Seven IT Eras Leading CIOs to Become One of the Key Evangelists to a Social Business Strategy (1/2)

In the last 10 years, the modern CIO has transformed himself into an IT chargé d’affaires (mediator) and a key technological emissary.  He has become one of the key players to the development of any successful social business strategy.  In this two-part series, we will review the seven stages that led IT to transform its traditional door-keeping role into the technological beacon of a social enterprise.  Without further ado, let’s review the last fifty years of IT’s technological maturing and unraveling.

 

1. Main Frame Computing

 

In the mid 70s, my dad and I regularly headed to the wholesale outlet in Orléans (France) to get our grocery supply.  As a teenager, one item particularly fascinated me, the huge IBM tabulating machine in the administration hall. 

image credit: http://www.grantowngrammar.highland.sch.uk

An employee would insert the punched-cards into the machine.  Then, this giant would print out an invoice with all the trimmings.  Needless to say, this was in the mid 70s state-of-the-art technology:  the era of mainframe computers (mostly used for transaction processing) roughly covering the late 50s through the 70s.  A computer professional would probably smile at the informal way I associate this device to the mainframe era, but at that time it was an impressive technology only larger businesses could afford.

Image credit: http://www.punchcardreader.com

This IBM machine was known as the “Card-Programmed Electronic Calculators (CPC).  Mainframe computers would soon be followed by mini, micro and personal workstations also known as personal computers.

2. PC Era

 

IBM underestimated the fact that by the mid 90s, personal workstations would usher in Personal Computer that eventually would replace the typewriter.  Some of us probably remember the Commodore PET, the first successfully marketed personal computer introduced in 1977.   

Image credit: http://dl.maximumpc.com

The predecessor to IBM AS/400, System/38 was first made available in August 1979.  It was marketed as a minicomputer for general business and department use.  It was sold alongside three other product lines, each with a different architecture not compatible with each other.  Digital Equipment Corporation used this IBM weakness to expand.  Digital Equipment was acquired by Compaq in 1998 which then merged with Hewlett Packard in 2002.  In the meanwhile Paul Allen and Bill Gates had founded ”Micro-Soft,” the combination of microcomputer and software, which became a US$ 42 billion corporation.  

 

3. Internet era

 

Internet service provider (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. CompuServe (my first email address) was a service provider founded in 1969.  CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States that became a leading worldwide internet service provider.  In 1998 CompuServe became a subsidiary of America Online Inc. (AOL).  Internet has become a global system of interconnected computer networks to serve billions of users worldwide.  Since its email commercial start, Internet technology has added: instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with services such as Skype, two ways interactive video calls and finally the World Wide Web including discussions forums, online shopping, blogs and more recently social networks.

 

4. Internet broadband and the World Wide Web era

 

Broadband Internet access or broadband is a high-speed internet access that replaced the awkward dial-up “modus operandi” some of us remember.  Dial-up bit rates varied from 33 to 64 kbit/s and required a telephone line.  Broadband started supplying higher bit rates with the crucial advantage of not disrupting regular phone lines.  It also provides a continuous “always on” connection.  Then came the World Wide Web, a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet.  Broadband supports a much faster World Wide Web browsing experience, faster downloading/uploading of information, video telephony, computing mobility with VPNs (virtual private networks) and online gaming experience. 

 

Next week, we will post the second half of this two-part series with the last three reasons why IT should become the technological beacon of a social enterprise 2.0 transformation.  In the meanwhile I wish you a very pleasant rest and a wonderful weekend. 

 

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10 Ways for Small and Medium Business to Establish a Social Business Strategy (2/2)

Our world is getting more complex every day.  Technology evolves at a speed that is hardly possible to keep up with.  In Part one, we reviewed the first five ways SMBs can set up a solid social business strategy:

1. Regularly review and refine your company mission, values and goals

2. Keep transforming your content marketing into convenience marketing

3. To blog or not to blog

4. Transform your website into a social hub and its visitors into co-creators

5. Carefully choose your social platforms

 

So here are the five last ways SMBs can establish a solid foundation for a social business:

 

6.  Reinforce and share your company vision

 

Share your company vision to employees, suppliers, customers and prospects on your company website.  Communicate your company vision on all your social networks. Reinforce your core values to customers, suppliers, prospects and anyone your business is coming in contact with.  I can guarantee you that it will be a rewarding experience for both your company and your customers who will better identify your vision and enthusiastically share it with the communities of their choice.  Zappos is well-known for its outstanding company culture and the way CEO Tony Hsieh runs his interviews for both cultural fit and skills requirements. On Zappos’ company blog, Tony publicly shares some of his correspondence for anybody to read: management, co-workers, clients, prospects and suppliers alike.  This is a superb way of spreading company culture while avoiding misunderstandings, promoting transparency and informing everyone.  

 

 

7. Create a dual strategy by combining your brick and mortar shop with a state of the art HTML5 web presence

 

Strive to create a superb online and personal shopping experience while rewarding your customers with loyalty perks and status.  Shoppers often use smartphones and tablets to get access to relevant information.  About.com has qualified three main distinct search types being made on the internet: “answer me (46% of all searches), inspire me (28% of all searches) and educate me (28% of all searches). Wouldn’t it be a great idea to make “answer me, inspire me and educate me” the three-dimensional crusade of your content marketing strategy?  Ask your customers, both online and in your shop, what answers they are looking for?  What inspires them? What educates them?  Gather your customer data directly into your database: the business headquarters of your people-centric customer information center.  This custom-made marketing know-how will help your business tailor make your content marketing output and assist you schedule personalized marketing messages via email or SMS.

 

8. Social, local, mobile (SoLoMo) and free Internet access

 

Would you rather have customers and prospects find out about competitive pricing inside or outside your shop premises?  If they search within your business, it might be easier for you and your staff to find out about competitors’ pricing and promotions.  It will also grant you the chance to intervene and give away “spur of the moment” discounts while bringing in more sales.  Providing customers and prospects with free internet access is a sure way to keep them inside your brick and mortar shop is not it?  No matter what, customers will find out what they want so you might as well give them the chance to do it while there are “browsing” around. It’s time for your business to harness wireless technology and give your visitors the shopping experience of their lives.  Why not consider an indoor positioning system (IPS) and lead your prospects to the right aisles? Why not consider near field communication (NFC) and QR codes to provide visitors with more product information?    

 

 

9.  Free is a wonderful motivator

 

We all love free things don’t we?  The concept of free automatically appeals to our human nature.  Would it be possible to provide your business with a little coffee and snack corner? Could you add a few tables for prospects to linger around and visit?  This could be a wonderful opportunity to create a local’s corner while gathering precious ideas about business dos and don’ts.  Ask your customers what they expect from your business and reward the top ideas with prizes (first, second to five and 11^th to 20^th or more if you can). Give, share and get altruistically involved with your community.  How about giving away a free coffee for every new Twitter follower or Facebook likes?  Be creative, try new things, and encourage mistakes among co-workers and team members.  One last word of advice from Dan Erwin: “Shift your networking orientation from getting to giving and your long-term success is assured.”

 

10.  Refine your web and shop loyalty program

 

Loyalty programs should become digital and mobile. There are clients combining web and shop loyalty programs who can adapt their products to your specific needs and beyond.  It is fundamental for customers to get rewarded.  Customers both love rewards and status.  Status gives a sense of belonging, a feeling of being part of something bigger.  Among the 36.8 million followers Lady Gaga enjoys on Twitter, she concentrates on the top 1% she names her “little monsters” … “These fans evangelize for her and bring new fans in the fold”.  Lady Gaga understands her fans’ needs to emotionally wanting to connect with her and goes as far as interrupting her concert while calling one of them on the stage with her.  The more customers purchase, the more unique their reward and status development should be.  Think of airlines bronze, silver and gold levels as an example.  Rewards and status are the motivation that channels patrons into buying more of your products and services, but also to evangelize your business.   Be creative, different, and provocative, and reward your customers with an exhaustive loyalty program that shows genuine gratitude towards them. 

 

Now it’s your turn. Which advice would you give a combined brick and mortar digital shop for it to thrive in this contemporary business environment? Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

 

 

Please do follow Bruno Gebarski

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10 Ways for Small and Medium Businesses to Establish a Social Business Strategy (1/2)

Our world is getting more complex every day.  Technology evolves at a speed that is hardly possible to keep up with.  The amount of information is exploding and as Clay Shirky points out, we need to avoid filter failure.  We are at the threshold of intelligent marketing because now, Big Data is available.  We are moving from descriptive and predictive to prescriptive business intelligence.  How do we establish an effective business strategy, the one that will give our businesses the necessary room for successful growth and development?  What should its priority list look like?  Social media, blogging, inbound or outbound marketing, curation of information, website updating, brick and mortar shop, digital shop?  Trying to answer such a complex question within a ten point two parts blog article is a daring undertaking, but here is a modest attempt at doing this.     

 

1. Regularly review and refine your company mission, values and goals

 

This could be a daunting task, but a simpler way of restarting the process is to review your unique selling proposition (USP) and then divide it into three sub-categories: company mission, company values and company goals.  Having a sharp and targeted vision is quintessential for refining and pursuing a suitable strategy.  Reviewing your mission is crucial as business opportunities and changes do take place.  IBM, in the mid 80s, was the personal computer leader. IBM wrote US$ 16 billion of losses under the baton of Lou Gersten with 35.000 workers made redundant.  IBM finally sold its mainframe business in 2003 and, under Ginni Rometty’s leadership, concentrates on three core areas: analytics, cloud computing and emerging markets. Should IBM have failed to adapt and change, who knows if IBM would have become the thriving social business leader it has been now for the last several years. 

 

 

A challenging way of applying technological trends could be to ask yourself if you could “create your 140 character brand promise”?  Can you summarize your company’s strategy in 35 words or less? The shorter and the clearer, the easier it will be for your communities to understand your mission and purpose.  It will help your business to energize its community while making it an active part of its purpose and vision.  Here are three USP examples which are each worth billions of dollars:

Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less—or it’s free.”

FedEx: “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”

M&M’s: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”

 

2. Keep transforming your content marketing into convenience marketing

 

Traditional marketing is no longer sufficient.  Businesses which mostly concentrate on their own activities and products are promised a tough time ahead.  Today there are many companies that master innovation and customer experience by creating and listening to their communities. Such companies like IBM, Amazon or Starbucks give their customers the opportunities to consult, advise and recommend new products and services.  Starbucks understands that some of the best ideas come from their own grass root marketers, the ones entering their coffee-shops day in and day out.  Could there be a better source of feedback than the one coming directly out of their customers’ mouths?  

Consider your website as a customer hub with people coming and going, uploading and downloading information. The more your business listens to its community, the more focused its content marketing will be.  Some of the platforms to distribute your content could be  how to, tips, recommended sites and resources, books, authors, literature, recipes, videos, interviews, podcast, webcast, webinars and so much more.

 

Image Credit: http://www.hyken.com

3. To blog or not to blog

It’s great to hear what Chris Brogan has to say about blogging:  “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog … It’s a website, with lots of built in features that make it useful from the search perspective, and simple from a content creation perspective…”  Blogging is like jogging for the brain.  Euan Semple once said:  “You do not know what you think until you write it down.”  At first blogging could be a strenuous way to ratify your thoughts, but the best way to freely express your personal ideas, views and expertise.  A blog is all yours and you may write (within reason) whatever your heart desires.  To blog or not to blog, this is the dilemma and the sooner your business starts the easier it will get. Blogging, like jogging, takes training, dedication and relentless commitment.  Avoid blogging about your products and services.  Concentrate on answering, sharing and inspiring.  Give your community what they want.  This will be the first act into bringing traffic to your website, and a natural way to gain traction and attention. 

 

4. Transform your website into a social hub and your visitors into your website co-creators

 

Amazon is a fabulous example of information crowd-sourcing.  When inquiring about books, the first thing most of us do is to find out about customer book-reviews.  Amazon has long understood that their website is not about them, but about the communities reading the books it sells.  It’s about letting visitors write reviews, comment on other people’s reviews, create groups and meet like minded readers.  It’s about customers’ wish-lists (a fabulous way of gathering marketing information) and remembering their interests, likes and dislikes. Amazon is a platform where people meet, read, comment, upload videos reviews and create personal profiles.  A company’s website should altruistically answer, inspire and educate its community.  It is not about your products or services, it is about your community, their worries, their interests and what inspires them.  Consider reserving enough space for uploading videos, reviews, articles and for giving your visitors the chance to become your website’s co-creators.

 

5. Carefully choose your social platforms

 

According Wikipedia, “Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks … It allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”  Social media is the new technological platform businesses use to promote physical or digital goods.  Social media networks should be kept to a minimum: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube.  Pick three or four and get professional help.  A Facebook and Pinterest expert like Mari Smith will save you time and money as she keeps up with ongoing platform changes and updates. Mari will provide you with the necessary support while you concentrate on your business.

 

In part two, we will review the last five fundamental points connected to the ongoing review of a successful social business foundation.  

 

Please do take the time to follow Bruno Gebarski

on Twitter, LinkedIn or on Google+:

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http://linkedin.com/in/brunogebarski

http://http://bitly.com/BrunoGebarski

 

11 Ways on How to Generate Twitter RSS Feeds For the Reader of Your Choice

Generating Twitter RSS feeds is for many of us a strategic way to curate relevant content, connect to communities of our choice, and keep up with our favorite tweeps.  RSS Twitter feeds are long gone, but recent changes have made their creation even more awkward. Nonetheless, bypassing those difficulties is still possible.  How can we do it and how do we get the most out of our Twitter curating efforts?  Without any further ado, let’s get right into it:

 

Generating RSS feeds from a Twitter list

 

Just if you have not yet noticed, since October 2012 the following Twitter feed is no longer working:  http://api.twitter.com/1/AUTHOR/lists/TWITTER-LIST/statuses.atom 

Many of us are struggling to find out a non-technical alternative.  As soon as we have a bullet-proof way of replacing this obsolete feed, we will post an update to this blog.  If you have an alternative, please write a comment below and it will get included into the next blog update.  Thanks!

 

1. Generating RSS feeds from a single Twitter account:

 

– Use this feed:  

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=

 – Simply add the twitter name of your choice after the ‘=’ sign, but without the ‘@’ sign.   

– Copy and paste into your reader and you are done:   

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=BrunoGebarski

 

You are now automatically receiving all Bruno Gebarski’s tweets in the reader of your choice…good luck!  You  can also use this second feed as well if you prefer: 

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/”Twittername”.rss

– Replace “Twittername” with the tweep of your choice and you are good to go.  

Now you can keep up with what Michael Brito is tweeting around the clock: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/britopian.rss

 

2. Generating RSS feeds from a single word search:

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=

– Add the word ‘software’ (as an example) to the end of the feed: 

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=software

– Copy and paste this feed into your reader.  That’s it, you are done.  All the tweets, including the term ‘software’, will automatically line up in the client of your choice. 

 

3. Generating RSS feeds from a combination of words:

 

If you are wondering about encoding, have a quick look at my previous post concerning the proper encoding of text and characters using the convenient Albion Research free web app.

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=

– Enhance your search query by using the Boolean operators of your choice.

– Codify Social Business OR Social Enterprise OR #socbiz with the Albion Research app to: Social%20Business%20OR%20Social%20Enterprise

%20OR%20%23socbiz

– Add the encoded search to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?

q=Social%20Business%20OR%20Social%20Enterprise

%20OR%20%23socbiz

(Make sure to remove “spaces” added here to fit the long feed formatting)

 

Let me try this feed… drum beat…copying the feed into my reader. V oilà! It works perfectly. Now it’s your turn.

If you use Boolean operators, make sure their formatting is correct.  Otherwise, your query won’t be encoded properly, and your feed won’t work.

 

4. Generating RSS feeds combining a tweep and a hashtag

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=

– Encode the following query: @MeghamMBiro OR #socialmedia to:

%40MeghamMBiro%20OR%20%23socialmedia

Add the encoded search to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%40MeghamMBiro%20OR%20%23socialmediaq

 

This feed will bring up all the results from Meghan M. Biro’s tweets, as well as those containing the ‘#socialmedia’ term.  Alternatively, it is possible to narrow down this search by replacing the ‘OR’ with an ‘AND’.  In this case, the feed will bring up the results from Meghan but only those which include the mention ‘#socialmedia’.  You can also use wild cards such as ‘leader*’.  In this case, the results would bring up all the words starting with ‘leader’ including ‘leaders’ and ‘leadership’. 

 

5. Generating RSS feeds containing a specific word or combination of words:

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=

– Encode the following query: Social Business OR Social Enterprise to: Social%20Business%20OR%20Social%20Enterprise%20

– Add the encoded search to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=Social%20Business%20OR%20Social%20Enterprise

– Copy and paste into your reader. Done!

 

6. Generating RSS feeds “from” a specific twitter account

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=

– Encode this query: from:markfidelman to from%3Amarkfidelman

– Add the encoded query to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from%3Amarkfidelman

Mark Fidelman is now under your radar.  By the way, check out his excellent book: “Socialized”, it is well worth a read.  

 

7. Generating RSS feeds “to” a specific twitter account

 

– Use this feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=

– Encode this query: to:jonhusband to: to%3Ajonhusband

– Add this encoded query to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=to%3Ajonhusband

– Paste the feed into you reader.  From now on you will receive all the tweets which are addressed to Jon Husband.

 

8. Generating RSS feeds ‘referencing’ a Twitter account

 

– Use the feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=

– Encode the following query: @euan to %40Euan

– Add this encoded query to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twtter.com/search.atom?q=%40Euan

You now will get all the references made about (@Euan) Euan Sample.

 

9. Generating RSS feeds from a specific geographical location with a multiple query.

 

This is getting a little more tricky.  But thanks to the Albion Research Ltd encoding tool you will manage just fine.  Follow these steps carefully Albion Research Ltd.  

 

Let’s say we want to locate all the tweeps in Hamburg within a 100km (100mi) radius tweeting about: ’#socbiz OR Social Business OR social business OR #esn OR social enterprise OR #e20’.

– We first need to find out Hamburg’s coordinates:  latitude and longitude.  For doing this we will use Brenz.net, an app that automatically gives us coordinates from any city or address around the globe.  Here are the results for Hamburg Germany:  53.5510846 and 9.9936818.

– Use this feed:  http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=

– Encode the following query by using Albion Research: 53.5510846,9.9936818,100km,#socbiz OR Social Business OR social business OR #esn OR social to: 53.5510846%2C9.9936818%2C100km%2C%23socbiz%20OR%20Social%20Business%20OR%20social%20business%20OR%20%23esn%20OR%20social%20enterprise%20OR%20%23e20

– Add this encoded query to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=53.5510846%2C9.9936818%2C100km%2C%23socbiz%20OR%20Social%20Business%20OR%20social%20business%20OR%20%23esn%20OR%20social%20enterprise%20OR%20%23e20

 

Voilà.  It’s not difficult. Albion Research does a flawless job at encoding all this data for us. 

 

10. Generating RSS feeds from a specific geographical location combined with a key word

 

We now want to find out all the people in Chichester (UK), tweeting about health within a radius of 50 miles.

– We first need to find out Chichester’s coordinates thanks to Brenz.net, again to our rescue:  50.7317166,-0.788917.

– Use this feed:  http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=

– Encode the query: health geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi: health%20geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi

– Add the encoded query to the first part of the feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=health%20geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi

 

This search will bring you the results for all the tweeps twitting about “health” in Chichester (UK) within a 25 miles radius.  Isn’t this awesome?  I hope you are excited because this is very useful information!

 

11. Generating RSS feeds from a specific geographical location combined with a key

word and Boolean operators (AND / NOT)

 

Let’s say we want to find all the people around Chichester (UK), within a radius of 25 miles, tweeting about health but not about cancer.

– We will retain the following Chichester coordinates:  50.7317166,-0.788917

– Use this feed:  http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=

– Encode the following query: health -cancer geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi to:

health%20-cancer%20geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi

– Add the encoded query to the first part of the feed: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=health%20-cancer%20geocode:50.7317166,-0.788917,25mi

 

Voilà! You are now getting all the tweets about health but without cancer within a 25 miles radius of Chichester in the United Kingdom. 

If you have any additional comments or suggestions please let us know so together we can complete and update this post on a continual basis. Thank you for stopping by.

 

Please follow me on Twitter at

http://Twitter.com/BrunoGebarski

 

How To Create RSS feeds From Your Favorite Twitter Hashtags and Tweeps

It is frustrating to see how Twitter safeguards its own ecosystem and paralyzes non-tech users like us by making it so awkward to create RSS feeds.  Twitter struck again at the end of October last year, by removing the atom feed from their services.  Is there a simple non-technical way around it?  Well it might be connected to a bit of extra work and tweaking, but it’s well worth putting the effort into it.

 

1. Identifying your Twitter #hashtags (keywords)

 

There is a fabulous tool called “What Hashtag” (freely given to us by a Spanish group of programmers) that does a reliable job at researching and selecting the most popular Twitter-hashtags.  Let’s say we are trying to find the proper Twitter-hashtags (and those are very specific) for ‘social business’.  In our ‘social business’ search we shall include the Boolean operator “quote” in order to single out the results for “social business” only:

 

Hashtag http://whathasthag.circulorojo.es	Frequency
#socbiz	175
#ibm	71
#SocBiz	45
#IBM	35
#socialmedia	35
#business	30
#Social	21
#ibmsocialbiz	15
#social	12
#Business	9

You may notice that each word is hyperlinked to its corresponding Twitter-feed:  very handy indeed.   It is now easier to identify the community connected to the “#socbiz” word or Twitter hashtag.  A word of caution please:  run the search several times and update it on a regular basis because things change fast on the Twittosphere.

 

The second tool is presented to us by Dan Zarrella:  Tweetcharts.com.  Tweetcharts goes one step further by giving us a full array of added information:  

– General statistics about links, retweets, replies, mentions, hashtags

– Top words and most mentioned users

– Other corresponding hashtags, links and media (images and videos)

 

Before we start creating RSS feeds, we need to understand a bit about encoding.  The Albion Research Ltd. application “encodes or decodes a string using URL Encoding.  URL Encoding is used when placing text in a query string to avoid it being confused with the URL itself.  It is normally used when the browser sends form data to a web server.”  So here is an example for us to try: 

Plain Text:

Hey What’s the heck with social media? 

Encoded Text:

Hey%20what’s%20the%20heck%20with%20social%20media%3F

 

Copy the following Twitter RSS string search:  “http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=” and add any terms or name of your choice with the Boolean operators to your search:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=@dpontefract OR @Euan OR @hjarche OR @jonhusband OR @KateNasser OR @rashkenas OR @rhappe OR @rossdawson OR @tdebaillon OR @BrunoGebarski

 

Now paste this string into the Albionresearch.com website to obtain he following encoded feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%40dpontefract%20OR%20%40Euan%20OR%20%40hjarche %20OR%20%40jonhusband%20OR%20%40KateNasser%20OR %20%40rashkenas%20OR%20%40rhappe%20OR%20 %40rossdawson%20OR%20%40tdebaillon%20OR %20%40BrunoGebarski

Remove unwanted spaces (due to blog formatting) and paste this final RSS feed into your reader, but first do not forget to replace the names, including mine, with the Tweeps of your choice!  Now you have your personalized twitter stream as an RSS feed with all the authors you wish to keep up with.  Easy and simple is not it?

 

Now it’s your turn: How do you keep up with your favorite Tweeps?  Any tools you would recommend?  Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

 

Please follow me on Twitter:

http://Twitter.com/BrunoGebarski

Three Fundamental Macro Trends Transforming Our Society, the Way we Live and How We Work

We are living in a ubiquitous mobile era and by the way, don’t  we love it?  Could you imagine for a second a world without smartphones or tablets?  Sooner than later we will start out our day by reading our favorite newspaper while shaving in front of the bathroom mirror.  We’ll continue reading while listening to our car audio system driving to work, then on to our Google glasses while walking to the office, finally catching up with the last paragraph either on our tablets, smartphones, laptops or antiquated PCs.

The Guardian reported on February 22:  “Mobile and social are bringing a dramatic cultural shift to the enterprise. The combination of mobile technology and social capabilities creates dynamics that have never before been possible.”

How can we synthesize the major technical trends that have transformed the way we live and the way we work?  In the last 10 years broadband communication has brought upon us three major changes:  mobile, social and cloud.

1. Mobility   

“Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide and that by 2015 over 80 percent of the handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones.  By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50 percent of laptop shipments and Windows 8 will likely be in third place behind Google’s Android and Apple iOS operating systems.”

Our digital world citizens have acquired more than one billion smartphones in 2011 and 2012 combined, with a 10.10% increase from 2011 (495.3 million units) to 2012 (545.2 million units).  By 2015 there will be 4.9 billion global mobile users.  Those figures are staggering and prove the “smart” mobile shift happening right now in our society.  Our mobile trend opens incredible new business models and opportunities such as mobile marketing, mobile payment, near field communication (NFC), indoor navigation systems and finally 25 billion apps, which have been already downloaded (iOS and Android).

2. Our 21^st century social network society

Less than 10 years ago (2004) Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, a social network that would turn the way we communicate upside down.  The membership has passed one billion worldwide and forever changed our notion of privacy.  Less than ten years ago it would have been inconceivable to post pictures on a public domain for just about anyone to see, while Google crawlers constantly index the web to improve the company’s search prowess.  Suddenly people are capable of staying in touch with their friends, while uploading their latest picture hunt they proudly want their communities to see.  Meanwhile, other social tools have popped up:

• LinkedIn — the 200 million professional network was created in 2002
• Twitter — the micro-blogging site was started by Mike Dorsey in 2006
• Caterina Fake’s Flickr image posting tool goes back to 2004
• YouTube, created by former PayPal employees, was launched in 2005
• Skype, a proprietary Voice over IP (VoIP), was first released in 2003

and the list goes on and on. Business Insider reports on March 21, 2013: “YouTube hits 1 Billion Monthly Users”, a staggering number of people viewing, uploading and sharing videos from the four corners of our planet.  Mobility is allowing communication in real-time, whenever and wherever it happens!  Traditional structures are being by-passed, new business models are being created.  What is going to happen to our libraries?  Virtual worlds and virtual goods can now be created.  What would happen if one day Facebook decided to create its own currency?  Whatever, wherever, whenever is becoming the new norm of ubiquitous digital communication thanks to broadband technology.  

Sharing information on all sorts of platforms (notebooks, smartphones and tablets) is forcing us to centralize our data storage.  How else would we access our Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook accounts if all the data had to be stored separately and constantly synchronized, as we used to do it between our PCs and Notebooks?

3. Cloud computing to the rescue

Without cloud computing it would be impossible for any of us to own a Google email account, impossible to tweet or to review and update the content of our LinkedIn accounts.  It is estimated there is one exabyte of data stored in the “cloud”.  All our favorite Evernote bits and pieces are stored in the cloud, so are our Facebook pictures, Twitter favorites and Slideshare presentations.  Additionally, many of us are now moving some our personal data (traditionally stored on hard disks) to cloud services such as Box.com, Dropbox and many others.  Cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mountain Lion’s Apple operating system, introducing services such as iCloud, are popping up everywhere.

Consequently, cloud computing has allowed us to centralize the positioning of our personal data and to access it from any “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) of our choice, thanks to broadband technology supporting our relentless nomadic lifestyles.  Cloud is the engine, the door opener, the way, the modern broadband electricity trail seamlessly granting access to our data, whenever and wherever we want it.  In 1917 Sears ran an advertisement advising people to “use electricity for more than light”.   At the beginning of the 21^st century cloud computing technology is here but still in its infancy.  Nikola Tesla (Никола Тесла; July 10 1856 – January 7^th 1943), a Serbian-American, was the inventor of the modern alternating current electrical supply system.  As much as electricity would prove to be much more than powering light bulbs, cloud computing gives us the feasible prospect of eliminating local data storage!  Do you know of anyone storing their own electricity?  Sounds ludicrous right?  It could very well become the same with cloud computing.  Buckle up, it’s going to be an interesting ride.  Our children and native digital citizens will someday look at us wondering how on earth we lived without cloud storage, smartphones and broadband communication — the new digital highway of our 21^st century wireless, “clouded” and crowded world.

Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Computing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Are People, Processes and Platforms the Three Fundamental P’s of Any Social Business Enterprise 2.0 transformation?

1. People and behavioral changes

People are at the core of any successful organizational and structural company change.  A technological fix vs. a behavioral change remains once and for all, an inane discussion. After companies have established their own “culture”, Enterprise 2.0 will dictate the necessary behavioral changes.  Employees’ motivation and engagement must first be stirred-up by HR and upper management, and then supported for any new collaborating technological implementation or change to flourish.  After a recent study led by the Dachis Group, Harold Jarche used the findings for his article “It Takes Time to be Social”, and rightly points out that “… when asked to assess the overall engagement of employees for the company, more than half responded that only 10-20% of its employees were active…”.  If a company wants its personnel to become more social, management should pave the way first.  They need to lead by collaborating and co-creating themselves otherwise the time and investment expended in a structural change could be entirely wasted.

Employees, teams and task-groups are the driving force inside any organization; they solve problems, create value and drive innovation.  On the other hand, organizational silos thwart collaboration and cut off departments and co-workers from each other. Silos isolate departments, locations and teams while preventing overall company motivation, engagement and higher achievement goals.  A corporate vision, code of conduct and established company culture are fundamental essentials if HR, Controlling and IT are to reach out to sales and marketing, while looking beyond their own responsibilities or department silos. The command-and-control frame of mind that IT traditionally has, will have to be reshaped to enable some sort of a revived technological door-opener (as opposed to the door-keeper) to co-create value to the people-centric enterprise that social business is striving to develop. HR must encourage and develop cross-functional team building if the silo-mentality is to be overcome, so that a genuine Enterprise 2.0 frame of mind can be established.

2. Processes and Business Process Management (BPM)

As Clay Shirky once said: “Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity.”!  Processes should then be proactive and not stifle employees’ creativity with a straitjacket-set of company rules and regulations.  Processes and policies ought to be defined and ratified in order to encourage communication and creativity to flourish. They should protect workers, promote products and services, and dismount company silos.

For new collaborative business processes to be implemented, HR and management should encourage and motivate personnel with the use of gamification; the art of applying game theory and procedures to non-gaming environments.  They ought to motivate, recognize and reward their employees for rethinking and putting forth more efforts into reshaping their own work behavior and modifying their daily routines.

3. Platforms i.e. technologies

In his recent article “Social Collaboration: It’s the people not the technology stupid!”, Steve Dale writes that “most collaboration strategies are treated as technology projects and not organizational development (OD) projects”, again showing that IT can be the troublesome door-keeper.  That’s why many of those projects will most likely fail to bring any social enterprise return on investment (ROI). Adoption rates are poor because again and again technologies and processes often fail to take into account the mandatory and necessary workforce behavioral changes which need to be attached to such implementations. Too many entrepreneurial 2.0 strategies and projects are perceived by employees as a behavioral straitjacket they are forced to put on. The resulting poor rate of adoption is irrefutably proving the fact that implementation is not as successful as the IT Project Managers would have expected it to be.

A company’s workforce is the most important “customer-base asset” it possesses. Traditionally, this workforce is a group of human beings resisting change (don’t we all!). Employees will reluctantly give up familiar territory and only bid farewell to old practices if motivation and rewards are attached to those changes. Technology should remain on the level of a helpful tool.  Its initial roll-out should be introduced mainly by a handful of hand-picked collaborative advocates and Enterprise 2.0 social stars.  The Chief Customer Officer and Community Manager should promote these advocates socially and create new leadership positions for them.  Their conviction, passion and gregarious approach cannot help but motivate and inspire the rest of the community i.e. workforce.  HR should rally all company employees to the cause of this entrepreneurial social project with the support and techniques of gamification, and then evangelize first the human benefits, and second the technological paybacks. Rewarding the early social adopters with incentive programs, bonuses and company perks, will give a new social project implementation its best chance to succeed and exceed the Dachis 10 to 20% average adoption rate!

What incentives and company perks are you giving or planning to give to your employees for the support of a successful roll-out of Enterprise 2.0 social technologies?

Follow Bruno Gebarski on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrunoGebarski or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunogebarski

Related posts to Social Business i.e. Enterprise 2.0:

–Why Company Culture is The Foundation to Any Social Business Enterprise 2.0

–Understanding the 4 Fundamentals of a Social Business Enterprise 2.0

–Humility, a Core Ingredient For Moving From Hierachy to Social Business Enterprise 2.0 Leadership (Part 1)

–Humility, a Core Ingredient For Moving From Hierachy to Social Business Enterprise 2.0 Leadership (Part 2)

Get Real: Earn Every Follower You Have on Twitter: Earn Each and Every One of Them

I am still new to twitter with roughly 3200 followers and still learning to appreciate each and every single one of them! I block “riff-raff”, permissive stuff but particularly followers offering so many followers for a couple of dollars! Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not care what it takes to get followers on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook: JUST DO NOT DO IT!
I remember not too long ago Jon Jantsch @ducttape doing an experiment with the purchase of “fake followers” and having finally to manually un-follow every single one of them: Please do not sell your valuable name for a couple of dollars, it is absolutely not worth it!

I went through a short stretch where I was tempted: I admit it I was, considering the amount of followers some companies or accounts have, I was considering “taking short cuts” but I did not! I refused to do it the easy way: because each and every one of your followers has to be earned! Yes you are reading it right: every one of them has to be earned!

Imagine if suddenly you came to my account and saw 10.000 followers knowing that I am usually worth 3.000? What would you think: “for him -@brunogebarski- I am just a number”, he wants numbers not quality and I would most probably end up trading quality for quantity! I have fabulous mentors following me, and I started an excel table of my favorite ones. Depending on your interest, passion and priority lookup for specific twitter accounts and promote them! Please do yourself a favor and do promote others, do not worry about your count or how little followers you have: it takes time and effort for a twitter-stream to become a twitte-river don’t you think?

I tweet about Social Business: E20, content & social Marketing, Cloud computing, Social Media Strategy, and BYOD; there are plenty of fabulous people out there: use the proper tools to spot them! It is not difficult: spot the hash tags and look up Dan Zarella’s tool: tweetcharts.com: it is a fabulous tool and it will get you up and running on what is happening on Twitter: Twitter is an extraordinary tool, use it wisely and appreciate the people you meet: avoid the rubbish and I really mean it: you will meet lots of rubbish, but concentrate on the 5% out there worth getting to know! Some of them are writers and contributors to fabulous magazines such as Forbes: I can only think of Meghan M. Biro: @meghanMBiro or Mark Fidelman: @markfidelman to name just a few! David F Carr @davidfcarr is a writer who brings a tremendous contribution to the topic of Enterprise 2.0 as well as Dion Hinchcliffe: @dhinchcliffe. Find out what topic you are interested in and locate your mentors and the leaders you can learn from and start promoting them: do not worry about yourself and apply the biblical principle: do unto others as you would love people to do unto you! This is one of the fundamental of “crowd sourcing” and learning humility because as the bible rightly states: before honour there is humility!

Be humble and earn one tweet at a time every one of your followers by bringing a valuable contribution to the Twitter forum and not by taking short cuts and purchasing fake followers for a couple of dollars: remember your name is so much more worth than 10 or 20 US$

Marketing Convenience Replaces our “Pay Spray & Pray” Traditional “Outbound” Marketing Approach

The transforming philosophy of “Marketing Convenience”, already applied today by many successful companies and aspiring to be more effective marketers, is just kicking in!  Marketing is becoming  a “convenience store” whereby customers / prospects come and go at their leisure, peruse our offerings and perks, to finally walk out with a basket full of goodies and ideas without having spent a dime: yep without having spent a single dime! This is the reality of Convenience Marketing! Alas but over are the days when companies could present products and services while automatically expecting consumers to fill up their shopping cart! Marketing has become much more complex as most of us customers do expect a run for our €uro / US$! Remember Seth Godin’s “Why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department” presentation? If you have never seen it before please do yourself a favo(u)r and watch this it right away! A couple of years back David Armano wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review stating: “fire your marketing manager and hire a community manager”: an article well worth reading while regularly checking out his contribution to Edelman Digital.

So why did Albert’s Einstein become so famous? Ever thought about it? Albert Einstein was a personality involved in the business of “spreading ideas”! Yes and his ideas are still spreading all over the place! But back to our topic: successful marketers ought to be spreading ideas in a “convenient way” giving out customer oriented perks such as:  

B2B Inbound marketing aka convenience marketing goodies:

–     Blog articles

–     Whitepapers

–     Pre-Recorded webinars

–     Case studies

–     Free product demos and downloads

Or B2C inbound marketing or convenience Marketing:  

–     Blog with relevant articles custom made for a specific niche audience

–     eArticles or eBooks

–     Videos (Remember Gary Varnychuk?)

–     Advise & Recipes

–     To do lists

–     Improvement recommendations

–     Tool kits and much more depending on what sort of business you are running.

By no means am I intending here to write an exhaustive list of inbound Marketing tactics or tools: There are plenty of fabulous people like Joe Pulizzi and his superb Content Marketing Institute platform offering scores of free resources that will keep your marketing folks busy for a quite a while if you only check this particular venue! It could also be that you have decided to become “more social” then Michael Brito and his wonderful Britopian venue should be of help! The issue here is for us to stop and think about this rather new concept of “Convenience Marketing” i.e. an approach transforming our former “pay, spray and pray” sales-approach with a philosophy some of us marketers only reluctantly accept! Consumers have choices; a  smorgasbord of product offerings “à la IKEA superstore”, where just about anything is available to your liking (or not as a matter of fact!) including facilities for you to eat (and stay longer) before you finally pay, pickup and load up your vehicle while rounding up a strenuous furniture shopping spree!   

 

Transform your sales approach with this philosophy of “Convenience Marketing” and learn to entrust your most valuable treasure: your customer and prospect with valuable informations and free stuff specific to your particular business-niche! Give, share, spread ideas while finding out directly from them what they are specifically looking for or interested in. Refine, rehearse, repeat, be humble, participate, listen and ask particularly if you are facing consumers on a daily basis either personally or on the phone! Inquire from them directly what they are searching for and give it to them! Reward them for their time and information and thank them for sharing it with you! Both customers and prospects will come back to you and buy from you because trust and equity will have then been established and remember may be it is time for you to “fire your marketing manager and hire a community manager”!

Happy Convenience Marketing days to you and a wonderful week wherever you are

5 Ways To Curate Content, Twit, File And Backup Relevant Information (Part 1)

Some of us twit a lot, may be for some of my followers a bit too much, but none can complain about twitting trivia. I don’t like trivia, especially irrelevant and non-entertaining rubbish! I  bear in mind however that not everyone is interested in topics such as Social Enterprise, Content Marketing, Social Media Strategy, Cloud Computing or Mobile Technology, which are the cause for so many changes in this technology threatening 21^st century. Let’s concentrate on “content curation” and how to possibly prepare ourselves for this onslaught of information overload we all have to deal with! Content curation is vital in our Big Data age! How to manage? How can we address content curation with the support of digital technology? Let’s first start with the basics:

1. Open an account in a reader (Google or RSS Bandit)

If you do not yet own an RSS news-reader please do yourself a huge favor: invest time and create one right away! It’s going to positively and creatively change your information-life forever! Especially if you are a blogger or planning to become one! This perfect foundation will assist you in “cloud-filing” your personal content and information gold nuggets! I use Google Tools so please get a Google Email address or just go to your reader of preference and you are all ready to go.

2. Identify first hash key-words and links for your topics of interest

We first need to find buzzwords about our particular topic(s) of interest and folks could we ever hope for a better tool than Twitter? Any topic of news is to be found on Twitter: the news “trend setter” par excellence, where any information your crowd of interest is “talking about” is guaranteed to be found. For this purpose please consider this first real time trendy twitter tool from Dan Zarella’s (@danzarrella) superb TweetCharts.com.

This tool will give you all the key words connected in this case to @brunogebarski and the topics I have been twitting about for the last week or so as well as the links connected to them, which will grant you a reliable start for curating relevant info.

3. Identify key or hash key-words with “Whathashtag”

The second tool that provides “in real time” info is “Whathashtag” from our Spanish neighbors: a brilliant little app that returns all Twitter key-words attached to a specific hash-keyword search, in this case: ContentCuration returning spelling, wording and frequency + the extra flexibility to click and land “in real time” in the twitter feed of your choice: a fabulous treasure of information.

4. Create Google Alerts with your key words

A Google Alert can be set up by adding to your search with Boolean terms such as “AND” or “OR”, which will have to be capitalized. In this alert it is easy to see how different words have been connected to each other: I opted for all results or “as it happens” and decided to receive the alert as a feed directly into my Google Reader.

5. Create RSS Feeds with Twitter lists or specific Twitter account(s) you want to follow:

Please refer to my previous three blog articles, which have been well researched and will give you roughly 30 other ways of creating all sorts of RSS feeds:

• 9 ways to create Twitter RSS feeds for your CMS and content curation needs (Part 1)
• 10 additional ways to create Twitter RSS feeds for your CMS or content curation needs (Part 2)
• 10 more ways to create RSS feeds and News for your Content or CMS (Part 3)

Part two will be posted a few days from now: Stay tuned for more info and please get in touch with me at @brunogebarski for any comment or suggestion: looking forward to your input!