Great demo of SixthSense by Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of MIT Media Lab. Can’t wait to get one, take a look:
Excellent TED talk by Kevin Kelly on the World Wide Web. WWW, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Kelly asks how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days? View the video for more:
Excellent TED talk by Howard Rheingold on coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action. Very relevant in the context of Social Media
Excellent Video: TED talk by Charles Leadbeater on Collaborative Creativity. Must watch given Social Media Collaboration context.
Excellent TED talk by David Logan on “Tribal Leadership”
Excellent TED talk by Seth Godin on “The tribes we lead”:
Another great preso by Tara Hunt titled “Your Social Media Strategy Won’t Save You”. My fav is slide no. 84, it is very well said (or written)!
Excellent video on how to be a Social Media change agent, an interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Although this video is more than a year old, it is very much relevant in today’s context and worth watching again.
In my previous post titled What is Social CRM and why it is important, I have highlighted the phenomenal growth in number of Social Media users and importance of engaging customers through Social Media for building trust and brand loyalty.
Given statistically significant correlation between social media engagement and financial performance metrics – revenue and profit, one would expect CMOs to be busy making elaborate plans about engaging customers through Social Media, Right? WRONG!
According to a survey of 124 chief marketing officers by The CMO Club and Hill & Knowlton, more than four out of five (84 percent) chief marketing officers (CMOs) allocate less than ten percent of their budgets to experimenting through social media and non-traditional communications channels, with more than half (55 percent) allocating just five percent or less.
To the question “Does your brand have a web 2.0 communications policy?” almost half said either they don’t have or are currently developing one. Only 14% CMOs said that they were “proactive” about creating external brand advocates and leveraging them (detailed findings of the survey here).
This lack of involvement on the part of CMOs contradicts with the growth of Social Media, not only in terms of users but time spent on it as well (see excellent post by Brian Solis on growth stats).
In another study by Weber Shandwick for evaluating how effectively Fortune 100 companies used Twitter to its full potential as an engagement platform, it was found that “for the majority of Fortune 100 companies, Twitter remains a missed opportunity. Many of their Twitter accounts did not appear to listen to or engage with their readers, instead offering a one-way broadcast of press releases, company blog posts and event information. This falls short of the opportunity that Twitter offers as a valuable communications channel and strategic social network.”
As per findings of two studies quoted above, we can see a major “disconnect” given the phenomenal growth in Social Media usage on one hand and lack of involvement of CMOs on the other. CMOs need to wake up to Social Media challenge NOW and lead from front, else they risk falling far behind other brands, not only in their industry, but across customers’ general online experience.
What do you think? What should CMOs do to engage their customers through Social Media for building Trust and Loyalty?
