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

Month: October 2012 (Page 1 of 2)

Happy Halloween!!! This is what scares me on Social! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm #ls13

Happy Halloween!    This is what scares me on Social!!!

1.  Anyone who says ” I want a Social Presence because I read about it on the plane!”
This view of social presence is spooky as it shows lack of understanding about social! I heard from so many CEOs or Senior Leaders that they want a social presence just because of their airplane reading!    Social is valuable but only if you know how it can help your business goals and really have a culture that is ready to transform!

2.  Senior leaders who say “I am opting out of Social”
Really?  How ?   Will you send a note to your clients asking them not to talk about you? This statement (which was said to me) sends shivers up my spine as you cannot opt out of social.  In fact, it is riskier to “opt out” and ignore social, than to be active in the discussion!

3.  People who use Social as a sales or marketing channel only.
Please slay the vampire!   Social is about a relationship.  It is not about selling and marketing.  The relationship makes selling and marketing easier because you have listened, and had the clients become active in your company and products.   But don’t use this as a traditional channel.

Surviving Hurricane Sandy with Social Pics! #ls13 #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz

Hurricane Sandy drove massive issues throughout the East Coast, and in my neighborhood.

It resulted in a Social drive in all social tools.   “There are now 10 pictures per second being posted with the hashtag sandy” per instagram, like the below from my neighborhood.   Twitter was also alive with #sandy (yes, my name) and more.

In this tradegy, I am glad I can keep in touch via all my social tools!

And this one to get out of our neighborhood.

 

Social did transform the culture; It revealed it! Clarrisa Felts Lowes #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #bizsocialmedia #ls13

This past week we had the first annual NAFE Business of Social Media conference!  Along with 183 other women, we learned about Social and the opportunity for all companies, and for all women!

This week in honor of Clarrisa Felts, the VP at Lowe’s in charge of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration, our Social Business Coffee break focuses on their excellence in sociall!

Her quote of the conference was “Social doesn’t transform the culture; It reveals it”  How true this is!

Tribal stories! Reliance Life Insurance goes social ! #bizsocialmedia #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

Reliance Life Insurance wanted to enable hyper-growth by building a ‘virtual office’ to accelerate the growth in their business.  They designed a Lifeline social-portal that delivers services to all of Reliance’s key stakeholder groups: customers, prospects, employees, and agents. The portal provides customers with a one-stop experience through which they can research and purchase insurance plans, manage their portfolios and pay their premiums. Agents can use the platform to get a unified, cross-sectional view of customers’ portfolios and gain the insights to make intelligent cross-selling recommendations that provide optimal coverage for customers. So far they have reduced the time required to develop new services and features by more than 50 percent and reduced their customer/agent service costs nearly 50 percent.   In addition, they have doubled market share since introducing Lifeline!

Tribal Reference Stories! Social Business Communities Work! #ibmiod #ls13 #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

Last time I was in Austin, I met with the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas at a Social Business Panel.   Learn from this team — they are doing some incredible things!

The Medical Center wanted a way to help patients and families learn from one another’s experiences and improve education and support networks, with the hope of driving more effectively managed care. As the 7th largest pediatric healthcare provider in the US- with nearly 570,000 patient visits every year- and a network of physicians and employees, they had a large potential ‘social graph’ to tap into.   They created a single experience for their patients, which integrated health records, educational material, tools, and the Children’s Social Network into a single experience, CMDC provided patients and parents with a private community for communication and support. They estimate that this single experience will drive a 75% reduction in clinic phone calls, a 5% increase in referrals, integration within the continuity of care and reduced operating costs.

These communities do work — and they can be secure!   What are you doing with your communities?

Tribal reference stories! Short and Sweet on power of Social Analytics! #ibmiod #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ls13

At the IBM conference in Las Vegas, we heard the strong message that Social Analytics made a huge difference!  Here is a great case study for emphasizing this point!

Amadori is a 100-yr old Italian food company that wanted to better market its products to a younger audience.  Using social analytics, they listened and learned about this new target customers’ preferences and integrate those insights into their digital marketing campaigns.   How?    They created highly interactive websites that integrated with social networking sites (like Facebook and YouTube).   Through the dialog within the four microsites and using sophisticated predictive analytics, Amadori is able to track and visualize what is said about their brand and products on social networks, blogs and forums- in real time- uncovering trends and opinions. Amadori uses this information to identify and predict consumer buying preferences, refine their digital marketing campaigns to generate more sales, and use the information to develop new products.
The results are on target!  The solution boosted their ability to monitor and learn about their brand, improve their social media presence by 100% (45k Facebook fans in less than one year), build direct channels with new segments and respond 40% faster with new web sites.

The Bridge that Connects Europe and Asia! The Social Bridge! #ls12 #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz

I was recently in Istanbul at the WebIt 2012 conference and was thrilled with my crossing of the Bosporus Bridge.  Interestingly, as the Bosporus strait is the boundary between Europe and Asia, the bridge actually connects two continents.  How cool is this !!!

This bridges takes and connects Asia to Europe.   I immediately thought of social bridging. (Of course, everything reminds me of social !!!!)

Social bridges several different attitudes and positions.

  • According to the University of Chicago survey social media bridges race, and ethnic divides
  • According to the Social Media Club, Social Media helps to  connect people outside of one’s age group and generation.  A  research project by the Pew Research Centre, U.S., indicated that more senior citizens in the U.S. were logging on to social media sites. Social network usage for Internet users of 74 and older quadrupled between 2008 and 2010, from 4 per cent to 16 per cent, making this age group the fastest growing social media users.
  • According to the Leadership Blog, Social is bridging the leadership-development discussion between manager and employee.  It fact is the most transformation change in leadership some say in history!
  • With LinkedIn, the bridges between social interaction in companies is greater than ever before.
  • Throughout social tools, social is bridging the customer interaction is an amount unheard of in past times.   This is bringing about high client empowerment and innovation from client to company.

Just like that bridge I crossed in Turkey, Social forms a significant social bridge.  What are your thoughts on the Bridging that Social has made on your life or professional career?

Most Valuable Global Brands: Coca-Cola, Apple, and IBM #ibm #interbrand #ls12 #ibmsocialbiz

Don’t know if you saw this report, but I checked out  the latest Interbrand report (this is in its 13th year).  Coca-Cola remained #1, and  Apple jumped sto #2, for its success in emerging markets over the past year.

For the ranking, Interbrand examined three key aspects that contribute to a brand’s value:

  1. The financial performance of the branded products or service.
  2. The role the brand plays in influencing consumer choice.
  3. The strength the brand has to command a premium price, or secure earnings for the company.

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