Evolving Social Media: Social Business

With the advances in how social media is applied daily, the description of Social Media For Communication Strategy held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), has a hard time keeping up even if the class does not. For example, nowhere does it mention social networks specifically, let alone the advent of social business. But then again, this was always by design. When the three-hour session was first...

Dehumanizing People: How Social Connections Create Elitists

In one of the more interesting studies to come out this week, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business hint at a downside to being an "influencer" online. Although the study does not cite online connections specifically, but rather social connections in general, it does provide a cross section for human behavior that manifests online. In...

Imagining Social Networks: The Futures Company

According to Alex Steer, writing for The Futures Company, social networks might be losing their way. He has an excellent point. "...it's a shame that so much of the conversation around the future of social networking focuses on technology. In the last few years we've heard that real-time access, mobile apps, geolocation, near-field communication and other innovations would transform social networking. To some extent...

Moving Toward Social Media: Now What?

According to a recap by Smart Company, Nielsen reports that three-quarters of Australian companies fully embrace social media with as much as 10 percent of their marketing budgets slated to social media. There is some discrepancy between large and medium businesses. The Nielsen-Community Engine 2011 Social Media Business Benchmarking Study finds that 35 percent of large companies have a stronger presence than medium-sized...

Obsessing Over Influencers: Six Influencer Styles From Psychology

Foresight Research, a Rochester, Michigan, based market research firm specializing in automotive research, has released some findings from its study influence of the Internet and social media on automotive purchase decisions. What they found won't surprise anyone involved in social media. In 2009, 86 percent of all new vehicle buyers used the Internet in their new vehicle purchase process. Of those who used the Internet,...

Spreading Messages: How They Stick

Most studies have already revealed the truth. The average purchasing decision takes only about 2.5 seconds. Knowing this, traditional marketers might deduce if you only have 2.5 seconds to make an impact, you might make that impact big, loud, and memorable. Some might even say that it is the driving force behind some campaigns, including Burger King, which is quickly becoming the leading fast food franchise in withdrawing...

Going Green: Free Iran

While most people have heard that social media has played a role in the post-election results in Iran, the consequences of immediate communication and online conversation have an impact that is equally compelling to on-the-ground coverage. While Valeria Maltoni sees the potential for crowdsourcing to surpass CNN news (it can), we also see it as an interesting division. Whereas traditional media has been tending to cover...

Polarizing Futures: Apple, Facebook, Everyone

When Amazon first launched Kindle, it seemed to me that no matter how anyone felt about the product, the technology behind it represented crossroads with potentially polarizing effects. It represented an opportunity to educate everyone on the planet (once there was a price point drop), giving them access to the best books ever written. And, it also represented an opportunity to enslave humankind by filtering future content...

Measuring Popular: Social Media Meets Gilligan's Island

Long-time industry analyst Barbara French once wrote (link below) that "we've got some very bright people on both sides of the debate — those advocating that we equate influence with popularity/connectedness, those advising against it. Neither side is ready to blink." Well, for those advocating for it, I suggest they study the work of Sherwood Schwartz and blink.That's right. You'll find all you need to know about how...

Dispelling Myths: Online Authority

In between some satire, there always seems to be some seriousness in conversations about online authority. Some social media participants want to measure this stuff, even if it for the sole purpose of vanity or perhaps selling snake oil.There is enough of it that Jennifer Leggio lent a near perfect expose entitled "Twitter popularity does not equal business acumen" on ZDNet. The article mentions several reasons that...

Toiling Over Titles: Everybody Online

Reflecting on last week's post, Chris Brogan noted that some people questioned his journalistic integrity even though he is not a journalist. But what struck me about his post, and the comments that followed, is a lesson learned 12 years ago. What's In A Title?Absolutely nothing.For Chris, maybe he learned it last week (maybe sooner, I don't know). For me, it was while overseeing a statewide literacy benefit. As the...

Thinking Internal: Watson Wyatt Study

Never mind external communication for a minute, think internal too. According to Watson Wyatt, more than one in five companies (23 percent) plan to make layoffs in the next 12 months, with almost two in five (39 percent) reporting that they have already done so. But layoffs aren't the only concern employees have.Hiring freezes also jumped from 30 percent in October to 47 percent this month. Eighteen percent are planning...

Inspiring Approaches: Gauguin To Da Vinci

While there is little doubt that businesses need to approach social media differently than individuals, sometimes the conversational nature of medium distracts from the much more fluid nature of inspiration and pushes a myopic impression of the space that denies the situational reality of communication, innovation, and invention. Great ideas don't just happen from one point of a bell curve; they can spring forth from...

Avoiding Echoes: Beware The Bubble

"My idea is fabulous!""Your idea is fabulous!""He said her idea is fabulous!""She said he said her idea is fabulous!" "See ... they all said my idea is fabulous!"Yes, yes, but what if it's not? What if the idea isn't so fabulous as is often the case in politics, public relations, public perception, and social media? After all, echo chambers sometimes promote the silliest of notions, especially when it starts from its...

Answering Questions: Are Teachers Too Old To Know?

Q: What does a digital native, born close to 1990, need to learn from a digital immigrant who graduated before the IBM PC was launched in the UK, and who wrote magazine articles back in the 1980s about how businesses were adopting a new communications device, the fax machine. — ValrossieA:The capacity for a person to learn, dream, and achieve is not defined or limited by his or her history but rather enhanced by it,...

Blaming Sexes: Bad Research Habits

Researchers at the University of Toronto recently compared the stress levels and physical health problems of men and women working in one of three situations: for a lone male supervisor, a lone female supervisor, or for both a male and female supervisor. The report concluded:• Women working for female bosses reported more psychological distress and physical symptoms than women working for a male boss.• Women reporting to a mixed-gender pair reported more symptoms than their peers who worked for a single male boss.• Men...

Branding America: The Year Of Living Stupid?

It has been four long months since Miss South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, stumbled on the Miss Teen USA question that stated “one-fifth of Americans cannot find the United States on a map.“ Old news? Maybe."I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere...

Smoking Strategies: David Maister

Beginning straightaway with the title of David Maister’s new book, Strategy And The Fat Smoker, he shares the pointed observation that most professionals, especially managers, already know what to do for long-term success (and why to do it), but are too easily swayed by bad habits, short-term temptations, and misaligned measurements.It’s a classic definition of the difference between intelligence and wisdom: smart...

Serving Up Stress: U.S. Employers

Watson Wyatt, an international association of human resource professionals, released a study today that may send shivers down the spines of management: a large majority of companies in the United States and around the world are struggling to attract and retain top-performing and critical-skill workers. The study, which included 946 companies and a complementary survey of 13,000 employees, found that the United States...