BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups
Recipe:
Sweet Potatoe Casserole
4 cans sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar
½ stick margarine
½ cup milk
4 tsp vanilla
2 eggs beaten
Mix all the ingredients together and then pour into greased dish. Top with the topping tomorrow. Cook at 350 for 45 minutes.
Topping:
1 cup chopped pecan
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup flour
½ stick margarine
Holidays!
OK, I love my holidays! All of them and we celebrate and decorate for all of them at my house. My kids love the energy and excitement and learning about each.
But this weekend, I received my first Christmas card. While I LOVE getting Christmas cards, this one came before Thanksgiving. A bit out of order for my tastes! By the way, my friend isn’t the only one out of order! Every store I have been in is already playing Christmas music!
Social Listening before Social Action!
Well, in social, many companies do the same as my friend did — Go out of order — they develop a strategy to “place” information into the blogosphere before they listen In any relationship, listening should proceed talking! So that are the best listen first.
Leading organizations are using social business technology to positively disrupt their industries and create competitive advantage and they begin by understanding the thoughts that their clients, employees, and influencers say about them. Organizations are now moving from “liking” – simply using social technology for basic communication, to leading – where they are applying social listening tools and culture to fundamentally change their core business processes, leading to positive disruption within their organizations and their industries. These organizations know that listening is a key first step!
Why Social Listening is so important
We all see that there is an unprecedented amount of data being gathered at every meaningful touchpoint about each customer. The best brands among us are very strategic about which touchpoints get instrumented, and what kind of data emerges as the result—not just from the touchpoints under the marketing function’s control, but all touchpoints the company has.
Question to ask: what is our instrumentation strategy on social listening?
The most skilled companies are combining social data, other Web-based data and transaction data—and running precise analytics over them to gain new kinds of insights. In this world, the path to success is largely dependent on having comprehensive access to the data you need to formulate these insights, and strategies to discern the veracity of that data.
Question to ask: what is our strategy for attracting data?
Armed with that strategy, we will be able to see a time when our understanding becomes predictive. What is the customer’s next likely move—so we can appropriately pair our response with the next best offer, next best action, next need.
Question to ask: how predictive must our insights about customers be to succeed in our competitive market?
I believe that these 3 questions are crucial to execute a successful Social strategy! They begin with understanding through listening. Doing things in the right order!
I love Pinterest! Have you tried it? Did you know that
Pinterest drives more traffic to retail sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined!
The new year is fast approaching, so here are three great resources to help your company get off to a fast start in 2013:
First, at IBM we’re gearing up for our big event of the year, Connect 2013 in Orlando. This is an exciting event where we’re really digging into the crux of social business. Sure, we’ll spend some time talking technical details, but we’ll really focus in on the transformational power of social. This event is an amazing learning experience for any organization looking to get into social and equally as informative for those companies who are in the transformational process. Subject mater experts, real life success stories, technical demonstrations, transformations before your very eyes, all under one roof! I encourage you all to check out more details, this is the event of the year for social business.
Next, TODAY is an exciting day! Today at bookstores nationwide, as well as at all major online retailers, including Amazon.com, there’s a new book that provides you with the ultimate playbook for transforming into a social business. Socialized!: How the Most Successful Businesses Harness the Power of Social, by Mark Fidelman, is a must read for any organization, small and large, thinking about jumping into social. Mark covers all the necessary components of a successful social business, from cultural implications, engagement challenges, measuring ROI and more.
Included in the book is an in depth case study on IBM’s own social business journey. Mark chronicles the organization’s use of social software to foster collaboration among our dispersed 433,000 person team — a practice that began long before Generation Y became fixated with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It’s really a tremendous use case in social and its impact on a global workforce.
Hats off to Mark for writing a truly exceptional illustration of what social business can do for an organization!
And finally, there’s another book I highly suggest you get your hands on and buy for your product management team. Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager by IBM’s Ed Bill is available for pre-order now, expected for release on January 20. This is the ultimate educational resource for all those product managers who have either ignored social or don’t see the value in engaging to get their job done. Ed provides a first person account of how he has used IBM’s social business platform to help develop some of IBM’s most innovative products for our clients. Your product team needs this book, another must read!
I invite you to take advantage of these three great social business resources now at your disposal. I hope to see you at IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando and be sure to pick up Socialized and Opting In to read on the plane down!
Here are my ahas! from living with the effects of Sandy (no, no me but the storm!)
1. Game night is ON and slumber parties rock! And they are great family bonding time! We loved the game nights but never had time! Now with no TV — we had the time. Slumber night was fun! It was a real bonding experience!
2. I love my flashlight! Yep, I bugged my hubbie to prepare but I ended up buying the flashlights, and lights to illuminate the house. I ended up carrying it with me everywhere! Be prepared if this could happen to you!
3. I missed writing in my diary. As a young girl, I used to write in my diary daily! I have books and books of them! With the extra time, and no power but light. I wrote down my thoughts about the day, life, and more. It was a great exercise and very calming!
4. Innovation is alive! Cooking eggs on a grill? New spaghetti dishes from a microwave? yes, innovative food is a must during the event with little power — and a grill to cook on .. but we did have a generator that we used for one room! You learn to appreciate your full kitchen!
5. Lines are frustrating but you meet new people in them!. During the power outage, we had lines for gas, lines for restaurants, lines for lines! While this added to the frustration, we met some cool people. And people really come together in a disaster!
6. I had withdraws from Social !! I could only go online at work. So my tweets, my blogs were done only in the day. I missed my online friends and the news available via Facebook.
7. I really really missed all the conveniences. I didn’t realize until after the third day of fun with the family, how much I missed the basics. We are very blessed to have these daily and we do not even think about it!
IBM surveyed 1,160 business and IT professionals to understand the state of social business adoption to take a pulse on how organizations are tapping the power of social technologies to advance business objectives. From the IBV survey, 2/3 of respondents were not sure they sufficiently understood the impact that social technologies would have on their organizations over the next three years. Check it out here!
I really want to help all companies on this one. This POV is from working with 1000s of clients. I’d love to know if this helps you!
A social business transforms itself by activating networks of people. Whether through online communities and meetings,
team spaces, blogs, wikis, profiles or other social tools, people can explore new ways to build and leverage their networks
beyond those dictated by traditional organizational structures or means of communication. Information also becomes more
transparent and accessible, opening up new wells of knowledge and expertise. As a result, people can be more efficient in their
tasks and more responsive, authentic and familiar in their interactions. In turn, the organization as a whole becomes
increasingly nimble, engaged and creative.
The key to implementing social software is to set clear, realistic objectives for your social business initiatives and to embed
social tools into existing role-based processes.
The end point for your organization includes the following:
• Enable an effective workforce: Operations, human resources and other departments can increase overall employee
productivity and job satisfaction through improved knowledge capture, expertise location, and collaboration. Travel, training
and teleconferencing expenses also can be reduced.
• Accelerate innovation: Product research and development teams can quicken internal idea sharing and discovery, as well
as transform how they generate ideas, share strategies and gather feedback from key customers and partners.
• Deepen customer relationships: With more immediate access to content and expertise, customer service representatives can
work more efficiently and provide higher-quality service. Marketing and sales teams can have more time to spend with
customers and to dedicate to customer-focused initiatives.
From the McKinsey Study, there are measureable results.
IBM surveyed 1,160 business and IT professionals to understand the state of social business adoption to take a pulse on how organizations are tapping the power of social technologies to advance business objectives.
The entire study from IBM’s Institute of Business Value report is superb! Check it out here!
Our research found the value of social business increasing within an organization. As a result, 46% of the companies surveyed increased their social business investments in 2012. Companies that are emerging as social business leaders are applying the technologies to drive customer-facing activities such as lead generation, sales and post-sales service.
Don’t be left behind! Have you started?!