Social Business Sandy

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

Category: Web 2.0 (Page 28 of 35)

Sweet tea and screen doors. Social Businesses could learn alot from them!

August 6, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Yes, I am southern pure as they come!  I love my sweet ice tea, grits with butter, screen doors, and Kudzu.

screen door

In the summer, the screen door is an essential element of everyone’s home.  The screen door’s entire point is that it’s not a barrier.  Its job is to open easily.  It is a welcome to all visitor’s and friends that approach it.

Is your social media site like that screen door?   Does it open and welcome others in?

Tips to make your site as welcoming as that Southern Door!

  1. Do you make people type in that “code” to enter?   Don’t!
  2. Is your site mobile friendly and usable?
  3. Do you have stellar content ?  Content is Queen!
  4. Is Video part of your strategy?  Video is the highest trusted media!  Use it wisely!
  5. Do you have a Twitter Widget on your Home page to engage your audience?  (Check out my blog on IBM Voices!)
  6. Can you feature other guests on your site?
  7. How do you listen?  All relationships listen first!
  8. Are your employees empowered to really represent the brand on your site?
  9. Have you chosen the right social tools that welcome your audience?  For instance, if you are selling to men, Pinerest may not be the best first choice.
  10. Do you constantly review the feedback and make changes to adapt and change?  

Social Business Use Case: A more successful Acquisition using social

August 5, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Happy Monday and welcome to today’s  Social Business Coffee Break!

Today we are continuing the series on Top Social Business Use Cases.  This one is how to leverage social to have more successful acquistions!  It makes sense – right.  Social helps with communication, ideation, and integration.  All the things that companies need to retain the top talent in companies that have been aquired.

Tell me what you think!

3 G's of Social Communication in A Social Media World!

August 2, 2013 / / 9 Comments

I was reading an article in HBR on the elements of successful leadership.  It was a great HBR article.  And as I read it, I thought that it applied to Social Leadership in the way that Great companies should use social — as a way to build relationships.  

Here are the modified Social 3 Gs!

The 3 G’s!

  • Gifted.   Your social communications needs to be both content rich but engaging.   Your gifted communicators need to also be able to master having a strong Point of View and to be able to handle conflict without being offensive.
  • Game.   In social, you need to be able to fail fast.   In Social, you need to have the courage to take risks.   Just as a leader needs to be “vulnerable and open to challenge and criticism” , your social engagement needs have confidence.   The kind of confidence that allows them to be questioned by others  without becoming defensive.  This is the way that true innovation occurs!
  • Generous.   Your social strategy needs to put to ensure the goal is for the good of the overall client ecosystem. It should be good-hearted, mutually respectful, and gracious, resisting the urge to dominate, or take the upper hand. Part of being generous with others also means taking an interest in, learning about, and offering opinions regarding your clients and employees.

I think these 3 G’s should guide the Social Conversations in the Blogosphere.  What do you think?

Social Media Tip of the Week – Using Twitter for business

August 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Using twitter is more or less easy, but being seen by the right people is not that simple. How do you stand out from the crowd without looking like “our company is the greatest” or “buy our products”?   On key suggestion on how to use Twitter without contributing to the noise:

  • Cultivate a following:

Relevant followers are more important than just big numbers. Thus: Understand who your customers are, and find them.

New role at IBM! Ecosystems on #Analytics, #socbiz , #Mobile, #Cloud & Big Data & Entrepreneurship

July 30, 2013 / / 12 Comments

I am truly excited to be taking on a new role here at IBM! As General Manager of Ecosystems, ISVs and Entrepreneurs or our IDR group, I look forward to the opportunity to work with a wide range of talented and innovative business partners, clients and IBMers to help enhance IBM’s position as a leader – fostering growth and success through influencer partnerships. I’m hitting the ground running. Here’s a few areas I am focused on…

First, nurture our Startup partners so we can achieve more together! IBM’s commitment to the entrepreneurial community is stronger than ever and will continue to grow, as evidenced by the success of the

IBM Global Entrepreneur Program

Since 2010, this program has helped launch more than 500 new businesses in key areas such as green energy, health care and transportation. How? By nurturing startups, bringing them into our 121,000-strong business partner ecosystem and helping them get their technologies ready for market. IBM’s work with startup companies helps us build and strengthen new markets such as cloud, mobile and big data/analytics. It also extends our geographic reach — for example, to companies like Sproxil in Africa.

Second, continue to grow the IBM SmartCamp initiative. Past SmartCamp participants have gone on to generate more than $90 million in VC/Angel funding following their work with IBM. With your help, I intend to deepen our commitment – focusing on nurturing and deepening our relationships with Startups so we can achieve broader success with more partners.

Finally, in an effort to spur ecosystem growth, we will focus deeper on our fundamentals: drive awareness to recruit new ecosystem partners; work closely with partners to enable our technologies with their solutions; and actively drive our go-to-market activities and sales engagements.

We will continue to focus on strategic initiatives, including Smarter Analytics, Social Business, Mobile and Cloud computing and our overall Big Data strategy. And we will show our partners and customers how they can use IBM expertise and resources to drive results through our “Learn – Build – Sell” model:

Learn: Understand the benefits we offer our partners and increase their technical and business expertise

Build:  Differentiate partner solutions using our resources, and collaborate with leading technical experts

Sell: Expand the ecosystem network and drive demand for joint solutions

With our combined energy, innovation and expertise, I’m confident we can make it happen.

Time to get moving and I’d love to hear from each of you on how I can assist!

Social Media Tip of the Week – 3 Social Media sins you should avoid

July 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Social media is a great way to connect and work with people. But don’t make these mistakes in the business world of Social Media:

1. Not responding to messages, post, tweets or comments (-> Social Media means communication!)

2. Sharing every little thing you do or like (-> not everything is for the public world to see)

3. Using every Social Media site ever invented (-> not every platform is relevant and useful for everybody)

Join me July 31st on GET BOLD for Social Business!

July 24, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Today, everyone is talking about social.  You hear about politicians, movie stars, and everyone in between talking about social, using social with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. 

But you’re a business.  What does all this mean to you? 

Sure, your business has a website, and it probably has a social media executive responsible for posting and /or monitoring comments about your company that might be posted on Twitter or Facebook by customers.  But ask yourself….is your company a social business company?  Are you leveraging social to be more customer-driven?  Are your employees engaged with social in their jobs?  Are you really utilizing the tools and techniques that social offers to improve your business and take advantage of opportunities for growth?

Join me on Wednesday, July 31, on the Victory Circle Radio hour as I talk about my book, “Get Bold”, in which I provide a framework for social.   www.victorycircles.com/radio-show

I’ll also share some case studies of companies who have successfully used social technology to connect with customers, helping them create communities and experiences they need.  According to a recent study, some 60% of customers use social media to discover new brands and products; 46% of customers use it to strongly influence their purchase decisions; and 40% check social media before making purchase decisions.  Your customers are already connecting and talking about your brand.  Are you connecting with them so they can become brand advocates?  I’ll share examples of customers who have successfully used social technologies to listen to and respond to their customers.

Becoming a social business is about more than simply building a social network.  It’s about offering information and services that your customers and partners need.  There are companies who have successfully used social technologies and offered meaningful services to their customers, while gaining critical feedback from the customers.  It’s about collecting and understanding the data that’s available on the various networks.  About 81% of purchasers get product purchase advice from social networks.  You need to know who is saying what, and know how to tap into the conversation. 

Today, it’s an economic reality that social is here to stay.  According to an IBM study, during the next 5 years, 95% of standout organizations will focus on getting closer to the customer.  Join me on Victory Circle Radio on July 31 and hear how my social framework can help you become a social business.

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