The spirit of social media is enlivening industries, refreshing marketing, and humanizing businesses. While the steps to the social revolution are gradual, so are the budgets that fund innovation. Progress is underway however, and with every experiment and pilot program, we learn the answers to the questions that serve as the gateways to change. Early experiments are sparked within various forward-looking divisions and funded by other resident or surrounding programs or departments. As social media permeates and socializes the frameworks…
Social Media is Measured by the Sum of Its Parts
Social Media is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is these parts that define the socialization of business. Today consumers are interacting with peers, brands, and influencers in social networks at varying levels across more industries than you might possibly believe. The answers of who, what, when, where, how, and to what extent are out there; we just need to spend a moment searching for the insights necessary to galvanize meaningful social media content, branding, and engagement…
Once More, with Feeling: Making Sense of Social Media
I was recently asked at a communications and marketing conference for senior executives when Social Media would start to appeal to all senses including, vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. It was an interesting question and the first time that I had heard it in public. My response was that it is already in full effect. To go one step further, much of the work I’ve studied and also the focus of much of my own work fuses aspects of…
The 2010 World Cup Inspires Creativity in Social Media
World Cup Fever is certainly a pandemic with champions spreading enthusiasm and passion around the world. It’s not only circulating from country to country and person to person, World Cup Fever is also propagating through the social graphs of fans in social networks around the world. On Twitter, for instance, it is because of the World Cup that a new Tweet record was established. On Thursday June 24th during the Japan vs. Denmark match, 3,282 Tweets flew across the stream…
Engage is Now Available in the Apple iBookstore
My friends over at Wiley Publishing alerted me to some good news today. If you own an iPad or iPhone, Engage! is now available in the Apple iBookstore. About Engage Now is the time for businesses to shift from experimenting with social media to strategically designing and measuring campaigns that contribute to brand resonance, positive sentiment, advocacy, and most importantly, the bottom line. While many books, talk about social media as something that businesses need to embrace, most leave marketers…
Facebook and Twitter users spend 1.5x more online than the average Internet user
If you want to get a glimpse of the economic future, focus on the emerging trends driven by those defining the evolution of the social Web. Social media is not only democratizing influence and upsetting the traditional media ecosystem, it is now an indicator for a potential economic resurgence. Leading metrics firm, comScore, released its Q1 U.S E-Commerce Spending Report recently, finding that online retail spending approached $34 billion in Q1 2010, which represents a 10 percent boost compared to…
7 Steps to Creating and Cultivating a Brand in Social Media
In business, we learn through everything we do and it influences all that we try and repeat. When something new comes along, we tend to view it with either enthusiasm or skepticism, or in some cases a bit of both. Such is true with the advent of Social Media. As business, marketing and service leaders, we face new challenges. We’re not quite sure how or why to implement the lessons and promises of social media into what we’re already doing….
Engage was Written to Help You Find Answers in Social Media
I recently hosted a discussion on the need to lessen, not eliminate, the emphasis we place on the social media case studies and “how to” posts that are now universal, as they won’t apply to the specific circumstances or context of our challenges, opportunities, and market dynamics. I believe that we should use them solely for inspiration, but not as templates for our work. The best advice that I or anyone for that matter, can offer, lies in our ability…
5 Social Media Best Practices for Business
Social networks and blogs are changing how consumers find places and services, how and where they share their experiences, and eventually, where they will spend their time and money. Without an understanding of, and participation in, social networks, you can miss shaping and contributing to the decision-making process of those who define the success of your business. While social media cheat-sheets and short cuts are available almost everywhere you look, the truth is that we have some work ahead of…
Q&A: The Impact of Social Media in the Enterprise
In the spirit of sharing dialog that transpires outside of this domain, I would like to invite you to read a recent discussion with good friend Jacob Morgan, co-author of Twittfaced (I contributed the foreword). While the discussion centered on Engage!, as you’ll soon see, it expanded to analyze the effects of social media in the enterprise. #EngageorDie Why is sociology and anthropology so important to understand for social media? I believe that at the top level, all of social…
