Top Spots for Entrepreneurs - An Infographic
I now have responsibility for IBM's Global entrepreneur program. This program is extraordinary and focuses on helping start-ups grow to their full potential.
I was researching and found this infographic on the hot spots!
What I thought was interesting was that Chile has the highest percentage of female entrepreneurs and that those in Singapore work more hours than those in Silicon Valley.
Now, my current City of Residence, NYC, is rated #5 in the world!
Tell me your thoughts on this space!!! Sandy
Open up to Client Influence the Social Way!
Happy Monday! This coffee break is dedicated to those companies who always put the client first!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF9DwAiDPZY&feature=youtu.be]
Leadership matters! One of the Top 5 Social Business Questions Answered!
One of the Top 5 questions people ask me is does it matter if your leaders are sold on social and the answer is YES!
Getting your executives to buy into the concept of a social business in most cases is something that they will either get straight away or not. Those who are switched on to “modern” technology will not need much convincing that implementing social technologies in the workplace will improve communications and enhance productivity. Those who don’t see the need for it, of course, require a little more persuasion.
However you arrive at their participation, they will most likely be nervous about stepping into a less controlled environment. It’s a bit like them going to the local swimming pool where all the employees swim. There’s no hiding!
How do you approach executives who are not Social?!
My advice to getting them into the water is to let them observe for a while. Get your enthusiastic evangelists publishing and propose that your leader checks in on these things. With their permission ask a public question. By that we mean something they will be happy to answer in public. Encourage your other trusted evangelists to do likewise. Use the fact that you have a team of enthusiastic users to vary the method of interaction. Ask in a forum post for a suggestion, ask in a micro-blogging entry something else.
Make it easy for your leader to get into the water by making it easy for them to answer. A couple of short sentences for the first few answers to things is all that’s needed.
Once you have the leader taking part, albeit on a light basis, we need to convince the leadership team that they too should look at taking part. That team will only see value in doing this if they see the chief doing it.
The leadership team will likely be nervous about what their own areas of the organization are putting into the social system – they will be concerned that their dirty laundry might be getting washed in public. Try to quash this concern. Remember that a social business is one which is engaged and transparent (and nimble).
Show your leaders that by participating in the system and answering cross-departmental or cross-organizational issues their area of the business shows its value. Remember – your value is in what your share – not what you know in a social business.
Commitment
Altimeter's report shows that only about 1/2 of executives are engaged. How do you get that commitment in your organization?
Having a strong commitment among the leaders in the organization sets the tone, volume and enthusiasm for the use of the system. Remember that in any organization the leadership team are essentially “celebrities” and when they post information or participate in the system the staff become engaged. As an analogy to this, while many people consider the old-fashioned two-page memo from the chief executive setting out policy and priorities to be deadly boring, everyone reads it. Everyone engages. So to get the engagement, to cross the social chasm, you need your leaders to start becoming more transparent.
You can facilitate this slowly by driving engagement from your core Social Business team from below. Encouraging the execs to take a more active role in forum discussions, making the technology available to them on their chosen mobile device and empowering the gatekeepers to your execs – the secretaries – are all good ways of driving top-down participation which in turn drives bottom-up engagement.
Reverse mentoring as a technique for helping with engagement. You should, however, consider preparing the ground by producing some executive training materials. An executive handbook – amounting to a maximum of 5 pages of tips and tricks, some one-to-one time, and perhaps a presentation provided to them on paper or some other medium to help them get into the concept are all good approaches. Above all show them that these are “special” materials – these are designed only for them. They are intelligent people and like to be treated that way. Give them the facts in tweet-size points.
Ask if you can check in on them from time to time. If you get their approval then MAKE SURE YOU DO IT REGULARLY. But not too regularly to avoid getting on their nerves!
One Week Before Black Friday .. did you know Social's role?
Holiday season is upon us! Black Friday is one week away. I am already planning my Thanksgiving dinner, my Christmas cards and caroling, and New Year's Plans!
So let's start thinking about this holiday season!
Did you know that people use social differently during the holiday weeks?
They increase their searches on social networks around products and potential gifts, recipes, and fun. This typically occurs starting now through early January. Their use of mobile goes up using the mobile device to show online and compare when they go into the store.
And don't discount Twitter it plays such a role! So get ready!!!
Social Selling Tip: Celebrate your clients
This video blog is the last in the series of our Social Selling series.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgm36GT9uaA&feature=youtu.be]
Happy Halloween! Social Business is creating a Scary number of new jobs
Happy Halloween! Since we had Hurricane Sandy last year, and snow the year before, this will be our first true trick or trick in a while! Be safe!
I was just in a panel with Target Marketing and after the panel got a lot of questions around what are the new job types I should be looking at due to social media dominence.
Don't be scared! There are a few. Your fear can rest if you start looking at the new frontier today!
What are some of the new job types that the Social Era is producing?
- Community manager - A person responsible for building, maintaining, and activating members in an online location around certain topics. Key skills required: Ability to be transparent, drive sharing among members, and listening and shaping conversations. This role has become so popular that a day honoring its professional was created!
- Social Business Risk Manager – A person who is focused on managing the risk associated with clients controlling brand online. The role entails building a risk management plan, selecting a listening tool for ensuring risk is assessed, and ensuring groups of people can rally around a recovery. Key skills required include: Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, public relations, and grace under fire of a crisis.
- Reputation manager – a person responsible for building, maintaining and protecting a company’s reputation. Reputation is what clients and potential clients believe to be true about your company. Key skills required: Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, marketing, and the ability to position a brand, company or product in a positive light. This role has now outpaced the Risk Manager role, showing that the industry has moved to being much more proactive.
- Social Analytics manager – a person who monitors, listens and analyzes the sentiment (or feelings of people online), and turns the massive amounts of data into insight. This role will become increasingly important as more automated tools are coming into the market. Key skills required: Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, business intelligence, and ability to make recommendations on incomplete data.
- Social customer support manager – a person responsible for scouring the blogsphere for customer concerns, insights, and statements. This person’s role will have to extend through multi channels of input – including social tools like Twitter, Facebook, as well as traditional channels of phone which has now become one of many places where listening and turning data into insight will occur. Key skills for this role include: Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, customer service, and CRM.
- Social Product Innovation manager – a person who can generate ideas, refine ideas, and solicit valid “votes” on the best ideas that customers will actually buy. With the increase in crowdsourcing or the ability of using crowds in the blogsphere to create and vote on new product concepts, this person becomes crucial to your company’s innovation engine. Key skills for this role include: Ability to understand new social business tools and techniques, product management, and product development.
5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience
Customer experience is a key differentiator for businesses. In the age of social, the experience is even more important.
From some research this weekend around the "experience" area, here are some of the tips I find most helpful in this area.
Top 5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience;
- Post relevant content. This technique pulls relevant people to your area. Much like a retailer would leverage a storefront, or product, or specials to get people into the store.
- Use big data to understand your clients needs. I believe the combination of big data and social is a game changer. Using the social conversations that exists, you can learn how to better meet the needs of our clients.
- Be Consistent. Your company will be on a number of social sites, and probably your own website. Consistency in multichannel is crucial. The new Generation C demands it! Be Consistent in brand message and content and service. . Consistency drives trust. Trust drivers loyalty!
- Help your clients. Provide them with social tools to help them decide on your products from the experience. Think about recommendations from others. There is a new type of purchasing recommendation. Instead of behavior driven – if you buy this, buy that because others did this, leverage the power that social brings: “You share these attributes with the people who read this. You might want to take a look at it.”. Gamification and other tools in the social world can increase your customer experience.
- Use predictive analysis to improve both current and future interactions. Anticipating your clients needs keeps them in your camp longer.
Sunday's Thought: Take Time out for those things that matter!
Just a simple post. Given I am sitting around a lot with a broken leg and recovering from such a tramatic accident in Brazil, I have more time to think.
Things that I just wouldn't have had the time for back when I could travel (and walk!!!) are getting done! For instance, I am going deeper with my kids on their homework and learning more about them as people.
My friends and I can really sit and have tea (I don't drink coffee!) and discuss deeper topics. Even my dog is loving having me around more.
I have more time for my clients and partners as I am doing video conferencing -- listening and talking more since I don't have all that travel time!
So I am soul searching a a bit on a few topics but know that my journey through this broken leg will definitely allow me to always in the future take time out for those things that matter the most!
Thoughts?
Skills gaps are creating huge challenges in Social, Mobile,
The IBM Tech Trends report is based on a survey of more than 1,200 professionals who make technology decisions for their organizations (22 percent IT managers, 53 percent IT practitioners, and 25 percent business professionals). Our respondents come from 16 different industries and 13 countries, spanning both major and growth markets.
I was surprised that mobile is the largest gap, followed by Cloud. While there is a gap in Social, of the Big 4, it is the best one.
Thoughts? Any surprises to you?!
