Social Mail is here! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz
Woo Hoo!
I am tingling as I use our new Notes 9 Social edition! Not because it is a next release of Notes, but because it is an amazing Social tool! It is Social Mail -- here today!
Some people think e-mail has always been social, and others say email and social are like oil and water.
I think it's a mix! And that's why I love it! My husband says I like my cake and eat it too! So with Social Mail I can do both -- have mail and social!
Social mail is the seamless integration of everything -- all your collaboration tools -- where and when you want them. Often, that's alongside your inbox.
And I mean everything. All the new & cool social stuff like Profiles, communities, file sharing, real time audio and video communications, presence and more, all right there. And I mean your desktop applications; your public social networks; your Tweets; and your other business applications. All together. No switching, stopping, or waiting.
But social mail is is also about the integration of messaging into those other applications-- shouldn't my desire to communicate be freed from the boundaries of a traditional email client application? Social mail is about having access any time & anywhere -- on my PC, my phone, my tablet, on my desktop, and even in the cloud.
Social mail lets me focus on my idea or the business problem I need to solve. Ultimately, a social mail experience is about empowering people to collaborate seamlessly and in context, so you forget about managing email and just get work done.
Social Business Coffee Break On Adoption from #SXSW! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz
Happy Monday in the Great Austin Texas!
Today we are on step #7 of the Top 10 Best practices for Social Business Adoption!
As a reminder, here are my top 10!
So here's the best practice on Motivation!!
Adoption Best Practice #7! Motivation!
IBM @ #SXSW!! Join us! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibmconnect
South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX, starts on Friday, March 8! If you’re not familiar with this event, or if you want to test your trivia knowledge, then check out this interesting infographic from Rocksauce Studios, which Guy Kawasaki shared earlier this week.
There are so many exciting sessions and speakers that it’s hard to choose which to attend. Even if you’re not attending SXSW, you can follow along on Twitter by searching #sxsw. You’ll be able to join the conversation and share what you see with your followers.
One session that looks incredible is Tina Roth Eisenberg’s keynote on March 10. She’ll be talking about social’s impact on design.
As the mother of a tween daughter, two other sessions have caught me eye:
Digital Drama: Growing Up in the Age of Facebook With Bill Keller, Danah Boyd, Emily Bazelon and Jason Rzekpa.
Is Women’s Media Too Girly? With Anna Holmes, Deborah Schoeneman, Margaret Johnson, Rebecca Fernandez
IBM will be involved in several SXSW speaking sessions:
I Know Where You're Going: Location as Biometric With Jeff Jonas, IBM Fellow & Chief Scientist, and Jennifer Lynch from Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Large Enterprise of Social Media - Meet Up Hosted by Noah Kuttler, Market Segment Manager, IBM Enterprise Content Management
Mentor Session With Rawn Shah, Social Business Strategist, IBM
Engaging Government for Fun, Profit & Meaning With Gadi Ben-Yehuda, Innovation & Social Media Director – IBM Center for the Business of Government, Amanda Eamich from USDA, Mary Krakowiak from National Archives & Records Administration, and Tammi Marcoullier from US General Services Administration
Making Accessible Transportation Modern & Cool
With Bill Curtis Davidson, Accessible Transportation Solutions & Business Development Lead, IBM , James Pol from US DOT, Kamiar Kordari from TRX Systems, and Mohammed Yousuf from DOT.
I will be participating on a panel that is not on the SXSW schedule but will be fun and informative:
Just Add Followers – The Key Ingredient to Telling Your Brand Story and Getting Results
- Panel Discussion with Shoutlet, Bare Escentuals & IBM, Moderated by TechCrunch
Gone are the days when brands used a brochure or static website to tell their story. Today, social media provides a platform where brands can communicate their story through the way they engage and interact with followers. And often, those interactions shape the brand in new ways, too. Join TechCrunch, IBM, Bare Escentuals and Shoutlet as we take a look at social storytelling and provide practical tips and tools for the job. You’ll hear a robust discussion on how to effectively manage online communities, listen to fans and impact buyer behaviors and preferences. More details here.
When: Saturday, March 9 from 2:00 - 4:30 pm
Where: Lambert's Downtown BBQ
IBM is planning an extensive presence at SXSW. Please stop by and say hello!
Date: Saturday, March 9, 6-8pm
Location: Haven Bar
5th Annual SXSW Interactive Accelerator
Date: Monday, March 11 and Tuesday, March 12
Location: Hilton Austin
What: New technologies and start ups presented at SXSW. IBM is sponsoring Social Technologies track
SXSW Trade Show
Date: Sunday, March 10 through Wednesday, March 13
Location: Austin Convention Center, Exhibit Halls 3 & 4
What: IBM booth will showcase solutions for Social Business, the Mobile Enterprise, Digital Marketing & Analytics, and Global Entrepreneurs
Last but not least, the famous Grumpy Cat from Twitter and Facebook will be doing meet & greets and “signing” autographs. That’s just the type of event that you expect at SXSW!
See you in Austin! Sandy
Social Business Tip: Social Infinity and beyond! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibmconnect #sxsw
To infinity and beyond! Since I was a math minor in college and so I saw the Infinity sign in my daily tasks and fell in love with it! Infinity is the unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity, or in plain English .... boundlessness.
Just on a POP note! Today it is one of the most popular necklaces because it represents endlessness ... (just ask my daughter who walked me through 4 cities looking for an infinity sign necklace that was in stock -- they are hard to find!) I am sure New Dimension has a lot to do with that!!!
Social Infinity: But in Social, it is money for your business because it represents the endless cycle of engagement with clients, and the knitting together of the employee and the client! The engaged employee is key.
Engaged employees are those who know the company’s values and are empowered to leverage those values with their partners and clients. They know their role and understand how to reach out to the right expert. These new social employee are about commitment and success.
An engaged employee yields an engaged Client!
This Engaged client is one who is attentive, interested, and active in their support for your brand, product, or company. The depth of their conversations online showcases their knowledge and care. They recommend and passionately advocate on your behalf in the blogosphere -- they become loyal Brand Ambassadors -- speaking on your behalf!
A brand ambassador is a person who is passionate about your brand and references you as a normal course of business usually done socially! And that makes you as a company a more desirable company! Becoming an infinite loop of success and money!!!
Addendum: The funny thing is I wrote this before my call with Janet Powers from the Women's Tool Box! And she had the exact same thoughts!!
Case Study: Create a great EVENT using Social! #ibmconnect #socbiz
I love to share case studies and here is one from our superstar IBM team in Europe! Mark Osborn's (@mark_osborn) leadership was the driver to a very successful joint Sales and Technical Education event .
He leveraged Social to drive all the core and key elements in the event:
- Ideation: Creation of the agenda based on the team's suggestions. First requests for topics were collected in an Activity. Common themes were organised into tracks and relevant speakers identified. Everyone voted for speakers and topics
- Continuous Improvement. The speakers could see the requirements from the team and posted draft agendas back to the Activity for comment, further honing their pitch.
- Realtime Reaction. During the event agendas and updates were made available via an event wiki.
- Immediate Usage. After the event speakers posted their presentations on Connections Files with the event tag, creating an event presentation feed. Several of our speakers, were virtual and presented via LotusLive & Sametime Web Meetings
- Best Social tools used! Leveraged IBM Connections
The team in Europe created a 'Ideation Blog'. This is a blog set up for using the collective intelligence of an entire team to create ideas and build upon each others thoughts. They took the suggested with the highest number of votes to create the agenda - there was a very high number of topics that were very popular!
And this was the Feedback from the team on this years event 97% satisfaction This demonstrates that the social approach to planning the event was not only highly effective, but created a much stronger sense of ownership with the participants, encouraging them to feed-back.
Social Business Coffee Break: Adoption Best Practice #6 - Evangelism! #socbiz
Happy Monday!
Today, we continue our 10 step Adoption best practice! Today we are going to focus on Adoption Step #6. Evangelism! The video below will go into details on how to do this to be effective in adoption throughout your organization and your clients.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooEKghzFqtA&feature=youtu.be]
The Scottish Qualifications Authority goes Social! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibmconnect
The Scottish Qualifications Authority- the body which creates and manages exams for Scotland's schools and further afield - have become a social business with the rollout of the first part of their Staff Social Portal - IBM Connections. Using Connections they are better able to communicate, collaborate and share information across their 800-strong workforce. Even before going live there were nearly 400 initial users, and 138 communities set up, dealing with work and socially-focused activities (like their ever-popular jogging club).
As I discussed with Rob Gibson, he commented " This has been a thoroughly enjoyable project from start to finish. We spent a lot of time researching how to best sell this type of solution to the organisation and then setting up an "Early Adopters" community to test the set up and iron out any issues before we opened up to everyone else.
The other main task for the Early Adopters was to populate the system and get the conversation going ahead of general opening. This created a substantial amount of momentum which we have carried on past the launch day. We started with around 15 Early Adopters and grew to nearly 400 in around three months (approximately half of the organisation).
The system is in full swing with all manner of conversations and networks being built. I am delighted with the overall response so far but we have some ideas about how we can reinvigorate the system should it require a helping hand in a few months time. We also have a planned upgrade to a future version of Connections later in the year. This will give users a great uplift and help to keep the interest levels high."
Twitter: fastest growing social platform +40% Q2 to Q4 2012 #socbiz #ibmconnect
Check out the new infographic from my favorite Global Webindex.
New "Thumb" for #socbiz Collective Intelligence! #ibmsocialbiz
Thumb is based on the concept of crowd sourcing. Crowd sourcing is tapping the collective Intelligence which leverages the wisdom of the crowd to generate new ideas and to refine ideas that exist, as well as vote on the “best” idea.
Thumb uses personal crowdsourcing. For example, my daughter doesn’t know what to match with her new skinny jeans. She can upload a pic to Thumb and then use collective intelligence to source the best match.
It appears like even simple questions typically generate hundreds of thumbs up or thumbs down, plus comments, sometimes within minutes.
The site has very high engagement of its users with 4 hours a month of use by its members, which is second only to Facebook!
Have you tried it? Your kids?!
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!!!