Japan Releases Get Bold with Social Business in Japanese! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #socialbusiness #ibmconnect

At IBM Connect 2013, the Japan Team released the Get Bold in Japanese!

A group of 50 clients and business partners showed up for our book reading and session!

Take a peek!

japan book signing 2


What's your Duck? The Power of a Brand in the Twitter Stream #peabody #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz #ibmconnect

Once upon a time, there was a world where social reigned  and where a teacher extraordinaire visited.  His name was Jeffrey Gitomer and he constantly declared simple points in a powerful way.   Then one day at Connect 2013 a magical thing happened.   At the Disney Complex , Jeffrey Gitomer reminded me about the wonder of the ducks at the Peabody Hotel.

So I tweeted about it ... "What's your duck?"   meaning what's your brand like Peabody has done with the Duck!

Don't know the story?   For over 80 years, in 3 hotels throughout the US, they have branded themselves with the ducks that march from their "palace" down an elevator to a "lobby pond" and back out again daily!   People from around the world have their ducks on their desk and on the tubs!  (See mine!)

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Now after I tweeted comes the magic.

I was "engaged" by the Peabody in Orlando.  The 'people' aka Kate, tweeted me personal messages and invited me to come for a behind the scenes tour.

ducks 001
Of course i said yes as I was already going to take my kids that night!  Now, there were non believers with me. They said "that's an automated message" and "there's nothing special about that!"  until we arrived and as directed in the Tweet went to visit Donald the Duckmaster.

Now a Duckmaster leads the ducks in and out.   He is magical.  I came up to him to ask about the behind the scenes tour and -- wait for it -- he knew my name, my twitter profile,, and my social graph that linked to his!!!   (He used to be the AT&T account manager on the IBM account a few years before.  Now retired, he joined the Duckmasters!)

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He invited me to be an honorary duck master for the night (my daughter said "Mom you are the coolest mom in the world").  As I marched behind the ducks to the Duck palace, I thought about the power of the people .. the power of the duck .. all linked to social.

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My conclusions:

  • The Peabody is a hip hotel with the right level of social engagement.  Kate rocked it by being personal, and meeting me in the person as well!
  • The Duck is going Social!  They know live not only in the pond, but in the twitter stream and blogosphere.   It is powerful.    You do need a duck.  What is yours?
  • The Peabody listened and responded.  And they knew my social graph.  Do you know your influencers Social Graph?  Do you know who your influencers are/
  • The Peabody demonstrated that the next generation of organizational productivity is based on unleashing the power of people.   It's about leadership.   Culture.   Trust.  Transparency.

So, I end where I began.  What's your Duck?   Do you engage?  The Peabody did.  I did.  And as a Result I am now an official Duck Master!  And the coolest mom in the world!

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Thanks to:

Kate Thomas, Sherri Wallen,  Tatum Jay Delia , and Donald Tompkins


Social Business Adoption Top 10: #2 - Create a customized experience #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibmconnect

We began a journey of the Top 10 best Social Business Adoption Practices!

Here is best practice #2 -- Customizing the experiences!  The experience is part of helping people to learn to work differently.  It appeals to the person to help them be more productive and efficient -- in essence , it helps them work the way they want to work!

I'd love to hear your comments on this adoption best practice!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So3-Y9Xd2lY&feature=youtu.be]


A new type of community! Introducing BlueWorks!

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/

 


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!

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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.
  • aDiasas on their viral campaign with University students
  • WD40 on their work on a product for women.

Check it out here!

http://www.brickfish.com/fashion/Coach?tab=overview


Did you know? Featured in WITI Keynote Tomorrow -- Social Media Statistics!

In preparing for this week's WITI keynote, I found some great factoids!

First, over 1/5th of the world’s population are online - that's over 1.2B people. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet! WOW!

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest population.
45% of Facebook’s audience is now 26 or older, with women over 55 the fastest growing group!

Between February 2008 and May 2009, the Twitter community grew by over 4,000% to an estimated 20 million+ users. In December 2008, over 14 billion web videos were viewed by 150 million online Americans, an increase of 13% over November ‘08!

People with more than twenty connections on LinkedIn are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.

All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees!

Send me your factoids!!!


Mini Case #2: Personal Branding in a Social Media

Personal Branding and Networking with Social Media:

One of the top issues that I see as I mentor a folks is in how they network. I started thinking about how my networking as changed, blending the in person with the online. Interesting note, from IDC study, more women than men use social media and networking for work and personal but from Time, 63% of Twitter users are male!! Interesting -- another blog on that later!!

I considered some examples on Networking through social meida to learn from what others do.

 Some Examples:

  • David Armano, creator of the Logic + Emotion blog, last week used Twitter to raise almost $15,000 within 24 hours for a friend in need. To me this story showed the power of his social currency through his social media connections
  • Jeremiah Owyang uses multiple tools to network with a set of social media thought leaders. This networking allowed him to use those contacts to do an inperson meeting in Silicon Valley to see what the next steps needed to be in this space with a set of vendors and brands that may never had gotten together in the past.    http://twitter.com/jowyang
  • Peter Shankman has used social media to form a network of reporters who need help, and a network of those of us who are willing to help the reporters out with questions. It is a great service that allows him to increase his network. Check it out! http://www.shankman.com
  • Jennifer Leggio posted an article about how folks are using Social Media to find jobs!   http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=374
  • Support groups done through social media!   http://collective-thoughts.com/2009/01/13/using-social-media-as-a-support-group/
    • Top 10 for your Personal Brand and Social Media!

      1. Determine what personal brand is! Make sure your avatar, blog, words reflect that personal brand.
      2. Listen first. Use a set of listening tools to understand the area of domain of your personal brand. Follow the social media leaders in those domains whether that is Tim O'Reilly on technology or Obama on politics (he is no longer active! Disappointing!) For instance, the most popular technology blog is TechCrunch as of January 2009. If you are a technologist, this would be one to keep your eye on. If you are a dog lover, perhaps it is http://www.dogster.com/
      3. Determine your personel wheel of influence. Know who will personally be your tippers in influencing your brand. I recommended in my book on Marketing 2.0 to develop your Personal Wheel of Influence.
      4. Select your Tool Of Choice! Get started online based on your interest in the tool for you. You must be active, so to be active, you need to love the interactions! There are over 150M active users on Facebook in over 170 countries. Is your tool of choice MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook or all of the above!
      5. Be interesting and relevant- open up on who you are! Always ask is what I am doing right now online consistent with what I want my personal brand to be.  To show relevance you really must keep up on the conversation.   In my last seminar, people asked how much time I spend on blogging, twittering, etc. What I do is to book time on the calendar to read and explore, and then twitter and blog throughout the day. Because I love it, I keep up even on the weekends!
      6. Be Bold. Ask people to follow your blog or your tweets. From a set of Social Media stats, the number of followers for a active twitterer is 86,000!!! Also drive your awareness by using the tools like Google reader, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Del.icio.us.
      7. Dialogue! Comment on other's blogs, tweets, The better your comments are, the better you domain and skills will be demonstrated, opening up networking opportunities.
      8. Think about others. My grandfather always told me "do unto others what you'd have them do to you" so thank those who help you, link to others on your site, tweets, etc. It will come back to you tenfold. For instance, Mike Moran has assisted me in several areas and I have repricoated as he left IBM. (Check him out .. an incredible guy http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/blog/ 
      9. Use multi media. Videos of course can help your network get to know you in a different way than words can. YouTube has over 70M videos uploaded because people are inherently social creatures. Buy yourself a flip and get going!
      10. Start your own network! On LinkedIn for instance, I joined an author's group. I didn't start it but joined it! You can increase your networking via the tools you choose!

      Let me know what works for you.  Given the response, I'd like to study this one deeper!


      Gaming as part of Marketing 2.0?!#

      Playing Video Games Isn’t a Waste of Time, After All

      This past holiday season, parents who buy Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo Co.'s Wii, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 or the latest online game need not feel guilty. Turns out that young people – and adults – aren’t wasting time when they’re playing video games. We got the Wii!!!

      Whether they’re tapping away on video game controllers or the keys of their computers in increasingly popular online games, today’s game players are acquiring the skills that companies increasingly value as the gaming generation enters the workforce.

      In fact, the skills needed to succeed in gaming can help young people “to be more sociable, develop strategic thinking and become better leaders in life,” according to a book, “The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace.” The authors, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, say that games “deserve” a role in helping young people grow into adults because they require them to use different mental and social skills, often simultaneously.

      With that in mind, thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM's new "serious game," available at no charge. We developed the game to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information IT skills, important attributes needed to compete in a global economy.

      Over the past two decades, IT professionals have had to break out of their comfort with proprietary systems as the industry moved to client-server computing and then to open computing. Today’s move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is asking both IT and line of business professionals to acquire cross-over skills in each other’s domains. That’s why the game stresses learning activities that combine IT acumen with business skills.

      Much like pilots who use flight simulators to learn how to fly airplanes, students of IT management studies who grew up playing video games can benefit from engaging in learning activities in the way they like to learn.

      By interacting with the video game, students can make decisions about real-life business situations, such as re-designing a call center process. They can see the results of their decisions right away, and if they make a mistake, it’s much more private than “failing” in front of a classroom of their colleagues. Because a love of gaming is shared around the world, professors have told us the game can help to bridge cultural barriers.

      The trend is spreading.

      According to The Apply Group, a marketing consultant, at least 100 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming to educate their employees by 2012, with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.

      While it’s too soon to measure the full implications, there’s a new business environment emerging. If hundreds of thousands of players organize themselves to successfully complete specific endeavors during their “play” time, will they be content during work hours in organizational structures used since the Industrial Revolution, with central command and control? Chances are they’re more likely to want to work on virtual teams distributed around the world, undertaking multiple endeavors, taking advantage of the thought processes that succeeded for them in online gaming.

      As employers, we cannot ignore the changing group dynamics. In fact, we should tap into the most innovative ideas to redefine the fundamental nature of computing. Just as games present us with situations that invite players to make choices, consider the advantage of using graphics and decision-making steps of games in business. Supply chain software and customer relationship software could allow decision makers to immerse themselves in the real-world simulations, judging cause and effect before making decisions.

      The possibilities are huge -- and not just for business.

      The application of serious gaming techniques in science, medicine and other industries could help us solve some of the world's biggest challenges.

      The term “serious gaming” no longer is an oxymoron. Not just competition for employees’ attention, there’s endless opportunity if we harness the power of games to get work done.

      Who else is going Gaming? Check out what we are doing!


      The Ava Awards!!! Social Media Videos from IBM SOA Win!

      The Ava Awards have just been posted on their Web site!!
      Two of our IBM Social Media entries received awards!!!!

      Platinum Award
      -- World Tour "Get Smart" Videos --
      http://www.youtube.com/smartsoa

      Gold Award
      -- Innov8 Trailer --
      http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8.html

      The international Ava Awards recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, direction, shooting, and editing of audio-visual materials and programs. Entries include film, analog and digital productions viewed in a wide variety of mediums- from movie screens to televisions to computers. Entrants include video and film production companies, web developers, advertising agencies, PR firms, corporate and government communication departments, producers, directors, editors, and shooters.

      Ava Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The international organization consists of several thousand production, marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, and free-lance professionals. The Association administers recognition programs; provides judges and rewards outstanding achievement and service to the profession.