Thought-Provoking: The Future of Learning (Video)

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We all know that our society is changing in terms of how we are learning today. But in which way does information communication technology redefine the way we learn in the Networked Society? In an interesting video Ericsson draws a nice collection of pictures with different experts and educators on how technology has enabled us to interact, innovate and share in whole new ways. They come to the conclusion that the dynamic shift in mindset is creating profound change throughout our society. The video “The Future of Learning” identifies that change as a “potential to redefine how we learn and educate”. It will take you away from a world of traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students’ needs and self expression.

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Mercedes – Twitter-Driven Commercial

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This is the first commercial that integrates Twitter as the driver of a commercial – obviously for the launch of a new car: Mercedes TVC. In the TV ad, Mercedes-Benz UK gave viewers the option to select the ending of the recently launched TVC.

How the ads worked?

The commercials went live during the X Factor series. People watching the show were really in the driver’s seat. It was split in three parts. They let the action by being invited to chose between certain scenarios. They could vote via Twitter hashtag #YOUDRIVE. During the 60 second commercial viewers could select between two ending options: #Hide or #Evade. Which ever you chose determined the ending of the TVC commercial. In my eyes a fantastic idea for an integrated second screen social media combination. What do you think about it?

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The creation was done by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO. For all of you, who haven’t seen it, you can have your replay here.

Reputation Management Information for Business Owners

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Unfortunately, most business owners don’t consider establishing a reputation management campaign until disaster has already struck. While taking measures to control your company reputation after slanderous or other undesirable information is plastered on the Internet is an important step, sometimes this post-situation management isn’t effective at clearing your business name.

In the fast-paced world of social media and digital information you must take preemptive measures to keep your business name and brand unwavering in the eyes of your customers, both current and potential.

Steps of Reputation Management
Reputation management isn’t a new concept within the business world, but since the introduction of social media platforms and its various spin-off websites, this mode of safeguarding your company’s good name has altered from print-only mediums. Although the specifics of a reputation management campaign can vary, the three most common principles include:

Establishing a Reputation
While this may be the most complicated and time-consuming process, establishing a good reputation within your industry is paramount to long-term success.Reputation Maintenance – Now that you’ve built a solid reputation within your industry for quality service, products and customer care , you must maintain this reputation. Reputation maintenance involves a myriad of steps, which may include continual monitoring customer reviews on social media sites and updating a business blog with vital and free information. Reputation Recovery – Even by following the aforementioned steps, it’s still possible to receive bad marketing from competitors or jilted customers. This is the most important step out of the aforementioned as it involves rescuing your reputation through a series of marketing techniques and positive business promotions.

Advanced Advice
Although securing your reputation is a continual process, professional reputation management consultants demystify the abundance of information about reputation management. Due to unique circumstances that can tarnish your business reputation, it’s important to place your business focus not on covering up negative remarks, but replacing these remarks with positive truths.
While certain forms of reputation management are considered manipulative as they attempt to alter search results, other forms don’t necessarily alter results but rather place the focus on the positive qualities of a particular business or person. The most effective way to accomplish this goal includes:
Publishing several websites that spin your business in a positive light. Soliciting mentions in highly respected third party directory listings.Proactively respond to criticism found in public spaces with an explanation and solution.Offering a level of transparency within the company so current and potential customers are aware of your business practices and procedures.

Things that connect us – Facebook started first ad campaign

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If you think that Facebook is all about sharing, then you might reconsider this in your marketing plans. Below you can find Facebook’s first advertising campaign with the title “The Things That Connect Us”.

The campaign will be rolled out in over 13 countries around the world. Why Facebook starts going the commercial route? Well, maybe Facebook has got to after their stock market experience. Or maybe they are simply celebrating the 1 billion users by looking back at the physical things that connect us. And with the simple message that Facebook is now enabling the same.

The 90 second production seems to me more like a “branding supporter” than a typical advertising campaign. It is telling us how we are utilising chairs, doorbells, bridges, airplanes to showcase the things that connect people around the world.

Interested to see your views on the video and what you think about them going back in the advertising age…

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Social Media & Customer Service? Companies have got 60 minutes max. to react

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Many companies and brands are asking themselves (and us): “How fast do we have to give some feedback or answer when somebody is pinging us on Facebook, Twitter and the likes?” Or: Do we have to give some feedback on the weekends? And the answers we have heard were quite astonishing. Many managers in companies still think they have got a day or two to reply to their customers – whether they are speaking with them on email or on one of their realtime streams. Many test we have done so far, have shown us that most companies don’t react at all, some not on weekends, and some after one or two days. Be sure, if you offer your clients a realtime channel, they will use it – and they don’t care if the problem comes up on a weekend or not.

In a recent research by Convince and Convert we can find some clean answer now: 42% of the respondents expect an answer in the first 60 minutes! What comes even worse for companies: 57% want the some reaction time no matter what time of day it is or whether it is a Saturday or Sunday. In total, 67% expect some response by companies in the someday.

Still, many companies don’t have the right resources to satisfy their customers Social Media expectations. And there are many reasons for it: not enough resources, lack in modern process management or lack in technical establishment. Some companies started mentioning their opening hours in the info or biography fields which kind of makes sense and becomes a state-of-the-art workaround for the interim period until companies understand what a full-fledged social business with proper community management means. And this definitely goes away from the “9-to-5” workplace we know from our fathers.

Spot On!
The main challenge for companies and brands is to find out what the deeper demand of the status update, the comment, the review or a rating is. Remember the 3R’s? In the end, what we have learned years ago, is that people want to have the feeling someone is taking care of them immediately. This does not essentially say that companies or brands have to supply the best possible answer or solution. Many managers have still not understood the fine difference between these topics.
What we would like to know is: Do 60 minutes feedback time make sense? Should we try to be more patient as users? Is a quick feedback really that important if our lives are not depending on it? You give the answer…

Google Study: How mobile-friendly sites help sales

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While Facebook turns more and more to search and ad exchange budgets, Google is still riding the mobile wave. In many moderations over the last two years, I could listen to their attitude towards building mobile websites, and why these are important to the business of the future. However, companies often resist to face the mobile evolution and still stick to their conventional desktop websites. Not to mention what this does to their brands when the user experience is driving into a nightmare of usability and readability.

To get more attraction for their mission, Google has now published some research data on their blog that will help them to evangelize in the mobile business world approach. The benefit for Google is obvious. The more people use mobile sites, the better the experience in mobile usage, the more people tend to approach the Google search which means more marketing budgets into their hands.

In their research of about 1,100 U.S. adult smartphone users conducted by  market research firms Sterling Research and SmithGeiger, Google gives some handsome advertising tips to make marketers better understand and evaluate the power of mobile.

The key findings can be summarized as follows…
– 67% of smartphone users state a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company’s product or service
– 74% are more likely to return to the site with a good experience later.
– 61% made clear that when they don’t find what they’re looking for (in roughly five seconds), they’ll click away to another site.
– 50% of respondents said even if they like a business, they’ll use its site less often if it doesn’t work well on their smartphone.
– 72% see a mobile-friendly site important to them, however 96% have visited sites that aren’t.

Spot On!
The Google study advices marketers to create a fast mobile site with big buttons and text, and simplify the mobile experience in terms of keeping steps to complete tasks to a minimum. For sure, Google did not forget to promote the site with Google mobile ads with some good results: two-thirds of people who use search find a site. Their conclusion is that “having a great mobile site is no longer just about making a few more sales. It’s become a critical component of building strong brands, nurturing lasting customer relationships, and making mobile work for you”. There is not much more to add.
Still, we would be happy to hear from your mobile experience – with or without Google. Did you change your site lately and what did it do to your sales?

How people see it – The state of social at work

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The technology service provider Appirio published some findings that most business people are more social personally than they are at work.

The findings show that twice as many managers are engaged in Social Media compared to the people they have in their teams. What the survey did not tell us is the reason why the people are using social platforms and features less than their managers. Are they not allowed to engage on communities at work? Are Social Media policies too much black and white? Or do they not see the benefits Social Media offers?

The positive outcome is that there is some understanding of culture and ownership of the social business as the driving factors for success. Although marketing seems to be owning the social business transformation, the question remains if this does not make space for a new position in companies like chief web officer or chief culture officer. Another question that could be raised in companies in my eyes.

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Interview: "Social Business = Creating a smarter workforce & a proven solution to business challenges"

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One-on-one interview with Ed Brill

Ed Brill is Director, Social Business and Collaboration Solutions, at IBM. Brill is responsible for the product and market strategy for IBM’s messaging, collaboration, communications, and productivity products, including Lotus Notes and Domino, IBM SmartCloud Notes, IBM Sametime, Lotus Symphony, IBM Docs, and other related social business solutions. Brill’s focus is on extending and growing the success of these solutions through customer engagement, partner ecosystem development, and harnessing the breadth and depth of the IBM organization.

The Strategy Web spoke with him about the relevance and future of Social Business.

Why is Social Business not only a buzzword?

Leaders in every industry are leveraging Social Business technology to disrupt their industries and create competitive advantage. They are improving productivity and unleashing innovation by tapping into the collective intelligence inside and outside their organizations. With social, they’re creating a smarter workforce and proving that social business isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a proven solution to business challenges.

According to Forrester Research, the market opportunity for social enterprise apps is expected to grow at a rate of 61 percent through 2016. According to IBM’s CEO Study, today only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years.

What does it take to make a business “social”?

Organizations have quickly learned that a Social Business is more than just having a Facebook page and a Twitter account. In a Social Business, every department in the organization has embedded social capabilities into their traditional business processes to fundamentally impact how work gets done to create business value. A Social Business utilizes social software technology to communicate with its rich ecosystem of clients, business partners and employees.

Social business is a strategic approach to shaping a business culture, highly dependent upon transparency and trust from executive leadership and corporate strategy, including business process design, risk management, leadership development, financial controls and use of business analytics. Becoming a Social Business can help an organization deepen customer relationships, generate new ideas and innovate faster, identify expertise, enable a more effective workforce and ultimately drive its bottom line.

What does it mean to change the culture of a company?

Changing an organizations culture to embrace social must start from the top. Senior leadership must buy in and promote a culture of sharing, transparency and trust. Recent studies by IBM see this shift, today’s C-Suite recognizes the potential of social. Consider this, according to IBM’s 2012 CEO Study, today only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years. Similarly. IBM’s 2011 CIO Survey of 3,000 global leaders indicated that more than 55% of companies identified social networking as having a strategic significance to their company’s growth. And finally, 2011 IBM CMO Study reports that CMOs are using social platforms to communicate with their customers, 56 percent view it as a key communication channel. These senior leaders are the key to social business adoption and there’s a real shift occurring, social business is now a business imperative.

What role is the flexible workspace playing in the process?

Companies are able to build virtual teams out of expertise and leadership, regardless of their physical location or title on the organization chart. Today’s workforce expects to be able to share, post, update and communicate with colleagues, customers, and ecosystem using social tools to get real work done. Through those tools, employees who work remotely, use flexible “hot desks” in company offices, or open floorplans can leverage tools for instant e-meetings, video and audio tools, and embedded applications to process knowledge and activities faster and deliver more value to the organization.

What’s your advice for companies to become a “social business”?

Companies around the world are now focused on becoming Social Businesses, Forrester Research estimates that the market opportunity for social software is expected to increase 60% annually. But perhaps the most daunting part of becoming a social business is how to start the journey. That’s where creating a Social Business Agenda plays a vital role. In order to become successful in social business, an organization needs to create its own personalized Agenda that addresses the company’s culture, trust
between management and employees and the organization and its constituencies, engagement behind and outside of the firewall, risk management, and of course, measurement. The sponsorship for such an activity can be driven by leadership, lines of business, or other organizational catalyst roles.

FaceDeals checks-in customers via facial recognition…for deals

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Most of our shopping experience through Social CRM solutions are not seamless yet. However, a new solution might challenge the past days of manual check-ins… and deals. FaceDeals comes up with one of the freakiest social innovation we have seen so far. The deal platform is connected to a camera that gets positioned at the entrance of a shop or a restaurant. When customers are coming in the camera checks them in automatically to the place they enter via facial recognition detection. Then, the system is delivering some text message that people can get at the bar, cash point or point of sale.

PS: I can already hear people arguing about data protection, security risks and so on. Still, I think this is a nice innovation. What do you think?

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Google: Agile Creativity with Google Think

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The way the biggest search engine started their revolution is kind of a tipping point for companies today to get orientation in their creative evolution for further development: The Agile process. These days, Google wants to help companies and brands participate in that world of experience to help them elaborate new ideas and new ways walking on a more fluid way of creativity and innovation in order to keep track with the digital future. Their latest learning hub is curated by Think with Google. It offers a good range of Agile creativity tips and tricks from the leading agencies in the world.

A nice education piece for marketers, and don’t forget: “We are living in a world, where the only thing that is constant is change!”

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