BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Month: September 2012 (Page 1 of 2)

Africa and Social Business! #ls13 #ibmsocialbiz #ibmconnect #socbiz #ibm

IBM takes its Social Business focus to Africa. Africa is the next frontier, perhaps, as I read the latest ads from HSBC, the last emerging market!

South Africa is already in the social media era! South Africans leverage a plethora of tools, and has one of the highest growths in social media per the latest GlobalWebIndex report. South Africa is the 6th fastest growth in use of Facebook.

Here the great team took me to see several clients and hosted an evening on Social Business.  The event was called Close the Gap — creating your Social Business Agenda.

 

And this market is ripe for social.    According to the Global Web Index, Indonesia leads the way, with over 80% of internet users in the market,both South Africa and India demonstrate incredibly high levels of multiple service adoption.

Whirlwind Social Business launch day in Sydney! $4B planned investment in Social Business in 2012! WOW! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm #marketing 2.0

With the Social Business world tour, I went Down Under to discuss social.  Again, the interest level has grown tremendously since last year!   While I was here, I saw the new report, The Global impact investment market study by JP Morgan, and the Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN).  It showed that  investors see the social enterprise as a market ‘in its infancy and growing’ with almost $ 4 billion planned for investment in 2012.

I loved working with the team in Australia on the Social Business!  But while at a client dinner,  I learned that many of my favorite Australian brands are actually no longer Australia!!!   Um……!   Really did you know that Aussie Shampoo is actually British! Also since my daughter loves Cody Simpson’s music (he is from the Gold Coast), learned that he is unknown in Australia.   Sigh.   No Cody Posters coming home in my bag!

 

While I was in Australia, we had analyst briefings, media event involving customers and partners plus meetings with FOUR major Australian companies all in 1 day. The Australian team sure know how to make time stretch!!  See below for some of the fun pics!

The day had a lot of excitement from clients who told their stories!  Jord was on stage with me and told their amazing story of leveraging Connections throughout their enterprise.

Take a listen to Kim Robertson on our adventure down and under!

 

Singapore – Here now back for IBM Interconnect October 9-11 #IBMInterConnect #ls13 #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm

On the Social Busines World Tour, I am now in Singapore,!!  It was a short visit but still time for the IBM team and clients!   We are back here in October 9-11 — will you be here too?

Hear from our ASEAN leader on the new buyer for Social and why INTERCONNECT in Singapore on October 9-11 is the place to be!   Why should you come?    Well, you can meet the best minds at IBM — including technical experts, thought leaders, and IBM’s senior leadership team (Bob Picciano, Mike Rhodin, Robert LeBlanc, Jim Bramante, Rod Adkins and Steve Mills)  With a  first-hand look at IBM’s newest social, cloud, mobile, and enterprise solutions, this cannot be missed!  I’ll see you there!

Follow us @IBMInterConnect 

Thanks for the great focus on Social Business in Singapore to our super IBM Team shown below!

5 New Trends from the newest GlobalIndex Trend report! #ls13 #ibmsocialbiz #social #socbiz

From the GlobalWebIndex Trend report, some very interesting facts about social!   My friend Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex. has some interesting new findings!  Take a read through it!

Five key trends in social media:

1. Social media is the internet:  Social media is so ingrained into the modern internet experience that a staggering 90% of all internet users now have an account on at least one social service and 70% of them contributed in the past month. Emerging internet markets dominate growth numbers for the big name social services and the top five markets for owning and being active on social profiles are Indonesia, China, South Korea, Philippines and Russia.

2. Passive users are transforming social:  When social media arrived, it was very much about consumers publishing to the world and peer-to-peer communication. The situation today is shifting rapidly. Increasingly, social media and the social platforms are enabling consumers to follow and stay up to date with people in the public eye. Consequently contribution levels are falling with messaging friends falling 16% from 69% of social network users in Q2 2012. As users become more passive over time and increasingly turn to people in the public eye or well-known organisations for interesting content, social will increasingly become a broadcast channel.

3. Emerging markets will power Facebook onwards and upwards:  Facebook continues to demonstrate epic growth, topping 1bn accounts by the end of Q2 2012. Growth is now entirely driven by new users in markets such as Brazil and India, where social media is mass market and internet penetration is growing rapidly. There has been a recent decline in the US and other mature markets such as Sweden, Hong Kong and Singapore. The relentless growth of emerging internet markets like Brazil, Indonesia and India, will according to our three years of trend data, enable Facebook to hit 1.5bn users by the Q3 2013 and 2bn users by the end of 2014.

4. Pinterest becomes an international hit:  The new star of social has certainly made a massive impact, already signing up 53m active users. This is rapid growth for a product that only came out of beta in August 2012. This a demonstration of the globalisation of the internet as only 16m of these active users originate in the US, with China (11m), India (8m) and Brazil (1.8m) leading the international growth charge.

5. Photo sharing dominates social usage:  Sharing photos is by far the most important activity on all the devices used by Facebook users. Eight-two per cent of active Facebook desktop PC users have shared via PC, 60% of mobile users via a mobile and 57% of tablet users via a tablet. It outranks messaging friends, posting status updates or sharing links.

This is replicated (at a lower level) in Google+ – where 120m active users have shared photos and is also the second-most important activity in Twitter – 41% – after posting comments on your daily activities, which scored 48%.

 

Social Business in Vietnam! Rocking in a Booming Economy! #ls13 #ibm #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz

I am here in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, for our next stop in the Social Business Roadshow!    Did you know that in terms of economic growth, Shanghai gets top rating followed by Ho Chi Minh City!  And there are more motorbikes on the road than I have ever seen!  I saw one motorbike with 6 family members on it and then this one … note that the bike is carrying a refrig and a plasma TV AND the guy is on the phone!

Social media has become an increasingly important tool in our daily lives – helping people connect, communicate and share information. This has forever changed the way people interact.  lToday, more than 2 billion people use the internet. By the end of this year, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….and 96% of them have joined a social network.The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube.  25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.  And this adoption has happened at an incredible pace. Consider this: to reach 50 million users, it took radio 38 years…it took television 13….it took the internet only 4. Meanwhile, Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion downloads in 9 months.

It’s clear we are now in the midst of a revolution. People are using these connections as a primary means of communication, in many cases, replacing other more traditional interactions.  Vietnam has only 27.1% social users – however, statistics show that the percentage of connected users who are highly engaged in online activities is high 45% in Vietnam, demonstrating an eagerness to adopt greater Internet usage in Vietnam. The average Vietnamese Internet user is 27.4 years.  According to statistics, most Internet users in Vietnam are Communicators (48%) and Influencers (27%); the popularity of social networking, email and a focus on online communication means there are many opportunities for online marketing and connecting through social platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

The packed out room today shows that leading companies are seizing on these opportunities to create real business value – moving from using social  technologies for basic communication to driving disruptive change in their industries.

Here is the great Vietnam Team!

 

Where in the world is Sandy? Social Media Matters in Hong Kong and China! #ls13 #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz

Our Social Business World Tour now has taken me to Hong Kong/ China.  Ogivly has a great show called “Social Media Matters” and it was again a sold out affair.   They had to figure out how to fit 500 seats into the expanded room and we still ended up with people standing! 

The conference was mainly focused on Marketing.   Per the IBM CMO study, 71% of CMOs regard social business as their #1 priority in managing the shift to digital marketing.    CMOs are looking to deliver value to empowered customers, focus on customers as individuals, and reveal preferences and trends hidden in data.  Foster lasting connections while stimulating customer relationships and offer tangible incentives if you can leverage social to engage throughout the customer lifecycle. 

#SMMASIA was a trending topic and here were some of favs — Twitter Style!  My Top 10!

1.  Opening of Olympics – 10 million tweets on twitter. On Chinese microblog site weibo – 119million

2.  IBM hit the nail on the head – have to have processes in place for social biz to work

3.  Renren users use their real name, which is not commonly seen on other Chinese social platforms

4.  A year from now, we will be talking as much as about WeChat as we are about Weibo. – Sam Flemming, CIC

5.  From IBM CEO Study, Social at the top: 16% of CEOs use social to connect with customers

6.  70%+ people in hong kong follow brands on LinkedIn – they welcome and expect interaction

7.  400 million video views on YouKu Tudou every day. 62% from licensed content like drama and movies.

8.  If fans love your brand, those fans will have your back.

9.  Wu Sheng of Jingdong: “does the customer return? That is all that matters. The rest is just fluff

10.  Last year, less than 1 out of 10 mobile phone purchases in China were smartphones, now 1 out of 2.”

IBM’s own Kwee Heng Lee who leads Social Business for the Greater China region was excited as IBM played a key role at the event!
In CHINESE:   
 
In ENGLISH:  
 
 

Japan Gets Social! What’s your favorite Connections 4 Focus? #ibm #ls13 #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz

IBM had a CIO Magazine sponsored “Social means business” event in Tokyo with a sold out crowd!   What a difference a year make!    Japan is rocking Social!  The question went from what’s social to how do we get started?

The message was clear around the IBM Platform for Social Business!  (see below)   The Platform has Social Content, Networking and Analytics — the core of function required!   And that as was said in the Panel, small tools cause big problems an integrated tool that you can use in bite size chunks if what is needed!

IBM’s announcement of the Platform including cool new news on Connections 4 was 3 dimensional!

And here’s our very own Japan leader on those thoughts!

What’s YOUR favorite Connections 4 new focus?  I’ll preview more in the next days but here’s a sneak peek!

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