We are continuing our series on the Angels framework. Today, I’d like to discuss “S” : Scream! … use technology to scream into the marketplace. Check out the video at:
Archive for March, 2009
NYC TweetUp! East Coast Rocks!
March 25, 2009Well, we ended up with 62 people are our NYC TweetUP on Madison Ave on Monday night! It was a great group of folks who attended with amazing social media stories of use and value, new applications, and even one person who had never been on Twitter that signed up immediately in the room (yes, they got the invite verbally from a friend!).
Yes, some might say a little formal……but great food, free drinks, and great conversations and networking. It was great to meet face to face with those you have been tweeting with for a while!
I learned about a Social Media Club, a Social Media Breakfast, and some great upcoming events. What more could you ask for?
We will do this again soon! Thanks for joining us!!!
Top 5 Do's and Don't from Jeremiah's Discussion with IBM'S WebSphere Event
March 23, 2009Guys … I took the 10 that Jeremiah gave us into 5!!! He is amazing and loves this space
1) Don’t obsess over the tools! His advice? Watch the early adoptors and see what they are adopting. Tons of new tools being developed every month! Choose carefully based on what you want to do! But you will make mistakes and it is ok!
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2) Invest in the resources around the tools you choose! You can do a lot for very little money! While growing, the total dollars here are small still. Spend 80% on the strategy, goals, value propositions and 20% on the tools. Examples he gave include Dell, Wells Fargo, and IBM.
3) Do Integrate! Don’t forget to integrate! Social tools are not islands. Successful social media works when the social media tools cross link and integrate! Develop an index page of tools!
4) Make sure you have an internal social media process! Several models were reviewed – -the Tire –> employees are communicating with the market with corporate communications still in the center. Second, the control – Company communications owns all social media. Third, hub and spoke — in the middle is a cross functional team.
He compared this hub and spoke to an airport. The team needs radar to listen. The Signal Tower prioritizes the information and informs the right team. The Flight log shows key results.
Have a place so that people can experiment — a Social Media sandbox like Yammer, or Blue Twit or Thinkforward internal to IBM. Make sure you make it safe to try this internally!
5) What not to do — measure the wrong things!
Page views along are not sufficient to measure . Meausring click throughs is the wrong engagements! Measure based on the business objectives.
Bottom line, this is personal, use them! Play with them. The ones Jeremiah suggested…..Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer, Twitter, Blogs and Pictures. Use search tools like google alerts, twitter search , and technorati.
Top 5 Do’s and Don’t from Jeremiah’s Discussion with IBM’S WebSphere Event
March 23, 2009Guys … I took the 10 that Jeremiah gave us into 5!!! He is amazing and loves this space
1) Don’t obsess over the tools! His advice? Watch the early adoptors and see what they are adopting. Tons of new tools being developed every month! Choose carefully based on what you want to do! But you will make mistakes and it is ok!
•
2) Invest in the resources around the tools you choose! You can do a lot for very little money! While growing, the total dollars here are small still. Spend 80% on the strategy, goals, value propositions and 20% on the tools. Examples he gave include Dell, Wells Fargo, and IBM.
3) Do Integrate! Don’t forget to integrate! Social tools are not islands. Successful social media works when the social media tools cross link and integrate! Develop an index page of tools!
4) Make sure you have an internal social media process! Several models were reviewed – -the Tire –> employees are communicating with the market with corporate communications still in the center. Second, the control – Company communications owns all social media. Third, hub and spoke — in the middle is a cross functional team.
He compared this hub and spoke to an airport. The team needs radar to listen. The Signal Tower prioritizes the information and informs the right team. The Flight log shows key results.
Have a place so that people can experiment — a Social Media sandbox like Yammer, or Blue Twit or Thinkforward internal to IBM. Make sure you make it safe to try this internally!
5) What not to do — measure the wrong things!
Page views along are not sufficient to measure . Meausring click throughs is the wrong engagements! Measure based on the business objectives.
Bottom line, this is personal, use them! Play with them. The ones Jeremiah suggested…..Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer, Twitter, Blogs and Pictures. Use search tools like google alerts, twitter search , and technorati.
Social Media Tweetup in NYC! Join Us!
March 18, 2009I am so excited! Coming to the East Coast — live — a Social Media Tweetup! We had one in the Valley — that was so energizing but being an East Coast girl, we must try one here!
Every day companies are devising innovative techniques to leverage Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Lotus Connections, WebSphere Commerce, iLog Visualization and other Social Media technologies to develop deeper customer connections. And I see that many many countries are getting more and more interested in Social Media — like India, Brazil, and others
Many of you, have stories about ways you have deployed Social Media tactics to successfully drive demand. And I want to hear about them! I love social media and if you share that passion and quest for Business Savy in measuring it for great business value.
f you do, please plan to share in a casual conversation, Social Media Tweetup, hosted by Sandy Carter, VP of Marketing for IBM’s SOA and Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior analyst for Forrester.
This event will be held in Mid Town Manhattan on Monday, March 23 from 6 – 8 PM. We are limited to 30 attendees so please RSVP quickly
To RSVP or to inquire for more details, please contact scarter@us.ibm.com
7 Key Social Media Trends in India
March 17, 2009A friend of mine in India sent me these great trends for India. If any of you have trends for other parts of the world, can you please Tweet me or Blog me?
Thanks!
Top Seven Social Media Predictions for India for 2009
1. Citizen journalism will come into its own in India.
We saw a preview of the power of citizen journalism in the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack. We also saw that mainstream media is increasingly willing to integrate citizen journalism in its news coverage. News organizations are not only promoting citizen journalism platforms like IBN Live’s Citizen Journalist, but also engaging with platforms like Twitter (see @DNAIndia, @LiveMint, @BangaloreMirror, @IndiatimesNews). We will see a continuation of these trends in 2009. More news organizations will experiment with citizen journalism, both by creating citizen journalism platforms on their own websites and by actively tracking social media for stories and sources.
2. Social media will play an important role in the 2009 Indian general elections.
Young people in India are very engaged with politics in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack and this engagement will make an impact in the 2009 elections. This will include more debate on the many problems facing India and even specific political parties and candidates. This will also involve a serious “get out the vote” campaign to get more young people to go out to vote. Specifically, we will see Twitter and other mobile based applications like
3. More Indian corporates will use social media tools to engage with their customers.
With the inevitable cuts in marketing budgets, more Indian corporates will turn to social media to recah their consumers in a meaningful way. These initiatives will include better listening via social media monitoring, more transparency via corporate blogs and Twitter profiles and higher engagement with customer communities on social networking sites. As a result, we will see several new social media monitoring companies (like
4. At least one SMS-based mobile social network will become mainstream in India.
Even as we see several innovations in location based mobile social networking internationally, the adoption of such services in India will be minimal, even with the launch of 3G and flat data rates. Text and voice will continue to drive mobile usage in most of India and we will see the emergence of at least one major SMS based mobile social network in India. It may be a ver 2.0 of
SMSGupShup with many-to-many messaging capability, it may be Twitter, or it may be a new player (and, no, it won’t be MobiChange, not yet). 5. At least one web 2.0 service started in Indian will break onto the international scene.
The recent $7.5 million
6. Social media outsourcing will we widely seen as the next big outsourcing opportunity for India.
I have earlier written that
In 2009, the volume of consumer generated media will increase, social media engagement processes and metrics will evolve and budgets will continue to decrese. All these three trends will drive large international brands to seriously evaluate outsourcing parts of the social media valua chain to countries like India. We will also see more Indian firms pursue the opportunity in a structured manner and social media outsourcing will be widely seen as the next big outsourcing opportunity for India. 7. Several Indian social networking websites will either shut down or reposition themselves as niche player.
In 2008, we saw that the social networking space in India became a two horse race with Orkut and Facebook and several
Indian social networking websites, that were essentially Facebook or Orkut clones, lost significant traffic. We will see this trend continuing in 2009, and, even as we see the emergence of niche social networking sites focused on Cricket, Bollywood, Education, Career, Consumer Reviews, Social Activism, or even Social Shopping, we will see several undifferentiated Indian social networking websites become even more marginalized, with some of them shutting shop.
social media outsourcing is the next big business opportunity for India and may already be leading the third wave of Indian outsourcingacquisition of SocialMedian by Xing has shown that a web 2.0 service developed in India can break through onto the international scene. SocialMedian was developed almost entirely in Pune by True Sparrow. In 2009, we will see at least one India based web 2.0 startup scaling up to international prominence, and perhaps selling out, in a similar fashion.Informm), social media agencies and consumer communities (like BrandAdda) enter the Indian market. SMSGupShup and MyToday playing an important role in the 2009 general elections, both in the campaigning and in the coverage of the elections. Some politicians will also experiment with social media. BJP’s V K Malhotra, for instance has a Twitter account @VKMalhotra
L is how to you measure leads from Social Media!
March 16, 2009Today, I’d like to discuss “L” from the ANGELS framework: Leads and Revenue which is really the bottom line! Check it out at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S70moQZPcPc&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=5
We look at how do you “show the money” from your Social Marketing? Highlights include:Metrics: don’t just measure the start and the end but look at the in process pieces ie: a lead from a virtual event, from Twitter, etc. How do you make sure Marketing and Sales are teaming together in the middle to progress that lead. Use in-process metrics!
Use a Dashboard: create an automated one such as a campaign effectiveness session or a response mgt session, that would allow you to automatically reach out to your customers.
Understand your dashboard … more than just ROI … sync it in to your business strategy and goals
What are the new metrics now that you have inserted social media into your plans: it’s all about the Marketing Mix. You may need to tweak it. Live events, search, virtual events, advertising … you need to optimize across the mix. Also, look at a lot of new metrics for on-line engagement, such as involvement, on-line interactions, are you getting the right audience. Look at the frequency of conversations, how many are converted relationships from negative to positive, relationships to purchase, on-line conversations that mention your brand, etc.
ROI can be tricky – measure the value of new social relationships, looking at innovation, at awareness, extended reach, word of mouth, communities, etc. Use and understand your Dashboard!
Great Social Networking article ! Check it out!
March 12, 2009Social Networking and Blogs Surpass Email in Popularity
With 67% of the worldwide internet population visiting, social networks and blogs are now outpacing email in popularity. They’ve become the 4th most popular online category, according to Nielsen Online.
“Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” says John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online.
“While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.
This study explains why.”Here are some more interesting nuggets of information on the matter from Nielsen:
One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.
The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to “Member Community” Web sites globally came from the 35-49 year old age group (+11.3 million).
Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23 percent (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19 percent in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year – up 249 percent in the UK and 156 percent in the US.
Does this mean people will start responding to social media marketing over email marketing? Only time will tell. So will you when you leave a comment below.
E = Energize the Channel and Community Socially!
March 12, 2009Continuing our series on the Angels framework, today, we will discuss “E”: how to Energize your channel and your community, one of my favorites!
Check out the video (do these help?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?=DBUA7_hmi2k&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=4
We look at how to choose the vessels available in social media based on your goals: dialogue, collaboration, sharing, etc. It all depends on your ultimate goal.
* Serious Gaming: Wii, DS: leverage the power of the games, a teachable moment. Example: Innov8, one of IBM’s serious games is a great example: it progressed from education to customer interaction to forming relationships with partners. There is a 80% higher recall from teaching with a game vs. in-class education and the average age of gamer is 33 and 47% are in the 18-49 year old age bracket.
Widgets: a virtual briefcase with a set of channels for demos, presentations, etc. Use it internally and externally with customers. They’re great for sharing information and getting feedback on it.
Communities and Social networks: Per IDC, 50% of on-line Americans belong to a social network. Do you create your own or leverage existing ones out there? Both MySpace and Facebook as well as LinkedIn fit in here.
Sharing. I personally love the vessel of Blogging. Blogging is great way to share information. My favorite of course is microblogs like Twitter.
Dell created their own Twitter channel to sell excess inventory
There are lots of social tools – to energize your channel and community – here are the key steps to take:
- Learn about the options
- Experiment – try things out
- Leverage them in your current plans
- Plan and execute your social media vehicles
