The POWER of Social drives Good. Check out how teens are leveraging it! #socbiz #ls12

I love good stories and giving back to the community.  With Social, the world is a whole new place!

This story came to me from one of the IBMers on my team.   His daughter  (KellyLogan)  and her friends launched a similar social campaign to the one used to connect and enlist the support of Justin Bieber (driving organ donor awareness).  Helene Campbell and her circle of friends shot a video which was sent to Ellen Degeneres using a variety of social media modes.

A Social Blitz begun last Thursday.

 As I understand it Ellen Degeneres reached out yesterday to Helene Campbell and her story will be seen / heard today on the The Ellen show (10 ET).   See the show here!    http://tinyurl.com/7r7pq7p

The likelihood of this occurring without harnessing the power of social media is next to nil. With Ellen's intervention and involvement we expect to see a strong spike in organ donor registry. Each donor's organs can save up to 8 lives and impact up to another 75 lives with 'quality of life' enhancing tissue donations. There was a 600% spike in organ donor registry following Justin Bieber's retweet of support to his 16.5M followers (linking them to Helene's video, her alungstory.ca blog and the "Be A Donor" application form).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rva7fU_zRys


Simple Social Facts! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm #ls12

I was reviewing many studies tonight on Social progress and thought these factoids were thought provoking!

  • 72% of businesses repot that they are deploying at least one social technology!  WOW!
  • Social networking is now 22% of all time online, 1 of every 4.5 minutes
  • Smartphone shipments will outcome PCs by 2012
  • Latin America, the Middle East, and China are now spending more time on social networking than email
  • Globally, the total minutes spent on social networks monthly grew more than 100% over the same time last year!
  • 9 of 10 business using Web 2.0 technology see measurable business benefits from its use
  • In 5 years, 89% of current global population will have a mobile device
  • The world spends more than 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites per month!

 


Social Business Lessons for Valentine's Day!!! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm

Valentine's day is all about special relationships!  With 1 in 5 marriages beginning online, social helps in relationships -- both personal and professionally.

Since social tools are relationship builders, while we celebrate Valentine's Day, I'd like to share best practices for connecting and building relationships!

1.   Listen.  Make sure you have social listening tools in place to listen to what people are saying to your company, about your company, and around your category.  To me, this is the most important thing in any relationship, online or offline, is to spend more time listening and understanding that speaking!

2.  Develop Business Relationships.   Focus on trust and adding value to your business relationships online.   I know you've heard quality over quantity but it is very important.   Don't try to have too many relationships that are sparse but deep relationships where you can showcase your value.   The most influence is usually not those with the most friends but those with the deepest relationships that are true.

3.  Be a whole person.    Yes, you don't want to tweet that you went to get a coffee, but you do want to share some of your personal likes as well.  Afterall, the world has moved beyound B2B, and B2C, but is not on P2P -->  People to People.   For instance, I blogged once on my favorite foods,  spurred on with sporting events like the SuperBowl, and shared my preferences in the Grammies!   This is all part of building a relationship!

4.  Accept and Manage Risk.  You cannot trust everyone, but where you invest your time, you must trust others.  Just manage the risk of sharing information in the way appropriate with your company's policies.   And make sure you know that this is about friends of friends too!   So the information will spread!  Be smart when you share!

5.   Balance in person and online.  You know I think relationships are strongest when you have met in person.   That personal touch should not be lost.   For instance, I just traveled to Europe and received a thank you note - not tweet.  I loved it!  I loved the tweetup where I got to meet my followers and those I follow!   Balance the two!

Now before Valentine's Day is over, go out and let your friends know how special they are!! 

Sandy

 


Monday's Social Business Coffee Break! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm #ls12 #ibmconnect

I am very excited about today's coffee break as it showcases the reasons why companies become Social Businesses.

IT is from IBM's Trend Report on Cloud, Social and Mobile.   Take a listen!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0IriWOh8LI&feature=youtu.be]


I love ICELAND and Nyherj! GREAT Social Usage! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm #ibmpartner

Team:  I just spend a day with our IBM Partner Nyherj and learned alot about Iceland and its Social Excellence!  The Nyherji team is an outstanding user of Social and value creator with clients in Iceland!

Iceland rocks social!   For instance, did you know:

  1. The Iceland Constitution was reworked using Social Communities!
  • 4 - month constitutional process
  • 25 - person council elected by popular vote
  • Sought comments/dialogue on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, flickr
  • Gathered 1600+ ideas on council website
  • Constitution submitted to Parliament on July 29, 2011

After Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008, the island nation decided it was time to write a new constitution. Iceland’s small population of 320,000 elected 25 assembly members from 522 ordinary candidates (including lawyers, political science professors, journalists, and many other professions), who in turn opened their process up to the public in an unprecedented example of crowdsourcing.  The Council was given less than four months to create a draft of the constitution before it was to be presented to the Icelandic Parliament. The Constitutional Council was highly active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, where they solicited comments and suggestions for the new government. The committee's website (www.stjornlagarad.is, also quickly became an incubator for comments, with more than 1,600 propositions and comments on the suggested text.  On Friday July 29th, 2011, the Iceland parliament officially received the new constitution.

2.  Pariliament members like Siv Fridleifsdottier have embraced social for their citizens.   www.siv.is

And there is more to come!!!   I met with Ari Kristinn Jonsson, President of Reykjavik University, and over 100 attendees on Social Business.    Ari has innovative university programs focusing on entrepreneurial endeavors. I met one of his past new CEOs who is focused on Social Gamification!    Very impressive!

I loved Iceland, the people, the country, and the passion for Social!  Iceland is ranked number 3 in the world for the percentage of population using Facebook and Icelanders have most Facebook friends;  The AVERAGE number of friends each Facebook user in Iceland has is 290 friends. That is number one on the world, according to Facebook, and more than double the world average.

I hope I have gained a whole new set of friends there as well!


Social Media Week in NYC! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm

 Social Media Week (link: http://socialmediaweek.org) is just around the corner from February 13th to 17th. Social Media Week is not a single event, it is actually a series of interconnected activities and conversations around the world on emerging trends in social and mobile media across industries. We hope you can join one of the three great events that IBM will be participating on both the East and West coasts.

How should you participate?!

  • New York City: Wednesday February 15 9AM-11AM at Birch Coffee for a Social Business Coffee Break. Learn about the Social Business Agenda.
  • New York City: Wednesday, February 15 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM in the Business & Innovation Content Hub at Bloomberg. Learn about Adoption of Social Business
  • San Francisco: Tuesday February 14 from 9:00-9:50AM at Razorfish's office – Rod Smith followed by 10:00AM – 7:30PM featuring: Big Data and Social, Social insight shoot out, Watch what I do, not what I say (Social Analytics), IBM Social Tools, and Show me the money!

If you can't join us in person, you can still join into the conversation on Social Business throughout Social Media Week by using the hashtag, #IBMSocialbiz and then following along with the conversation on our Social Business Social Media Aggregator (link to https://www.ibm.com/social/aggregator/socialbusiness). I hope to connect with you online!


IBM Inside Sales Rocks! Ireland crazy about #socbiz! #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

 

I am in Ireland for 2 days with our great IBM Inside Sales team!  And what did I learn?  Ireland is crazy about social networking!  Take a read of this survey!

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0722/1224301110715.html

I recently read this article in Irish Times about recent surveys on social media in Ireland and found some interesting points. The two surveys referenced are the EU’s Eurobarometer, which incorporates data on the perceptions of various European populations on social networking and privacy and a survey by Regus, an international workplace solution provider, which gives perspective on business attitudes toward social networking.

Each survey highlighted interesting facts such as Ireland’s internet users are the 4th heavies users of social in Europe with 68% of internet users using social tools. The heaviest users are in Hungary (80 per cent), Latvia (73 per cent), and Malta (71 per cent). Poland, Denmark and Slovakia also rank among the heavier users.

It was also noted that some 44 per cent of Irish companies are also using such tools to acquire new customers, a rise of 4 per cent on a similar survey last year by Regus.

There are other interesting facts but bottom line the Irish are using social tools!

Ireland is the 3rd largest user of LinkedIn

Wow, according to comscore, Ireland is the 2nd largest user of LinkedIn even ahead of the United States! Netherlands is #1 with 26.15 penetration followed by Ireland with 21% penetration with the United States in 3rd with 17.6%. This is significant for business networkers, recruiters and job seekers. For example, if you want to recruit an IT professional or Sales professional in Ireland then you now have proof that these people DO exist on LinkedIn!


Social Business Coffee Break - How do you deal with Regulatory Items? #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibm

Here is our latest Monday Social Business Coffee Break!  Take a few moments, grab a coffee, and learn about managing Social in a regulatory environment.    Comment on your solutions or challenges!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD196O7qCE0&feature=youtu.be]


Does Social Networking Change the Game in Ethics? #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ls12

The Ethics Resource Center released its latest National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) <http://bit.ly/ERCnbes>, which takes an in-depth look at the shifts in ethical behavior within the workplace, with a specific focus on how social networkers are changing the game.  In fact, the report reveals a surprising and worrisome divide in ethical workplace experiences between employees who spend substantial time on social networks, and those who do not.
 
Key Social Media Findings:
* Active social networkers spend at least 30 percent of their work day on social networking activities. Approximately 11% of employees who engage in social networking are “active.”
* Active social networkers are far more likely to experience pressure to compromise standards (42 percent vs. 11 percent) and to experience retaliation for reporting misconduct (56 percent vs. 18 percent) than co-workers who are less involved with social networking.
* However, active social networkers are also more likely to report lapses in corporate ethics.
* Active users of social networks are much more likely than non-networking colleagues to accept behaviors that have traditionally been considered to be “questionable” or marginal behaviors (e.g., keeping copies of confidential work documents for use in a future job, personal use of the company credit card, taking home company software).
* Many active social networkers indicated a willingness to publicly share less than flattering information about their workplace and colleagues.


Social Analytics for Taking Decisive Action! #ibmsocialbiz #ibm #socbiz

There is a GREAT partner solution for Social Listening for action!  Our partner, HMS Technologies is getting BOLD by making this available today as a Cloud based service.    

They developed TACTweet to allow users to enter in key words or phrases to monitor, and see what is being said about their company, their prime leaders, their products and their competition.  It is a powerful force multiplier in gaining sales and marketing intelligence to get the competitive advantage.  Companies can no longer ignore social business and TACTweet is a prime example of how IBM and its business partners are delivering innovative social business tools.  

What is “TACTweet”?

TACTweet is a real time social network monitoring and analytics application built on WebSphere Portal and offered as a cloud service.   It is a social media dashboard that enables users to peer into the social sales and marketing business spectrum in real time. TACtweet pulls social data from a myriad of sources to include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, 4Square, etc. It allows users to understand what is being said and about what. 

 

 

TACTweet also includes real time language translation of non English social data using Google Translate Widgets or the Linguasys Translate application.  TACTweet allows a user to search for social content within a specific geographic area.  (For example, only search for "Coach Handbags Sales" within a 100 mile radius around downtown Manhattan).  TACTweet geo-locates the exact location of a tweet on a map.  Additionally, TACTweet has been integrated with i2's Analyst Notebook, a recent IBM acquisition.

It is estimated that over 500+ organizations use TACTweet today for monitoring the social spectrum.  TODAY,  TACTweet will become a cloud for fee service through the HMS Technologies Corporation. A Smarter Social Business App.

To see HMS's system, go to  www.tactweet.net or download a whitepaper of how TACTweet is being used by law enforcement through IBM Connections at https://w3-connections.ibm.com/files/app?lang=en_US#/file/e0379d75-a3af-4b24-b146-e361fc3504cc!

GET BOLD ! Whats your social business agenda?