As part of my SXSW speaking proposal on ‘How to Avoid Being a Social Zombie in a Global World’, I recently caught up with Tom Smith at GlobalWebIndex who shared some fascinating insights from their unique and far-reaching study of the patterns of key decision makers: a theme we’ll be exploring further in our session.

 The findings are a must-read for anyone who does business globally!

 Take, for instance, the GlobalWebIndex finding that those decision makers who interact most on social networks are from emerging markets such as Thailand, Turkey and Mexico. If you are looking to do business in the emerging markets, don’t ignore the local social networks!

 Also, when asked what they consider the most influential marketing channel, decision makers overwhelmingly picked ‘Conversations with people from the company/organization on a social network’. Your employees are a more trusted source than than your webinars, sales presentations or events. This is in line with our push here at IBM to become a social business: we have a strong emphasis on employee enablement.

Now, another fascinating finding is that these decision makers make heavy use of mobile technologies to access social networks, whether that be a smartphone or a tablet. Business happens around the clock and these folks are always on. Are you?

You’ll find more even more insights in this 8 minute webinar I recorded with Tom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8pKQB1gk0E

We will be diving deeper into this topic during the proposed session http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/23204 at SXSW. Want to hear more?   Don’t forget to also see my other session: Socialytics Bootcamp! Social + Big Data + Analytic http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/23035

I look forward to seeing you at SXSW 2014!