Archive for February, 2011

Government & Social Media: The Global & Local Impacts

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Civil and political unrest has erupted in parts of the Middle East.  Entire countries like Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen and Egypt are dealing with protestors who are rising up in an attempt to affect change.  After seeing success in Egypt, other countries are encouraged with their chances of change and following much of the same course as those in Tunisia and Egypt started.

Along with other issues, Egypt’s youth has experienced significant unemployment for a long time.   This younger demographic led much of the uprising and used social media outlets to organize their revolt.  So as the string telephone goes, many who are less familiar with situations are wondering how social media caused these riots.  Social media, of course, did not cause the civil unrest, frustrated citizens and ineffective govenments caused the riots.  Social media simply fueled them.

In search of free political and/or free economic systems, citizens are using the ubiquitous channels that are social media (primarily Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube) to organize and communicate with each other and the rest of the world.  So effective are these tools that some governments are shutting down or severely throttling web access while other governments are encouraging its continued use.  Some Governments are so threatened by the power this new style of communication presents they are even prosecuting users for using it.

It seems very appropriate to discuss how Governments are treating social media here on this event.  To do so, we are employing the expert services of Alexander B. Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media.  Alexander’s take on the world’s governments use of social media will certainly enlighten whether you are interested in Gov2.0 or enterprise2.0 as citizen’s expectations will certainly be changed forever.  The topic and questions we will use are below:

Government & Social Media: The Global & Local Impacts

  1. How effective is own government using social media in the Middle East? (and how other governments are blocking, censoring or filtering it)
  2. How citizens are using social media at home?
  3. What privacy, security and identity issues are raised by those trends

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 22 at noon ET.  Follow #sm99 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Social Media Training: Who Needs It?

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Well, some weeks we just run a bit behind.  This is one of those weeks. 

The conversation will revolve around a great topic of training.  Our moderator is Carri Bugbee who is very adept at equipping your social media staff with the tools to be successful.  Our topic and questions this week will be:

Social Media Training: Who Needs It?
1.  What should training programs focus on?
2.  Who should provide the training?
3.  What staff members should be trained?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 15 at noon ET.  Follow #sm98 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in corporate, Human Resources | 1 Comment »

Unleashing Consumer Insights with Social Media

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Monitoring and Listening are quickly becoming commodity type words, and that’s wrong.  In my travels and discussions with all types of Fortune 100 marketers, many are using the terms to explain what they are doing in social media, yet most cannot give me any meaningful value from the actions.   The same goes with the resulting data.  These same marketers will show me the pretty reports from their very sophisticated systems, yet hardly any are doing anything with the data to evolve actionable insights.  It’s not the systems fault, or the marketers, really.  We are at a point where an evolution is needed in how we think about this stage of the social media process.

When you listen generically, you will hear a lot of noise.  If you know where to point your microphone though, you could here prospects who are asking for your product recommendations, customers who are seeking answers about their latest purchase or better understand the latest product buzz from your competitors.  One might also be able to identify people who are passionate about your product/company, people with ideas that you could incorporate, employees and their opinion on their work environments.

To better account for this, I prefer to move away from talking about the tactical actions of listening/monitoring and focus more on the outcomes: Learning.  Let’s set up a learning post or focus your reports on what you have learned today.  Putting on that lens, clients start to think very different in how they act and how they report on those actions that ultimately leads to a new found value in running these listening / learning posts.

Now that you are learning new things every day, how do you unleash the data being collected into actionable insights.  The first step was discussed above.  Listening for noise will get you just that.  Hearing what’s being said is a discipline that cannot be overlooked.  Next, knowing what to do with the information is critical.  Do you send ideas to the product team, issues to service and branding to marketing?  Or are you relying on one person to manage every conversation just because it’s digital?  This would be the equivalent to having customer service, returns, cashiers and product specialists all be the check out person in your retail store.

Learning about your customers is critical to being able to engage with them.  Who better to discuss this than the President & CEO of Communispace, Diane Hessan.  Communispace has been helping their clients understand the intricacies of doing business in a digital and social world for many years now.  The have helped dozens of large companies innovate in new and exciting ways and they understand how to create value throughout their digital and traditional landscapes.  With this experience, Diane will lead this week’s #socialmedia discussion.  The topic and questions are listed below:

Unleashing Consumer Insights with Social Media

  1.  There is so much information on the web today.  What’s the difference between info & insight?
  2. What are the best strategies for engaging consumers & getting them to open up their lives online?
  3. Other than the standard Dell/Starbucks stories, what companies do you think are great at listening online?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 8 at noon ET.  Follow #sm97 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Innovation, Listening | 1 Comment »

The Rise of the Brand Experience

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

If you look at the top global brands of 2010, you will find traditional brands at the top of the list.  With so many emerging brands across the globe, what does a brand have to do to become a top global brand?

1.  Brand Messaging continues to be a strong driver for marketers.  Where a Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.  The messaging is what I refer to as the communications that is distributed around the aspects of branding like:

  • Corporate slogan
  • Products and services
  • Product names
  • Product features
  • Positionings
  • Marketing mixes (including pricing, distribution, media and advertising execution)

All of this messaging culminates in developing the Brand Promise.  Effectively what the brand stands for or has stood for in the past.

2.  Brand Experience is the what the brand actually delivers.  It’s the culmination of all the touchpoints a customer, partner or employee may have with your brand including your website, social media touchpoints, point-of-sale, post sales service, mobile, and actual use.

The point of this post is to point out the impact that social can and has had that impacts a brand and it’s conversion.  I point out conversion as the driver here because, in my experience, a great product that does not sell simply does not last long.  The same goes for brands.  Where a brand has always been defined by it’s product, social media allows you to redefine what your brand can actually stand for.  It allows you to be entertainers, educators, and more for your followers.

A recent BusinessWeek article discusses GM’s old guard and their approach to building cars in the modeling room without any customer feedback.  The article goes on to praise Dan Ackerson’s (new CEO of GM) customer centric approach to building cars.  The difference of Brand Promise in the past (pre-bailout) and the recent move towards Brand Experience (post-IPO) in the future.  Interesting.

Digital’s impact on brand expression and experience is significant.  Leading companies are still trying to figure out what this new world looks like now that a Brand can expand it’s breadth of what it stands for and now that customers are armed with a whole new set of expectations and capabilities.  To help us sort this out is Michelle Tripp, a Creative Director / VP of Account Strategy at Idea Worldwide.  She will lead our conversation this week around the rise of the brand experience.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic:  The Rise of the Brand Experience

1. Who should be front and center in conversation: The brand name or the brand’s communicator?

2. Are consumers more likely to buy because of the brand promise or the brand experience?

3. How can brands create experiences in a social world?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 1 at noon ET.  Follow #sm96 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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