Is the innovation race over for social media?

July 27, 2010 – 11:06 pm | 304 views

In his excellent piece “What has happened to all the new social networks?” Arthur Monday writes that the rate of rapid social start-ups is probably on the wane:

Despite the insistence of web executives everywhere that rivals online are “only a click away”, you actually have to screw up royally to turn a successful service into one that people leave in droves (So congratulations to the former managers at MySpace and Bebo: you deserve your place in those MBA case studies of the future.)

Look around, though, and sites such as blip.fm haven’t taken off. True, services such as FourSquare and Gowalla seem to be on the rise – although, as Leo Hickman pointed out last week, people haven’t quite grasped the threat that they can pose to users. So we’re back at the original questions: where are all the new social networks? I think they’re gone. Done, dusted, over. I don’t think anyone is going to build a social network from scratch whose only purpose is to connect people. We’ve got Facebook (personal), LinkedIn (business) and Twitter (SMS-length for mobile).

And throw in YouTube for good measure!

Are all the social media bases really covered?  I tend to agree and here’s why. If you look at classic market dynamics, there are usually three large companies who dominate a market and then a few niche players. Think about almost any traditional industry and consolidation occurs over time to leave a market leader, a close second and an innovating third player.  Soft drinks — Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and the niche players.  U.S. beer market –  A-B, Miller, Coors and niche players. Rental cars — Hertz, Avis, Budget and niche. The examples can go on and on.

But consumers seem to be able to attach their emotional loyalty to ONE player per social market. That’s why the business strategy has been so different for the social business start-ups. It’s not differentiate or die, it’s scale or die.

Once the checkered flag waves for the location-based apps race, radical innovation and new players on the social scene may be over.

To a great degree the new functionality of smart phones drove the adoption of social networks, especially the location apps like Foursquare. Hardware (3D capability) is also driving the latest innovations in entertainment and gaming. It may take another breakthrough on the mobile hardware side before we see the scope of software innovations like we’ve seen on social networks over the past five years.

Agree?

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By Nathan Egan | Posted in Business strategy, Innovation | Comments (2)

Putting “social” into the DNA of your workforce

July 22, 2010 – 10:09 am | 230 views

I was struck by a quote I read yesterday in an interview with William Robb, the social media director of SAP:

You can build social DNA into every employee (and the business itself) yet still require a team of social media specialists who have deep expertise in the discipline — not to mention a more critical eye for bad behavior. I think roles like mine are going to be necessary for the foreseeable future.

I think Mr. Robb makes two important points in this quote:

First, is the necessity to build social success into your entire workforce. That is at the heart of what we do for our clients, especially through our concept of “workforce branding.”  We’ve demonstrated in measurable ways that there is tremendous power in leveraging the online presence of your entire workforce in a systematic, market-oriented manner.

The second key point is the emerging specialized role for social media marketing.  We’ve featured this idea before — the web is changing so fast that focus on this area will require specialized roles — probably for consultants.

I recently saw some fact in the Twitter stream that there were more than 300 third party apps just for Twitter alone. You could make a career out of just studying Twitter! I don’t think there are too many companies who could afford to stay on top of all the changes going on. It’s a challenge even for those of us who are immersed in it.

The increasing complexity and breadth of social media marketing will necessitate both employee involvement and professional focus.

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By Nathan Egan | Posted in Business strategy, Careers, Social media policies | Comments (0)

Social media careers go mainstream

July 19, 2010 – 1:06 pm | 609 views

The fact that that social web has been in the news a lot the past few weeks is another indicator that it is moving from “fad” to business reality.

Last week the Old Spice tweets and You Tube videos were a business news sensation.  The week before that Facebook was on the hot seat for privacy issues. And now, social media marketing is taking center stage on the employment scene.

An article in in the Wall Street Journal reports that social marketing is the hottest job around right now:

  • Universal McCann, the media-buying firm owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., is bolstering its social-media offering by launching a practice this week called Rally. “Social media is now part of all our clients’ plans; we can’t not be in this space,” says Matt Seiler, chief executive of Universal McCann.
  • Publicis Groupe’s digital umbrella organization, Vivaki, says it also will open a social-media consulting practice by the end of the year.
  • Some corporations have taken a hands-on role in crafting their efforts: PepsiCo Inc.’s Gatorade, for example, recently created its “Mission Control Center,” which is set up like a broadcast-television control room and is charged with monitoring the sports drink around the clock across social-media networks.
  • Ad spending on social networks world-wide is expected to rise 14% this year to $2.5 billion, according to research firm eMarketer. Although social media represents only a fraction of the $55 billion online-ad market, it is one of the fastest-growing segments.

We can also verify from our personal experience here at Freesource that demand for top-notch sales and marketing talent with social media experience is growing. I’m pleased to report that demand for our services has never been stronger.  It looks like we’re in a real boom period right now for the marketing profession.

Ilustration: The Economist

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By Nathan Egan | Posted in Business strategy, Careers | Comments (2)

Social CRM has to mean more than keeping up with the “conversation”

July 15, 2010 – 8:10 am | 203 views

While the focus of most monitoring and CRM evaluations is “conversation” and “sentiment,” many companies may be overlooking changes in the social platforms themselves that can provide important market information.

Social brings a new element into CRM because now instead of just dealing with sales data and contact information we are dealing with conversations and relationships.  These take place all over the social web, and not just from company to consumer, but also from consumer to consumer.

Keeping up with the conversations may be hard enough but are you also keeping up with the WAY your company can find this information?

All of the major social media platforms have been innovating at a breakneck pace but perhaps none has come so far, so fast as Linkedin. The company is literally releasing a new version every week. Some of the changes in each version are subtle but some can really provide some interesting opportunities for your company.

An example is the new company profile feature introduced a few months ago. That was a big change.  But a little change that might have gone unnoticed is the new ability for people to “follow” your company. Here’s what that looks like:

“Keeping tabs” on which people are following your company is a BIG idea but it’s not easy to do — there is no mechanism inside of the platform that notifies you of new company followers.  Yet, this is undoubtedly an important source of business intelligence. These new followers could be prospective employees, partners, customers … who knows, maybe even the competition.

If you aren’t checking them out and cataloging them as part of your social CRM intiative your organization is missing out on some huge opportunities.  Remember that you not only have to monitor the conversations — you also have to monitor the dashboards themselves!  That is not easy for a lot of companies to do because we tend to like to see nice neat comparisons from quarter to quarter. That’s difficult if the sources of information keep changing.

While you’re establishing social CRM as a organizational competency, don’t overlook embedding intelligence and flexibility in your system to respond to important changes in the platforms themselves!

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By Nathan Egan | Posted in Business strategy, CRM, Social media policies | Comments (0)

Some cool, new, and FREE business tools

July 13, 2010 – 2:18 pm | 225 views

We’re constantly updating the freesourcing.org search engine with the web’s best FREE business resources. Here are four that recently caught our eye:

ScreenToaster — An amazing way to record your computer screen shots to make HD-quality presentations and tutorials.

Tungle.me — Allows you to share your calendar (Google, Outlook, etc.) so folks know what times you are available.

Tangelo — Useful and innovative photo tagging. It’s great for blogs, because you can makes notes on specific things in the image that become visible you mouse over.

SocialCast – SocialCast can be used as an internal messaging and collaboration tool.

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By Nathan Egan | Posted in Free applications | Comments (0)