Companies with the foresight and know-how to apply [social media] thoughtfully, and with rigor, will be the big winners. A great example is social media’s ability to spur the convergence of brand and culture. It encourages people to integrate their personal and professional personae in ways that lead to new and valuable ideas and work – for the individuals and their organizations. An example of this convergence is a new IBM social website and web service called Voices. Voices is a real-time data service that showcases live social feeds of IBMers who are experts in big data, mobile, social business, cloud, cognitive computing and much more. But it doesn’t end there. Voices then marries the individuals’ thoughts with IBM’s company feeds (@IBM, @SmarterPlanet, @IBMResearch) etc.), as well as a word cloud that shows visitors what’s trending via data visualization technology originating from IBM Research.
via Ethan McCarty, IBM, in wired.com
Social Media eValuation 101 webinar for basic cyber communication methodology
Nice to have simple, basics to check and get clarity before details to digging,
- 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve their intended benefits through 2015 due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology .
- The “push” approach that worked for ERP and CRM rollouts won’t work for social applications — people must…
Web site and Social Media are becoming more important place to share information than ever before. This trend seems continue and asks us to write more, to compose more content… to share over the internet media in multiple ways.
To enhance content quality, requires certain skill set. And from now on, I suppose it would become more crucial to have as an individual own skills, rather than seeking someone professional to serve your needs.
These writing composition are quite different from what we learn in school English class. Ideal to have marketing views with core based resource approach when considering objectives in conjunction with media characteristics and nature.
Here is what I must share with you.
The Simple 7 Steps - which I have distilled Only The Essence Needed from my writing composition method used by Fortune 500 clients over the last 20 years.
Mini Online Workshop Event: Thu 2/7/2013 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PT
Free Registration http://bit.ly/RegisterEvent_ReceiveDetails
Look forward to sharing New Value with you at this event!
Excitedly,
Ami Yamazaki
thanking your Social Sharing about this event:
Award Winning eBranding Expert: eBrandingPro@gmail.com
CEO, Value Gear Network, Inc.
PS. I Share The Exact Steps at the workshop!
The Steps guide to Articulate True Voice with professional marketing & eBranding awareness.
By applying this Result Proven method allow Your Business Communication Enhancement.
Transform Your Promo Tools as Pros!
More Info http://bit.ly/VGN_EventArticulateAsPros20713
Video is the Social CEO Hotspot
More than ever, CEOs are using video to promote their company narratives and connect. In 2010, video was used by only 18 percent of CEOs. Today, the rate of video usage has more than doubled, with 40 percent of CEOs now appearing in corporate videos. Growth in video is nearly evenly divided between CEOs appearing in videos on company websites and on corporate YouTube channels.
Major 2012 developments in social media:
- The re-unification of social business. While 2011 was dominated by the realization that social media must be connected to daily work to have real impact, 2012 revealed that organizations had created numerous social silos that fragmented their efforts and people, especially when it came to the walls they erected between internal and external social media.
- More major vendors moved into social business. IBM has long been a leader in social business, but up until recently the other software giants either had minor side bets or had platforms that could be social, but was not their primary function. This all changed in 2012 as Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft each doubled-down on social business by making substantial new public commitments to it, major related acquisitions, or introducing new software products.
- Social business became data-driven. You couldn’t sit through a presentation last year without hearing about the confluence of big data and social media, and more specifically how it will allow companies to zero in on ROI. The goal? To turn the mass of global conversations in social media into relevant insights that can improve results in marketing, sales, customer care, product development, and more.
- Mobile hampered social business projects more than it helped them. Strong user pull of mobile devices, which are (potentially) perfect for delivery of social business user experiences, made it awkward for older efforts still rolling out their pre-mobile social marketing and workforce engagement efforts.
- Social business merged with main customer experience. While a few brave souls in years past have thrown away their traditional digital experiences and made them all social, a new view has arisen to merge and combine the traditional and social customer experiences into something more holistic, natural, and expected by today’s consumer.
Via: posted by Christian Bieck, Feb 27, 2012 at ibm.com
One of my side projects over the past 6 years of research has been to examine the question why insurers (and financial services providers in general)* seem to have problems with innovation. The use or non-use of social media is a case in point. For example, a recent (unpublished) study by the University of Cologne in Germany found that 60% of (German) insurers are at a low social media maturity level. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter or own company blogs, a majority of insurers is content to watch or do a little light dabbling instead of using the full potential.
Of course, that is Germany. US carriers seem more active. There you have some very active companies at a top maturity level – but without having seen an in-depth study my guess would be that that is the tip of the iceberg - at the bottom we would see a number quite close to the German 60%.
Why? Here are seven possible reasons, let’s see if you recognize your company in some of them.
1. Too radical.
In a 2010 study on innovation we found that describing the financial services industries as non-innovative is not entirely fair – it really depends on your definition of innovation. FS providers are quite adept at incremental innovation, baby-steps of continuous, mostly internal improvement. Incremental improvement goes mostly unnoticed from the outside. For most insurers and banks, it is also unstructured, which means there is no process to improvement.
There is no baby-step to using social media. It is not improvement of something existing, but rather a big step, outside of most providers comfort zone.
2. Thinking in channels instead of interactions
Traditionally, the insurer-customer touch points have been fairly rigid. We sell, you have a claim, we settle. Insurers were not used to having a conversation, and if one was necessary, they had intermediaries to lead it. The rise of the internet has seen a lot of disintermediation, but the need for conversation is still there.
Insurers think in distribution channels: if you can’t sell through it, what is the use? Introducing a new distribution channel is a big endeavor. Yet customers need to interact. The shopping process is a large part interaction, small part purchase, and so is the service process. Treating social media as interaction points (instead of a distribution channel) would enable conversation.
3. Numbers
Financial services are very strongly based on numbers. It is hard to calculate the impact of using social media, both on the benefit and on the risk side. On the up side, it belongs to the murky realm of marketing, where you don’t which half of your budget is wasted. On the down side, you could misstep and ruin your brand. This murkiness is not unique to financial services, but if your business model relies on actuarial tables, it may be hard to overcome.
Which brings me to the next reason:
