Sweet tea and screen doors. Social Businesses could learn alot from them!
Yes, I am southern pure as they come! I love my sweet ice tea, grits with butter, screen doors, and Kudzu.
In the summer, the screen door is an essential element of everyone's home. The screen door's entire point is that it's not a barrier. Its job is to open easily. It is a welcome to all visitor's and friends that approach it.
Is your social media site like that screen door? Does it open and welcome others in?
Tips to make your site as welcoming as that Southern Door!
- Do you make people type in that "code" to enter? Don't!
- Is your site mobile friendly and usable?
- Do you have stellar content ? Content is Queen!
- Is Video part of your strategy? Video is the highest trusted media! Use it wisely!
- Do you have a Twitter Widget on your Home page to engage your audience? (Check out my blog on IBM Voices!)
- Can you feature other guests on your site?
- How do you listen? All relationships listen first!
- Are your employees empowered to really represent the brand on your site?
- Have you chosen the right social tools that welcome your audience? For instance, if you are selling to men, Pinerest may not be the best first choice.
- Do you constantly review the feedback and make changes to adapt and change?
Social Business Adoption Best Practice #9: Brand Army!
Happy Monday and grab that coffee!!!
Today's Social Business Coffee Break is about forming that important Brand Army!
Let me know your thoughts!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vN8JO6lmvg&feature=youtu.be]
Diving in Bonaire: 5 lessons of the coral reef & the Social Ecosystem! #ibmsocialbiz #socbiz
Last week I was on vacation and finally got to dive in Bonaire! We went with Bob from http://vipdiving.com! They were great. Even though I had a back injury, they helped me tremendously to dive safe and took us to 2 amazing dive sites!!! I'd highly recommend them to you!!!!
So what did we see on these dives? I saw tons of turtles, eels, barracuda, flounder, and colorful coral reef. But my favorite was a first for my dives ... I saw my first seahorse there! He was a bit red, cool, and incredible. Though I didn't get a pic, here's one from a pro that looks just like my sea horse!!!
YEA!!!!
But while I was diving I was thinking about the social ecosystem!! (Folks like Dachis, Jeremiah Owyang in the past have done the same!!!)
A few of my thoughts:
- What I saw: Seahorses hanging on for dear life like ... many companies struggling with Social. They cling to the past. We need to see that social is now a part of the business system. I'd love to help you embrace it!
- What I saw: Schools of fish being chased like...consumers banding together in communities, being chased by companies!
- What I saw: My guide searching for fish we had not seen like... companies approaching social in a focused way. Adding value, searching not for the masses but those consumers that matter to their business.
- What I saw: Tons of turtles having fun in the sea but working hard too. (Did you know that that marine turtles actively, and intentionally, remove algae from coral reefs) like: a great social analytics engine to remove the "stuff" that doesn't matter, and helps you identify what does!
- What I saw: Lots of color and coral formed overtime like a great community platform (IBM Connections!) that enables the different social networks to form! These tools are important and the security they provide enhances results!
Yes, I know many of you ask "do I ever stop thinking about Social?" Ummmmm....no!!!
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.