Google to use Twitter Posts in their Standard Search! Woot!
Google is planning to soon return Twitter posts in their standard search results. This will have HUGE implications for companies! It sounds like from Google's announcement that they will sift and sort years worth of previous twitter posts into search results related to keyword searches.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900052&subSection=News
(Note that the twitter announcement is at the bottom of the article.)
Talking to Dave McCoy at Gartner it seems that the more important announcement rather than the general social media search returns mentioned because the social media returns require that a searcher have a Google account and profile, be logged in, and have a previous database of searchable social content that is connected with their Google’s contacts list. Since twitter posts are essentially a public microblog, they won’t require these prerequisites in order to show up in the returns.
Faberge and the Inner Sanctum!
I am here in Europe for a few sessions with Partners! One of the funniest ones was with Louise Grey, the CEO of MVM on a luxury goods, personalization and social media panel. I spoke on the panel using our IBM customer, Faberge, as an example.
Our Story! Faberge is a boutique that designs and sells one of a kind works of art and jewellery. The company wanted to revitalize their business model, establish itself as a premiere world luxury brand, and define an online approach to selling its high-value luxury items that avoided the usual mass market, self service format of the web. Their aim was to make the experience truly interactive by providing each client with a real life personal sales advisor as they would find in a traditional, high end boutique. The new site would also become the hub around which all client interactions would be constructed, thereby providing global reach and accessibility without the constraints or cost of a physical store network.
The key was to free the client to choose how, where and when they purchase. With the new on-line experience, Faberge creates the impression of depth: of a multitude of shops and products accessible to their connoisseur clients, backed with the quality of 1:1 VIP experience found in a private salon.
Experience from our Visioning Session! The online experience delivered by IBM translates the key elements of the traditional high end luxury good shopping process into an online paradigm that reflects traditional VIP private selling methods based on highly interactive and personal service. Prospective clients are required to pass through a filtering process in order to access the exclusive ‘inner sanctum’ where they can explore and interact with Faberge products. As the customer builds trust and explores, more of the product catalogue is progressively revealed. Access to a personal agent is provided, avoiding mass market self service, and at the client’s discretion, can conduct a unique interactive dialogue via the medium of the web and assist by pushing items to the client’s browser and exploring them with the client. The result is multi-layered access, detail and exploration -Initial access to all via website. Access to inner sanctum is via agent enablement, inivitation or mentor recommendation.
Trust Builds! As the customer explores or returns to the site, rules unlock further elements making it a constantly developing experience -Agent may remotely(off line) or interactively expose further elements of the catalogue for a customer at any time and determine if they are VIP. VIP status is progressivey earned or can be given by agent. Pretty impressive and innovative use of social tools to match the company's goals.
Launch in Sept 2009! The launch of Faberge’s site was a huge success, giving clients wishing to purchase their own personal sales advisor who provides a live 1:1 interactive sales service via video, telephone or live conversation text. The interactive platform model allows continuing development and the addition of further capabilities. These include the ability to involve other parties in the on line interaction and ensure the collection can be refreshed with new pieces.
Serious Gaming goes to the next level in Social Media!
Innov8 as a social media training element is really taking off at universities and business too! Here are the latest in the university area!
At San Jose State, students are leveraging social media game, INNOV8:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj-tU2LJ4rY]
USC is now using INNOV8 as part of their core curriculum- training 700 business school students this semester alone!!!
We are not alone! Intel teamed with Buddy Media
Project: InTru 3D application for Facebook
Goal: Generate awareness of Intel’s new cinematic 3D technology. You create an avatar, play the game and earn points to upgrade. You can invite your friends in Facebook to participate (share the message)!
What are you doing in gaming? I'd love to see case studies of other gaming usees.
Social Media -- Lethal Generosity ? Your thoughts?
I just read this very interesting article on lethal generosity!
"Lethal generosity," is the concept that the most generous members of any social media company are the most credible and influential and as such, they can compete more effectively!
In short, the company whose representative posts the most tips, links, advice, case studies, best practices that followers find useful will always rises to the top, not just in influence but also in search results."
This is exactly what we observe in open source communities.... the communities that 'scratch the most itches' win. Hibernate is a good example of a project with GOOD social traction. OpenJPA is technically strong, but the project has very limited social traction. The open source projects that attract just a few passionate subject matter experts who like to talk/blog/tweet are generally much more successful than the others.
So relating this to your business and mine! Every single time a question is answered about your product, the original problem/question and the answer needs to be findable (via google, twitter, or...). No exceptions.
There is too much good information get lost inside internal email chains. Although the customer is made whole, but the experience only lives in archived internal emails and in participants heads.
You need to start thinking about you get your best information to the public!
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/using-lethal-ge.html
A new type of community! Introducing BlueWorks!
Communities and social networks are being used more and more by companies to assist their clients on targetted areas.
Yesterday, we continued our work in Social media focusing on a community experience (based on our technology and Cloud) for business users working with their processes.
BlueWorks delivers a community to business users with a set of tools that showcase industry content of best practice processes. For instance, what is the best practice process for opening a new account or gift registry.
Business leaders can begin capturing their strategic intent and link it to their capabilities to ensure that they have the key resources within their organization.
One of the keys to a great community is value that is brought to them. It is The key thing is that there are over 2000 helpful items for the community from papers, podcasts, webcasts, demos, capability maps, and process maps. One of the most value one is over 800 Key Performance Indictors from the industry standard body called AQPC.
Try it out! Tell me what you think!
https://apps.lotuslive.com/bpmblueworks/
Update on Gaming in the Social World!
We talked about using gaming to train and drive demand in the new world.
Web Traffic/Metrics
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Traffic has doubled since May! Thousands are playing per week
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>75% avg clickthrough of eNurture emails (avg in industry is 25%)
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Over 3.5M gamers used the Proactive LivePerson chat offering more information from the game on our products -- an 4000% & uptick in the use of the tool.
Usage Beyond Web
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Our Serious Game is now in Widespread use in our Briefing Centers Worldwide
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Innov8 2.0 is featured in our lobbies
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We also have heavy standalone usage by our enablement teams in many geos
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Many of our events feature a Gaming Competition!
I am sold on Serious Gaming. What are your thoughts?
We wanted to take the serious game and take it outside the web as well.
BlogHer - My Top 10 as a First Timer!
My first time at BlogHer!
I had the great pleasure to attend BlogHer for the first time this year. How did I get to attend? A perfect storm really. 3 things happened that allowed me to attend: first, a customer had asked me to support them in their session and to talk about how my book on social media helped them with their strategy, second, I spoke with Charlene Li at the WITI conference and she knew the founders and secured me a ticket and then finally, I was asked to speak on how to leverage social media as the only real IBM presence at the conference.
So what is BlogHer?
I pulled this from the BlogHer site. It was founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone. BlogHer’s mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online and creates opportunities for its members via a community hub (http://blogher.com), annual conferences and a publishing network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency
The Top 10 Ah Ha's
1. The Business BlogHer had a lot of great case studies. While not sold out on the business side, I found the case studies innovative and best practices. I have blogged on the specific case studies that I heard ... Allstate, Tropicana, Pepsi, Sprint, Coach and many others.
2. Lots of Geek Labs - Hands on! I love the hands on labs. You could set up a new blog here with step by step instructions to learning HTML and PHP.
3. Networking The conference was setup to network. They did speeddating in a new and innovative way, and arranged the sessions and breaks to stimulate discussion.
4. Community keynote I attend a lot of corporate events and shows. Usually the keynoter is the CEO or GM in charge of the work. While powerful, I have not experienced a more moving and powerful keynote that BlogHer did on Friday night. It was a community keynote where bloggers were selected to read their blog entries. It was amazing. I am glad someone who had been here before told me to make sure I didn't miss it!
5. Swag. Again, going to CeBit or GiTex is an experience and everyone gives away their toys. But I have never seen the swag that was at BlogHer. From products, to free services on site, to designer scarfs, and vendors printers, servers, and phones. If you come, be prepared. This shows me that the vendors view this show as an important way to reach the tippers. One of our competitors was here for Small Business and I saw the bump in blogs on their products in the GB space go up 3x over the last 3 days.
6. Panels. Most of the sessions here were in a set of tracks on Geek Labs, Business, Leadership, Room of your own, Identity and Passions. But most of the sessions were panels. If you don't learn this way, it may not be the way for you!
7. Q&A's are LONG! Another culture here at BlogHer is to learn from a Q&A session. The sessions here are meant for learning not gaining exposure. I would say that in the sessions over 1/2 the time was spent answering questions from the audience.
8. Amazing Women in New Media. The BlogHer team brought out the stars. From Lisa Stone to GM of CBS, to Donna Bryne, etc. This is the place for the new adventurers in the social media world!
9. Purpose I was truly impressed by the purpose that I felt from all these women and men. These guys, while looking to monetize, are truly dedicated to their mission. I heard about blogs on the homeless, soberity, raising disabled kids, traveling, shyness, and the list goes on. Everyone I met loved what they blogged on. A great lesson in you do more of what you love -- for employers getting people into the right roles.
10. Fun I loved it. It was energeric, and fun. It energized me and showed me that one with a purpose can accomplish more than you can imagine! There were over 1999 parties. That's right.. suites to teach photography, small busines skills, word of mouth marketing, silk screening, etc.
Next Year:
Next year the conference will be in NYC in August. Will I go? Absolutely.
The Future - Generation C
This is the future. Everything is going online. 53% of women WW are online. Generation C -- which I have defined as the next generation who wants to co create, collaboration, and use their creavitiy. They are going to be around for a while. Join the exploration and see what works for you!
BlogHer Keynote -- A Group of Self Taught Geeks who are doing amazing things!
The keynote kicked off in Chicago with an amazing group of women! BlogHer was totally sold out! In today's world of travel cut backs, and reduced expenses this is amazing to see over 2K women!
Some of the key points:
- Women are the majority of internet usage now - 53%
- Women who are on the internet trust the internet information more than other sources
- Women Online - Frugalistas and Hard News Junkies. The tops are those on frugal shopping and politics (the Obama/Clinton campaign took the number of women politics blogs went from 300 to over 2000!)
- Strongest social users are those who blog.
- The Economist - The Story of Women Online! Lisa discussed her decision to leave CNN and start BlogHer. An amazing insightful decision!
- BlogHer is about the people! Velveteen Mind
There are multiple tracks!!!
Business of blogging, Geek Labs, Leadership, Passions, and room of your own! Oh, also the Mommy bloggers too.
Every major company is here.....Microsoft, HP, Sprint, etc.
Coach -- Crowd Sourcing with Social Media - Know of anyother great examples?
The Coach team crowd sourced its product development of a Tote while holding onto to their brand. I heard from Vanessa Flaherty, Jamie Dicken, and Stephanie Rohlfs on Coach at BlogHer!
A Simple, crowd sourced campaign.
Coach wanted to reach a new and younger market. They wanted to engage the younger generation in a new way. They wanted the consumer to put their DNA onto the next bag. They launch a "design the next Coach tote" contest. It was a completely viral campaign. They received 3200 entries in less than 6 weeks.
People were spending the whole night on designing bags. They replaced focus groups with the natural language. They were about the distribution not the destination. They wanted everyone to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. It traveled across 8000 URLs in 6 weeks.
BrickFish's Viral Map:
Key bloggers wrote about the contest. There were over 30 blogs that constantly commented on it . The image was that Coach Cared about what their clients wanted. Brickfish Tracked a viral map of each entry and where all the interactions happened with the brand.
They generated over 6M customer images over 6 weeks! On average people spent 7 minutes on the site and each person influenced over 1,729 people with the viralness of the campaign.
Coach was brave in the way they allowed people interacted with the brand. They ended up on the front page of Google.
They sold out this bag in all stores (small runs!) and the designer's name is inside the bag itself!
Is this long lasting?
Is this novelty or long lasting? I think that people like to co create. We are now in the Generation C world. Generation C is different than the baby boomers, and gen x. Generation C wants to co create, collaborate, etc. I think this will become more important important in fact, perhaps being the primary form of product development.Others doing this?
Do you know of other co creation case studies?
- IBM with development of its WebSphere sMash product.
- NFL football on their advertising.
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aDiasas on their viral campaign with University students
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WD40 on their work on a product for women.
Check it out here!
http://www.brickfish.com/fashion/Coach?tab=overview
BlogHer -- Fiskar's Use of Fiskateers!!! Great social networking case study!
Fiskars! 360 year old brad is the second case study at BlogHer. Three talented women spoke: Angela Daniels,
Carrie Woodward, and Suzanne Fanning
How did social media start at Fiskars? They started with what do people think of when they think of the brand Fiskars. They wanted to build an emotional bond with Fiskars.
They decided to go after the passion about scrapebooking and sharing their lives. Fiskars used Brains on Fire to find 5 people that are passionate about scrapebooking. It was kind of like like American Idol!
They found 5 top women and brought them up to Fiskar to teach them about Fiskar's products. They met with all the key folks there and they were able to "play" with the materials for scraping! We got to see our business through their eyes. These women were so excited to see the building, the development, and it was that moment of seeing their excitement that I knew we had done the right thing!
Now, they paid their advocates because of the amount of time they would spend on this project of blogging about the Fiskars products. They paid them for 20 hours, but they loved it so much they did more than 80 hours. They were clear in their disclosure on the blog itself. They are not paid to positively blog about the company. They are paid to plan contests, crafts, and projects.
Interesting point to this case study. They created Fiskar- Teers! They gave these cool and different scissors -- so that even when someone didn't want to talk about the Social Network and Blogs on Fiskar, people would ask...where did you get those scissors? (Note over 60K comments about the coolness of the scissors!!)
The Fiskateer site launched in 2006! They wanted 200 people to talk about their products. They had 200 within the first 24 hours. 1100 by the end of 2006 and today they have over 6417 active Fiskateers -- 70 countries and all 50 States!!!
Gallery of pictures gets 11K comments, and 7K uploads of pictures of the work itself.
Fiskar increased their brand image a lot! 600x mentions in other sites outside their own site!!! WOW!
Fiskar started this as a PR action. However, now they use the information in product development, marketing, and service and support.
Another great case study! Stores that had Fiskar participants had 3x the sales for the company!!
They are using as well in some of their other areas. Examples included teacher community but not a special group.
Their best advice...they did this from the grassroots effort. They did a countdown to the FiskarTeer launch! They had 24K visits in the first day! What did they do to get people there? They did a grass roots effort. They reached out to those who were excited about their program.