Social Business Sandy

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

Category: Web 2.0 (Page 22 of 35)

GET BOLD, Live Social !

November 7, 2013 / / 8 Comments

My favorite Get Bold readers!!

A few weeks ago I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking (virtually!) at the Women’s Toolbox Conference that took place in Beverly, Massachusetts. I gave the attendees some of my favorite tips on how to integrate social into their business strategies, and they also received complimentary copies of my book Get Bold–because that’s exactly what I want them to do!

Then I challenged my readers to go online and let the world know if they are really ready to #GETBOLD with their business. They did a great job declaring how they plan to #GETBOLD! Here are some of my favorites:

I will Get Bold in my business by building the sales engine. We provide high quality language translation services and we need to get the word out about us. The sales engine will include top people, clear metrics, and increased sales.Wendy Pease  Rapport International – http://rapporttranslations.com/      

I will Get Bold in my business by nurturing my communities, sharpening my skills, and helping fellow entrepreneurs stand out from the crowd through smart, targeted marketing!  Sandra Larking   Metaphor Maven – http://themetaphormaven.com/    

I will Get Bold in my business by being open and honest about my own experience of being $50,000 in credit card debt to help others learn how to get out of debt, think of debt differently and make sure they never get back into debt.   Maureen Campaiola  The Debt Free Project – http://thedebtfreeproject.com/   

I will Get Bold in my business by Imagining. Clarifying. Executing.Helping emerging women entrepreneurs generate six-figure incomes by managing conflict and doing business like a woman ..She E.O [not CEO]  Deborah Thorne  The Information Diva – http://theinformationdivaonline.com/  

Connect 2014! IBM's Largest Social Event! Join me!

November 6, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Connect is coming!  YEA!

With Halloween behind us, it’s no surprise we’re seeing Black Friday previews online and Christmas tree displays in stores. (I’ve actually seen displays as early as September!) This abrupt change of season is a reminder that 2014 is quickly approaching, bringing more changes. But as far as I can see, the changes on the horizon look very good.

For starters, the Connect 2014 Conference,  January 26 – January 30, is expanding to reflect the growing breadth of what it means to be a social business. In addition to the strategic social business content we saw last year and the Technical Program, Connect 2014 will include the Kenexa World Conference – focused on empowering HR, your workforce and your business. This addition addresses exactly what we are seeing in the marketplace; in order to be competitive, your business strategy needs to consider social, mobile, cloud, a smarter workforce, digital, smarter commerce and analytics. And even more importantly, businesses have to figure out how to integrate these game-changing technologies into a seamless customer experience.

We’re also getting an earlier look at the sessions for Connect 2014. The content team recently shared some IBM abstract submissions we can expect to see on the agenda, including IBM Sametime 9: From On-Premises to Mobile, Cloud and Beyond, Getting Beyond Theory and into Practice: Deploying Mail and Social Business in the Cloud and IBM Digital Experience Platform: Strategy and Roadmap. I’m told they will continue to release additional session titles on a regular basis. So stay tuned!

And in keeping with the theme of early holiday shopping, the conference team recently extended the early bird discount until December 13, 2013. With news like this, maybe Santa will want to start his shopping early too!

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 !

Friday Tip: Always on listening

November 1, 2013 / / 1 Comment

My  mom used to tell me that God gave me two ears and one mouth because I was to listen more than talk.   In Social Media, listening acts as a guide, through the magical and interesting world of the blogosphere.

Listening should be a passion and an ongoing process that is necessary to keeping your strategy fresh and competitive.  It enables you to find opportunities, potential new stakeholders and enables you to proactively manage Social Trust.  

The value of listening is that it assists you in understanding your prospects, clients, and of course, your competitors.   It leads to action and awareness of conversations which will compel your company to respond.  

Since your URL isn’t just your website anymore, but everywhere you are on the web, listening is important to your digital presence.  You are building a brand through images and test, and your head is on the “guillotine” everyday if you just rest and don’t stay totally tuned in a systemic approach. Business, corporation related and societal events and basically everything is simply interconnected and needs dedicated listening all at the same time.

How do you listen?   I use IBM Connections internally, and IBM Analytics externally and also set google alerts, Hootsuite and check Tumblr for trending topics.      What do you use?

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.

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