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Archive for the ‘Thoughts and Musings’ Category

Social Media Analytics: Three lessons for success

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , on November 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to present  my views on social media analytics at Business Insider’s Social Media Analytics conference (you can view the slides from my presentation here).  The lessons I presented were based on my own experience, both based on my work at SAP but also on discussions with my peers in the industry.  They were centered around  the following three key takeaways:

1. Differentiate, but be consistent

Although this sounds like an oxymoron, defining a consistent social media analytics framework can help create a common vocabulary and allow you to learn by being able to consistently compare across your various campaigns.  There are three key dimensions as shown on the chart above:

  • Use case: It starts with understanding what you are trying to accomplish, and then driving your strategy and results based on those objectives.  Are you trying to build awareness with an audience not necessarily familiar with your brand and offerings, or are you trying to generate demand running a social media campaign?  These are two very different things and the way you measure success needs to vary based on these objectives.

Read the rest of the post here…

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The “Dirty Little Secret” of Facebook (Access Control)

Posted in Marketing Best Practices, Marketing Misses and Missteps, Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , , on April 13, 2011 | 1 Comment »


Recently, I discovered some “dirty truths” about Facebook that I found somewhat disturbing, even though the situation can probably be explained with personal and cultural differences. Nevertheless, I find the practice offensive.

In a nutshell, it’s become more and more popular for people to create “levels” or “castes” of Facebook friends who they give different “access rights” to content on their FB pages.

If you are not familiar with Facebook lists, here is a quick tutorial. This feature allows you to create lists of “friends” and to then limit their access to your Facebook content through settings in the profile area.

Read the full blog here.

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Salesforce buys Radian6 for $326M: So What?

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , on March 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


Two months ago I wrote a post lamenting over how the emerging enterprise social media/social CRM vendors are making the same mistakes we have made over the past 40 years in the enterprise software industry and alluding to the fact that I expected the major enterprise technology vendors to enter the market in earnest this year.  I just never thought we would see so much before the end of Q1. During the past 6 days, IBM launched a social media analytics solution based on their Coremetrics acquisition last summer,  and yesterday Salesforce announced their plans to acquire Radian6, one of the leading social listening / analytics platforms (disclosure: SAP is a Radian6 customer).

Continue reading…

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Learnings from the Silicon Valley Enterprise Social Media Council Summit

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


The Silicon Valley Enterprise Social Media Council (SVESMC) is a group of Bay Area social media practitioners (no vendors) from CA Technologies, eBay, Ariba, Cisco, Taleo, Xerox, PayPal, EMC, Symantec, Wellsfargo and SAP.  The objective of the group is to network, discuss challenges and share social media know how with enterprise peers who live and breathe social media.

On March 25th, SAP hosted the first quarterly social media summit for the group that was started in late 2010. Fittingly, the first group members were “recruited” via Twitter. Our currently close to 30 members regularly meet for a monthly dinner and share expertise in conference calls, via a LinkedIn group and Twitter (follow the public list @SocialB2P/SVESMC).

The summit was a full success with non-stop passionate discussions, sometimes taking a panel into an unexpected direction but only because there was so much enthusiasm and eagerness to learn and share. Overall, I was very pleased to see that SAP holds up well in social media compared to its peers; and I got a lot of great new ideas, and made new friends.

Ironically, we asked everybody to turn off their Twitter and other social media tools for the day to keep our discussions open and confidential. Without violating this agreement (“what happens in Palo Alto stays in Palo Alto”), I can share some key findings from the summit:

Read more here.

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Be The Change You Want To See In B2B Marketing

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 27, 2011 | 1 Comment »


By guest blogger Michael Brenner.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” is an oft-used phrase by Mahatma Gandhi. But now that January is coming to a close, most resolutions have fallen by the wayside and many of us find ourselves back into the same old routine.

Resolutions or not, change has come to B2B Marketing in 2011. Are you keeping up? I have always tried to follow Gandhi’s advice to drive both professional and personal goals. It is one of the reasons I started blogging. And as a “B2B Marketing Insider,” I am a practitioner and need to make sure I practice what I preach. So what is the best way to be the change you want to see in B2B Marketing?

I truly believe Life Is Short! In that article I challenged myself to ask whether I was pushing myself hard enough, to consider whether I was achieving my goals and to remind us all that we are the only ones to blame if we are not where we want to be. But is that really the answer? Let’s look at a few other people for their recent thoughts:

Slow Down

One person whose blog I enjoy and whose life story I truly admire is Jonathan Fields (@jonathanfields). Jonathan writes about how to build the life you want, offers tips to small business owners and also writes amazingly inspiring articles. In “Hair On Fire Minus One“ he suggests we slow down, even just one gear. Jonathan tested this theory when he was a big-shot securities lawyer (he’s not any more!) and found that he was making fewer mistakes and was actually more productive.

Read more on Michael Brenner’s blog.

____________________________________________________________________

About SocialB2P Guest Blogger Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is the author of B2B Marketing Insider and serves as Sr. Director of Integrated Marketing for SAP. Michael’s blog is dedicated to sharing the ideas, topics and marketing strategies that drive real results like sales, leads, and higher customer loyalty. Follow online at
http://www.B2BMarketingInsider.com
 Follow on Twitter: @brennermichael @B2BMktgInsider

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Re: The Top Do’s and Don’ts for Tweeters

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


Matthias Steiner | January 14, 2011

Reply to: 
http://marketingaccelerator.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/the-top-five-dos-and-donts-for-tweeters/
 

During a coffee break I stumbled across a blog post by Natascha Thomson on her B2B marketing blog and wanted to reply right away. Yet, instead of writing a lengthy comment I opted for replying to her on my own blog – continuing our interchange on social media.

In fact, Natascha was among the first people I “got to know on Twitter first” before enjoying meeting her face-to-face during TechEd and Palo Alto afterwards. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Natascha-2-TechEd tale by now, don’t you Since that time we both have been exploring the twitterverse and for me it still feels like a a rewarding learning experience… the netiquette keeps evolving as do some of the rules.

Sure, some basics have established by now and one is well-advised to understand them, so it’s best to do a little of basic reading first before getting started. I’ve been strongly promoting twitter and its value for information gathering in this high fidelity business for a while now as well as sharing my own insights on a regular basis (with anyone willing to listen.) In this tradition, I just can resist the temptation to reply to Natascha’s post and share my own views… a 2nd opinion so to say. Here it goes…

Read more at
http://www.inscope.net/post/1290
.

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The Top Five Do’s and Don’ts for Tweeters

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 13, 2011 | 4 Comments »


It feels to me that the honeymoon phase of Twitter is over - or at least it should be.

While there are still thousands of users joining Twitter every day, many of us have now been using the tool for years, which means that rules and conventions have developed. Most of them make the use of Twitter more effective and enjoyable, some of them seem to clog up space that could be utilized for more meaningful communication.

Here my personal list of “The Top Five Do’s and Don’ts for Tweeters“:

(more…)

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Poll – Predictions: 2011 will see the rise of . . .

Posted in Thoughts and Musings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


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A New Way of Thinking

Posted in Marketing Best Practices, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »


I am generally not a fan of the “viral video.”  I get the value, but most of what gets passed around to my in-box tends to be the “dancing kitten” or “funniest-home-video-dad-gets-hit-in-the-groin-by-his-5-year-old’s-baseball-bat” variety.  What I gravitate toward, however, are the videos that show you a new way to view the world, on innovation, on perspective. Take the mundane and make it extraordinary.  Inspire me.  That is what I love about this video and why I have Tim Clark’s blog to thank.  If you are not one of the 13 million who has seen this already, take 3 minutes to view it.  The premise is “Can you quickly get people to change their behavior if you add an element of fun to it?“

How does this fit into Social Media?  I operate from the premise that we all are overwhelmed with information in our daily lives – texts, emails, URLs, videos, blogs, msgs, etc.  In fact, my blogging to tell you that you are inundated with information becomes the social media equivalent of Schrodinger’s Cat.  My blog, while well-intentioned (and brilliant!), becomes part of your daily noise.

What if we focused our energies in 2011 on solving the problem, not just improving the tactic.  Our usual approach is to improve the tactic, the function.  We build a better escalator – faster, smoother, more colorful perhaps.  How about we start with the problem, devise a way to successfully implement toward that goal, and then – here is the tricky part – actually execute against that idea!  Crazy, I know!  Instead of building a better escalator, make the experience of coming up the stairs more enjoyable and arguably more fruitful for the denizens of the subway.

What do we want to solve in 2011?  How about how we communicate, how to filter out the noise, how to connect with like-minded individuals around the globe, to connect with people on a meaningful level?  Let’s solve that.  In the “valley of innovation,” what we tend to hear – and far too often – are ideas like . . . .

  • It is like facebook 2.0,
  • It is Twitter only with x features, y faster, for z cost,
  • It is email  . . . on steroids.

Let’s throw the old premises out the window and invent from the problem we are trying to solve.  That would make a great “Top 10” list for 2011.  Now, if you will excuse me, I have a xylophone ramp to build.

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Social Media: A Route-To-Market or a Channel?

Posted in Marketing Best Practices, Social Media Marketing, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »


by Sumith Kumar

A few months ago I decided to switch gears from my strategy and operations role, and fully immerse in the pursuit of unleashing commercial nirvana that the emerging discipline of social media promises to facilitate – reach more people, quickly and inexpensively, to buy more solutions, more often and for more money, all by tapping an eager and connected community/audience via the web.

As we organize to integrate with mainstream marketing the question on whether social media is a channel or a route-to-market was posed.  (more…)

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