Marriott starts a new social media game born from ideation!
I love social media and especially the concept of Social Gaming. 63% of the US population now plays video games and this number is significantly higher in Asia. The average age of the gamer is 35 years old, 40% women, and half of them play games online one or more hours per week.
I was intrigued by the new game that the Marriott corporation just released! It's called XplorSM . A cool thing about this game is that it was conceived by a group of Marriott employees from various departments, age groups and levels across the company. Talk about ideation! The team was lead by David A. Rodriguez who is the Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer at Marriott and a true innovator!
OK! So the game helps you to visit New York City, Paris, Beijing, Dubai and Sao Paolo and win Marriott Rewards points along the way. And it helps when if you are like me, and find yourself sitting in airports waiting for a flight or lounging by the pool and looking for something to do.
XPLOR can be played on a coast to coast or intercontinental flight without an Internet connection once it's downloaded. This is a key feature since most travelers and emerging consumers and employees, even if they have web connections, find it can get very expensive in international cities to connect.
The game is more like Call of Duty and other major adventure and sports game titles like Madden Football or Major League Baseball, and less like Angry Birds or Tetris where there is just one background and things moving around in the foreground. Just in the character creation area (before you start playing), there are several million possible combinations.
Download the game free and start travelling!: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xplor-by-marriott/id646951347?ls=1&mt=8:
I cannot wait to continue exploring! And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game!!!
Trend #1: Value of Social Sharing is > Information Hoarding
Happy Monday!
Today we are starting a new series of the Top 5 Trends in Social today -- actually involving Social, Big Data and Analytics.
The firs tof the trends is the shift in information value. To illustrate, when I went to school, value was placed on what I memorized. Today, it is about what I share. One of my daugther's assignments at school was to find the answer to a question and prove the answer was from an expert who could be trusted!
Take a look at how this trend applies to business!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYuMSIzuX14&feature=youtu.be]
Who is the smartest in the room? Social can tell you!
Ask a social executive, ‘who is the smartest in the room?’ and she will answer: the room. (Now, since she answered this way, does that make her the smartest again?!)
Why? The Fortune 500 lose “$31.5B a year by failing to share knowledge” according to Lisa Quast, Forbes Online. The "room" is the group that generates ideas because they are closest to the clients and the market. But only 25% of companies are good at Idea Generation & Idea Conversion.
So yes, that executive who can harness the power of the room, wins everytime!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnb4onPPbAs]
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 Use Case: A more successful Acquisition using social
Happy Monday and welcome to today's Social Business Coffee Break!
Today we are continuing the series on Top Social Business Use Cases. This one is how to leverage social to have more successful acquistions! It makes sense - right. Social helps with communication, ideation, and integration. All the things that companies need to retain the top talent in companies that have been aquired.
Tell me what you think!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L72HUFKeus&feature=youtu.be]
3 G's of Social Communication in A Social Media World!
I was reading an article in HBR on the elements of successful leadership. It was a great HBR article. And as I read it, I thought that it applied to Social Leadership in the way that Great companies should use social -- as a way to build relationships.
Here are the modified Social 3 Gs!
The 3 G's!
- Gifted. Your social communications needs to be both content rich but engaging. Your gifted communicators need to also be able to master having a strong Point of View and to be able to handle conflict without being offensive.
- Game. In social, you need to be able to fail fast. In Social, you need to have the courage to take risks. Just as a leader needs to be "vulnerable and open to challenge and criticism" , your social engagement needs have confidence. The kind of confidence that allows them to be questioned by others without becoming defensive. This is the way that true innovation occurs!
- Generous. Your social strategy needs to put to ensure the goal is for the good of the overall client ecosystem. It should be good-hearted, mutually respectful, and gracious, resisting the urge to dominate, or take the upper hand. Part of being generous with others also means taking an interest in, learning about, and offering opinions regarding your clients and employees.
I think these 3 G's should guide the Social Conversations in the Blogosphere. What do you think?
Social Media Tip of the Week – Using Twitter for business
Using twitter is more or less easy, but being seen by the right people is not that simple. How do you stand out from the crowd without looking like “our company is the greatest” or “buy our products”? On key suggestion on how to use Twitter without contributing to the noise:
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Cultivate a following:
Relevant followers are more important than just big numbers. Thus: Understand who your customers are, and find them.
New role at IBM! Ecosystems on #Analytics, #socbiz , #Mobile, #Cloud & Big Data & Entrepreneurship
I am truly excited to be taking on a new role here at IBM! As General Manager of Ecosystems, ISVs and Entrepreneurs or our IDR group, I look forward to the opportunity to work with a wide range of talented and innovative business partners, clients and IBMers to help enhance IBM's position as a leader - fostering growth and success through influencer partnerships. I'm hitting the ground running. Here's a few areas I am focused on...
First, nurture our Startup partners so we can achieve more together! IBM's commitment to the entrepreneurial community is stronger than ever and will continue to grow, as evidenced by the success of the
IBM Global Entrepreneur Program
Since 2010, this program has helped launch more than 500 new businesses in key areas such as green energy, health care and transportation. How? By nurturing startups, bringing them into our 121,000-strong business partner ecosystem and helping them get their technologies ready for market. IBM's work with startup companies helps us build and strengthen new markets such as cloud, mobile and big data/analytics. It also extends our geographic reach -- for example, to companies like Sproxil in Africa.
Second, continue to grow the IBM SmartCamp initiative. Past SmartCamp participants have gone on to generate more than $90 million in VC/Angel funding following their work with IBM. With your help, I intend to deepen our commitment - focusing on nurturing and deepening our relationships with Startups so we can achieve broader success with more partners.
Finally, in an effort to spur ecosystem growth, we will focus deeper on our fundamentals: drive awareness to recruit new ecosystem partners; work closely with partners to enable our technologies with their solutions; and actively drive our go-to-market activities and sales engagements.
We will continue to focus on strategic initiatives, including Smarter Analytics, Social Business, Mobile and Cloud computing and our overall Big Data strategy. And we will show our partners and customers how they can use IBM expertise and resources to drive results through our "Learn - Build - Sell" model:
Learn: Understand the benefits we offer our partners and increase their technical and business expertise
Build: Differentiate partner solutions using our resources, and collaborate with leading technical experts
Sell: Expand the ecosystem network and drive demand for joint solutions
With our combined energy, innovation and expertise, I'm confident we can make it happen.
Time to get moving and I'd love to hear from each of you on how I can assist!
Safety is a great Social Business Use Case!
Happy Monday! Today's Social Business Coffee Break is featuring a surprise use case --- Safety. I love this one as it does have high ROI in reduced worker's compensation but the ROI I love is saving employees from injury.
Take a listen!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zTS5uh2RFI&feature=youtu.be]