Social Media in Israel!
I am Israel this week with a whole set of partners and clients that are amazing!
During my time spent with clients and partners, here's some of the things that I learned that I thought I'd share!
- In Israel, Facebook growing faster than Twitter •2 Million users: 53.8% are men and 46.2% are women •Ages 18-24 = 32.4%; 25-34 = 37.6%, teenagers 14-17 = 18.3% . Interesting that in my Partner roundtable today, the country sentiment is that Twitter isn't understood in value -- I tried to help! Let's see if it worked!
- IBM Israel team did a ** Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn ** only campaign to attract partners to an event here and ended up with over 200 new developers!
- Social Groups. I found a first of its kind! -- Social media conference for Torah-observant people and organizations. Sponsored by Kishor Women’s Professional Networking Group (www.professionaljewishwomen.org) It was spent addressing legal and philosophical issues relating to use of social media as well as internet safety for children & students
- Social Media Networking – Israel – connect via LinkedIn §For developers, technical writers, and users
- Shin1 – most popular social network for Israeli kids (http://www.shin1.co.il)
- Supermom Network (http://jerusalemsupermoms.ning.com)
- Dec 2009: IDF cyber defense strategy -- planning to use social networking -- Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube -- to reach international audiences
Some great and creative work by Isreal on Social Media!
SocialStar Digest: Featuring Liz Albert from Ascendant Technology
In my New Year's resolution, I suggested doing a set of guest bloggers who are experts and users of Social Media in their businesses! I had *Great* response to this idea and have a series of guest bloggers joining me !
The first in my series will be from Ascendant technology, who has a Social Media Practice in their business. Liz Albert, is our first guest blogger, and has some great experience in a small business setting leveraging social media!
1. Ascendent is a leading business partner with IBM. In a few sentences, what's Ascendant's value proposition and mission?
Ascendant Technology (Atech) is the leading provider of end-to-end web-based solutions to enterprises worldwide. We create business agility for organizations through the adoption and implementation of technology, to both increase the speed at which organizations innovate and drive efficiency through this innovation.
We work comprehensively across all five IBM software brands—Lotus, WebSphere, Tivoli, Rational and Information Management—to develop elegant Portal, e-Commerce, and rich Internet applications. Our top-notch business services combine best-in-class subject matter expertise to develop solutions in Strategy Definition & Value Measurement, Requirements and Process Engineering, User Experience Research and Design & Digital Marketing.
With local offices across the U.S. and in Europe, Brazil, and India, Atech is a recognized Premier IBM business partner and has garnered numerous IBM awards such as Best Portal Solution and SOA Innovator Award for the Lotus, WebSphere and Rational brands. Most recently, Atech was recognized as the 2010 North America Lotus Distinguished Award winner.
2. Liz, tell me a little bit about your background in social media?
I have been an avid consumer of all things “social media” for several years, especially since the advent of social networking sites and public online communities. Like many, I started with interest in Myspace. Then Linkedin. Then Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogspot, etc. At one point, I must have been signing up for 3- 4 social media sites every week!
Over the past couple years though, I have noticed a trend in social media advancement, how the tools can now help address particular business needs and what social media truly means in today’s challenging economic environment. It is these applications and uses of social media which will drive the next wave of social media demand and innovation.
3. Interesting. What are your 3 favorite social media tactics that you have executed?
Currently some of my favorite social media tactics include the new and somewhat innovative paths we’ve been taking with our recent Atech marketing campaigns. Throughout 2009, Atech embarked on a path to introduce social media tools to our customers and partners with tactics intended to promote both the activities within Atech but also facilitate solution & methodology launches. My 3 favorites through all our recent campaigns include:
· Expanding social media campaigns to include a more varied form of media (including video and photograph applications) with traditional print and blog campaigns. Perhaps you’ve seen the Southpark videos we’ve created for the various IBM brand conferences in 2009? These campaigns employed the use of YouTube to reach of different type of audience, one that perhaps would not have been familiarized with Atech and IBM solutions had we not “reached” them through this media platform. The success of this tactic has resulted in expanded plans in 2010 to utilize the medium in a much greater fashion, so much so that we’re including a YouTube blog area of the new atech.com website, which is deep in the midst of redesign now.
· Development and promotion of Atech’s own instance of Lotus Connections, hosted on the Amazon Cloud:
http://getsocial.atech.com/
This site was launched at the recent Lotusphere 2010 (#ls10) conference and was also recognized as a finalist for the Best in Showcase solution. As an innovative social media tool, the site is both an example of how easy it is to get up-and-running quickly with IBM Lotus Collaboration software and is designed to provide users an easy point-of-entry to experience the innovative features of the IBM social networking tool. More than just a demonstration of the functionality of Connections on the Cloud, this particular instance is a live, working, full version of Connections for Atech employees, customers and partners. Within this environment, there are various blogs discussing the latest tech and world news of the day, bookmarks to pertinent technical and life resources, and much more information as it relates to Atech and our current path of innovation, which our community of followers can now access in a centralized location.
· Finally, and I’m sure you knew I was going to say this, but Twitter has been a tactic which Atech has found great success through 2009 and will continue to expand upon in 2010. Through lessons learned in 2009, we’ve learned the types of news (both Atech and Tech world in general) our followers find value in being alerted to and what will help to generate additional business for Atech. As I mentioned earlier, Atech.com is undergoing a massive redesign, specially to address the greater need we see for social media marketing tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc. The homepage of the site will now have a live feed of all corporate Atech tweets (@Atech_Speaks), as well as other feeds that include the soon to be introduced hastag #Atech, specifically from myself (@socialmediamvn) and Jim Deters, the King of social media forethought (@yodeets).
4. What do you think are the top 2 trends for future leaders to focus on?
Currently Atech, quite like yourself, is committed to a “Social Media Resolution” strategy for 2010. There are definitely areas within our social media strategy that we need to improve upon to address the growing demands of both consumers and developers. The one trend I can definitely foresee in the very near future which will help us meet these demands is that social media will be simply everywhere. Take a fictional coffee drinker (Stan) for example. While sitting at home, computer in reach and watching a prime time TV show (which happens to have a promotional twitter feed streaming during the telecast) Stan will see a commercial promoting a new fangled type of coffee pot. Stan is encouraged to “Visit a website to learn more,” which he immediately does, as he was engaging in the twitter promotion with other viewers of the TV show he was watching. Once at the site, he sees an embedded YouTube video showing a regular consumer, just like Stan, using the coffee pot of interest. Also on the site, there is a link to purchase the product, which leads to an area with a social tool allowing other consumers to create reviews and product ratings. Some of these reviewers chose to link their facebook and twitter ID’s, which Stan chooses to friend/follow, and so begins a discussion with previously complete strangers to determine the best coffee for Stan’s now purchased coffee pot. Social media will be everywhere and very soon influence every activity we engage in!
5. What didn't I ask you that you think I should have?
The one thing that I’m constantly asked is how I maintain my high-level of involvement with the many social media tools, as it seems like a very time consuming activity. I challenge all who question the applicability and ease of use within social media to find one thing that interests them, be it coffee like “Stan” or new innovations in the world of Mac, and start seeking out information via social media tools for that one topic. Find something that grabs hold of you and learn how easy it is to engage within the many realms of social media to get complete information quickly and easily!
Thanks Sandy! J
Social Snow in NY!
Gang! We have about 17 inches of snow and it is still coming down!
Check this out! My husband is 6 foot 2 inches! Snow covers his knees!
Yes, this is a ROAD! It has been plowed numerous times today!
Robots Begin To Socialize!!!!
From one of my favorites -- Ray Hammond!
A pan-European team of robotics researchers begins a project this year that could see humanoid robots interact with groups of people in a realistic, anthropomorphic way for the first time.
If successful, the project will give future humanoid bots something that existing robots don't possess - the simple social skills necessary to deal with small groups of people, including the basic intelligence to pick out a group of humans and determine which ones want to interact with it. It could also endow robots with the ability to infer meaning from incoming sense data, which would be a rudimentary step towards truly anthropomorphic robot intelligence.
Virtual gifting -- researching it!
I am intrigued by virtual gifting ever since I went to a Social Media conference that was housed with an online dating conference. Yes, I know an interesting combo! But as I walked through their solution conference, I found some interesting items!
First, let's start at the beginning. Per Wikipedia, a virtual gift is a picture of an item, instead of the item itself. The item may have a digital social capital value, esthetic or functional value. The item may or may not be paired with an offline equivalent.
This HEX necklace was the first virtual gift that I created for an IBM event....it is a HEX necklace!
Second, people love them! 57 % believe virtual gifting is as meaningful as real life gifting. WOW!
Third, it drives money. It is about 10% of Facebook's revenue from the beginning in 2007. (Couldn't find any new factoids!)
Fourth, I want to see what you guys think about virtual gifting. Are you using it? See below what we created for my team mates below.
Steel Magnolias!
Gang:
I had a great opportunity to present Social Media & Personal Branding at University of North Carolina. Yes, I am a southern woman -- loving my sweetened ice tea and the hospitality!!
The day before the event, I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of Steel Magnolias -- strong business women and professors of North Carolina. It was an amazing lesson in networking in person with amazing women!
More than one-third (36%) of online US and Canadian women would give up chocolate, their Pradas, or their mother-in-law before they gave up their social networks! 53% of online women use social networks at least weekly. These women were savy business leaders making their mark on the world -- and understanding the new world enough to drive their growth in the new world.
Here we are in the Hyde Hall, a great building, on campus!
On the next day, I presented to a great group of students and professors on Personal Branding! There were lots of great questions and I am still amazed at how much can be done with social media and branding!
Let me know if I can help out your university !
How did they know that?
I was on our monthly Social Business lunch n learn today and received a great question.
The question was " I tweeted about silent auctions and immediately was approached by many silent auction vendors on software, thoughts, points of views, etc. How did that happen?"
Well, smart users of Twitter will have set up a tool like TweetDeck flagging key search words. Then you can immediately see who is talking about subjects that are exciting to you. It is so valueable to find those interested in your topic.
What are your best tips?
Avatar and 3D -- The 3D's of observation
How many of you have seen Avatar?
What's amazing to me about that movie is the technology and the 3D experience. It impacted me so much I decided to sit down and really think about how it will impact the future of our social businesses.
I came up with 3 Ds of impact! Data, Desire, and Domain Eminence!
1) Data Overload Savior?! Since we are all in data overload, 3D can help make us more action oriented! For instance, Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany’s national railway uses visualization software to create information-rich user displays for its new train dispatching application, resulting in improved speed and accuracy of decision-making and reduced staff training time to use the dispatching system to “almost zero” from 5 to 8 days per user, according to DB Systems management.
By visualizing the data, making it come alive, the teams could focus on acting on the data, not trying to sort through data. A great direction to head!
2) Desire. Techcrunch declared Avatar the iphone app for movies!So true, now that you've seen this movie, who wants to see a movie that's not 3D? This movie teases you with the potential of what is to come.
I now want to see my Twitter IDs in 3D and collaborate in 3d!. See this Youtube video on how it might look -- just a start!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBfnUPgkfBk]
3) Domain Eminence!
And then I have personally experienced 3D power with the game that we are using to showcase our technology education!
I have to show it to you! What do you think? It has a 80% higher recall through 3D education !
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3tJ4c0JVq0]
I'd love your thoughts. Are you seeing the impact of 3D today? What do you see for tomorrow?
3 Proof Points that Social Media HAS gone mainstream. Check out this .....
As I was thinking about social media in 2010, I believe a different thought process because Social media is NOW mainstream! My proof?
Everyone is doing it, speaking it, and mobilizing it!
Here are the big 3 I read over the holiday!
1) Top 100 Companies "doing" social media! I love this article on Social Media ratings for companies around their Social media saviness. This means that Social Media has now become mainstream. Check out the who whose list of those who are leveraging Social Media.
Is there anyone off the list on the Fortune 500? Well, a few, the biggest Exxon, Chevron, GE,
http://mashable.com/2010/01/04/most-buzzed-about-brand/
I love this survey too! According to a survey from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), BtoB Magazine and ‘mktg’, despite continuing concerns about measuring ROI and effectiveness, two-thirds of marketers have used social media in 2009 and half have used viral videos, making these two formats the fastest-growing tactics in marketing!!!
2) Social Media Terms go mainstream! When even my dad says, you've been tweeting a lot lately, you know something is happening!
I went to see if this was just "my family" or broader. Check this research out -- already "unfriend" and "hashtag" have made the dictionaries as common terms! The world is changing!
http://www.pcworld.com/article/185729/social_network_terms_go_mainstream.html
Some examples include:
Words of the Year 2009
Tweetup - noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP].
Hashtag - noun: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets.
Tag cloud - noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.
Slashdot effect - noun: the slowing down or crashing of a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.
Unfriend/defriend - verb: to remove from one's 'friends' list (e.g. on a social networking website).
3) Mobile is main stream and everything hot is on mobile -- over 50% of B2C marketers are using Social media on Mobile!
While mobile is used by 32 percent of overall marketers, it is three times more likely to be used by B2C versus B2B marketers (52% vs. 18%).
Social Media is mainstream!!!!