Tag Archive for: Share

"We have effectively created a two-way direct dialogue" – World Economic Forum & Social Media

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The World Economic Forum will host its annual meeting in Davos from 26-30th of January 2011. Year on year prominent business people and politicians discuss at the event the state of the world from economics to political issues up to environment topics. In 2008, I have written about the first Social Media approach of the WEF. It became the most read blog post until today, probably as of the event’s popularity.

At the end of last year, I met Matthias Lüfkens at the LeWeb10 in Paris and I wanted to get some input on their Social Media learnings.

About two years ago, I have written about the World Economic Forum and your open social web-strategy. How do you think about your approach in 2008 today?
I think it was the right decision to engage the World Economic Forum on social networks. We are present on the key networks and now have 15.000 fans on Facebook, 13.000 subscribers on YouTube and 1.4 million followers on Twitter. We have shown that our engagement on social networks was not a short-lived PR operation but is a continuous effort to participate in the conversation.

What are the main achievements of your social web activities?
Beyond the number of friends, fans and followers the main achievement is to have given the general public a voice in the Forum. For three years running we have invited citizen journalists to attend our meetings. In 2010 Julia Lalla-Maharajh from the Orchid Project won the YouTube contest and had her own panel in the programme addressing her cause, the fight against female genital mutilation.

Where do you see the difference between PR people and bloggers from today’s point of view?
Social Media has blurred the lines between bloggers and PR people. Today anyone can have his voice heard through blogging or micro-blogging: the consumer, the blogger, the PR representative but also the CEO directly. If there is citizen journalism, there must also be room for CEO journalism, a new more transparent and engaging form of public relations.

What will be your highlights of the WEF 2011?
My highlight is to see how much Social Media has become part and parcel of our events. At the Social Media Corner participants are encouraged to reply to questions on YouTube and Facebook. Many are actively using Twitter to share their thoughts about the meeting. It will be interesting to see how many will check in on Facebook Places and Foursquare.

What is the value of the social web and active social medians for an event like the World Economic Forum?
Social Media has opened up the World Economic Forum events. We have effectively created a two-way direct dialogue between our participants and the general public.

Thank you for your time, Matthias!

Study: Web 2.0 increase market share, gain benefit

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The latest research by McKinsey & Company states that companies embracing Web 2.0 opportunities have more chances to gain market leadership and step ahead of their competitors than companies that are less Web 2.0-savvy. The research was interviewing 3.249 companies as part of its annual Web 2.0 survey.

The study concluded that “networked enterprises” are more likely to be market leaders and winning market share. The study’s authors, Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui said that the Web 2.0 companies “also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.” They found that 27% of companies overall gained market share against their competitors and could succeed with higher profit margins.

The success curve of the “networked companies” is exponential. Those companies that are “highly networked enterprises”, defined as companies using Web 2.0 inside and outside their business in innovative ways, “were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were,” the authors state.

The authors prediction is that that in many industries, “new competitive battle lines may form between companies that use the Web in sophisticated ways and companies that feel uncomfortable with new Web-inspired management styles or simply can’t execute at a sufficiently high level.”

Companies that have embraced Web 2.0 philosophy continue to report that they are receiving measurable business benefits. 90% are reporting at least one benefit. The benefits were increasing speed of access to knowledge – 77% of respodents with internal Web 2.0 efforts and 57% using Web 2.0 to engage external partners. Obviously cost saving is a big topic: 60% of internal and 53% of external users mention that communication costs could be reduced. And travel costs decreased as well said 44% internal users and 38% external users.

Funny Case Study: "David on Demand"

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This social media case study by Leo Burnett Worldwide called “David on Demand” is really something to be shared with my readers. It is outlining the success of an unprecedented social media experiment. Users were able to control the actions of a man through Twitter and then view the experiment live via 24/7 video streaming through a webcam installed on his head. Great and funny idea – although I would not let my followers do that with me… 😉

LeWeb10 – web strategy catch-up with Jeremiah Owyang

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When I joined the LeWeb10 in Paris last week, I was fortunate to spend some time with Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Altimeter Group and Blogger at web-strategist.com. We to talk about the future of web-strategy, the evolution of brands in the social web era and exchanged thoughts on how businesses need to integrate social media in their web activities. And it was good to see that our views matched nicely.

Afterwards, I did a quick video snapshot on three topics…

Where is web-strategy heading to in 2011?
The main trend that Jeremiah foresees is the integration of social media into the corporate website. In 2010, I have seen many companies already challenging this topic, and it improves. Although I have to admit, in many cases I found often tiny mistakes like the way social media conquers websites while important information gets lost or hidden in the backend or also placement of share items/buttons in the wrong corner apart from other things. Yes, companies are integrating their social affinity and activity but should not forget the business model, the target-group (or should I say friends or followers?) and the main existing user behavior…

What are the main trends from a long-term perspective?
Social analytics and Social CRM will emerge (active, pervasive), he said, and he differentiates this from social media monitoring (passive, reactive). I defintely agree in that point. Companies need to understand and react immediately whenever a client approaches a brand or a company how to match the data of all website and lead generation traffic stats with the CRM system in order to pro-actively supply relevant offers to them – be it on mobile, online or offline. Otherwise any competitive advantage will get lost in the future.

What is the role of brand vangelists/brand advocates in the future?
Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Wall-Mart amongst others have already deployed brand vangelist/brand advocates for their purposes. He makes clear that by using these people brands get ahead of the 1:1 dialogue which he thinks does not work on the social web. Brand advocates make the communication programs scale, he argues – I could not agree more as I see the main ROI factor from a user perspective in the time factor.

Thank you, Jeremiah! Looking forward to catching up in 2011…

Book Review – Marketing in the Age of Google

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When somebody used to work for Google there is a lot of knowedge to be shared. And I thought, I could learn more about SEO techniques and tactics. Vanessa Fox did work for Google (apart from inventing Webmaster Central), and so I thought, I need to read the book Marketing in the Age of Google. As a web-strategist I should know the secrets of ranking high on Google for my clients.

Getting Vanessa’s inside view on how Google and their search technology operates, gives an aggregated insight on the evolution of search topics. It is saving time and presumingly more efficient than following or reading many SEO experts thoughts. And then let’s help clients to optimize their site fropm a SEO point of view.

To write a review is a challenge. As I follow some of the most interesting SEO cracks, I knew some content topics already. But there is much more quality thoughts and knowledge in it that makes the book worth reading. If companies want to optimize their top rankings, the book offers good tactical approaches and a clear structure how to start and evolve your content strategy as well as how to conquer the top positions in Google. 

Having said this, the book is based on the theory of having a web-strategy in place that is aligned to the company’s business strategy. If your company has the consumer approach understanding the needs, desires and motivation why consumers go online to evaluate products and services, then the book is a must read.

The way people used search engines has changed in the last years as the web has become mature from an information platform to a consumer generated content base. It is not about what the company spreads but what the users are looking for and the content they share and create. People hear something about a person, a brand or a campaign and instandly start going to search for more information. Not seldomly they are finding consumer input. And often the initial search entry point starts with offline marketing, PR or customer service conversation – in print ads, TV commercials or an wallpapers.

Business that know how to connect offline and online efforts will succeed in the future. Happy that this was my main claim when I started this blog and thus gets now backed up by a Google specialist… Thanks Vanessa!
 
Spot On!
The amount of input the book Marketing in the Age of Google offers is probably only handable for a SEO specialist. And this person has to have the buy in from the C-level to manage the online strategy accordingly. A lot of the strategy is based on content creation and content framework which is a PR, marketing, HR, R&D and Customer Service topic in the future in my eyes. These departments need to learn how to place content effectively in the search world. It will affect the way peope perceive the business strategy of a company and the way the companies and brands interact with their clients, partners and employees. What I missed was the effect taxonomies and social tagging might have on search in the future but maybe this comes with the next update. 

Meetings and the importance of dissent

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We all experience this phenomenon on a daily basis in business. In meetings we spend hours listening to the stuff that has been said for years. No new input, no fresh approach, no disbelieve. People love to tell each other what everyone already knows. And those who really address new topics and thoughts often fail to alert the rest of the meeting crowd. Thus, the output of these meetings in most cases could be summaruzed with a single = 0…

As most of us don’t know why we have meetings and what the purpose of these meetings is, we tend to stay in our comfort-zone and don’t address the “unsaid, unknown and unpredicted”. Safety and familiarity makes us hide our dissent in meetings. And the reason we love to keep our jobs does it’s favor to it (especially in recession times). In most cases everyone knows the outcome of meetings before they have even started. The reason? We have made up our minds already…

So, how can we introduce new input or information for more effective ways of meeting conversation? Social software could play a crucial role in this perpetuum mobile business cycle. The use of social bookmarks, blogs and wikis offers a new perspective for discussions in meetings. If people give valuable input on the meeting topic via these platforms before the meeting starts, the discussion gets less influenced by the group harmony.

Apart from that, meeting members tend to follow the group heads, especially young and junior members often don’t dare to dissent with their bosses’ view – no matter if he/she is right/wrong. By opening up an input-first strategy, or platform, for the meeting, the “meeting-leader” can introduce the new input to the others and encourage meeting members to share their views and ideas around the new conversation topic.

These social platforms also serve as a checklist for the meeting (and can shorten the time needed for it). People need to be prepared upfront. Less duplication of known facts follows. And new thoughts as well as new dissent gets more awareness. As these platforms are open for all employees to work with, meeting members might acknowledge input from meeting members that were not planned to attend the meeting.

In many meetings I have seen and been to, this has proven to be more creative, and it generates more engagement and involvement. These cross-thinkers get a voice and become drivers of new business. They get invited to present their views, get their benefitial feedback which makes them become thoughtleaders. And the good thing is…? You don’t only have those people in the room that stay in the center of commodity and common believe.

Don’t you think? Yes, you can say “No!” if you dissent… Only then, it will start the conversation!

News Update – Best of the Day

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How will the future of the workplace look like? I have my views: flexible working hours, mobile offices and driving busness by networking outside of the office. Generally speaking, I love to share ideas and thoughts that I come across like these work displacements. Now that Porsche and VW (partly) banned access to social networking sites, it is interesting to see the other side of the medal. Maybe social networking becomes the main corporate sales strategy in the future. This example shows why the use of Salesforce Chatter could become an optimization of the future workplace.

The good thing about Social Media? People blog about events you could not take part in as they took place when you had meetings, where not in the country, etc. They share their new knowledge and some good case studies of social media campaigns like Juan Martinez who took part in the Social Ad Summit ’10. He tells us about the 5 Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing, he learned from Aaron Shapiro, partner at Huge, Inc..#

One of the succesful modern virals was the Old Spice campaign. AdNews interviewed Isaiah Mustafa on the future of media and on becoming an internet sensation.

News Update – Best of the Day

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A recent international survey of 2,200 mothers shows 81% of children under the age of two currently have some form of online presence — ranging from photos uploaded and shared by their parents, to a full-fledged profile on a social networking site, writes Mashable.

What is the futre of social networking? Everyone would like to know that. Social networking technology becomes more advanced and increased online activity makes more robust data sets available. Social networks are changing the way we interact, yes. But what does that mean and offer to people from a strategic point of view. Greg Satell shares his interresting insights.

Sometimes I don’t know whether commercials are creative or not. Make up your own mind about this Japanese blood pressure ad.

News Update – Best of the Day

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The search engine for the future is Facebook. Or let’s say social media. Sanjay Metha discusses “What is a search engine? and comes to an easy result: From a users perspective it is a platform where I can quickly get relevant results for whatever I am looking for. And his result is that social media owns the future as our friends offer more relevanceto our questions…

A luxury hotel in Mykonos has used social media for a campaign which was designed to work according to the organization’s objectives. Dimitris Zotos shares with us the actions and the goals of a real life example that can help us understand how social media can be used in order to promote a brand.

CWS knows how to kill a perfect night for chic and glamour girls. They say no to drugs! Funny commercial…

Social Media carried to extremes

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This video is showing when social media shoots out of the roof… but still fun.


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