Timi will share… | Social Business Strategy

…analysis on social business, interactive media, games, e-democracy, poetry, food, passions

February 17, 2012 • 5:01 pm 0

Weekend reads: On social business maturity, content marketing, blogging and revolutions

I must admit that my heart skips a beat whenever interesting articles find their way to me. The end of the work week has brought some good catch on social business maturity, the crucial role of content marketing and engagement, and the ultimate ROI of social media, in particular, blogging — changing behaviours — , which in this case, contributed to a revolution.

The posts on engagement and content marketing describe exactly my recommendations to two clients of mine this week. Once you go social (and it’s no longer a question of if, but how), it’s a continuous effort. It’s not like advertising with a start and end date. It’s about feeding your network and engaging with them, which means, you must think in terms of increments, of addressing recognised needs or opportunities, but always, with the end goal of mind.

Anyhow, looking forward to reading these posts this weekend.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do that in between trying to teach my just-turned toddler to drink from a cup (even just drinking more would be a good acceptance criteria already), doing my taxes, and playing Skyrim (fingers crossed). Enjoy!

  • Content: The New Marketing Equation by Altimeter Group Network on SlideShare – This is a presentation of their latest report. I like this as it once again underscores how content marketing within the social business framework is NOT advertising. It’s not about one-off campaigns.  Real engagement needs continuous investment.  On their slideshare description: “Content marketing requires a shift in company culture, resources, budgets, partners and strategy. Rebalancing is critical to achieve these goals. The choice is whether to rebalance now, or later when the battle for attention may become even more difficult than it currently is.”
  • Jeremiah Owyang weighs in on the above report on his blog: Beyond Tools, Marketers Must Focus on Content
  • So does Brian Solis in a more elaborate post: Report: Content and the New Marketing Equation

Filed under: Digital worlds, e-democracy, Politics, Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, , , , , ,

September 12, 2011 • 11:35 pm 0

Links 12-09-11: Social business design must-reads

Brand Marketing Programs made Social By Design
How do you develop marketing programmes that are social by design? This framework articulates something I’ve been trying to do myself, and gave me a more structured approach in creating socially designed marketing programmes.

From traditional business to social business
A must read if you are serious about social business (and not just developing a strategy for social presence and increasing the number of likes.) Good examples of what it means to deliver value!

Filed under: Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, User experience, , ,

September 12, 2011 • 11:29 pm 0

Links 12-09-11: social media research

Nielsen: Social Media Report (U.S.) Q3 ’11- Really crucial to gain insights on how consumer segments use and share content. Some interesting findings:

  1. Over 2x as many 55-plussers visited social networks via mobile
  2. Top 3 categories of apps: games, weather, social networking. (Weather was an eye-opener for me)
  3. On slide 11: active social networkers are influential OFFLINE

A recent study (U.S.) on consumer interaction on Facebook – Interesting stats on engagement with brands.

 

Filed under: Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, , ,

August 3, 2011 • 10:48 am 0

Publicy and social advertising

Brian Solis, in “The Rise of Social Advertising”, wrote about the report by the Pivot team on the state of social advertising and its opportunities. The Trends in Social Advertising survey was conducted among brand managers, executives, and marketing professionals via email, blogs,Twitter and Facebook. I won’t delve into it as such a meaty article filled with lots of facts and figures is best read in its entirety.

What I’d like to share, though, is the comment I added to it. The report was focused on how businesses are using social advertising. After reading it, my thoughts began to wander in the realm of the consumer.  I think social advertising will intensify more the privacy-publicy conflict that arises every time a social network launches initiatives in social advertising. What should brands and the movers and builders of social networks should do about this? I am for publicy, by the way, but I believe it requires a process, not just a default opt in for social advertising. Here’s my complete comment:

Brian, I’m curious to know what you think of the whole publicy-privacy context and how that impacts social advertising. I think the rise of social advertising highlights this conflict even more. A lot of the major social advertising programs use tools that rely and thrive on publicy, where information/content is ‘public by default, private through effort’. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Ideas, Social / online media analysis, social business, , , , , ,

July 28, 2011 • 6:12 pm 0

Some top issues in adopting social computing

Here’s another brilliant resource for social business thinking. Also quite useful in presentations. Your prospects or existing clients would also want to know, aside from the benefits of social business, the most voiced issues concerning social business adoption. A number of them might even be already struggling with these issues. In a nutshell, the 10 top issues with social computing in business are:

  1. Lack of social media literacy amongst workers.
  2. A perception that social tools won’t work well in a particular industry.
  3. Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities.
  4. Can’t get enough senior executives engaged with social tools.
  5. There is vapor lock between IT and the social computing initiative.
  6. Need to prove ROI before there will be support for social software.
  7. Security concerns are holding up pilot projects/adoption plans.
  8. The needs around community management have come as a surprise.
  9. Difficulties sustaining external engagement.
  10. Struggling to survive due to unexpected success.

Read the full version by one of my favourite and genuine social business experts, Dion Hinchcliffe @dhinchcliffe.

Filed under: Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, , ,

July 19, 2011 • 5:00 pm 0

Use service design to envision social business programmes

A lot of time and resources are spent on thinking of clever marketing / PR gimmicks, but less about harnessing the real potential of social for your business: making social a core part of your services and products.

How to integrate social into services and products? To quote Clay Shirky, give your customers “a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain.” Learn more from James Dellow in this well-written and insightful post ‘Using service design to envision socially integrated services and products‘.

Filed under: Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, , , , , ,

July 12, 2011 • 12:34 pm 0

Pharmacies can be more social: talking with your customers can be more important than giving answers

I was customer #5 at the neighbourhood pharmacy this morning. I wanted to get a ‘herhalingsrecept’ (repeat prescription) for my brand new and ridiculously expensive medication for treating my high cholesterol levels. I have to shell out my own money first before it can be shouldered by my insurance, and getting the reimbursement requires filling and sending paper forms. Also these days, I have to request medication, even my insulin shots, a week in advance. Otherwise, the pharmacy can’t guarantee availability. So, I dutifully proceeded to the pharmacy at 8 a.m. to make sure I get my repeat prescription. I thought it was strange to not have gotten it right away the last time, but I wrote that off to my forgetfulness and to the pharmacist’s busy schedule.

My turn came up and I explained myself to the pharmacist. I said I wondered why I didn’t get the repeat prescription, and how can I get it. “Then it’s not meant to be ordered again”, the pharmacist knowingly replied.

I gave her a blank look; luckily, my brain was jolted enough from its sleepy state to manage a retort, “But that’s the second time I ordered it. That means the original prescription stated that it’s meant to be used regularly — monthly in my case.”

To which she replied, “Daar ik ga ik geen gesprek voeren,” (“I won’t go into that discussion”).

Ah, the magic words that would compel me to stop asking and accept the facts of life. It was meant to be the end point of a flowchart, the conclusion of a Q&A triage.  Although having grown up with tyrants in government has taught me that silence is argument carried on by other means, I luckily managed to also develop a questioning nature and an ability for indirect resistance. So I skipped the step ‘No discussion’ in the flowchart and created a new flow. I told the pharmacist that my new medication was not meant as a one-off.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Ideas, Social / online media analysis, social business, User experience, , , ,

June 30, 2011 • 2:09 pm 1

Social Business Series 1: Social media behaviours around the world

[Note: Aside from blogging about the impact of social media in society, I also want to popularise the concept of Social Business. I’ve decided to post regularly about a series of topics related to ‘Social Business’, which will be a combination of curated information and reflections about my own experiences as a freelance Social Business Analyst / Strategist. I hope to explore the different aspects of Social Business and help you gain a better understanding on how to optimise social and network productivity in an organisation. In this post, I'd like to give an overview on social media behaviours and underscore the importance of knowing your target audience.]

Social business as a concept and framework is, first and foremost, an acknowledgement of the profound impact of social technologies on our culture, the way we communicate and the way we work. Secondly, it’s a recognition of the potential of social media and networks for consumer engagement, workforce engagement and change / operations management.  Last, but not the least, it is a framework for effecting genuine and holistic transformations in organisations.

Global social media behaviours 2010/2011

Global state of social networking

Know thy customer
The holy grail of social media is – surprise, surprise – not media but social. By social I mean people and the networks they participate in. Before an organisation should even attempt to create a social media campaign or set up account profiles across social web, it should first be clear about its audience and their socialgraphics. This means having an in-depth knowledge of what people do online, where they converge, what they talk about, who they talk to and trust, and how they connect with each other. These are fertile grounds for consumer/user insights, which are fundamental in any online business. If there’s anything that best practices in online and social business have taught us, it’s this: don’t cut corners in project activities aimed at attaining a real understanding of the local market.

But since digital and social technologies are helping us live in increasingly proximity with each other, we must  also complement local knowledge with a global perspective on how consumers use social technologies.

To get you started thinking about Social Business, above are two very relevant infographics on global use and adoption of the social web. The first is a 2011 global snapshot of social media activities in Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific (using the GlobalWebIndex, Comscore and Nielsen). I got this from Michael Brito‘s brilliant blog for his book, “Smart Business,  Social Business”.  (More details in the later part of this post.) The second is from GlobalWebIndex that visualises the global state of social networking in 2011.

While you would naturally have to conduct more local and group-specific research on your target customer’s social and online behaviour, global statistics always come in handy for comparative analysis or as a springboard for deeper investigation. Always be on the look-out for information that shows interesting trends in social network growth, adoption, and engagement that can reveal insights on customers’ relationships and their ever-evolving user behaviour.
Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: campaigns, Digital worlds, Ideas, Philippines, Social / online media analysis, social business, Strategy, User experience, , , , , ,

June 9, 2011 • 10:34 am 2

A smart infographic for Social Business

Back from a month-long holiday in the Philippines and now faced with a huge backlog of brilliant posts to read from my favourite thinkers and writers. Thank goodness for smart infographics such as this one by Michael Brito, which set my mind again on the fundamentals of Social Business. It has inspired me to start working on one myself. It’s not only an essential for presentations, but also a good mind exercise for checking ones thinking and challenging ones notions about Social Business.

Thanks to advocates of Open Research, Creative Commons and the Open Web for continuing to share knowledge and insights freely – and beautifully, too ;-)

And if you like this infographic, then maybe you’d like the book, too. It has genuinely piqued my curiousity. In this case, it’s an effective tool for promoting the book! [I hope Headshift and Lee Bryant will publish a book on social business, too.]
The Social Business Book
The Social Business infographic created by Online MBA

Filed under: Digital worlds, Social / online media analysis, social business, , , ,

March 23, 2011 • 3:09 pm 0

Motherhood: How does a new mom carve out her niche in the workplace when returning to work?

I posed this question on Quora some time ago and got some great response. The context:

A lot of moms going back to work find it challenging, if not difficult, to claim back the niche they carved out for themselves in the workplace. I think many feel the need to prove themselves once again, especially those who led a very hectic career before giving birth. But as every mother knows, it’s a different ‘now’ we’re dealing with. How should one go about returning to work and striking a balance between career development and raising her child?

After having just read Tamar Weinberg’s post on her ‘must-have tools’, I decided to share an answer myself. ;-) I found her post so helpful, I just have to spread the goodness. I bet you will, too.

“I’ll just focus on some ways that can help moms get organised and be more productive. There are a lot of tools – online tools especially – that can make the transition better. Think of time and task management tools, invoicing, and communication and collaboration tools. For those involved in online business or are entrepreneurs, Tamar Weinberg (internet/community/social media consultant and author who’s a work from home mom) wrote an awesome blog post about the online business tools she uses to make her more productive: http://www.techipedia.com/2011/business-owners-web-toolbox/

Some of it are naturally quite specific to the work she does, but you can easily find personal use cases for most of the tools she listed.”

Filed under: Digital worlds, social business, , , , ,

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analyst, poet, dream-dweller. a.k.a. 'delunna'

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