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Meaningful dialogue the key to social media

Think about it, if you had an opportunity to conduct a meaningful, ongoing dialogue about your brand, company or product would you take it? When viewing social media this way it provides the basis for the development of a social media strategy. Mention meaningful conversation or ongoing dialogue to your CEO however and you would most likely be met with a blank stare or bemused smile. So how can a company utilize social media to engage with current and potential customers?

1. The first step would be to identify the top social networks where your customers or potential customers may frequent and join in the conversation (and it is a conversation).

• Twitter - Search on keywords, individuals and companies to follow relevant to your industry. Contribute. Add value.
  

• Facebook - Search and join relevant groups, pages. Contribute content. Build  and promote community.

• LinkedIn - Answer questions about your area of expertise. Ask questions, help the professional community.

• RSS - Blog about your industry, upload relevant content. Use Feedburner. There is a significant subset of people who chose to utilize email subscriptions and RSS. Don't neglect them.

2. Measure your success! Implement analytics (Google Analytics) on your website. Measure the most effective activities which drive traffic to and activity on your website. For an overall brand engagement metric, you can try Net Promoter Score as a way to measure your success. Adjust and focus your social media efforts accordingly.

3. Start today. Most suggestions in this post can be implemented immediately and at an incremental cost. The most effective use of social media is to start using social media.

So the common thread for effective social media marketing is to promote community around your brand, add value and initiate and contribute to meaningful conversations - if you're doing none of those things what are you waiting for?

Google Wave as audacious as Windows

In the past month two juggernauts of the tech world have made announcements with the potential to shape the competitive landscape on the web for the next decade. Microsoft announced Bing, a "decision engine" looking to make inroads on Google's unstoppable dominance in search.  Initial reports indicate Microsoft has built a worthy alternative. I say worthy because whilst Bing is a vast improvement over Live, it doesn't seem to be bringing anything game changing. In other words, people will use it as a compliment rather than a replacement to Google Search. Ultimately, the attempt is reflective of Google's  current attempt at displacing Microsoft in the enterprise. Google Apps is worthy and some might say superior but ultimately not compelling enough for companies to disrupt decades of  development and business process around the Microsoft stack. Earlier this week I watched a joint interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from 2007. What struck me about both their success was that they dared to be different, they were bold and they took risks. This was to be the catalyst for their dominance in their respective markets. In 1985 Microsoft bet on the Windows Graphical User Interface and won emphatically, dominating the desktop for the next 2 decades. In 2001, Apple launched the iPod which is now the "default" music player. Both of these strategies were bold, some might say audacious even. So it was with great interest that I watched the announcement and demo of Google Wave at Google I/O. Techcrunch does a great job of breaking down Google Wave. An open collaboration platform which wants to be your social network of choice at home and your productivity toolset at work. Also interesting is that by allowing companies to run Waves behind the firewall Google has enroached on Microsoft's "software plus services" mantra (albeit in an opensource non-threatening kinda way). In those one and a half hours, Google Wave presented an audacious idea not unlike Microsoft's efforts two decades earlier.

"We made a bet that the paradigm shift would be the graphical user interface" - Bill Gates

When the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable

Milton Friedman once said "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function; to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

The idea of cloud computing has been bubbling away for a few years now. Many CIOs have watched but not acted, for a number of reasons. One reason may be personnel. If your team is entrenched in the behaviours and solutions of an on-premise world the change management exercise for the IT team, let alone the organisation would take cloud computing off the agenda. To tell your CEO that he will be using his favourite PC application on the browser, ditto. The decoupling of systems intertwined in the on-premise world, don't go there. There are many reasons why cloud computing may be politically impossible.

The question is not a choice between on-premise or in the cloud. That was answered when Microsoft announced its "software plus services" strategy. Rather, the question is, "how long until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable?"

Inbox Zero. No pipedream.

I need to write this blog post. Every week I hear musings about, "I get 300 emails per day" or "It must be lost can you resend it" or well...... you get the gist.

No, I need to write this blog post if only to save those poor souls sucked into the productivity blackhole known as email. Adhering to the concept of inbox zero definitely works and is simpler than you think. Here's how.

1. Conversation View - this was introduced by Gmail but you can use it in Outlook and most email clients. Conversation view allows you to group messages of the same subject in a single thread. This allows you to process the conversation in its entirety reducing the number of individual emails you need to deal with.

2. Delete - enough said. If you've read it and don't need it for reference, bin it.

3. File - For the emails that require no action (and that's every CC email by the way) I file it into a single folder. No complicated structures just a folder called "Archive. How do I get away with it? Enter Google Desktop Search. Just set and forget, it will index your email and make it as searchable as..... Google.

4. Action - In the case where your email requires a reply, reply. If it needs to be forwarded, forward. If it requires an action for later. Create a task from it (this can be done in both Outlook and Gmail).

All of these steps need to be taken with the goal of removing emails from your inbox until there are none left. Inbox zero. When was the last time your inbox was empty?

Non-profits enjoying the spoils of SaaS

SaaS is perfectly suited to non-profits. From the very large to the very small, non-profits share characteristics that make them ideal candidates for cloud based apps. Limited budgets, an often nomadic existence and the need for collaboration across distributed teams make cloud based applications ideal. More importantly, non-profits often employ an army of volunteers which need adhoc tools in the right place at the right time. Google has recognized the lure of SaaS amongst non-profits by offering a free version of Apps suited to these organisations. Ning, a white-label social network, is also being used by non-profits the world over to extend their community online. Perhaps the most effective use of SaaS has been by Barack Obama who used all the Web 2.0 tools at his disposal during the 2008 Presidential Campaign.  For these organisations, the caveats around cloud computing play second fiddle to the benefits of returning their hard earned back to their core business. How is your club, charity or cause utilizing SaaS?

Should companies police employee use of social media?

A pertinent question was asked by a member of the LinkedIn community. Should companies police employee use of LinkedIn?

The question strikes at the heart of how many companies are still struggling to understand social media and its impact inside and outside the organisation.

There are a few considerations.

1. Is social media an effective way to engage customers and employees?

2. Are companies better off regulating or educating their employees about the use of social media?In my opinion, regulating the use of social media is not only futile, it's counter-productive. If your company has disengaged employees or unhappy customers there are probably wider issues to worry about than whether they are venting their frustration on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Social media is an effective way to conduct conversations with customers, employees and shareholders in a context meaningful to them. Who knows, it might actually help achieve some business objectives along the way.