Social Business Sandy

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

Category: Blogs (Page 3 of 24)

What are the attributes of a Social Advocate?

April 1, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Yesterday I spoke to my team on how to be more of a Social Advocate.  This Advocate role is very important to companies because studies show that more people listen to word of mouth vs brand content.

Since I had this as our #1 question, I decided to do a quick blog entry on it as well to share more broadly!

A Social Advocate is a person who is passionate about your brand and references you in the normal course of business.  The recent Global Web Index, found that exclusive content motivates 21% to become a advocate brand.

Their characteristics are those of a Trust-builder, an Idea challenger, and a client advocate.  They specialize in the art of the conversation, asking questions, listening, and sharing a point of view.   They become the Go-to Person, …not just present in Social Media, they position themselves as credible and influential sources in customer networks.

Are you an Advocate?

Blogging: the gateway drug to technology! Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins from BlogHer at SXSW

March 26, 2014 / / 2 Comments

BlogHer is one of my favorite content networks and events. So I was very excited to have the opportunity to talk to co-founders Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins.

We talked about developing more opportunities for women in tech, why when thinking mobile you need to think tablets, and how in certain markets every blogger needs to be a pinner.

If you haven’t already, make sure you check out BlogHer!

Bluemix Days! Join us !

March 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Ecosystem_BlueMix_Days_Sandy_Blog_NOHIPAA

Cambridge BlueMix Day Registration: http://www-304.ibm.com/events/idr/idrevents/register.action?meid=16628&ieid=9475

Silicon Valley BlueMix Day Registration: http://www-304.ibm.com/events/idr/idrevents/register.action?meid=16628&ieid=9478

Complete list of BlueMix Days: http://www-304.ibm.com/events/idr/idrevents/detail.action?meid=16628&ieid=9478&cmp=pw&cpb=pw&ct=pwrss&cr=pwiic&ccy=zz

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Digital tip for Friday – Cleaning up your Twitter account

March 21, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Having a lot of users following your account in Twitter is a good thing… or isn’t it anymore? As @digitalnaiv, it is worth to focus on a vibrant network or in one that is out of date? If you want to have a healthy community of followers, based more on quality than quantity, you can use tools such as Tweepi to force people to directly unfollow you. This way you can leave out those who do not tweet anymore or have abandoned accounts. This is useful also for doing some clean up on the people or brands you are following.

A chance to shine: Show-off your mobile app at Impact 2014

March 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Do you have a mobile app solution? If so, the IBM Mobile App Throwdown at Impact 2014 is for you!

We’re inviting developers and our IBM Business Partners to get up on stage and demonstrate new solutions that use the IBM MobileFirst portfolio or our newly announced IBM BlueMix.

The App Throwdown at Impact 2014 will be a fun, interactive event where we will feature you, your mobile app solution, and how it integrates on any one of our IBM products. This puts you front and center at a major IBM event where you’ll have the chance to demonstrate your solution live! The audience of clients, IBM Business Partners, and IBM sellers will select their favorite mobile app solution to win.

Will it be you? This is a great opportunity! Don’t miss it!

Listen to what past App Throwdown winner, My Menu, said about their experience!

The deadline for the App Throwdown is April 21st. IBM Impact 2014 is April 27th to May 1st.

Don’t delay!Register now!!!

Selfies Explode but ROI comes from sharing value! Let's do "other-ies"

March 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I was thinking this weekend about Selfies after I saw so many taken at SXSW and highlighted in the Oscars.

I looked for some research on how prevalent this trend is becoming.  For example, a recent joint study of self-portraits in social media by three universities in the U.K. found that aggressively posting self-portraits on Facebook can alienate our friends and loved ones.  In another example, the study found that selfies compose a 30% of images snapped by everyone’s favorite demographic — the much-beloved millennial!!

So much focus now on “it’s all about me”. But you get more success when social is used for “value” of all opinions and offering a point of view.  

I think the leaders of social should push for sharing and valuing others.   determining what others need helps to spur on innovation and a focus outside yourself, vs inside your company.

The top ten most innovative companies had two-year compound annual growth rates of 60 percent more than the overall Standard and Poors Global.  For these companies, innovation is much more than a “big idea.” Innovation is an ongoing process of creating value from something new, such as new ideas, new technologies, new products or new processes. For example, 75 percent of successful companies rely on social networks to vet new ideas for success. They use them for:

  • Openly communicating strategy
  • Openly generating and prioritizing non-traditional ideas for new products and services
  • Innovating operations by teaming with external specialists and business partners
  • Innovating business models by combining emerging technologies with business imperatives to redefine the value chain or move into entirely new industries

Your influence matters!!  Encourage others and companies to :

  • “Engage the crowd” (internal and external) to vet new ideas not just sell their own
  • Deploy a portal that combines content, social and advanced mobile features to provide an exceptional digital experience for customers, partners, and employees to make it easy to share ideas
  • Deploy social gamification and social rewards systems to improve engagement and sharing

SXSW Interactive at the BlueMix Blast!!!

March 14, 2014 / / 0 Comments

For the last 5 years I’ve had the opportunity to attend SXSW in Austin, Texas.

sxsw shirt

More than 60,000 people annually attend the conference, which is consistently an overwhelmingly impressive display of up-and-coming technologies and inspirational industry thought leaders. This year, the two biggest highlights of the conference were enjoying creative culinary delights such as a burrito cooked by the Institute of Culinary Education chefs at the Watson Food Truck and having an opportunity to spend so much time with developers.

sxsw watson

If you had a chance to interact with more than 10,000 developers at once what would you ask them? I spoke with hundreds of developers and asked them to tell me about how they are using cloud, mobile, big data and analytics to innovate, address business pain points or create the next big consumer app. For example, wearable technology such as clothing that uses, sensors to help better manage an individual’s health.

During SXSW I first met with designers and front-end developers at our BlueMix Blast! See this amazing team below!

design team of BLUEMIX

In 2013, IBM unveiled a product design studio in Austin, which has brought together hundreds of designers and front-end developers to focus on how software is designed, developed and consumed by organizations around the globe. Next, I attended IBM’s BlueMix Party along with more than 400 developers looking for an opportunity to learn about BlueMix, IBM’s new platform-as-service (PaaS) that combines the strength of IBM software, third-party and open technologies.

What is BlueMix?

BlueMix is an open-standards, cloud-based platform for building, managing and running apps of all types (web, mobile, big data, new smart devices). Capabilities include Java, mobile backend development, application monitoring, as well as capabilities from ecosystem partners and open source — all through an as-a-service model in the cloud. When thinking about BlueMix, imagine tapping into DevOps in the cloud — an open, integrated development experience that scales, helping developers, independent firms and enterprise teams get started to build enterprise applications more quickly and effectively.

If you are curious about how BlueMix can help a business, check out this video conversation I recently had with Michael Garel, CEO and Founder of eyeQ, about customer engagement and how BlueMix allowed them to simplify and improve their development process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7_UT02jVfQ

During my conversation with developers at SXSW three key points on the future of the developer and cloud ecosystem stood out to me:
1. It’s all about the tools.
Developers today are always on the look-out to tap into systems and tools that simplify and reduce the time needed to create an application and to provision it so that they can focus on what they do best—innovating and developing top quality applications. By using the right tools that eliminate complexity, developers can quickly turn their ideas into shipped products fast and lower their time-to-market by cutting application development and deployment times from months to days and hours.
2. Keep an open mind when it comes to open standards.
An open, flexible cloud environment connecting the enterprise and born-on-the-web developers using their choice of tools in a scalable model prevents vendor lock-in, accelerates innovation and fosters growth.
3. The developer community keeps growing in size and creativity.
According to Evans Data, there are more than 18 million software developers worldwide yet less than 25 percent are developing for the cloud today. The developer population is expected to grow to 26.4M by 2016 and the parentage of developers expected to develop in the cloud will grow by 44% to 12.5M by 2019.

With new tools, ideas and processes being brought to the table every day, it’s an incredibly exciting time for developers to jump into the sandbox of their choice and start creating! To start experimenting with Bluemix today visit: https://www.ibmdw.net/bluemix/

sxsw booth

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