Social media listening involves gathering and analyzing content from blogs, tweets, boards and news posts. Listening means both broadly searching for trends and narrowing as well the online universe prior to a set of topics and sub-topics. What is a Jam? 

• A high-profile online event
  • 16 weeks of event preparation (based on IBM’s Jam experience)
  • Requires support of senior business executives (e.g., CEO, Board-level, Business Unit leader)
  • Requires client to marshall support from across the enterprise
• Specific in duration, typically ranging from 72+ consecutive hours
• A defined agenda, focused on strategic & critical enterprise issues
• A real-time discussion database with ideas, best practices & employee sentiment
• A disciplined “behind the scenes” human planning and orchestration effort
• Real-time text mining & analysis to surface and steer live discussion trends
• Robust event hosting infrastructure (same as US open, Wimbledon)
• 2-3 weeks post-event research & analysis
• An event report with key conclusions and an action plan

Jams have been strategic to IBM in multiple ways

• • Enabling culture change: catalyze a culture of individual empowerment, trust and innovation; strengthen employees’ feelings of opportunity and connection to the company; route around middle-management territoriality and controls; unleash the employee population.
  • Improving operations: socialize best practices; lower the center of gravity; change policies and processes, aligning them with our values.
  • Shaping and operationalizing core values: ValuesJam, WorldJam 2004 (Recent update on WJ2004 results ; Recent update on ValuesJam outcome )
  • Introducing a new level of collaborative innovation: new approach to EBO/new business creation – InnovationJam.
  • Laying the path – culturally, operationally and strategically – for IBM’s strong move into Web 2.0 and virtual worlds: Show IBMers how safe and easy it is to collaborate more openly; IBM went from perceived irrelevance to perceived leadership in Web 2.0 over five months in 2005
  • Differentiate IBM from competition: Unique, home-grown brand and expertise in Web 2.0 and social software/social networking.

Another great example is what the IBM Lotus team launched exciting, innovative and new “Lotus Knows” marketing initiative targeting the influential end-user audience to broaden and deepen enthusiasm for Lotus collaboration technology. (You can follow the campaign at #LotusKnows).

 

 

 

The goal of the campaign is to reach a key audience — the pacesetter users — key influencers in collaboration. On August 19th, in order to see what the tippers and key clients and partners had to say, they held an IdeaJam. It was an opportunity for all to share their thoughts, ideas and experiences to help shape our strategy and communications around the Lotus Knows campaign.

The Jam was divided into four core themes:

1. “Lotus knows working smarter depends on great technology…” – Cool features of Lotus technology that you cannot live without, or that people do not know about

2. “Lotus knows marketing is key to technology adoption…” – Ideas on how you would build awareness and evangelism in our market

3. “Lotus knows technology is only great with client success…” Customer success stories (roll out strategy, communications, education, etc.)

4. “Lotus knows the world is getting smaller, flatter and smarter…” Ideas about how end-users have benefitted from Lotus offerings around the world

Jammers were able to vote and promote ideas so that hot topics would bubble to the top. Jammers were able to vote and promote ideas so that hot topicbubble to the top. After the Jam, the top ideas in each theme will be collected and evaluated for potential use during the campaign.

I love Jams and the power they bring in helping crowdsourcing innovative ideas!!

 

 

“Wake The Beast” — OK, well, I just got around to writing this since my trip to Ireland a month ago!!!

I think the Honda Civic campaign called “Wake The Beast” is super cool!

Did you see it?   It was launced in Ireland — where I just was for a meeting in Dublin with partners!  I saw it on a  large billboard featuring Honda Civic R image with a tagline  ‘Wake the Beast’.
The beauty of this campaign is that people can  send a sms message “Text START to the short code 51500″ to start interactions with the bill board advertisement, this call to action (sending sms) will trigger the lights on the car to light up and smoke to billow from the exhaust of the car on the poster while user gets a link to Honda Civic R Mobile website so they can browse for more information and can receive the ring tone of engine roar.

Below is the video showing, how people can interact with the billboard display:

This is social media at its Max!   It is a way to ENGAGE the user, CONNECT with the texter, and CREATE a new image for Honda!

I love it!

 

Google is planning to soon return Twitter posts in their standard search results.  This will have HUGE implications for companies!  It sounds like from Google’s announcement that they will sift and sort years worth of previous twitter posts into search results related to keyword searches.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900052&subSection=News

(Note that the twitter announcement is at the bottom of the article.)

Talking to Dave McCoy at Gartner it seems that the more important announcement rather than the general social media search returns mentioned because the social media returns require that a searcher have a Google account and profile, be logged in, and have a previous database of searchable social content that is connected with their Google’s contacts list.  Since twitter posts are essentially a public microblog, they won’t require these prerequisites in order to show up in the returns.

 I am here in Europe for a few sessions with Partners!  One of the funniest ones was with Louise Grey, the CEO of MVM on a luxury goods, personalization and social media panel.  I spoke on the panel using our IBM customer, Faberge, as an example.

Our Story! Faberge is a boutique that designs and sells one of a kind works of art and jewellery.  The company wanted to revitalize their business model, establish itself as a premiere world luxury brand, and define an online approach to selling its high-value luxury items that avoided the usual mass market, self service format of the web.  Their aim was to make the experience truly interactive by providing each client with a real life personal sales advisor as they would find in a traditional, high end boutique.   The new site would also become the hub around which all client interactions would be constructed, thereby providing global reach and accessibility without the constraints or cost of a physical store network.

The key was to free the client to choose how, where and when they purchase.  With the new on-line experience, Faberge creates the impression of depth:  of a multitude of shops and products accessible to their connoisseur clients, backed with the quality of 1:1 VIP experience found in a private salon.

The initial Web Site

Experience from our Visioning Session! The online experience delivered by IBM translates the key elements of the traditional high end luxury good shopping process into an online paradigm that reflects traditional VIP private selling methods based on highly interactive and personal service. Prospective clients are required to pass through a filtering process in order to access the exclusive ‘inner sanctum’ where they can explore and interact with Faberge products. As the customer builds trust and explores, more of the product catalogue is progressively revealed.  Access to a personal agent is provided, avoiding mass market self service, and at the client’s discretion, can conduct a unique interactive dialogue via the medium of the web and assist by pushing items to the client’s browser and exploring them with the client. The result is multi-layered access, detail and exploration -Initial access to all via website.  Access to inner sanctum is via agent enablement, inivitation or mentor recommendation. 

Trust Builds! As the customer explores or returns to the site, rules unlock further elements making it a constantly developing experience -Agent may remotely(off line) or interactively expose further elements of the catalogue for a customer at any time and determine if they are VIP.  VIP status is progressivey earned or can be given by agent.  Pretty impressive and innovative use of social tools to match the company’s goals.

Pages after trust builds!

 

 

Launch in Sept 2009!  The launch of Faberge’s site was a huge success, giving clients wishing to purchase their own personal sales advisor who provides a live 1:1 interactive sales service via video, telephone or live conversation text. The interactive platform model allows continuing development and the addition of further capabilities.  These include the ability to involve other parties in the on line interaction and ensure the collection can be refreshed with new pieces.

Innov8 as a social media training element is really taking off at universities and business too!  Here are the latest in the university area!

At San Jose State, students are leveraging social media game, INNOV8:

USC is now using INNOV8 as part of their core curriculum- training 700 business school students this semester alone!!!

We are not alone!   Intel teamed with Buddy Media

Project:   InTru 3D application for Facebook

Goal: Generate awareness of Intel’s new cinematic 3D technology.  You create an avatar, play the game and earn points to upgrade.  You can invite your friends in Facebook to participate (share the message)!

What are you doing in gaming? I’d love to see case studies of other gaming usees.

I just read this very interesting article on lethal generosity!  

“Lethal generosity,” is the concept that the most generous members of any social media company are the most credible and influential and as such, they can compete more effectively! 

In short, the company whose representative posts the most tips, links, advice, case studies, best practices that followers find useful will always rises to the top, not just in influence but also in search results.”

This is exactly what we observe in open source communities…. the communities that ’scratch the most itches’ win.  Hibernate is a good example of a project with GOOD social traction. OpenJPA  is technically strong, but the project has very limited social traction. The open source projects that attract just a few passionate subject matter experts who like to talk/blog/tweet are generally much more successful than the others.

 

 

So relating this to your business and mine!  Every single time a question is answered about your product, the original problem/question and the answer needs to be findable (via google, twitter, or…). No exceptions.

There is too much good information get lost inside internal email chains. Although the customer is made whole, but the experience only lives in archived internal emails and in participants heads.

You need to start thinking about you get your best information to the public!

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/using-lethal-ge.html

Communities and social networks are being used more and more by companies to assist their clients on targetted areas.

Yesterday, we continued our work in Social media focusing on a community experience (based on our technology and Cloud) for business users working with their processes.

BlueWorks delivers a community to business users with a set of tools that showcase industry content of best practice processes. For instance, what is the best practice process for opening a new account or gift registry.

Business leaders can begin capturing their strategic intent and link it to their capabilities to ensure that they have the key resources within their organization.

One of the keys to a great community is value that is brought to them.   It is The key thing is that there are over 2000 helpful items for the community from papers, podcasts, webcasts, demos, capability maps, and process maps.  One of the most value one is over 800 Key Performance Indictors from the industry standard body called AQPC.

Try it out!  Tell me what you think!

https://apps.lotuslive.com/bpmblueworks/

 

 

Innvo8 2.0: Serious Social Gaming

 

 

We talked about using gaming to train and drive demand in the new world. 

 We piloted an Innov8 gaming strategy (see this post! http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8/index.html) and have now gone to Innvo8 2.0!   I wanted to share the updates & progress with you on our great IBM gamer Phaedra Boinodiris!

Web Traffic/Metrics

• Traffic has doubled  since May!   Thousands are playing per week
• >75% avg clickthrough of eNurture emails (avg in industry is 25%)
• Over 3.5M gamers used the Proactive LivePerson chat offering more information from the game on our products — an 4000% &  uptick in the use of the tool.

Usage Beyond Web

• Our Serious Game is now in Widespread use in our Briefing Centers Worldwide
• Innov8 2.0 is featured in our lobbies
• We also have heavy standalone usage by our enablement teams in many geos
• Many of our events feature a Gaming Competition!

I am sold on Serious Gaming.  What are your thoughts?

We wanted to take the serious game and take it outside the web as well.   

My first time at BlogHer!

I had the great pleasure to attend BlogHer for the first time this year. How did I get to attend? A perfect storm really. 3 things happened that allowed me to attend: first, a customer had asked me to support them in their session and to talk about how my book on social media helped them with their strategy, second, I spoke with Charlene Li at the WITI conference and she knew the founders and secured me a ticket and then finally, I was asked to speak on how to leverage social media as the only real IBM presence at the conference.

So what is BlogHer?
I pulled this from the BlogHer site. It was founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone. BlogHer’s mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online and creates opportunities for its members via a community hub (http://blogher.com), annual conferences and a publishing network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency

The Top 10 Ah Ha’s
1. The Business BlogHer had a lot of great case studies. While not sold out on the business side, I found the case studies innovative and best practices. I have blogged on the specific case studies that I heard … Allstate, Tropicana, Pepsi, Sprint, Coach and many others.

2. Lots of Geek Labs – Hands on! I love the hands on labs. You could set up a new blog here with step by step instructions to learning HTML and PHP.

3. Networking The conference was setup to network. They did speeddating in a new and innovative way, and arranged the sessions and breaks to stimulate discussion.

4. Community keynote I attend a lot of corporate events and shows. Usually the keynoter is the CEO or GM in charge of the work. While powerful, I have not experienced a more moving and powerful keynote that BlogHer did on Friday night. It was a community keynote where bloggers were selected to read their blog entries. It was amazing. I am glad someone who had been here before told me to make sure I didn’t miss it!

5. Swag. Again, going to CeBit or GiTex is an experience and everyone gives away their toys. But I have never seen the swag that was at BlogHer. From products, to free services on site, to designer scarfs, and vendors printers, servers, and phones. If you come, be prepared. This shows me that the vendors view this show as an important way to reach the tippers. One of our competitors was here for Small Business and I saw the bump in blogs on their products in the GB space go up 3x over the last 3 days.

6. Panels. Most of the sessions here were in a set of tracks on Geek Labs, Business, Leadership, Room of your own, Identity and Passions. But most of the sessions were panels. If you don’t learn this way, it may not be the way for you!

7. Q&A’s are LONG! Another culture here at BlogHer is to learn from a Q&A session. The sessions here are meant for learning not gaining exposure. I would say that in the sessions over 1/2 the time was spent answering questions from the audience.

8. Amazing Women in New Media. The BlogHer team brought out the stars. From Lisa Stone to GM of CBS, to Donna Bryne, etc. This is the place for the new adventurers in the social media world!

9. Purpose I was truly impressed by the purpose that I felt from all these women and men. These guys, while looking to monetize, are truly dedicated to their mission. I heard about blogs on the homeless, soberity, raising disabled kids, traveling, shyness, and the list goes on. Everyone I met loved what they blogged on. A great lesson in you do more of what you love — for employers getting people into the right roles.

10. Fun I loved it. It was energeric, and fun. It energized me and showed me that one with a purpose can accomplish more than you can imagine! There were over 1999 parties. That’s right.. suites to teach photography, small busines skills, word of mouth marketing, silk screening, etc.

Next Year:
Next year the conference will be in NYC in August. Will I go? Absolutely.

The Future – Generation C
This is the future. Everything is going online. 53% of women WW are online. Generation C — which I have defined as the next generation who wants to co create, collaboration, and use their creavitiy. They are going to be around for a while. Join the exploration and see what works for you!

The keynote kicked off in Chicago with an amazing group of women!  BlogHer was totally sold out!  In today’s world of travel cut backs, and reduced expenses this is amazing to see over 2K women!

Some of the key points:

• Women are the majority of internet usage now – 53%
• Women who are on the internet trust the internet information more than other sources
• Women Online – Frugalistas and Hard News Junkies.   The tops are those on frugal shopping and politics (the Obama/Clinton campaign took the number of women politics blogs went from 300 to over 2000!)
• Strongest social users are those who blog.
• The Economist – The Story of Women Online!  Lisa discussed her decision to leave CNN and start BlogHer.  An amazing insightful decision!
• BlogHer is about the people!   Velveteen Mind

There are multiple tracks!!!

Business of blogging, Geek Labs, Leadership, Passions, and room of your own!  Oh, also the Mommy bloggers too.

Every major company is here…..Microsoft, HP, Sprint, etc.

The Ava Awards have just been posted on their Web site!!
Two of our IBM Social Media entries received awards!!!!

Platinum Award
– World Tour “Get Smart” Videos –
http://www.youtube.com/smartsoa

Gold Award
– Innov8 Trailer –
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8.html

The international Ava Awards recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, direction, shooting, and editing of audio-visual materials and programs. Entries include film, analog and digital productions viewed in a wide variety of mediums- from movie screens to televisions to computers. Entrants include video and film production companies, web developers, advertising agencies, PR firms, corporate and government communication departments, producers, directors, editors, and shooters.

Ava Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The international organization consists of several thousand production, marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, and free-lance professionals. The Association administers recognition programs; provides judges and rewards outstanding achievement and service to the profession.

Being in the dialogue – Midwest Airlines

With 20% of employees at large U.S. companies now contributing to blogs, social networks, and other Web 2.0 services (according to IDC), the trend is no surprise, with companies finding ways to capitalize on this activity with their own social networks because of the competitive advantages they can gain.  Marketers have long acknowledged that word-of-mouth is important but that communication was always going in one-direction.  Blogging has taken one-way conversations of many-to-one and flipped it on its head.  The blogger has an equal voice and has as much opportunity to be heard as huge corporations or government institutions.

Blogging is important because it helps put a face on the large faceless mask of large institutions.  Suddenly someone can reach out and touch a person and seek out their perspective, expertise, or just plain say “Hello, thanks for being out here.”   There is power in the corporate blog.  Midwest Airlines leveraged their blog to create a personal connection to a new group of customers – traveling women. With more and more value being placed on service, Midwest Airlines wanted to have a blog that was targeted at the traveling population of woman for getaways, but one that had a personal touch.  Tish Robison started their blog which features services that are of interest to woman.

But those aren’t the reasons why Tish has a community willing to even wear Travel with Tish t-shirts!  The blog has a following because it is written from a personal point of view.  For example, she told me that she includes items like the amount of walking involved, or recommendations for when and when not to take a cab.  Marketing’s job is to provide a lens for Midwest’s blogging personality, for the market to see that personality.  The crucial part is to find someone who can make it personal, relevant and true.  The ROI has been excellent, providing approximately a 10:1 return, though much more return can be assumed that may have been triggered by the blog, but booked using alternative methods.  Blogs can extend your corporate personality and can be a very valuable source of information.  Midwest
is gaining insight into one segment of its customers need.    Check it out and meet my friend Tish!!!

http://www.travelswithtish.com

 

What is MARKETING 2.0?

It is leveraging and using a combination of traditional marketing methods like direct mail, e-mail and events with the new Web 2.0 technology such as Twitter, Serious Gaming, Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, RSS, Widgets and so on. Combining the traditional with Web 2.0 technology creates a powerful marketing phenomenon that will bring great results in any marketplace!

Playing Video Games Isn’t a Waste of Time, After All

This past holiday season, parents who buy Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo Co.’s Wii, Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 or the latest online game need not feel guilty. Turns out that young people – and adults – aren’t wasting time when they’re playing video games. We got the Wii!!!

Whether they’re tapping away on video game controllers or the keys of their computers in increasingly popular online games, today’s game players are acquiring the skills that companies increasingly value as the gaming generation enters the workforce.

In fact, the skills needed to succeed in gaming can help young people “to be more sociable, develop strategic thinking and become better leaders in life,” according to a book, “The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace.” The authors, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, say that games “deserve” a role in helping young people grow into adults because they require them to use different mental and social skills, often simultaneously.

With that in mind, thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM’s new “serious game,” available at no charge. We developed the game to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information IT skills, important attributes needed to compete in a global economy.

Over the past two decades, IT professionals have had to break out of their comfort with proprietary systems as the industry moved to client-server computing and then to open computing. Today’s move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is asking both IT and line of business professionals to acquire cross-over skills in each other’s domains. That’s why the game stresses learning activities that combine IT acumen with business skills.

Much like pilots who use flight simulators to learn how to fly airplanes, students of IT management studies who grew up playing video games can benefit from engaging in learning activities in the way they like to learn.

By interacting with the video game, students can make decisions about real-life business situations, such as re-designing a call center process. They can see the results of their decisions right away, and if they make a mistake, it’s much more private than “failing” in front of a classroom of their colleagues. Because a love of gaming is shared around the world, professors have told us the game can help to bridge cultural barriers.

The trend is spreading.

According to The Apply Group, a marketing consultant, at least 100 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming to educate their employees by 2012, with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.

While it’s too soon to measure the full implications, there’s a new business environment emerging. If hundreds of thousands of players organize themselves to successfully complete specific endeavors during their “play” time, will they be content during work hours in organizational structures used since the Industrial Revolution, with central command and control? Chances are they’re more likely to want to work on virtual teams distributed around the world, undertaking multiple endeavors, taking advantage of the thought processes that succeeded for them in online gaming.

As employers, we cannot ignore the changing group dynamics. In fact, we should tap into the most innovative ideas to redefine the fundamental nature of computing. Just as games present us with situations that invite players to make choices, consider the advantage of using graphics and decision-making steps of games in business. Supply chain software and customer relationship software could allow decision makers to immerse themselves in the real-world simulations, judging cause and effect before making decisions.

The possibilities are huge — and not just for business.

The application of serious gaming techniques in science, medicine and other industries could help us solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

The term “serious gaming” no longer is an oxymoron. Not just competition for employees’ attention, there’s endless opportunity if we harness the power of games to get work done.

Who else is going Gaming? Check out what we are doing!

Well tonight I was working on Twitter and my daugther came up and wanted to learn about it. She had such fun — that I pulled out my flip and filmed her!

This was her perspective on marketing 2.0!

Tell me what you think of Cassie’s Views!! She is dying to hear@!

All:
I have been inundated with uses for social media …. how can you us it in analyzing your market, in service, in different industries, and the list goes on! Especially after yesterday’s discussion with over 3300 women on Marketing 2.0!

Mini Case Studies
I decided to create mini case studies on 10 different uses of Social media — some from my book and some are recent uses! Send me others that you want me to include ! Today’s is a fun one! Social Sweet Spots!!!

Here we go! Short and sweet!!!

Typically, a simplified view of traditional marketing might starting with the articulation of new marketing requirements. Then marketing professionals would create new messages and images, which are then delivered via various media for consumption by the audience.

But with Marketing 2.0, which features Social Media + Traditional Methds, new behaviors have the capability to ’short-circuit’ the
existing model. With 3.5B conversations occuring each day on social sites, and 1.2M blog conversations happening daily, more
listening must be done to shape our views. Obviously, traditional marketing and media does not go away, but undoubtedly these
changes are providing new opportunities for to research and engage our market.

How we listen:
So we have started listening and analzying the blogsphere and twittersphere. We research what the market is discussing and searching for, in or around a set of defined topic areas vs. Inside Out – we research what the market thinks of what we want to say. We look at the thousands of conversations around these topics and glean insight from that listening. This allows us to develop Social Sweet Spots!

How do we do it? From the “New Langauage of Marketing 2.0″, we document the steps to doing this Social Sweet Spot work!

• Identify key sites and blogs where conversations are happening – use tools to get the biggest bang — like TweetLater, StumbleUpon, AllTop, TweetDeck, etc.
• Translate the content into needs and preferences that inform your offerings and messages – you will find core topics like economic changes show interest in different topics, etc.
• Identify the best opportunities to participate
• Develop a repeatable, systematic and focused process!   We use Banter a process from 2 business partners to do this so that we can compare results week to week.

Conclusion:

Listening and learning to me is one of the most valuable assets of social media.  It complements my market intelligence and helps me to make better decisions.  For example, I have used it to gather market requirements for new products, for message and positioning tweaks, and for new offerings!

Personal Branding and Networking with Social Media:

One of the top issues that I see as I mentor a folks is in how they network. I started thinking about how my networking as changed, blending the in person with the online. Interesting note, from IDC study, more women than men use social media and networking for work and personal but from Time, 63% of Twitter users are male!! Interesting — another blog on that later!!

I considered some examples on Networking through social meida to learn from what others do.

 Some Examples:

David Armano, creator of the Logic + Emotion blog, last week used Twitter to raise almost $15,000 within 24 hours for a friend in need. To me this story showed the power of his social currency through his social media connections

Jeremiah Owyang uses multiple tools to network with a set of social media thought leaders. This networking allowed him to use those contacts to do an inperson meeting in Silicon Valley to see what the next steps needed to be in this space with a set of vendors and brands that may never had gotten together in the past.    http://twitter.com/jowyang

Peter Shankman has used social media to form a network of reporters who need help, and a network of those of us who are willing to help the reporters out with questions. It is a great service that allows him to increase his network. Check it out! http://www.shankman.com

Jennifer Leggio posted an article about how folks are using Social Media to find jobs!   http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=374

Support groups done through social media!   http://collective-thoughts.com/2009/01/13/using-social-media-as-a-support-group/

Top 10 for your Personal Brand and Social Media!

1. Determine what personal brand is! Make sure your avatar, blog, words reflect that personal brand.
2. Listen first. Use a set of listening tools to understand the area of domain of your personal brand. Follow the social media leaders in those domains whether that is Tim O’Reilly on technology or Obama on politics (he is no longer active! Disappointing!) For instance, the most popular technology blog is TechCrunch as of January 2009. If you are a technologist, this would be one to keep your eye on. If you are a dog lover, perhaps it is http://www.dogster.com/
3. Determine your personel wheel of influence. Know who will personally be your tippers in influencing your brand. I recommended in my book on Marketing 2.0 to develop your Personal Wheel of Influence.
4. Select your Tool Of Choice! Get started online based on your interest in the tool for you. You must be active, so to be active, you need to love the interactions! There are over 150M active users on Facebook in over 170 countries. Is your tool of choice MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook or all of the above!
5. Be interesting and relevant- open up on who you are! Always ask is what I am doing right now online consistent with what I want my personal brand to be.  To show relevance you really must keep up on the conversation.   In my last seminar, people asked how much time I spend on blogging, twittering, etc. What I do is to book time on the calendar to read and explore, and then twitter and blog throughout the day. Because I love it, I keep up even on the weekends!
6. Be Bold. Ask people to follow your blog or your tweets. From a set of Social Media stats, the number of followers for a active twitterer is 86,000!!! Also drive your awareness by using the tools like Google reader, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Del.icio.us.
7. Dialogue! Comment on other’s blogs, tweets, The better your comments are, the better you domain and skills will be demonstrated, opening up networking opportunities.
8. Think about others. My grandfather always told me “do unto others what you’d have them do to you” so thank those who help you, link to others on your site, tweets, etc. It will come back to you tenfold. For instance, Mike Moran has assisted me in several areas and I have repricoated as he left IBM. (Check him out .. an incredible guy http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/blog/ 
9. Use multi media. Videos of course can help your network get to know you in a different way than words can. YouTube has over 70M videos uploaded because people are inherently social creatures. Buy yourself a flip and get going!
10. Start your own network! On LinkedIn for instance, I joined an author’s group. I didn’t start it but joined it! You can increase your networking via the tools you choose!

Let me know what works for you.  Given the response, I’d like to study this one deeper!

So this is our third case study of using social media in the real world!

For marketers, social media has shown how to drive opportunities in greater volumes into the pipeline. “Lightly branding”, which is having your customers and communities drive your brand, is happening all around us.  Companies today are custodians of their brand, not the owners.  In a global world, consumers are taking that brand equity and building their own stories.  It is these stories that are now at the heart of trust and relevance.

 

Social media is the toolset to allow pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness and new customer leads.  It is more powerful than third-party advertising because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend.  And it provides you with a way to personalize your brand. 

For example, EepyBird.com and the Coca Cola Company. The video of two “scientists”, 101 bottles of Diet Coke and hundreds of Mentos showed the reaction of the 2 products together in a huge fountain effect. It started as just a video for the fun of performance, but ultimately this “lightly” branding significantly drove up sales of both Mentos and 2-liter bottles of Dike Coke

 

 

With the YouTube generation, the internet is a media of social connectivity.  Differentiation is no longer about product/service but rather is based on the concept of engagement and long-term relationship.

 

For instance. In one of the book’s Online chapters, a small company in San Antonio Texas called RackSpace is highlighted because of their virtually 100% referral business. Driven by viral reference videos, and what they call “Fanatical Support”, they have co-branded their support as a competitive advantage. (http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/articles/article.asp?p=1273853)

 

 

Lightly branding is one way to start that long-term relationship and to drive new leads. It works both ways though!  Just recently, due to Twitter comments, Johnson and Johnson’s Motrin brand took a lightly branded approach by removing their new ad due to tweets about the ad’s impact on their “brand”.

 

Guiding principles:

• Businesses no longer hold absolute sway over the decisions and behavior of consumers
• The longer companies refuse to accept the influence of consumer-to-consumer communication a­nd perpetuate old ways of doing business, the more they will alienate and drive away their customers
• To succeed in a world where consumers now control the conversation, and w­here satisfied customers tell three friends, while angry customers tell 3000, companies must achieve credibility on every front

 

Social media is a new channel.   Through real time social media techniques, like blogging, twitter or online chat, a channel of support or assistance can be focused on a particular topic.  It offers an opportunity to interact with a person in a non-threatening manner moving from B2B to P2P – person to person.

 

 

As an example, using its social chat capability, IBM increased its leads, improved customer satisfaction, and drove up sales productivity. From their ibm.com/soa web site, IBM leverages a set of pre-determined “qualifications” to pop up an online chat. In just the first 3 months of operation, IBM has seen over 2,845 chats with new customers, resulting in 182 validated leads and is now extending the online chat to Germany, China and Japan.

 

In addition, Dell Outlet came up with the idea that Twitter may be a solution to the challenges presented, by offering Twitter-specific promotions and featured products. The goals were: 1. To drive increased traffic, and thus increased demand for particular products for which Dell Outlet has inventory greater than desired levels and 2. To grow the pool of Dell Outlet’s Twitter followers to the point where it is sizable enough to have an impact on specific demand-generation postings.

 

Dell Outlet’s Twitter strategy revolves around regularly posting Twitter-only offers.  When a new tweet is posted, it generally provides followers a coupon code to obtain a discount on that particular model in the Dell Outlet.   Typically, this coupon is exclusive to Twitter, so they are able to measure the redemptions and know that it was due to being posted on Twitter.  Twitter followers may share coupons easily with Twitter friends in a viral fashion

 

For Dell, Twitter represented a new way to reach customers.   Ricardo Guerrero, a key visionary for this work at Dell, claims that per their latest surveys, a significant portion of people who bought through Twitter were not aware of the Dell Outlet before Twitter. And by tracking the coupon code, in the first year utilizing Twitter as a promotional tool, Dell Outlet generated over $500,000 in revenue in sales of refurbished systems. 

 

The social media channel provides a way to respond “just in time”, not waiting in a reactive mode.  In fact, it allows a pre qualification process for new customers.  It gives you the ability to have a conversation with your prospects when they’re most receptive — while they are on your website or on your Twitter Channel actively gathering information. 

 

Guiding principles:

• Skills matter.  The presence in front of prospects is very important, so you want your best and brightest reps doing the real time chats.  They need to be very knowledgeable about the products and services not simply communicating at a high level. 
• Your mom taught you etiquette!  Use it online!   There is online etiquette for inviting people to chats, and for chatting with them once they accept.  For example, don’t immediately pop up an invitation within the first 30 seconds that a person is on your site — it’s pushy. 

I’d love your comments on your best practices with Social Media and to see your thoughts on the online portions of the book!  See it in action – don’t just read the words! 

Remember that all relationships have a set of common factors. First, all relationships require listening. Listening has become core to everything. Second, in the best relationships, there is a lot of active communication and dialogue. This dialogue is essential to growth in the relationship.

A lot of listening can be added to your marketing plan by adding communities from your social media toolbox.

What is a Community?

A community is a group of people that have a shared interest. Communities can be 2-3 people or thousands, in person, electronic or both. Wikipedia, a community in and of itself, define community marketing as a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Communities are a big mega trend. Everyone wants to be part of a group. Development of online communities has afforded us an opportunity to observe people interacting with one another, expressing their own opinion, forming relationships, breaking relationships, be they with other consumers or with just friends or with companies themselves or with products or logos, people form relationships with everything

A couple of case studies:
 
1) Nintendo: Building Market Share through Customer Collaboration and Relationship. In the early 1990s, Nintendo’s share of the game console market was 61 percent, but by the mid-2000s, it had fallen to 22 percent.[i] To regain its leadership position, Nintendo needed to find new ways to delight gamers – and to bring gaming to new audiences.

To do that, Nintendo went straight to the source – gamers themselves. The company established an online community by offering incentives in return for customer information. The company also selected a group of experienced gamers based on the value and frequency of their community contributions. These “Sages” as they were named were given exclusive rewards, like previews of new games, in exchange for helping new users and providing community support.[ii]

Through this community, Nintendo has gained valuable insights into market needs and preferences. This has influenced everything from game offeringslike an online library of “nostalgic” games that appeal to older gamers—to new product design—for example, the intuitive controls of the popular Nintendo Wii system, which have helped attract new, casual gamers.[iii]

By leveraging the loyalty and expertise of its core customer segment, Nintendo has successfully connected with two new ones—women and older men. This collaboration seems to have paid off: Nintendo is once again ahead of its competitors, with 44 percent market share

[i] IBM analysis.[ii] “Nintendo Rewards Its Customers with New Loyalty Program.” Xbox Solution. December 11, 2003. http://talk.xboxsolution.com/showthread.php?t=1088 [iii] “Casual Gamers Help Nintendo Wii Take Lead in 2008, says iSuppli.” Tekrati. February 14, 2008. http://ce.tekrati.com/research/10080/ [iv] “Worldwide Hardware Shipments.” VGChartz.com, accessed March 27, 2008.

 
2) Harley DavidsonThe Harley community is a fascinating one to me. Harley has had a viral social community for 25 years since 1983. The Harley Owners Group was started by the company as a way for riders to share the bonds between them and with the brand. While beginning in the US, their first international group started in England in 1991 and that globalness has only grown and improved over time. They are both online and in person with a focus on in person meetings facilitated through events and the joy and passion of riding together and doing things together. All of the groups exist around surrounding brick and mortar dealerships. All HOG chapters are sponsored by a dealership. Not all dealers sponsor HOG chapters, but a HOG chapter can only exist if a dealer sponsors

Harley Davidson – An Amazing CommunityHarley’s focus and philosophy for the groups is about interactions and obsession. In contrast to some of the other communities I investigated where they were about media plans and creative plans to sell things, but not about the aspect of the effect on people. The result is an increase in sales, but it comes secondarily. Their groups foster rich and deep social interactions. The Harley Owner’s Group is probably the strongest social network of any company anywhere. We’ve got more than a million members across the world. The Harley Owner’s Group is probably the strongest first-hand social network of any company anywhere.

Let’s look at an example of a HOG member, Dan Powers. He joined the HOG community in 2003 when he got his new Harley 2003 Road King. When you buy a bike from Harley, they give you free membership to HOG for 1 year. Dan comments, “After that timeframe, it is apparent this is a community you want to be in every year and you sign up for your yearly membership.” You can also pay one price for a “Lifetime Membership!” A famous tag-line from American Express is membership has its privileges, in Harley’s case once you have experienced this community and you know membership is fun and you can’t imagine not being part of HOG going forward.

Many times at motorcycle rallies you see members proudly displaying their HOG patches on their jackets going back many, many years. Some have chosen to be Lifetime Members. This is a badge of honor and branding all in one! Along with patches and membership pins, HOG sends a travel guide and map that includes the location of all the dealers in the world. And one of the reasons many HOG members renew or become life members is the free towing to the nearest Harley-Davidson Dealer should a member get stranded somewhere. This service is similar to AAA for motorcycles. HOG also has a terrific member magazine – HOG Tales – complete with user submitted content and pictures of their journeys. Many Dealers also provide discounts for members of the local HOG chapters. While all of these rational benefits are powerful, it is arguably the social and emotional benefit of being in the community that provides the most value.

The online web site is amazing. They focus on what riders want and need like mapping of routes, sharing of those maps with other riders going on those routes. They also have a list of all riding events coming up for the year, including links to help ship your bike to the event, hotel arrangements you can make on line, and links to others organizing the events for more information

On the Harley Davidson main web site, it is hard to find a link to the HOG website. For one thing most Harley riders have already bookmarked it separately, or they click on “Riders” and find the site in addition to many other great Harley happenings. Also the HOG website is tightly integrated into the entire Harley Davidson website to associate Harley from a look/feel and experience perspective with the community. You are part of Harley, you are part of HOG, it is a seamless experience and a seamless community.

The HOG community is a great example of not getting caught up in the buzz word of a community. But combining the power of in person meetings with the web creates a powerful community.

The idea for SOAsocial.com came during the process of building our
Social Network.

The Smart SOA Social Network already encompassed existing SOA networking communities led by IBM and other 3rd parties. However, we realized that there was not one stand alone web destination where SOA enthusiasts could find the latest SOA news, share knowledge and discuss relevant issues.

We were fortunate to partner with InfoQ, a leading software development community that already had a strong SOA news and networking portal. InfoQ was already interested in building out the capabilities of their SOA community, as so we signed on as the key sponsor — and thus SOAsocial was born.

SOAsocial is intended to fill an unmet need in the marketplace, not reinvent the wheel. For instance, it is not meant to replace the popular SOA groups that exist on mainstream social networking sites, but to supplement them with an additional source of focused knowledge from the worldwide community. SOAsocial’s overarching goals are to maintain a dynamic stream of quality, focused content, and provide the venue in which that knowledge can develop. I am excited to announce that SOAsocial will continue to unveil new capabilities in the coming months that make it even easier to contribute and consume the information housed there.

Please stay tuned!

Over the weekend I was catching up on some of the new thoughts in Social Meida and came across a note from Dee Fleming. She was commenting on a training seminar I did internally for the Super Women of IBM and she included a link to a cool article.

In the article, the woman called herself a Conversation Agent. How interesting! A title on her business card to let all know that she was about the dialogue, not a push message.

Have any of you seen any other interesting job titles and new roles created from the force of this new Markteing 2.0 world?

Let me know! I can’t wait to see what you respond with!

An interesting one that came up today!

This is a book review that ended up re-opening a murder case.

The power of social media! Read it here!

I was just in Dubai and heard from some of our clients that they are facing challenges they’ve never experienced before. At the same time external factors in their environment are forcing downward pressures on their businesses, they must still achieve growth targets/metrics and reduce costs… and they must execute with even greater speed than ever before. They are still looking to invest in critical areas but they are urgently searching for clearer solutions that deliver results to the bottom line with immediate value for their customers.

Part of what I saw was investment in technology like SOA and BPM! But I also saw a lot of Social Media interest as well!

Take for instance this! http://socialmediame.h2onewmedia.com/node/21

“It took us less than three months and less than 10,000 USD of investment to get our social media platform working for our business, we estimate that it has saved us at least 100,000 USD in sales, promotion and advertising costs over the past twelve months and that is without calculating the time saved by receiving super qualified opportunities.  From the perspective of our business social media just works and delivers significant value to our operations” Alan Condron Concur “

Also see this! A Super Cool vision for a Green City! – displayed on YouTube! Amazing! Marketing 2.0 goes around the world!

Yesterday, I provided you with a look at my 1st video.. hope you enjoyed watching it!

My second video highlights the “A” in the ANGELS framework. How to Analyze your market place (click on me!) - the whole premise is to insert Web 2.0 methods into traditional approaches.

1. How do you look at the globalization effect? The world is becoming flatter making the overall market place important. How can you use techniques to strengthen your market?

For instance..
Dove: they looked and leveraged the web culturally – exploring how to send their message in Europe and Russia in different fashions as there message went out – analyzing what was effective in both market places

Lenovo: Localized their message – taking what they knew from China & applying it in a new market place in India

Globalization is more and more important. The framework highlighted in the book looks at the ecosystem, how you manage those marketplaces w/ Web 2.0?

2. How to make sure you look at your distinct marketplace..
50% of marketplace is on-line per IDC
50% of marketplace is not on-line
How do you segment that market?

3. How do you leverage on-line tools?
Banter – allows us to measure the amount of times people use certain phrases..
On-line allows you to experiment and turn things much faster if you monitor the banter that is occurring

For example, Johnson & Johnson developed a new ad for moms. The feedback on Twitter was clear that mothers were not happy about it. From the bad publicity in the social media, the ad was immediately pulled and replaced with a new ad.

Experiment by leveraging web 2.0 techniques!

Let me hear from you!!

Today, we will discuss “N” from the ANGELS framework. I am here at Wharton with a group of Chief Learning Officiers and Chief Process Officiers!  My topic is on the use of Social Media in Strategy and Analysis of the market.

( You can see the video by clicking here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9oNE7bSiDg&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=2

In this video we look at how to insert new techniques in traditional marketing.

Corporate Social Responsibility is key – from a recent IBM study w/ 1100 CEOs, Corporate Social Responsibility is the # 1 priority for CEOs around the world. We need to demonstrate commitment to that strategy and live it.

How can you leverage that and nail your corporate social responsibility strategy? How you can use on-line tools to prove you are living your strategy?

An IBM example is “Project Green” where we leveraged Second Life to do demos. This allowed customers to view the demos without traveling, preserving our carbon usage, showing and living our commitment to green everyday.

Looking at branding, we used to control the message through a one way communication channel. Now with Web 2.0- two way communication, we need to realize we are the orchestrator of the brand, not the controller. We are conducting what happens and it is very successful on-line. You will see your brand on Twitter, Facebook etc.. you will influence that brand on-line by responding to your customers.

Look at roles – the way you segment your marketplace. If you segment by industry, one thing you notice on a global basis is that healthcare is different throughout the world. You should segment globally and look at roles on-line. On-line, you can gather a community using Web 2.0 technologies to form a group with similar roles.

For instance, Adobe and Rubicon Consulting have a group targeting bio scientists. IBM also formed a community on SOA – Role based segmentation.

Read the book for more case studies and check out my video!

We are continuing our series on the Angels framework. Next stop is “G”: How to Go To Market socially and how to develop your go to market plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzIFVJTbh2s&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=3

Some focus areas discussed in the video include:

1. As you add social media to your marketing plan, you need to remember the value propositions as they make a difference. Companies forget that the same marketing principles apply. The value propositions need to be compelling and differentiating – set your market apart.

• How do you make it compelling? Represent the value of your company. differentiation
• relevance
• compelling nature
• enduring

2. As you develop your plan, relationships are very important so remember the three C’s:

• customization – i.e. Sears – My Virtual Model
• co-creation – how do you enable your customer to use your technology to shape the future
• collaboration – facilitate discovery and take action – how do you engage the tools and images?

3. Master the wheel of influence

• Target by audience – i.e. Twitter, Bloggers, Governance and Universities

Continuing our series on the Angels framework, today, we will discuss “E”: how to Energize your channel and your community, one of my favorites!

Check out the video (do these help?) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?=DBUA7_hmi2k&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=4

We look at how to choose the vessels available in social media based on your goals: dialogue, collaboration, sharing, etc. It all depends on your ultimate goal.
* Serious Gaming: Wii, DS: leverage the power of the games, a teachable moment. Example: Innov8, one of IBM’s serious games is a great example: it progressed from education to customer interaction to forming relationships with partners.  There is a 80% higher recall from teaching with a game vs. in-class education and the average age of gamer is 33 and 47% are in the 18-49 year old age bracket.

Widgets: a virtual briefcase with a set of channels for demos, presentations, etc. Use it internally and externally with customers. They’re great for sharing information and getting feedback on it.

Communities and Social networks: Per IDC, 50% of on-line Americans belong to a social network. Do you create your own or leverage existing ones out there? Both MySpace and Facebook as well as LinkedIn fit in here.

Sharing. I personally love the vessel of Blogging.  Blogging is great way to share information. My favorite of course is microblogs like Twitter. 
Dell created their own Twitter channel to sell excess inventory

There are lots of social tools – to energize your channel and community – here are the key steps to take:

• Learn about the options
• Experiment – try things out
• Leverage them in your current plans
• Plan and execute your social media vehicles

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090310-082257

 

Social Networking and Blogs Surpass Email in Popularity

With 67% of the worldwide internet population visiting, social networks and blogs are now outpacing email in popularity. They’ve become the 4th most popular online category, according to Nielsen Online.

“Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” says John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online.

 

 

“While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.

This study explains why.”Here are some more interesting nuggets of information on the matter from Nielsen:

 

 

One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.

The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to “Member Community” Web sites globally came from the 35-49 year old age group (+11.3 million).

Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23 percent (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19 percent in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year – up 249 percent in the UK and 156 percent in the US.

Does this mean people will start responding to social media marketing over email marketing? Only time will tell. So will you when you leave a comment below.

 

 

 Today, I’d like to discuss “L” from the ANGELS framework: Leads and Revenue which is really the bottom line! Check it out at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S70moQZPcPc&feature=PlayList&p=0270CF7431B8451D&index=5

We look at how do you “show the money” from your Social Marketing? Highlights include:Metrics: don’t just measure the start and the end but look at the in process pieces ie: a lead from a virtual event, from Twitter, etc. How do you make sure Marketing and Sales are teaming together in the middle to progress that lead. Use in-process metrics!

Use a Dashboard: create an automated one such as a campaign effectiveness session or a response mgt session, that would allow you to automatically reach out to your customers.

Understand your dashboard … more than just ROI … sync it in to your business strategy and goals

What are the new metrics now that you have inserted social media into your plans: it’s all about the Marketing Mix. You may need to tweak it. Live events, search, virtual events, advertising … you need to optimize across the mix. Also, look at a lot of new metrics for on-line engagement, such as involvement, on-line interactions, are you getting the right audience. Look at the frequency of conversations, how many are converted relationships from negative to positive, relationships to purchase, on-line conversations that mention your brand, etc.

ROI can be tricky – measure the value of new social relationships, looking at innovation, at awareness, extended reach, word of mouth, communities, etc. Use and understand your Dashboard!

A friend of mine in India sent me these great trends for India. If any of you have trends for other parts of the world, can you please Tweet me or Blog me?

Thanks!

 

Top Seven Social Media Predictions for India for 2009

1. Citizen journalism will come into its own in India.

 

 

 We saw a preview of the power of citizen journalism in the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack. We also saw that mainstream media is increasingly willing to integrate citizen journalism in its news coverage. News organizations are not only promoting citizen journalism platforms like IBN Live’s Citizen Journalist, but also engaging with platforms like Twitter (see @DNAIndia, @LiveMint, @BangaloreMirror, @IndiatimesNews). We will see a continuation of these trends in 2009. More news organizations will experiment with citizen journalism, both by creating citizen journalism platforms on their own websites and by actively tracking social media for stories and sources.

2. Social media will play an important role in the 2009 Indian general elections.

Young people in India are very engaged with politics in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack and this engagement will make an impact in the 2009 elections. This will include more debate on the many problems facing India and even specific political parties and candidates. This will also involve a serious “get out the vote” campaign to get more young people to go out to vote. Specifically, we will see Twitter and other mobile based applications like

 

3. More Indian corporates will use social media tools to engage with their customers.

With the inevitable cuts in marketing budgets, more Indian corporates will turn to social media to recah their consumers in a meaningful way. These initiatives will include better listening via social media monitoring, more transparency via corporate blogs and Twitter profiles and higher engagement with customer communities on social networking sites. As a result, we will see several new social media monitoring companies (like

4. At least one SMS-based mobile social network will become mainstream in India.

Even as we see several innovations in location based mobile social networking internationally, the adoption of such services in India will be minimal, even with the launch of 3G and flat data rates. Text and voice will continue to drive mobile usage in most of India and we will see the emergence of at least one major SMS based mobile social network in India. It may be a ver 2.0 of

SMSGupShup with many-to-many messaging capability, it may be Twitter, or it may be a new player (and, no, it won’t be MobiChange, not yet). 5. At least one web 2.0 service started in Indian will break onto the international scene.

The recent $7.5 million

6. Social media outsourcing will we widely seen as the next big outsourcing opportunity for India.

I have earlier written that

 In 2009, the volume of consumer generated media will increase, social media engagement processes and metrics will evolve and budgets will continue to decrese. All these three trends will drive large international brands to seriously evaluate outsourcing parts of the social media valua chain to countries like India. We will also see more Indian firms pursue the opportunity in a structured manner and social media outsourcing will be widely seen as the next big outsourcing opportunity for India. 7. Several Indian social networking websites will either shut down or reposition themselves as niche player.

In 2008, we saw that the social networking space in India became a two horse race with Orkut and Facebook and several

Indian social networking websites, that were essentially Facebook or Orkut clones, lost significant traffic. We will see this trend continuing in 2009, and, even as we see the emergence of niche social networking sites focused on Cricket, Bollywood, Education, Career, Consumer Reviews, Social Activism, or even Social Shopping, we will see several undifferentiated Indian social networking websites become even more marginalized, with some of them shutting shop.

 social media outsourcing is the next big business opportunity for India and may already be leading the third wave of Indian outsourcingacquisition of SocialMedian by Xing has shown that a web 2.0 service developed in India can break through onto the international scene. SocialMedian was developed almost entirely in Pune by True Sparrow. In 2009, we will see at least one India based web 2.0 startup scaling up to international prominence, and perhaps selling out, in a similar fashion.Informm), social media agencies and consumer communities (like BrandAdda) enter the Indian market. SMSGupShup and MyToday playing an important role in the 2009 general elections, both in the campaigning and in the coverage of the elections. Some politicians will also experiment with social media. BJP’s V K Malhotra, for instance has a Twitter account @VKMalhotra

I am so excited! Coming to the East Coast — live — a Social Media Tweetup! We had one in the Valley — that was so energizing but being an East Coast girl, we must try one here!

Every day companies are devising innovative techniques to leverage Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Lotus Connections, WebSphere Commerce, iLog Visualization and other Social Media technologies to develop deeper customer connections.   And I see that many many countries are getting more and more interested in Social Media — like India, Brazil, and others

Many of you, have stories about ways you have deployed Social Media tactics to successfully drive demand. And I want to hear about them!  I love social media and if you share that passion and quest for Business Savy in measuring it for great business value.

f you do, please plan to share in a casual conversation, Social Media Tweetup, hosted by Sandy Carter, VP of Marketing for IBM’s SOA and Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior analyst for Forrester.

This event will be held in Mid Town Manhattan on Monday, March 23 from 6 – 8 PM. We are limited to 30 attendees so please RSVP quickly

To RSVP or to inquire for more details, please contact scarter@us.ibm.com

Guys … I took the 10 that Jeremiah gave us into 5!!!  He is amazing and loves this space

1)  Don’t obsess over the tools!  His advice?   Watch the early adoptors and see what they are adopting.  Tons of new tools being developed every month!  Choose carefully based on what you want to do!  But you will make mistakes and it is ok!  

•

2)  Invest in the resources around the tools you choose!  You can do a lot for very little money!  While growing, the total dollars here are small still.     Spend 80% on the strategy, goals, value propositions and 20% on the tools.  Examples he gave include Dell, Wells Fargo, and IBM.

3)  Do Integrate!  Don’t forget to integrate!  Social tools are not islands.  Successful social media works when the social media tools cross link and integrate!  Develop an index page of tools!

4)  Make sure you have an internal social media process!  Several models were reviewed – -the Tire –>  employees are communicating with the market with corporate communications still in the center.  Second, the control – Company communications owns all social media.  Third, hub and spoke — in the middle is a cross functional team. 

He compared this hub and spoke to an airport.  The team needs radar to listen.  The Signal Tower prioritizes the information and informs the right team.  The Flight log shows key results.

Have a place so that people can experiment — a Social Media sandbox like Yammer, or Blue Twit or Thinkforward internal to IBM.  Make sure you make it safe to try this internally!

5)  What not to do — measure the wrong things!

Page views along are not sufficient to measure .  Meausring click throughs is the wrong engagements!  Measure based on the business objectives.

Bottom line, this is personal, use them!  Play with them.  The ones Jeremiah suggested…..Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer, Twitter, Blogs and Pictures. Use search tools like google alerts, twitter search , and technorati.

Well, we ended up with 62 people are our NYC TweetUP on Madison Ave on Monday night! It was a great group of folks who attended with amazing social media stories of use and value, new applications, and even one person who had never been on Twitter that signed up immediately in the room (yes, they got the invite verbally from a friend!).

Yes, some might say a little formal……but great food, free drinks, and great conversations and networking. It was great to meet face to face with those you have been tweeting with for a while!

I learned about a Social Media Club, a Social Media Breakfast, and some great upcoming events. What more could you ask for?

We will do this again soon! Thanks for joining us!!!

We are continuing our series on the Angels framework. Today, I’d like to discuss “S” : Scream! … use technology to scream into the marketplace. Check out the video at:
It highlights the two core attributes of Screaming: 1) Understanding the dichotomy in your marketplace today: understand the nature of digital citizens vs. non-digital citizens, those who are using social media tools and those who are not, and 2) Understand the technology: we are trained in basic marketing but we now also have to understand the new technology.

Areas to Scream:

Leverage your existing website: for example, on-line chat on your website to interact with your customers and guide them to a purchase; a great way to scream your message and go from website 1.0 to 2.0

Use technology to progress a lead, not just to generate a lead: e-nurture your leads, it’s critical to stay in touch with your customers on-line, build a relationship with them

How do you sell on-line: customer centric commerce, great examples include Staples and Bass Pro Shops: Dell uses Twitter to sell their excess inventory

How do you take advantage of new technologies coming out: 3D is upon us now, Second Life is another good example and Sears are using a My Virtual Model to sell their products

Leverage the new Marketing 2.0 technologies to really scream into the marketplace!

From Business Week

Messaging with the boss much? Maybe you ought to be. Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to a new analysis of social networks in the workplace by IBM (NYSE:IBM – News) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The research, released this week, even assigns a dollar value to e-mail interaction with an employee’s managers. Among the group studied, several thousand consultants at IBM, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm.

The results represent an early attempt to understand the value of the broadening variety of personal connections afforded by the Web. Users of social media rack up LinkedIn contacts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers by the hundreds, if not thousands. But figuring out how big a difference all those contacts make in a person’s life, financial or otherwise, is a far murkier matter.

[The article goes on ... ]

The actual study is here …

My Virtual Model enables consumers to “try on” clothes online and this is a business model after my own heart! For companies, using My Virtual Model technology improves their bottom-line profitability by increasing revenues while cutting costs. As an IBM SOA business partner, MVM will be at IMPACT 2009.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Louise Guay, the MVM co-founder and wanted to share her insight!

Sandy: This year will be your first trip to IMPACT! What are you most looking forward to?
Louise: I hope that I will have the chance to share our experience of social centrality and target advertising with the participants. The moneytisation of the social shopping and networking is “le sujet de l’heure” and we have an experience conducive to it! We can provide in the core of the shopping experience of merchants a usage of social media (Show me me how people like me wear this product!) and how the users can buy the entire look with a buy all button. Once the users register their profiles (their 3D models of themselves with a picture of their faces), ads can be targeted to them via banners or in emails or when they make their model appear on a product page. We have also an amazing network driving new clients to our merchant clients.

Sandy: I know that My Virtual Model has incorporated Social Media within the online shopping experience for Sears, Cosmopolitan and others. What is the reaction from customers and users?
Louise: Merchants are anxious to make a sound usage of social media. From a merchant perspective these times command a strong metrics oriented results, we also know that users trust more and more their peers comments. Imagine if they can see their peers wearing what they like and would wear also. They can choose seeing it on similar peers body types or same ethnicity or any physical affinity they have with peers! It influences their purchases and drives strong recommendations. It is an effective outfitting approach. Publishers want to go from mass media to personalized media. My Virtual Model brings each and everyone of their readers to literally try on their fashion picks and hints and all the trends presented regularly in their magazines.

Users are more and more visual and very involved in the process. They already rate products. If they can see the products on themselves and on others people similar to them it has a direct impact on their decision to purchase. It boosts their confidence in their styles, their looks and their tastes and preferences. Confirmed in their personalities they feel good to go and get what makes them look great. When we install our product on a publisher/media site like Cosmopolitan, users read fashion tips and trends and are always wandering what it will look like on them and where can they get it? These questions are answered by the virtual models of the users and the comments of other users on their models.

Sandy: What are some of the more popular elements of social media that users have really loved within the new My Virtual Model experience?
Louise: Users enjoy discovering their personal styles. They also develop friendships, affinities of interests and support the efforts of others. Many great talents appear and are encouraged by the Community. Users love to create looks, publish them on their public page and get rated by other users. They also appear in the most recent and popular looks of the Community and rate other users looks. They love to click the “Try On Outfit” button and wear on their model an outfit created by another user. It is a great way to shop and buy outfits. It is quick and highly efficient. They love to describe their looks and tell a story about their looks. They also love to see how each item of their looks is worn by other users utilizing the feature “More looks featuring this item “

Sandy: Why did you choose to base this on WebSphere Commerce?
Louise: WebSphere is well know for it’s foundational excellence and architecture of openness to integrate 3rd party applications that are user centric. By choosing WebSphere we were able to concentrate on what we do best, and leverage a powerful and robust ecommerce platform to create an innovative and solid shopping experience.
This is exciting and thank you for stopping by and sharing your insights! I am looking forward to seeing you in Vegas next month @IBM IMPACT 2009

Check this one out!

IBM to help SOA partners with SEO, social net tools
By Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director
14 Apr 2009 | SearchITChannel.com

IBM is amping up its partner effort around service oriented architectures with new social networking tools, search engine optimization help and other resources.

An IBM executive said the move is driven by the company’s need to help partners get more self-sufficient and profitable in a tough economy.

The offerings, to launch officially next month at the company’s IMPACT 2009 conference, include tools to help partners make their web sites more findable via search engine optimization (SEO).

“The number one thing for [partners] is the ability to generate their own leads, identify opportunities and to do it cost effectively,” Sandy Carter, IBM’s vice president of service oriented architecture (SOA) and WebSphere told SearchITChannel.com.

IBM will train partners in the niceties of search engine optimization to help them generate more traffic to their websites and make their services and products more easily found on the Web. “If you look at [return on investment] for any social media, the number one ROI thing to do is optimizing your pages for search. IBM.com was one of the first groups to figure out the algorithms for this and we will share our best practices with partners,” Carter said.

IBM created a tool that it uses to look at its own site meta data, headers, summaries, images and monitor readability and IBM.com has reaped the benefits, Carter said. “It checks how many Google crawls you get, the rate and traffic rating. It’s a really nice analysis tool.”
SEO is indeed critical to partners, said Devi Gupta, vice president of marketing for Prolifics, a New York City-based IBM software partner.
Prolifics hired an SEO optimization consultant last year but did not renew the contract, Gupta said. “We felt we needed to take another look at our web site and rethink our strategy. IBM is providing this benefit that will makes it effective to jump back in using their recommendations. My understanding is this tool will take your keywords, go through your site and meta tags and evaluate it.”
Good SEO is very measurable and tools to help us do it better are very valuable, Gupta said.

Better business by social networkingIBM is trying to more deeply entrench its WebSphere middleware and other software in SOAs and public and private clouds.

An IBM-built and maintained Virtual Forum will replicate the virtual reality aspects of Second Life but tailor them for SOA professionals, Carter said. “This is not just a web cast but a Second Life type version — fully contained. You can do keynotes, breakouts, partners can have demo booths.” IBM partners Prolifics and Sirius Computer Solutions have already worked with in the forum, she said.
In the past few years, IBM, like many tech companies, put a lot of effort into Second Life presence. The problem was business usage did not live up to the hype. Carter admitted that it hadn’t taken off as expected although IBM still maintains a few islands for educational purposes. The new Virtual Forum will weed out distractions and focus on SOA-related business

Other deliverables will be live social media training sessions in New York City, London, San Francisco and other locations to help partners get the most out of existing social networking tools — FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc.IBM trainers will show partners how to “paint” their Facebook page, optimizing it for business use IBM will also host an online business catalog to give partners and customers access to SOA-related resources.

IBM expects several thousand partners to attend the Las Vegas event in May. There it will continue to educate them on the new certification requirements for software partners that have raised hackles among some IBM partners. Under the new Growth Through Skills partners wanting to sell the company’s software, must get two technical certifications plus one sales certification for each of 14 different product lines that they want to resell.

Social Media Guru at IMPACT 2009!

I got to know Jeremiah at a Social Media thought leadership event in the Valley. He is truly a leader and visionary in this space. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeremiah and wanted to share what he has planned for IMPACT 2009!

Sandy: How has the economic downturn changed the way people leverage social networking
Jeremiah: Our Technographics Research shows an increase in adoption of social tools from 2007-2008, in fact some pretty large jumps in behaviors. Basic common sense and logic tells us that social media usage for consumers will go up during a recession. Why? People will want to connect with others during crises, build personal brands, learn new skills by reading blogs. Also those who are in between jobs will have more time and certainly need to connect with others to find new job opportunities. Furthermore, we’ve found that 53% marketers have decided to increase their social media spend during a recession on social, however it’s important to note we’re not talking about sizable budget amounts, these are still small potato budgets –all things considered.

Sandy: Is social media superficial branding, or does it truly change the company?
Jeremiah: Sadly, many companies are slapping social features on their corporate websites or launching blogs –yet they are not walking the talk. Many brands don’t truly live an open an transparent workstyle, and as a result, customers see right through it. This research is telling, corporate blogs aren’t trusted by consumers.

Sandy: What is the biggest finding from the many interviews you’ve done with corporate social media teams, what’s the one trend you’re finding?
Jeremiah: Many companies are starting to get organized and are appointing key roles, such as the social media strategist and a handful of community managers. These specific roles, while often perform other traditional marketing tasks, are key to delivering true social media programs to the market. Why? Like all business programs, internal champions are still needed for success –especially new mediums

Sandy: On a lighter note, what’s your take on the Ashton Kutcher @aplusk and CNN @cnnbrk race to 1 million followers?
Jeremiah: While silly and trivial, this is a true milestone that Twitter and other social tools are about to go mainstream with media coverage. This however, doesn’t suggest they are mainstream tools, as they don’t have mainstream adoption.

Sandy: How do you feel about celebrities using Twitter? Oprah has 92,000 followers before she ever posted 1 tweet, are celebrities changing the way Twitter is being used and any lessons to be learnt by companies?
Jeremiah: Expect celebrities to monetize this microblogging tool far faster than Twitter themselves. They will extend this tool to help their sponsors reach new audiences, pimp their own shows and content, and use it to broadcast content. Most celebrities won’t understand the true dialog opportunities and will use it like their other tools –broadcast. As a result, early adopters of Twitter will move on, and create a new community that hasn’t become saturated.

Sandy: You will be at IBM IMPACT in Vegas next month talking about the importance of social networking for today’s commerce opportunities. Would love to get a sneak preview on this session.
Jeremiah: Social Network adoption is one of the highest participated social activities by consumers –as a result, brands want to be there. In my session we’ll talk about what works, and what doesn’t. I’ll have some practical examples and best practices, and will make it interactive. I hope folks show up, and Tweeting is certainly encouraged!

Gang, come and see us at IMPACT. We have some great social media adventures planned like blogger box seats, Paint your Facebook, and more! Sign Up Here!

P.S. As everyone knows, Jeremiah’s puppy is famous and no blog would be complete without a picture!

I have such excitement from the announcement of INNOV8 2.0 at IMPACT in Las Vegas!

Did you see it– if not click me!!

The early results from INNOV8’s eNurture campaign shows that our click through numbers are exceedingly above industry average: 77.8% compared to an average of 25%.

In addition, since using opt-in registration is a barrier to public score posting, our use of tailored emails worked well where the content mirrors the gamer’s scenario interest really works!

Although it is still early, this has been a most excellent pilot for us to explore how we can use games to not only Train but to Persuade, thus showcasing IBM as a thought leader.

The CICS team has been leveraging social network marketing to prepare for IMPACT and beyond. It is catching steam – with active twitter followers, facebook group participants, regular followers like Steve Baugh – a popular blogger – who further broadcasts the message – and expand the reach in the marketplace in new ways.

Here’s recent interview w/ with Dave Andrews.

The viral communications afforded by these new media are providing interesting ways to get the word out to new audiences that CICS has some exciting things to offer – the CICS community is delivering robust solutions in increasingly new and innovative ways. Great given the stereotype for a CICS user!!!

Some examples!:
I ♥ CICS
I Love CICS Facebook group
Youtube

Recently, Hostbridge, an IBM Business Partner joined us on facebook – posting information about one of their webcast events on our facebook group to extending THEIR usual marketing reach, driving additional attendence and awareness for this activity. Mike O’Neill and Susan Henderson of Hostbridge, felt this was a very positive extension of their usual marketing efforts and have since worked on a number of co-marketing activites with us. Hostbridge was so impressed with the value of using facebook as a way to establish community contact that they started their own facebook group.

We also had a joint webcast with Hostbridge and IBM – and leveraged all these social networking tools to broadcast registration information and we had a 10x registration rate!!!!

The facebook group is a tool to promote other co-marketing work we cemented (CICS Spotlight articles, webcasts, etc) and extending our reach to other facebook groups that are maintained by various CICS user groups, Mainframe communities, Academic communities, etc.

The viral effect is shown as other bloggers pick up the feed. For example, The Master Terminal actively promotes the I Love CICS facebook group and our recent Youtube clips – extending the usual marketing reach – as are many other bloggers and user groups on facebook.

The more we do to connect the communities….the broader our reach..and that of our partners.

Our facebook group membership accelerates and goes more global, Youtube views are getting picked up faster – as new ones are introduced- reflecting an active and interested community is engaging with our social networking efforts.

Who would have thought for the mainframe community! GO CICS!!! And thanks to Diane Johnson for her leadership here!

Great news!

My SOA marketing organization has received 5 Hermes Awards, as follows:

Platinum Awards:

Impact 2008 (Event Marketing category)
Smart SOA Widget (Electronic Media/Other category)
IBM Smart SOA Newsletter (E-Newsletter category)

Gold Awards:
Smart SOA World Tour (Integrated Marketing/Other)
World Tour “Get Smart” Videos (Viral Marketing category)

Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production, web and free-lance professionals. The Association oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence.

The home page for Hermes Creative Awards links to the winners’ list.
http://www.hermesawards.com/

I was just reading a blog on a survey done for
women by Mary Kay. Very interesting that
Social media made the Top 10 list of what
women want now! It was a global survey!

Take a read!

Ten Things Women Want Now
1. Completeness
2. Strength & Independence
3. Family + Choice
4. Fulfilling Career
5. Connection/Sisterhood
6. Personal Income
7. Men, sometimes
8. Pampering
9. Social Media
10. Trust

I am at my Harvard Business School Reunion. It is so great to see all my friends again and catch up!

But we also get to attend great classes by Harvard Professors. One that I find intriguing today was by Charlie Collier on the Practices of Flourishing Families.

The highlights included:
– A discussion on what it takes to be a member of your family (do you have a set of family values, and a mission?)
– How do you encourage your children to lead their own lives yet stay connected to the family (tough one that we debated for a while!0
– How do you influence your child to be the best they can be (The discussion was around leading by example)
– We also discussed how you discuss money and prepare your kids to manage money (his theory was that we do not spend enough time educating our kids on how to manage their money)
– And we discussed how to raise a child to give back!

We discussed at length these questions and he ended with 6 questions that you should ask your parents and video tape to show your kids.

The 6 questions were:
1) What was the turning point in your life?
2) What was a high point in your life?
3) What was a low point in your life?
4) Who were the most influential people in your life and why?
5) What is your biggest regret?
6) What is the unifying theme of your life? Your legacy?

I think I am going to do this exercise — for my in laws, my parents, and me!

What do you think?

In preparing for this week’s WITI keynote, I found some great factoids!

First, over 1/5th of the world’s population are online – that’s over 1.2B people. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet! WOW!

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest population.
45% of Facebook’s audience is now 26 or older, with women over 55 the fastest growing group!

Between February 2008 and May 2009, the Twitter community grew by over 4,000% to an estimated 20 million+ users. In December 2008, over 14 billion web videos were viewed by 150 million online Americans, an increase of 13% over November ‘08!

People with more than twenty connections on LinkedIn are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.

All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees!

Send me your factoids!!!

Listening is a lost art. Today we are hungry to be heard. We like to talk, tweet, blog a lot. But listening and exploring questions that matter makes a difference.

Think about it. We had 4 women at a table. They each talked on what energized them.. Wendy, the hippie chick, Ann where boundaries are gone, Sandy, empowering others and creating something new, and Trudie working from a challenge into energy. The conversation was great. It was like weaving a new cloth.. each conversation being one thread .. a cloth that will never be woven again.

Interesting how listening does that. Do you do that with your family, with your team, with those in your friend group, or your connections.

When was the last time you listened and reflected? What cloth did you weave?

I’d propose this defnition of a dialogue.

Voicing — explaining, sharing, your thoughts.
Listening — hearing what others have to say on the topic.
Reflecting — thinking through others point of view
Challenging — Discussion the ideas and pros and cons

What do you think of as a dialogue? What did I miss?

For your social media strategy, have you set your goals? Explored how to reach them?

And then tried to change ?

Capture the results.

More later!

When you decide to add social media to your company’s strategy, here are some things to think through!

1. Don’t say If we will do social media, but When we do Social Media. “If” implies that you are thinking, “when” empowers people to do something!
2. State your intention. This is why Technology companies announce ahead of time of delivery of the product a roadmap. Be vocal about your Social Vision — perhaps to your team or a cross brand team.
3. Understand your goal. If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there! Is your goal new customers? Better support? New product requirements? Make sure you know your goals before you kick off a social media planning!
4. Collaborative Social Media Plan. Step 1 for me is to set up a Social Media Council. I did this at with my IBM SOA team. We had a cross functional team that brought forward case studies, ideas, and passion. This council for me was a virtual group. The council can assist in setting the roadmap!
5. Be students of the game. Learn daily. Post best practices of social media in a WIKI or an internal blog. Mistakes should be expected! Experimentation in Social Media is easy and a way to learn! Experimentation is good (and necessary) but remember that it’s a scientific process – you should have an expected outcome/framework!
6. Listen! You need to be listening to conversations! I just did a presentation with Maggie Fox. I loved her quote of “DON’T ignore negative chatter – it matters, and things move quickly”. If you don’t listen, you will miss 50% of the value of social media!
7. Approach End to End! Approach things from a holistic perspective .. you want to make sure your brand is viewed end to end. That it constantly supports your vision and your goals. For example, a message on LinkedIn and Twitter needs to be the consistent .. perhaps even in your taglines, and naming of your group.
8. Solicit your customers to be your “brand army” of enthusiasts that make your success their cause. We had customers post videos to YouTube on why they loved our products. They became our advocates. RackSpace does an amazing job of this as well! Acknowledge and harness their goodwill to generate insight and return on your investment. For example, we took those videos that our clients did and learned how they discussed our products and used those words to talk to other potential clients.
9. Hybrid Rocks. Don’t forget this is about leveraging social media to supplement your real-world events and experiences. Face to face is still the most meaningful interaction!
10. Digital crisis plan. Have a digital crisis communications plan – being caught flat-footed can do lasting damage. You need to move super fast in this new world be ready. Example of Domino’s Pizza who had employees post pictures of employees sticking cheese in their nose before they put it on a sandwich. Domino needed to move fast!

I was just in Costa Rica – a beautiful country – to meet with GBM — our key partner there and several customers. Also I attended the OMG meeting.

While there Richard Soley had a guest speaker at the event — the President of Costa Rica. He is an amazing man with a Nobel Prize and vision for his country around skills and technology.

I was amazed at several companies — including Credomatic — who are lplanning to be the leaders in Social Media for the region. Watch this space for more energy around Social Media!

I was just in Hawaii and will feature a series on the relationship of those sidetrips to Social Media! Too much vacation? Tell me what you think!

While in Paradise, I went to visit the 7 Sacred Pools in Hawaii’s Maui Island! These “7″ pools are beautiful — and there are more than 7 for sure! They are freshwater but touch the sea! The Seven Sacred Pools are near the burial site of Charles Lindbergh, as well as over Jim Nabors’s macadamia nut farm!!

The assorted pools vary in elevation and size and are most pronounced when rainfalls are heavy. In 1967, He Chas agreed to donate a 58-acre tract to the Valley of the Seven Sacred Pools ‘Park. Then in 1987, in a bid to attract tourists, a few local businessmen apparently concocted a “legend’ that there were seven pools leading to the ocean, and that they were considered sacred. While there are debates, my tour guide said that there is no evidence of any religious affiliation. To get to the end of the road and the hotel the business men built, you have to go through 617 twists and turns on the 53-mile road to the village!

While I am not going to debate whether these pools are sacred or not, the 7 Sacred Pool story is an interesting one. And yes I did go!!!!

A story can make a huge difference. My favorite quote is
“Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” It changed a little town that was too hard to get to, into a major Maui tourist attraction.

In Social media marketing, we tend to think it is the tool — Twitter, Blogs, Facebook — is the key. Not the story when in reality it is the story you are telling, that will make all the difference in the world. Is it compelling? It is relevant and enduring? Those are questions all need to ask before they JUST jump into the tool!

What do you think?

Kīlauea is the youngest and southeastern most volcano on the Big Island of Hawai`i. Since 1952 there have been 34 eruptions, and since January 1983 eruptive activity has been continuous along the east rift zone. Many believe that Kīlauea ranks among the world’s most active volcanoes.

Because of its activity, it happens to be the most visited, and most photographed volcano in the world! I went to the park to see the volcano and was hit by the hot steam, and smelled the sulfur (in fact it got shut down for a while I was there due to the dangerous levels that day). Since we were on a cruise, we saw at night the flowing lave into the sea! Pretty cool!

How does this relate to social media? Well, Kilauea is so super cool because it is active. The same is true with blogging, twittering etc. As I was on vacation and offline, my readership declined, my interest waned and fewer people read what I had written because it was old.

Activity breeds interest and sharing — like I did with the volcano picture. You feel compelled to share that which is cool, interesting and relevant. To be cool, interesting and relevant you really need to be contributing on an active basis.

The more activity, the better. But be aware. It is not just meaningless contribution, but contribution that is cool and matters!

I will also be taking more of my advice and ensuring that I contribute here more!!! Many thanks!

While on Maui, we also went to see the sunrise at the Mt. Haleakala ! You get up super early — yes, 2AM — and drive up a very curvy road to see a breathtaking sunrise over a crator. But a sunrise? Haven’t you seen a sunrise? (Take a peek!!)

The beauty of this sunrise was amazing to me. As I talked to my tour guide, he was busy snapping pictures. I asked him why? Doesn’t he see this same view everyday? He said something impactful .. while he does see it everyday, it was that consistency of beauty (Haleakala’s brand!) that attracted him and made this tour what it was today! One of the most popular in Hawaii!

So while we tend to think that consistency is boring, his view was it was that consistency that made him intrigued. As I watched this glorious event, I thought again about my passion of Social Media. All of us have a multitude of tools, but the consistency of our brand in each is appreciated and celebrated. In a way, the consistency makes us unique.

For example, is your picture — part of your brand — consistent in Twitter, your Blog, your Blogher profile, your LinkedIn account. What’s the value of that consistency? Well, your brand is repeated. That consistent repetition makes your brand known — in this case, for your first impression! As I walk into a room to keynote, people know me from that repeated pciture!

What elements should be consistent?

As you look at your social media strategy, note your common “branding” elements. Things like taglines, pictures, resumes, should be consistent so that you are instantly branded.

What do you think? Anyone disagree?

Virtual World: Immersive social experience
Facebook / Myspace: Social Networking
LinkedIn: Career-focused networking
Viral: Leveraging pre-existing social networks in self-replicating process
Serious Game: New way of education and enablement
Widget: Mini-web app
Wiki: Users freely create and edit web site content
Blog: Web-based discussion tool
Twitter: Micro-blogging web and mobile-based
Yammer: Corporate micro-blogging, segmented by enterprise domain name
RSS: Web-feed format used to publish frequently updated content
Podcast: Series of digital media files distributed over the internet for playback on portable devices
Videocast: Online delivery of video clips
Survey Monkey: Online Survey & Polling platform
SEO: Search engine optimization – maximizing exposure on search engines

@: At reply. A public tweet directed at a fellow Twitterer, such as @Barack Obama, that shows up in their Twitter stream.

DM: Direct Message. A private message that appears in a Twitter inbox. You can only direct message people who follow you.

RT: Retweet. A tweet that you like so much that you are resending to your followers. Usually includes credit to original tweeter, such as RT @BarackObama, followed by the tweet.

Whale Icon: The iconic blue whale that pops up when Twitter is down. It appeared frequently in Twitter’s first year and a half.

#: Hashtag. Used to designate a topic such as #SanDiegoFire so that people can easily search for tweets on a topic. (It is totally unnecessary, though, because a search on a keyword without the # returns the same results).

Nudge: A feature that lets you send a note to a Twitterer encouraging them to tweet more frequently. You can only nudge people who are tweeting from a mobile phone.

Check them out!

Well– you can’t go too far these days without reading or hearing about Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or blogs, and the list goes on.

And it’s fun it seems. But is it for business use? Or is this all a big waste of time?

I’d argue that it’s worth looking at – but there has to be a business case on the use of each.

Let’s have a look at some very recent survey results about how solution providers (VARs, RSIs, ISVs) are using Web 2.0 sites and technologies for business use – both today, and what their plans are in the future. Current Use is in Yellow. Planned Use is in Red. IDC split up the responses so that they were either in Currently using, future using, or neither.

LinkedIn , for networking use has the most users at over 50% of all those surveyed. This makes sense. LinkedIn has become very pervasive in the last few years.

Not for business use in this case – but a good benchmark – is the use of Facebook for personal reasons. Almost 40% of solution providers were using Facebook for personal reasons.

Something that IDC finds is very useful is LinkedIn Groups. A new piece of functionality within LinkedIn that allows people to participate in communities of interest.

There is a 15 mile coast in Kaui known as the Na Pali coast!

Much of it is inaccessible due to its sheer cliffs that drop straight down, 1000s of feet into the ocean. But it is beautiful! I went to view it in a helicopter and in a boat to get both views. You can also hike there but they say it is hard but it is well worth the trip!

So, how does this relate to Social Media? The reason people come here is the breathtaking view and the jagged coast. It is not because of smooth lines, and no issues. No, it is because of the balance in edginess and somewhat in the exclusivity in viewing.

This is why I believe that communities that are private or invitation only are going to be the big hit. As Jimmy Wales said “Communities can build amazing things, but you have to be part of that community and you can’t abuse them. You have to be very respectful of what their needs are.”

Think about how many open communities are out there and how much time you have. It is tough to join the many that exist out there today. But communities that are restrictive — like Harley Davidson who has a huge online and offline community but you have to have a VIN number to get in! Or Adobe’s biomedical community that is invitation only. Or even our IBM Software Partner community in LinkedIn that is by acceptance only.

It changes the game. I believe that creating great communities involves a few key points: (taken from “The New Language of Marketing 2.0):

Key elements of the Community
In order to build a B2B Community you need to meet these three key goals:
1. Build an understanding of the needs of the Community and an in-depth understanding of which of those needs are provided by existing organisations and how this Community could provide additional facilities, information and interaction to make it a viable entity
2. Develop a trusted environment; this can be built by engaging with a senior level group of individuals to form the core of the Community
3. Work with the core group to begin to deliver the essential content that will draw members into the Community.

Best practices:
1. It Has to Be Their Community – Not Yours
a. It needs to be independent – there is a massive difference between a company x user group and a Community sponsored by company x.
b. It should have an independent chair recruited from the ranks of the Community who is enabled to run the Community
c. Topics, discussions, etc within the Community must be driven by the members
2. You Need to Answer Their Needs – Not Yours
a. It has to provide the information they want – not the information you want to give them
b. It’s not about your products or services, it’s about building true business intelligence about your Community
3. It Must Be a ‘Trusted’ Environment
a. It must be a trusted environment a place where they feel comfortable they can share their issues with their peers in a closed environment – most high level B2B communities are very restrictive on press and vendor access.
4. B2B Communities Are about People not Technology
a. One of the key differences between B2B and B2C communities are that B2B communities need to be driven, they don’t tend to grow by osmosis so they need dedicated people interacting with the community creating content making sure new things are happening answering members needs etc.
b. Don’t get hung up on technology – yes the platform is important but a Community with poorer technology driven by the right people with drive and empathy for the Community will always be more successful than a community that is dependent on technology alone.

B2B Communities Succeed Because They Do a Number of Things:

1. The Community Empowers the Members
The Community must be run by the members to deliver the services they want.
2. They Give the Members What They Want
Above all, the compelling content will draw members into the Community.
3. They Have Passion
The Community manager needs to develop with the Community a content schedule, conferences, events, panels, webinars, surveys, polls etc. both online and offline that cover the most important issues and generate the passion for the subject matter, the debate and as a result the Community.
4. They Are For People Like Me
Our experience runs counter to the web myth that you should make it as easy as possible to join. In our experience members respect having to qualify and the fact that not everyone can join. In most of the communities in which we are involved over 30 per cent of applications to join are turned down.

This is essential. It says to the Community: ‘This is your group, it is for people like you, and when you join a significant part of the value is that only senior executives like you can take part’. Community members want to be assured they are with people like them.

5. The Community Allows Members to Collaborate
One of the key benefits to members of the Community is the ability to collaborate in two key ways:
1. To resolve common issues. Typically the core group will decide on a monthly basis what the key issues are affecting the Community and ask small groups of people from within the group to collaborate to produce white papers addressing these issues.
In this way all the group members benefit. Not only do members receive help from like-minded executives in other organisations to address the issue most pressing for them but they also receive the benefits of all the other whitepapers addressing key issues that are or probably will affect them. Because of this their productivity is massively enhanced and their perceived ability in their own organisation increases dramatically.
2. To build business together, certain communities benefit enormously from the fact that the community gives them the opportunity and technology to enable them to discover and work in collaboration with other members of the community.
3. Social networking (though in a very restricted way) is another very important element in the success of a B2B community.

Communities Must Offer Multiple Ways to Interact
There is no such thing as an online Community. Very quickly as the group forms they will want to interact in multiple ways both online and offline and it is essential to the success of the Community that this interaction is both enabled and encouraged. The Community must therefore offer multiple ways to interact. So while the on-line element is the ‘glue’ that sticks it all together, B2B communities are based on trust and trust only comes following face to face engagement – so regular meetings and events are vital to the success of a B2B community.

What do you think it takes to drive a great community?

I am in Chicago at the Blogher conference, speaking and meeting with customers and partners!

They shared their latest social media study. Some interesting facts!

* 43M women read/write blogs (from from 35M last year)
* Time shift to social media continues. Women using social media use between 20-40% less TV, papers, etc.
* 75% of women online and using social media use blogging as a tool.
* Bloggers are the most prolific social media users.
* Bloggers perceive themselves as tech savvy, tippers, influencers, and experts. They crave that cross influence.
* Bloggers consider online relationships equal to those offline! Wow!
* Bloggers are twice as likely to turn to their social media source for information.
* 78% are considering their purchases more carefully.
* 25% buy more from companies they “know”

The bottom line is that blogging is growing in importance in influence, size, and fun!

Lizzie from AllState

I am here in Chicago using to Blogging Best practices in 5 Case studies!
Here is case study #1! AllState!

My key take aways
1) Issues in regulated industries. Discussion of liability if someone takes advice from a Allstate message board. Seek advice from legal in these industries.
2) Have a strategy – don’t just “do social media”
3) Advise with others need to “approve” social media stategy. Her example was with legal:
a) First educate them on what social media is
b) Do your homework — know your facts. For instance, Lizzie from AllState went in with guidelines she wanted based on Farmer’s Insurance etc.
c) Show it don’t just tell it. Lizzie showed legal other message boards.
d) Prove, communicate, enhance, and repeat. Update the team!
3) Communications to the entire company — not just marketing is critcial!
4) Take baby steps, and then move forward to next strategy when success in one!
5) Track the results.
6) Lizzie leveraged resource from Blogging Council.

Some cool questions:
a) What’s your resource? One person.
b) What’s your next step beyond the message blog? Texting Tessa! Twitter and Gaming!
c) What are your results? Lizzie gave conversion rates of 50% plus to buy insurance! Online closure is moving higher.
d) How did you start ? They did no internal work first, they went to message board first.
e) How is the overall outlook in the company now? Yes, almost too much so. We do not want to go overboard. We are still an insurance company and we need to do many critical things in traditional ways.
f) What has this progressed? We have an internal board now to share best practices.
g) How do you quantify success? We measure acquisition of new customers and conversion in all tactics. Other groups in AllState are looking at it based on their stategy in terms of brand and loyalty.
h) Do you allow other companies to come in and share best practices? Not yet but I have used Walmart internally to move faster inside Allstate.

Bottom line to me is that regulated industries can use social media like Lizzie did and use her collaborative techniques to gain buyin throughout her company!

Fiskars! 360 year old brad is the second case study at BlogHer. Three talented women spoke: Angela Daniels,
Carrie Woodward, and Suzanne Fanning

How did social media start at Fiskars? They started with what do people think of when they think of the brand Fiskars. They wanted to build an emotional bond with Fiskars.

They decided to go after the passion about scrapebooking and sharing their lives. Fiskars used Brains on Fire to find 5 people that are passionate about scrapebooking. It was kind of like like American Idol!

They found 5 top women and brought them up to Fiskar to teach them about Fiskar’s products. They met with all the key folks there and they were able to “play” with the materials for scraping! We got to see our business through their eyes. These women were so excited to see the building, the development, and it was that moment of seeing their excitement that I knew we had done the right thing!

Now, they paid their advocates because of the amount of time they would spend on this project of blogging about the Fiskars products. They paid them for 20 hours, but they loved it so much they did more than 80 hours. They were clear in their disclosure on the blog itself. They are not paid to positively blog about the company. They are paid to plan contests, crafts, and projects.

Interesting point to this case study. They created Fiskar- Teers! They gave these cool and different scissors — so that even when someone didn’t want to talk about the Social Network and Blogs on Fiskar, people would ask…where did you get those scissors? (Note over 60K comments about the coolness of the scissors!!)

The Fiskateer site launched in 2006! They wanted 200 people to talk about their products. They had 200 within the first 24 hours. 1100 by the end of 2006 and today they have over 6417 active Fiskateers — 70 countries and all 50 States!!!

Gallery of pictures gets 11K comments, and 7K uploads of pictures of the work itself.

Fiskar increased their brand image a lot! 600x mentions in other sites outside their own site!!! WOW!

Fiskar started this as a PR action. However, now they use the information in product development, marketing, and service and support.

Another great case study! Stores that had Fiskar participants had 3x the sales for the company!!

They are using as well in some of their other areas. Examples included teacher community but not a special group.

Their best advice…they did this from the grassroots effort. They did a countdown to the FiskarTeer launch! They had 24K visits in the first day! What did they do to get people there? They did a grass roots effort. They reached out to those who were excited about their program.

The Coach team crowd sourced its product development of a Tote while holding onto to their brand.  I heard from Vanessa Flaherty, Jamie Dicken, and Stephanie Rohlfs on Coach at BlogHer!

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A Simple, crowd sourced campaign.

Coach wanted to reach a new and younger market. They wanted to engage the younger generation in a new way. They wanted the consumer to put their DNA onto the next bag. They launch a “design the next Coach tote” contest. It was a completely viral campaign. They received 3200 entries in less than 6 weeks.

People were spending the whole night on designing bags. They replaced focus groups with the natural language. They were about the distribution not the destination. They wanted everyone to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. It traveled across 8000 URLs in 6 weeks.

BrickFish’s Viral Map:

Key bloggers wrote about the contest. There were over 30 blogs that constantly commented on it . The image was that Coach Cared about what their clients wanted. Brickfish Tracked a viral map of each entry and where all the interactions happened with the brand.

They generated over 6M customer images over 6 weeks! On average people spent 7 minutes on the site and each person influenced over 1,729 people with the viralness of the campaign.

Coach was brave in the way they allowed people interacted with the brand. They ended up on the front page of Google.

They sold out this bag in all stores (small runs!) and the designer’s name is inside the bag itself!

Is this long lasting?

Is this novelty or long lasting? I think that people like to co create. We are now in the Generation C world. Generation C is different than the baby boomers, and gen x. Generation C wants to co create, collaborate, etc. I think this will become more important important in fact, perhaps being the primary form of product development.Others doing this?

Do you know of other co creation case studies?

• IBM with development of its WebSphere sMash product.
• NFL football on their advertising.
• aDiasas on their viral campaign with University students
• WD40 on their work on a product for women.

Check it out here!

http://www.brickfish.com/fashion/Coach?tab=overview