Category: Uncategorized (Page 45 of 72)

Happy Monday from SXSW!!!  I am learning so much here and creating new networks!  More blog information on this later!

One hot trend here in Austin is SoLoMo!  Social Local Mobile!

Live from SXSW!  I tried to collect some of the top thoughts that I believe will be value add for me from SXSW!

1.  “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time around.  You are your (Social) Network.”  Social networking is fun, but also important.  Do you know the top 5 people that you spend time with in the “real” world. and the top 10 people you read in the blogsphere?

2.  Rappers are more engaging on social because, unlike brands, their presence isn’t micromanaged or designed in a boardroom.  Their brands emerge and are basically crowdsourced.   How am I using crowdsourcing at work and personally?   Something to think about! Reputation building has become democratized and small cos can punch above weight in it.

3.  Don’t just take things out — Don’t confuse subtraction with simplification.  With so much information, your message needs to be simple to understand.  However, simplicity isn’t just taking what you have and taking stuff out.  It needs to be rethought.   Mark Twain said ” I would have written a shorter book if I had had more time.”

4.  Digital isn’t a medium, it’s the age we’re in!   I agree.  So how does that change the way we think, work, and function.  I still see too many people keeping social over to the side, and not embedding it into their workflow.  How can I help more people see this point of view?!

5.  Transmedia needs to be a part of your strategy.  (new term for me!)  TV Show Top Chef used transmedia to redefine online engagement…lots of lessons. Pull, push, engage and get all media working together.  Amen!   All media is crucial for success.  Just one won’t work in our attention deficit society!

More later but I wanted to share as I went!

I was reading an article by Paul Kix where he looked at the research done by OfficeTeam, a California company that focuses on job placement. The research showed that 76% of employees had no interest in becoming a manager. The issue? The X generation wants to have a great job but also have time for family.

In order to do this, these Generation Xers need flexibility. According to Neil Howe, an expert on generational differences, these Gen Xers need and want a new way of working. Technology plays a role for sure. Mobile devices and access at home help but is there another play?

Is Social a player in this new way of working? The payoffs of working smarter and overcoming these deficiencies are tremendous.  Think about the opportunities before us if we can work smarter delivering flexibility. To work smarter, we need smarter organizations – enhancing and benefiting from their people’s expertise, enterprise and creativity, rather than inhibiting them. We need to change the where and how decisions are made.

One compliant is that today’s organization are: “20th century relics, reliant on a regimented routine in a centralized location.”

Social changes the mix.

Social is about connectedness. Tapping into the knowledge of people we know and don’t know to extend expertise. And we can do this in a way that optimizes cost for our organizations. It is not in a centralized location — it is everywhere. Bringing the right people together from anywhere at any time to increase people’s productivity.

Social is about leveraging relationships. It is not about being isolated but about being people centric.

And it is all about Agility. It is about transparency that drives information sharing in all different ways, top down, bottom up, and everyway you can imagine. It is about the corporate lattice as Deloitte entitles it. Technologies like mobile and cloud give you that flexibility.

 How do you see Social Impacting the way you work?!

 Happy International Women’s day!

To all .. yes, because whoever you are this day applies as you have a wife, mother, daughter or are a Super Women yourself!

In celebration, I wanted to focus on Social Media and Women!

First, A few observations:

• Large Numbers. There is a huge audience of women on social networks. There are a huge number of contributors in Social by women.   From BlogHer, Inc.,and Nielson, * one of my favorite groups and conferences, interesting stats are below with over 80M women using social monthly!
• Differences.  There are differences in how women use the tools. On Twitter for instance, women comment on things, men reference things. And Men are followed and re tweeted more than women.
• Age does not matter. Women over 50 are one of the fastest growing groups online. Women under 30 are embracing!  Are you?
• Social brings power to women. Depending on where you are in the world, it brings business to a woman’s world, it provides a voice, and it enables impact. 
• Women lead.  Woman are leading in many areas. For instance, Lady Gaga has the most followers on Twitter!

How do you become a Super Social Woman?

Beginner?

1. Set your goals!  It is personal?  Business?   Developing a new subject matter expertise?   If you have no destination, any road will get you there!  Make sure you know your direction!
2. Get Started! Get a Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn id. Set up a common picture, profile, and information that will become your personal brand.
3. Listen and follow to decide your “network”. Use tools like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Klout to find out who to listen to. This will depend on your goals for going social!
4. Contribute. Comment on areas in your area of expertise. Yes, we all have one! I know you do too! Tweet me at sandy_carter if you can’t find yours and I bet I can help!
5. Get educated.   Go to a lunch and learn, ask your nephew to teach you come to the WITI event in June and I’ll walk you through a workshop!  Don’t just sit there!

Advanced:

1. Measure your contribution and influence.  Use Klout for your personally, or engagement DB for companies or Dachis Groups metric.  But know the impact of your social efforts.
2. Contribute.  Make sure you are sharing your knowledge and expertise.   Sharing your expertise is the best way to drive trust!.
3. Drive valuable women’s content.  As an advanced user, help other women.   The research shows that more people retweet men, not women!   Teach a class, adopt a newbie, help out!
4. Set a goal to drive up your influence and reach.   Be purposeful.  Set a goal and work toward it!
5. Experiment with new tools and techniques.   Share your experiences.

The Stats for Fun! From BlogHer, Inc.,and Nielson, * one of my favorite groups see above! * Source: Social Media Matters 2011, BlogHer Inc., Nielsen US Total Online Population sample, N = 1,771; Weekly or more Social Media Activity; Total online raw numbers based on Nielsen Online @Plan

From SheSays, we find that 86% women use social networking. Women over 50, grew from 31% to 70%. Women under 30, have a 96% participation rate on social networks!

And from the Harvard study

“…there are more women on Twitter than men, women tweet about the same rate as men, but men’s tweets are followed by both sexes much more than expected by chance.“

*  women create fewer links in their tweets than men.”  “Women actually say things, guys give references to other things.“
But even accounting for these differences, the researchers still saw differences between how men and women are followed, perhaps pointing to a fundamental representation of the role of men and women in society.

So, I just tried out Pinterest.  It is very cool. It just launched in 2010, and now has 10M registered users.   I read that it is one of the top 10 websites in the world!!! 

It is intriguing to me!  Here’s why!

1. Power to Women!  I was interested when I heard it called “Tumblr for girls.”  Yep, women drove its popularity and now its is sending and receiving more traffice than the 100M users on Google + ( more male dominated?!)
2. Addicting.  I wanted to try this out and ended up spending 2 hours exploring and learning.
3. Value.  About 9% of the top online retailers are offering Pinterest pins on their sites. I saw reference libraries for tech products, recipe folders for Food companies, Gift Selections for retailers, and the list goes on. WOW!
4. Easy!   If you haven’t used it, watch this one!
5. Fun.  I had fun.  I love social and I love my social tools.  This is one of my new Favs!  What I loved tonight is the “bucket list” “recipes”   “Top places to visit” etc.  

Have you used it?

Our Monday Social Business Coffee Breaks!   I love having coffee (or Tea!) with you each Monday!

One of my favorites — the Top 3 Trends!  Your thoughts?  What surprised you?

So I was looking at analytics and it appears that if you use FRIDAY in your Blog title, especially on Friday, the number of viewings increase.

I wanted to test this one today — on Friday with Friday in the title.

I was just watching a TED talk on viral videos, and saw more proof today!  This was the tracking of the song Friday and the blips that occured on Fridays!   What do you guys think?

Is FRIDAY the day?!

Wow!    Social has come a long way!   Many Universities are now using social to drive innovation!  Can  you believe that social is the tie that binds football, baseball, the Oscars, and Protein Folding? !  Read more!

1.  University of Washington.   The University of Washington Department of Computer Sciences was looking for new way to solve a problem that has challenged life sciences researchers for many years: examing and figuring out the right shape and the right function for proteins to try to cure diseases.  The problem itself had millions of possibilities and many nuances that created a problem that was simply too difficult to solve with computer algorithms alone. It really needed human ingenuity. Some problems have point solutions that are fairly obvious to people but not so for software.

 To tackle the problem however, they needed many people to first understand how to solve the problem and try different permutations, without requiring an extensive scientific background to do so.   What the University of Washington team was create a serious social game with simple rules on how to fold different shapes of proteins. Using a mass group of 57,000 players from a variety of educational backgrounds and locations on this game, they were able to solve in 3 weeks a problem that vexed scientists for years. It simply took the social collective intelligence and effort of many individuals to deliver effective solutions in at least one fiftieth the amount of time.  The Solutions that resulted from the analysis of the game play provided important insights into development of new retroviral drugs.

 2.  University of Southern CA.  And students at the Annenberg Innovation lab at Souther Cal  working with IBM, have turned twitter information into meaningful data with a Social Sentiment Index.

All!  I am back from vacation — went to Dominican Republic!  More on that later!

Today, I will focus the Coffee Break on the SmartCloud for Government!

I was awaiting Tom Smith’s new Global Web Index and I found the results fascinating.   I’ll blog for the next 3 days on surprising results from the survey!

The first surprise to me, is the progression of China in Social.   In fact,

Some interesting facts:

• China is up to 50% active users
• China social technology is on par with the rest of the world.
• Question:   Will their technology spread to the rest of world?  The report argues that China has the most competitive platform in the world.
• Officially, Facebook, Twitter & Google+ are banned in China; unofficially, via V.P.Ns and mobile, they are growing.

http://www.slideshare.net/Tomtrendstream/global-webindex-6-trends