Facebook and Social Games

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Excellent talk by Prof. Jesse Schell of Carnegie Mellon University on Psychology of Social Gaming and what drives player behavior in this area. Thanks to Social Networking, online Gaming (or Social Gaming as many call it) will grow exponentially in the next 3-5 years. Facebook games are a great example of things to come. Please listen to this enlightening talk by Prof. Jesse Schell:

Slides used by Prof. Jesse Schell:

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Social Media Vision 2020

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Excellent interview of Chris Brogan by David Thomas of SAS Institute on biggest change Social Media will bring to the way we do business.

Social Media according to Chris Brogan:

  • Lot of light as compared to heat
  • Puts human face back on Business
  • Big companies have a chance to feel small and human again
  • Individuals have an opportunity to compete with bigger organizations like never before

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Social Media turning Marketers into Media Companies?

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As more marketers use Social Media channels for engaging their customers and prospects, it is becoming obvious that they will have to take on additional responsibility for not only creation of content, but also facilitate sharing or distribution of content through Social Media channels such as YouTube. Some notable examples of this approach are:

This raises an important question: Should Marketers behave like Media companies when it comes to Social Media? If yes, what additional skills will be required by those in the marketing department for this new task. And what is the role of an “agency” in this new “set-up”?

In my opinion, marketers should take on additional responsibility of content creation with the help of agencies and professionals/SMEs in the area. Marketers should also provide necessary tools and platform for their customers to discuss about their brands, share content and exchange ideas. Agencies should use their expertise to help marketers connect with customers.

Listen to what Jonah Bloom, former Editor at Advertising Age, has to say on this subject:

What to you think? Should Marketers behave like Media companies when it comes to Social Media? Please share your views and opinion:

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Really? Social Media Better Done “In house”

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Results of CMO Club Weekly Poll published on BW blog made some interesting reading. Question that was asked was “Which of your groups is best equipped to help you with your social media efforts today?”  114 CMOs responded:

  • 65.6% In House
  • 15.6% Interactive Agency
  • 9.4% PR Firm
  • 9.4% Social Media Agency
  • 0% Creative/Ad Agency

Why majority of respondents preferred In House Agency rather than entrusting the work to outside firms?

Answer lies in the fact that Social Media is still a very new subject and unexplored medium – constantly evolving. More importantly, Social Media/Interactive/PR/Creative/Ad agencies have not done a good job of defining their offerings and articulating them well to clients. And in absence of any well defined service offerings from agencies, clients prefer to do Social Media in-house.

What Can agencies do to remedy the situation?

  • Come out with well defined service offerings
  • Articulate their service offerings well to clients
  • Offer a result oriented approach to induce clients to try out Social Media
  • Hire best available talent who understand Social Media well and how to leverage it for Brand Promotion

Agencies will have to take a lead on this and guide their clients. Early birds will get the best returns! What do you think?

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Cisco and Pepsico CEOs on Social Networking

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Watch this video for what three visionary CEOs have to say about Social Networking:

  • John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco: “Social Networking is transforming companies. It is the future of Business Productivity, Health Care, Education and Entertainment.”
  • Indra Nooyi, CEO, Pepsico: “Global company with global brands and reputation can use it as a force for good.”
  • Jeffrey Joerres, President and CEO, Manpower: “When it comes to Social Networking, it is a major trend towards what will be a very standard everyday stuff.”

This very clearly highlights the fact that Social Media and Social Networking are not a fad, but for real, are here to stay and will become mainstream in near future. Social Business is not just another way of doing business, it is THE way business will be conducted.

I strongly recommend that all senior executives (and especially the CMOs) start taking Social Media initiatives seriously, and lead from the front when it comes to use of Social Media, as survival and growth of their business rests on how effectively they leverage emerging tech tools.

Social Networking has far reaching implications for the marketing department and I recommend that CMOs setup a Social Media Task force that will advise them on how to quickly adapt and integrate their marketing operations into emerging Social Networking tools and applications. Sooner marketing department(s) adopt and start using Social Networking for engaging their customers better for their brand(s), else performance of their business will suffer.

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Should Companies restrict Employees’ Social Media use?

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It is not uncommon to see companies restricting (or even worse, banning) use of Social Networking sites by their employees. I don’t think that this is a step in the right direction. If companies can trust their employees to run business, can’t they be trusted when it comes to using Social Media in an acceptable way?

IBM is a great example of how companies should handle employees’ use of Social Media. IBM has approximately 400,000 employees spread through out the world, still it allows them to use Social Media without much restrictions. Casey Hibbard has written an excellent blog post on how IBM uses Social Media to spur employee innovation (see this link).

As per Casey’s post, IBM lets employees communicate with each other and the public over Social Media channels without intervention. This in spite of the fact that IBM has:

  • A few thousand “IBMers” on Twitter
  • Thousands of external bloggers,
  • Almost 200,000 on LinkedIn
  • 17,000 internal blogs
  • 100,000 employees using internal blogs
  • 53,000 members on SocialBlue (like Facebook for employees)
  • As many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-sourcing “jams”
  • 50,000 in alum networks on Facebook and LinkedIn

Watch this CNBC interview with Adam Christensen, IBM’s Social Media Communications Manager and John Abell, New York Bureau chief, Wired.com. According to Adam, IBM’s job is to help employees go out and have conversations that they want to, so that they can lead the business they are involved in. Not allowing employees to use Social Media is “short sighted” and companies will be “missing an opportunity”. (watch this video for more)

To succeed in this new age, it is important to embrace and adopt changes brought about by Social Media. And for that to happen, it is critical that organizations have proper guidelines for Social Media use by their employees. Employees should be allowed to use Social Media freely within those guidelines. (for IBM’s guidelines, see this link and for an excellent database of Social Media usage policies of 116 organizations, see this link).

I want to end this post by sharing a thought provoking video on how the workforce is changing in Social Media Age. Please watch this video and let me know if companies should restrict employees’ Social Media use.

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Definition: Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

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Social Media and Social CRM being so new, one is often asked the question what is Social CRM and how is it different from “traditional” CRM?

Social CRM is the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with goal of building trust and brand loyalty. Loyalty is defined as attitude towards a brand that inclines a customer to repurchase it and/or recommend it to others.

Social CRM and Social Media are more about building trust and managing loyalty with customers than about managing relationships or transactions, which are focus areas of “traditional” CRM.

Hope this answers the question. If not, please feel free to leave a comment:

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Social Media and Real Time News Analysis

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President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address on Wednesday to a joint session of Congress. This speech was televised live nationally.

Social Networking sites like Twitter were abuzz with tweets about President’s speech. See this video for an excellent analysis of tweets about State of the Union address. It underscores the importance of Social Media in reporting news in real-time with Geo-location.

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Dear CEOs, please Tweet!

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Should the CEO Tweet? This is a hot topic of discussion among senior execs with strong opinions both in favor and against. But in practice, very few CEOs of large corporations are actively using Twitter. Findings of a study on use of Social Media tools by CEOs of Fortune 100 companies are shocking. It was found that among Fortune’s top 100 CEOs:

* Only 2 CEOs have twitter account
* Mere 13 have LinkedIn profile
* 81% do not have a Facebook page
* Only 2 Fortune 100 CEOs have more than 10 friends on Facebook
* Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog

Fortune 100 CEOs Are Social Media Slackers

Shouldn’t CEOs leverage growing reach and effectiveness of Social Media channels to reach out to their Customers, Employees and other stake holders?

In my opinion, they should. Of course, they need to be careful in what they write on their Facebook page or on Twitter. But they SHOULD use social media channels with necessary inputs from their PR, Media Relations and Legal departments. Social Media is all about bringing the “human touch” and CEOs being public face of corporations can use Twitter very effectively for this. For example, CEOs can tweet about what their company has done to help those affected by recent earthquake in Haiti. This can help generate a lot of goodwill for their corporate brand.

Watch this excellent CNN video interview with Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com and Sarah Milstein

Zappos CEO is quoted as saying “if you don’t trust your employees to tweet freely, it’s an employee or leadership issue, not an employee Twitter policy issue”.

So true! Hope more CEOs and senior executives start actively using Social Media channels like Facebook and Twitter and allow their employees to do the same in a constructive way that will benefit everyone!

What do you think? Should CEOs and other senior executives use Twitter and Facebook? And should they allow employees in their company to use Social Media freely?

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Socialnomics author Erik Qualman on impact of Social Media

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Socialnomics Author Erik Qualman recently visited Google’s Boston, MA campus to discuss his book, Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business.

This is a great talk by Erik on why Social Media is one of the greatest shift since industrial revolution and what successful people and companies are doing in this space. Watch the video:

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