Social Business Sandy

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

Category: adoption (Page 13 of 25)

Socialytics! Ready, Set, Social Business Agenda!

November 5, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Top 5 Questions on Social!
I was just looking at the Top 5 questions companies have about Social Media and in the Top 5 is “How do I create a social strategy?”  In fact 83% say this is THE most important question to answer.

Companies around the world are now focused on becoming Social Businesses, estimated to be a $100B market by 2015.  In the past, Social Media was top of mind for marketing and PR executives, with the focus on leveraging social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and communities as a new form of media.  As these social techniques have advanced, businesses are now applying their value to more than just marketing and public relations but to all processes in a business – including Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Supply Chain and more.  A Social Business is one that uses these social techniques in all of its business processes.

It’s GLOBAL!

As I have traveled around the globe to over 78 countries, this trend is a global one.  According to the GlobalWebIndex Survey of over 51K web users, use of social tools is now mainstream in all countries but Japan having over 50% of their population using the tools.  Communities are the number social tool being used, with Facebook is the dominating communities, except in Russia, Netherlands, Japan and China where local brands dominate.   So with this major focus,    how does your company start the journey?

 So how do you do it? 

Based on working with thousands of clients, below is a way to create your personalized Social Business Agenda.

 A  – Align your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you.  Culture eats strategy for lunch.  Take a look at IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines as a way to get started!

G – Gain Social Trust focuses on finding your fans, friends and followers, and forming best friends from your tippers or most influential clients or outside parties. It dives into what social trust is all about and how you instill it.

E – Engage through experiences focuses on how a company can engage its clients and employees and dives into gaming, virtual gifting, location based, mobile, or other stellar experiences to drive that engagement.

N – “Social” Network your processes. Since this is about business, figuring out how to add social technqiues to your processes is critical. Think about customer service — adding in Twitter to address your customer’s concerns. Or Crowdsourcing for product innovation, or Communities for incrementing your marketing processes around Loyalty!

D – Design for Reputation and Risk Management! This is the #1 areas of focus for the C level — managing the risk of having your brand online, your employees being your brand advocates, and even your clients becoming your marketing department! I think the value outweighs the risk .. but see how to develop a Disaster Recovery plan as you plan for the worst, and expect the best!

A – Analyze your data! Social analytics are the new black! You need to see the patterns of sentiment, who your tippers are, and listen daily !

Happy Halloween! Social Business is creating a Scary number of new jobs

October 31, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Happy Halloween!  Since we had Hurricane Sandy last year, and snow the year before, this will be our first true trick or trick in a while!  Be safe!

I was just in a panel with Target Marketing and after the panel got a lot of questions around what are the new job types I should be looking at due to social media dominence. 

Don’t be scared!   There are a few.  Your fear can rest if you start looking at the new frontier today!

What are some of the new job types that the Social Era is producing?

  • Community manager – A person responsible for building, maintaining, and activating members in an online location around certain topics.  Key skills required:   Ability to be transparent, drive sharing among members, and listening and shaping conversations.   This role has become so popular that a day honoring its professional was created!

 

  • Social Business Risk Manager – A person who is focused on managing the risk associated with clients controlling brand online.   The role entails building a risk management plan, selecting a listening tool for ensuring risk is assessed, and ensuring groups of people can rally around a recovery.   Key skills required include:  Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, public relations, and grace under fire of a crisis.  

 

  • Reputation manager – a person responsible for building, maintaining and protecting a company’s reputation.   Reputation is what clients and potential clients believe to be true about your company.  Key skills required:   Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, marketing, and the ability to position a brand, company or product in a positive light.   This role has now outpaced the Risk Manager role, showing that the industry has moved to being much more proactive.

 

  • Social Analytics manager – a person who monitors, listens and analyzes the sentiment (or feelings of people online), and turns the massive amounts of data into insight.   This role will become increasingly important as more automated tools are coming into the market.  Key skills required:  Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques,  business intelligence, and ability to make recommendations on incomplete data.

 

  • Social customer support manager – a person responsible for scouring the blogsphere for customer concerns, insights, and statements.  This person’s role will have to extend through multi channels of input – including social tools like Twitter, Facebook, as well as traditional channels of phone which has now become one of many places where listening and turning data into insight will occur. Key skills for this role include:  Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques,  customer service, and CRM.

 

  • Social Product Innovation manager – a person who can generate ideas, refine ideas, and solicit valid “votes” on the best ideas that customers will actually buy.  With the increase in crowdsourcing or the ability of using crowds in the blogsphere to create and vote on new product concepts, this person becomes crucial to your company’s innovation engine.  Key skills for this role include:  Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, product management, and product development.

9 Levers of Differentiation in Big Data (Social creates alot of data!)

October 30, 2013 / / 1 Comment

What is big data anyway?  It is the flood of information that is available today.   Did you know that every day, 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created in a variety of forms, such as social 
media posts, information gathered in sensors 
and medical devices, videos and transaction records?  Why .. that’s Big!

Why is Big Data important? Being able to capitalize of that data gives you better insight and makes you more competitive.

big data info

IBM’s Institute of Business Value just published a study on the 9 Levers of Differentiation for Big Data.   The research makes it clear there are specific activities that can help organizations accelerate value creation and simplify analytics implementation.

Those 9 levers are:

1. Know the Source of Value.   Focus on actions and decisions that generate value.  Organizations realizing value from analytics solutions are those that can readily measure their impact.

2. Culture.  Those cultures that support the availability and use of data and analytics see higher value from analytics and data.

3. Executive Support and involvement.  Infusing the use of analytics into an organization’s culture typically requires advocacy and action from the most senior levels of
the organization.

4. Measurements.  Evaluating impact on business outcomes.  

5. Trusted data and data management practices.  Decision makers must have confidence in the data before they will use it to guide their actions.

6. Disicplined approach.  Leaders use a financial rigor in analytics funding process.

7. A great software platform.  You need integrated capabilities delivered by software tools to take advantage of big data.

8. Organizational confidence in the data and the skills.

9. Focus on Skills. Development and access to skills and capabilities.   There is a huge analytics skills gap.  Those leaders focus on training a great team.

Download the full report:   www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ninelevers/

Characteristics of Mobile Leaders

October 29, 2013 / / 2 Comments

I was just reading a survey completed by 601 Companies (301 Mature Countries, 300 Growth Countries) that was supported by IBM’s research partner, Oxford Economics .  It was done globally with respondents from 29 countries.

Here’s the leadership characteristics for mobile leaders:

1.   Leaders build apps that unlock core business knowledge for mobile uses.  They exceled 2:1 at integrating systems with mobile and are more efficient with app security than non leaders.

2.  Leaders manage mobile optimize performance and efficiency.  They are more than 2X likely to adopt BYOD and ensure speed!

3.  Leaders use insights to engage their clients whereever they are.  They are 2x more effective at taking action from mobile data.

4.  Leaders are using mobile to transform the way they do business.   They are 2X more likely to drive strong ROI.   For example, NS Shopping transformed their customer experience with mobile and analytics technologies.

Friday Social Tip: Spend Time on Your Influencers – The 4-1-1

October 25, 2013 / / 5 Comments

Spend time on your influencers!

I think this is one of the best social media tips I ever discovered.

First, a definition of an nfluencer.  An influencer is someone who influences the rest of the clients and potential clients online and offline, usually about 15% to 20% of your followers or fans!

I discovered this concept in a book by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping,  The 4-1-1 (for your informtion!) is a way to show value and care to your social influencers.

This concept says that if you communicate 6 things socially, 4 of those 6, or 67% should be showcasing content from your influencers.   The other items you should be showcasing are your Point of View or Subject Matter Expertise .  The other could be something that is more sales oriented.

Complements of Joe Pulizzi here is a great visual of what this concept is!

411

The Digital Fishbowl

October 24, 2013 / / 1 Comment

I overheard today someone discussing not wanting to live their life in a “fishbowl”.   And then I thought about our social world.   We actually do everything in a Digital Fishbowl.   The new generation (we call them generation C – connected and in control!) grew up this way and so it feels natural.

fishbowl

But what really are the benefits and the concerns to this new world?

Benefits:

  • Sharing of information.   Social networking enables sharing helpful information. Did you know that 52% of bloggers are parents who are seeking information to help their family in some way.   And there are social support groups for illnesses, and technical support.   I love this aspect about sharing in the fishbowl!
  • Think global act Social.   Social networking allows us the ability to communicate globally.   I loved the fact that over 500 friends around the world supported me in my broken leg through Facebook, and twitter.    For businesses, this implies that the global view can be learned.
  • Social is the ultimate personality test.   The digital fishbowl allows us to discover through social analytics the intrinsic traits that include what motivates you, what you believe, and your fundamental needs.  Computers can derive people’s traits from linguistic footprints.  That hasn’t been widely applicable before, because where do you get those linguistic footprints? Now, you can do that with social media and digital communications we have the big data we need!
  • Efficiency.   The digital fishbowl enables us to be more efficient.   For businesses, they can crowdsource their next product or strategy.   Sales can reach more contacts.  Video makes our visits more social and less time consuming.

Some Cons:

  • Lack of personal touch.   The digital fishbowl can be addicting and many I know communicate now mostly through text, tweets, and facebook. You lose something in doing that.
  • Anything that you do can leak out.    And maybe before you want it to!   There is a risk to being social !  (I think the risk of not being social is greater however!)
  • You cannot keep negativity at bay — and digital amplifies it!   We see this in schools with cyberbullying and even with some companies.  The biggest question that I get asked by small companies is how do I handled untrue remarks.

What do you think?  Do you like living in a digital fishbowl?

5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience

October 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Customer experience is a key differentiator for businesses.  In the age of social, the experience is even more important.

From some research this weekend around the “experience” area, here are some of the tips I find most helpful in this area.

Top 5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience;

  1. Post relevant content.    This technique pulls relevant people to your area.  Much like a retailer would leverage a storefront, or product, or specials to get people into the store.
  2. Use big data to understand your clients needs.   I believe the combination of big data and social is a game changer.  Using the social conversations that exists, you can learn how to better meet the needs of our clients.
  3. Be Consistent.   Your company will be on a number of social sites, and probably your own website.  Consistency in multichannel is crucial.  The new Generation C demands it!  Be Consistent in brand message and content and service. .   Consistency drives trust.   Trust drivers loyalty!
  4. Help your clients.   Provide them with social tools to help them decide on your products from the experience.   Think about recommendations from others. There is a new type of purchasing recommendation.   Instead of behavior driven – if you buy this, buy that because others did this, leverage the power that social brings:  “You share these attributes with the people who read this. You might want to take a look at it.”.  Gamification and other tools in the social world can increase your customer experience.
  5. Use predictive analysis to improve both current and future interactions.  Anticipating your clients needs keeps them in your camp longer.

7 Key Steps for Social Content Curation – Quiet Marketing

October 22, 2013 / / 13 Comments

Lately I have been focused on Content Curation as a secret weapon in your Social Strategy.  Did you know that 60% of B2B marketers plan on spending more on their content marketing next year than ever before?

content marketing

What is Social Content Curation?   It is a plan to create content, distribute content, promote content, and measure its success in the social world.

7 Steps to Great Social Curation:

  1. Conceptualize:   Before you begin, think through your plan and goals for your social content.  Think through details and leave nothing to chance. This requires a lot of preliminary research on your part.
  2. Plan your space.  Select where to place the content.  Where you place content will help you shape the content.  For instance, content on Pinterest is different than a blog!  Did you know that SlideShare is a great place and the largest curation of social presentations?  How do you leverage the right tools for your content!
  3. Know your audience.  A good curator needs to understand the audience and to fully communicate and let their Point of View (POV) speak out to the public and to better listen and meet their desires.
  4. Secure commitment, resources and budget.   Who will be your Subject Matter experts(SMEs)?  Make sure you secure their time and if you need, money to create the right graphics, video, and pictures to make your content come live.
  5. Create content.  Make sure it is great content.  Writing well is a necessary skill for a curator.  As is the use of video, pictures, presentations, and all valued content for your area.
  6. Communicate your content.  You have spent a long time on researching and organizing your content; now you want to maximize the viewing for your content and make it truly memorable. Imagine a top rated infographic, or blog.  Allow time and budget in order to be able to effectively contextualize your work.
  7. Have an Opening! Just like a museum curating an art exhibition, make your Social Content opening fun, exciting and memorable. You want to create an exciting buzz so that people will keep coming back.  Schedule your opening and begin the opening with a bang — maybe a SocialChat or a Tweetup.   Just as a museum would begin the opening with a live art or music performance or light show, these items !
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