In an article published by Alison Diana of Informationweek.com, the majority of consumers want to interact with businesses via social media outlets. However, less than one-third of companies actually have any type of social media strategy in place. Thus, we have a problem. So, then why aren’t businesses picking up on their consumers’ desire to connect?
This information on the many missed opportunities to use social media in business comes from a recent report put forth by Siemens Enterprise Communications in conjunction with leading research firm, Yankee Group. In the study, results showed that the average customer satisfaction with current business interactions via social media was just 65 percent while one third of businesses do not allow the use of social media at work or aren’t aware of their company’s participation in social networking.
Tsk. Tsk.
Overlooking social networking or merely passing social media off as a “waste of time” or boiling it down to goofing off on Facebook or Twitter is hardly the case. If used properly, social media can draw in tons of traffic to a website or help put a business that would have otherwise been an ‘unknown’ on the map for the first time.
All you have to do to see social media in action with a business is look at the recent ad campaign put forth by Old Spice. Old Spice found a clever and creative way to employ the use of several top social networking site: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (all user-generated) in order to strengthen their brand. Some may view Twitter as pointless, but when you look at what Old Spice did with their Twitter page, they actually took the time to interact with their followers. It was the perfect example of listening to the consumer and then responding (in real time) to their demand.
Selected highlights from the study
70 percent of consumers want access to company experts and support via social media channels and trust company information provided to them via their social networks.
Nearly 60 percent of customers feel company outreach via social media would improve their loyalty to that company.
Most customers feel that companies should be monitoring social media for customer feedback.
50 percent of respondents use social media daily or several times a day.
Nearly 70 percent of employees feel they need better tools to track and manage social media for business, and would like the ability to initiate a Web conference automatically from a chat discussion at work, inviting people from within their social and work networks.
To read more about the study, click here. In the meantime, consider what sorts of social media practices your business is employing at the moment. What could you be doing better? What sorts of demands do your customers/clients want? Perhaps the most important thing to consider is the power that social media has to leverage your business above the competition. Never underestimate this!
It seems that it wasn’t enough that Old Spice came up with a few clever commercials, but now closer attention is being paid to those of us who already spend countless hours on YouTube looking up ridiculous cat videos as well as self help videos. Thanks to some clever marketing by Old Spice, countless businesses and entrepreneurs are recognizing the sheer power that social media, social networking and viral marketing can have on an audience.
In a recent (and clever) marketing campaign, Isaiah Mustafa used Twitter to respond in real time to tweets set forth by Old Spice followers on Twitter. The result was a hilarious string of YouTube videos complete with props and sarcasm. But in the bigger scheme of things, a marketing genius was born.
It is only a matter of time before others start following suit with similar campaigns. And at the end of the day, we may just have Old Spice to thank for it. Check out one of the videos below, after the break. You can also read more about the Old Spice marketing campaign and how the videos were made on ReadWriteWeb.
Social Media is helping out in many ways but it can be sometimes difficult to counter. This is true whether it’s a sports group utilizing a Facebook follower sheet, expert athletes on Twitter, sports bureaus seeking to encourage their emblem from blogging, sports administration programs looking to employ new scholars, or other sports associations looking to find modes to boost sales and provide latest sports news.
For real life examples of how social media is being used in sports, players like LenDale White, and Chad Ochocinco, are connecting with their followers on an entirely different level than what the commonplace followers are used to. Additionally, these players have both come up with concepts for T-shirts, and LenDale has searched recommendations from Twitter followers for his designs. For a reduced cost, these players are trading T-shirts-solely to their followers on Twitter. Not an awful concept for little work!
The expansion rate of public broadcasting will also improve with time, as various districts will increase output and performance- not wanting to be on the tail end of the social media market.
One could speculate that social media operates off of a supply-demand mentality, with previous developments resulting in the biggest dividends; while if you purchase the latter, you will still make earnings, just not as much.
Author:
Darren Anthony is the Head Writer at Blogs.Bettor.com, an authority latest sports news blog. He provides in-depth analysis on international sporting events covering such major sports as football, golf, tennis, basketball and others. He also writes about the growing trend of social media marketing in the world of sports.
A Poken is a small USB device that allows you to store your social networking info and share it with other Poken users. Essentially, it is akin to having a social business card because it makes sharing your contact details and online social networking info incredibly easy (not to mention paper-free).
How do you Poken?
To activate your Poken, you have to pull apart the body and hand (yes, they look like little people) and pull out the plastic tab. If you see a flashing red light, then this means that your activated and read to go. When you meet up with your boss for lunch or with other business prospects, instead of handing them your business card, simply connect your Poken to theirs. You can choose what sort of information you would like to share with other people before hand. Remember, your poken card only shows whatever information you want to share with people.
Where Do I Get One?
Pokens can be purchased in packages or individually from official resellers found here. Pokens can come in sleek and sophisticated designs (for those of you who like to keep things super simple) or you can purchase them in one of the many characters that they are popular for. Most of them average between $20-$35 depending on the style that you get. To get an even better idea of what Poken is all about, check out the following video:
Now what is that you’re doing there with that computer?
Spoken in a thick Long Island accent, these were the first words that indicated my 78 year-old grandmother’s curiosity in what I was doing on my laptop. I was visiting her for the weekend with my boyfriend and was precariously balancing my laptop on the edge of a table near her bedroom window so that I could have a hope of “borrowing” the one, free floating Internet connection that someone else wasn’t smart enough to secure. But why go to all of this trouble, you might ask?
To check my Facebook account of course.
My grandmother, who we all call “Me-Mom,” was leaning over my shoulder when I finally managed to catch an Internet connection. As I pulled up my Facebook account, and with it- pictures of my little brother, uncles, aunts and cousins, she immediately became fascinated:
Oh! Now, what is this? Everyone’s got their pictures on the Internet? What is this “Facebook” thing?
My boyfriend, who is not too fond of my relationship with Facebook, stuck his head into the room to see what we were up to. Upon hearing me start to explain how Facebook worked in terms that a 78-year old, non-computer savvy person could understand, he exclaimed:
Oh god- now you’re going to get your grandmother on there?! Here we go…
Making the Sale
I ignored my boyfriend and gingerly showed my grandmother some of the features of Facebook, explaining what a “social networking site” was and how it could be beneficial to various people. For instance, I use my Facebook account strictly for personal reasons. My ‘friends list’ is small and consists only of friends and family. I explained what status updates were and what ‘writing on someone’s wall’ meant. I also showed her how she could post pictures, play games and connect with other people through current connections. For instance, I pulled up my aunt’s profile and scanned through her friends list in order to demonstrate how I had found out that my uncle had a FB account.
Sold!
My grandmother, who is the nucleus of our family, loves to keep in touch with her family and has been doing this mostly via email (because she has a hard time hearing on the phone). However, when she discovered that most of her kids and extended family were on this social networking site called Facebook, I didn’t have to try very hard to sell her on the idea of joining.
Within minutes, I helped her set up her Facebook account. I uploaded a few pictures to help her get started with her first photo album, and then we started adding a few family members. We then did a search to see if there was anyone she knew who had a FB account, and sure enough, Me-Mom found some friends of hers! She was thrilled and immediately hooked.
And with Christmas just around the corner, she knew what she wanted from her six adult children: a laptop along with a fast Internet connection so that she could check her Facebook account! It just goes to show you that you’re never too old for social media
Tiny futuristic techno creatures, some with oversized eyes and cartoon-like disguises, have entered the US at strategic points. They have been identified as Poken. Their point of entry two years ago was Switzerland. They transmit short range wireless code to accomplish their mission of interpersonal information gathering. They are reported to be proliferating in Europe, and now seem to be multiplying quickly in the U.S., having been observed in increasing numbers, especially at networking gatherings around the Triangle, NC area.
Success coach Martin Brossman says not to be afraid. He advises: “This is the wave of the future. It’s time to be prepared. The Poken™ come in peace, bringing a new electronic form of networking communication. I see a day in the not-too-distant future when everyone who wants to expedite and improve their human connections will own and carry a Poken™ on their keychain.”
For those who are eager to early-adoopt a Poken™, Brossman has been authorized to reveal the inner workings , as follows:
How information is transferred and stored via the Poken™
The Poken™ is a fun way to share your social media and contact information with someone you meet who also has a Poken™. When two Poken are touched together, they give off a green glow which indicates the information has been successfully transferred. Information can include your photo, all your social media sites, your websites, phone, address–whatever you want to add.
The Poken HUB is the website you use to maintain and keep all your contact data. Since it is web-based you can view and update it remotely. To see more about the HUB:http://www.poken.com/website
A Poken™ is essentially a dynamic electronic business card. There are two different models.
* PokenSPARK™: Humorously designed little characters with a big hand, plus key chain hook.; they have no extra memory. Cost about $20.00 + shipping. To see the SPARK: http://www.poken.com/spark
* PokenPULSE™: Looks like a USB memory stick and had 2Gig of re-usable memory as well as the Poken™ electronics and storage for the Poken data. To see the PULSE: http://www.poken.com/pulse
Poken™ have the following benefits
* You don’t have to type in a person’s contact information or re-check scanned information like you do with business cards.
* If your contact changes their content information, their information is automatically updated on your Hub site.
* Your Hub storage includes the time / date when you met them on a timeline.
* Their photo is included.
* You can easily export the data to other electronic devices.
You can find Poken™ to order on-line, or it is available locally at events related to www.inside919.com and www.LinkingRaleighNC.com or contact the Martin Brossman to find out where to pickup one in the Raleigh NC area.
This is what I thought when I recently made (and broke) plans to hang out with one of my friends via Twitter. In the same amount of time that we could have simply place a phone call to one another, we instead decided to try to plan our dinner date through an online social networking site.
So, now you’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal?” Well, this isn’t the first time that I have used a social networking site to make plans with friends. In fact, I am willing to admit that I, at all costs, will avoid using my cell phone except to talk to my family and boyfriend. For everyone else (i.e. the people who I don’t usually come into regular contact with), it just seems to be more convenient to communicate online. But this avoidance is not new; rather, it is something that has developed over time.
The Rise of the Internet; The Fall of Face-to-Face Communication
It is no secret that there is a very clear, inverse relationship between face-to-face communication versus the Internet. Since the development and emergence of the Internet, we have seen the eruption of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as more business-oriented sites such as LinkedIn. And while all of these sites purport to increase communication and the formation of relationships, why is it then that a vast majority of us avoid using our cell phones for what they were intended for- making and receiving phone calls?
Perhaps it is just my circle of net-surfing savvy friends, but I have found that among us, we would rather send a text message, FB message, email or tweet to “chat” versus actually using a phone. Are telephones becoming archaic? What is the fascination with online and mobile communication that keeps us tethered to our laptops and puts us into a near panic attack when our Internet connections go down?
This is a question I was recently pondering when I saw that one of my friends had posted her wedding pictures on her Facebook account….ALL OF THEM. Granted, I also have some personal pictures on my Facebook account, but I feel slightly better about it because I’ve changed the settings so that only my “friends” can see them. There are also other safety and privacy settings that can be altered as an extra step against an unwanted onlooker peering into your account. But is it really safe?
A few days ago, one of my good friends sent me a message on Facebook. I figured that it had been a while since I had spoken with her, so I thought that maybe she was just “catching up”. Not thinking much else, I opened the message only to realize that it was some sort of virus/spam-related thing. I quickly sent her a message and emailed the folks at FB to let them know what had happened. It turns out that someone had hacked into her account and was sending spam messages to everyone.
I shuddered.
Just how much information was this hacker privy to? I mean, my friend had her personal cell phone number on there, email account information, home address and a whole slew of other personal information. But FB isn’t the only culprit in the concern over the safety in social media. Twitter is another Web 2.0-based technology that has (and still currently) continues to influence the ever-changing shift in Internet culture. Again, though; who is to blame when someone reveals just a little too much information about themselves on the web? Have you ever thought about how incredibly easy it would be to get to know a person simply by being a “follower” or because someone forgot to make their account “private:
