Another case of social media - its scary practicality

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/what-is-buzzing/amy-cheong-vacant-job-posted-career-094026501.html

This is a case that recently happened just on Monday, two days ago in Singapore. It is indeed scary how social media can bring an individual down overnight, when used incorrectly.

Social media strategies for Organisations

Hello people!

So it's all about the social media strategies for organisation this week!

I guess before Organisations even think about developing the social media strategies they intend to deploy for the company, they need to ask themselves certain questions. I have retrieve these following questions from Social Media Today:
"
 First, start with your customer. Ask questions like:

• Do you know how they decide to buy and use your product or service?
• Are you familiar with their questions and challenges?
• Are they using social media? If so, which platforms?
• How do they consume content?

Next, think about your employees:

• Are they aware of company promotions and offers?
• Do they see the communications delivered to your customers?
• Do they know how to answer customer questions? If not, do they know where to direct those questions?
• Do you regularly ask for their input? This is especially true for staff who are in regular contact with customers.
• Do they use social media?

For leaders:

• What kind of customer experience does your organization value?
• Have you mapped all customer touch points?
• What have you done to foster an atmosphere of collaboration?
• Have you visited your web site from a smart phone? Have you browsed and looked for information, or tried to purchase?
• How will social media fit within the context of the overall marketing mix?

"

Only by understanding your organisation's needs to the above questions, only then I suppose, would you be able to develop the social media strategies for your organisation.

Here are some more commonly used strategies I have found on the world wide web:
1) Creating a Facebook Fanpage for your organisation
-- This will help to promote the reputation of the organisation, it could also very possibly be the subject topic amongst people's daily conversations

2) Signing up on Google Plus

3) Join Twitter
- If the CEO of an organisation that I am working for has Twitter, I would want to follow, just to know the casual side of the big boss of the organisation That would be quite nice, wouldn't it be?

4) Connect with others on LinkedIn
- Creating conversations by sharing interesting photos, videos, links, etc.

5) Blogging
- Just like Twitter, it would be quite nice and interesting to know what the top Management has been up to, and what they normally do on their day to day job, be it whether it's a coffee break(even), etc.

Does anyone of you know of any organisations that encourage, or even blog? Would be nice to hear from you!

Interesting links I have found:
Social Media Today
Top 5 Social Media Strategies for Small Businesses
Social Media for Small Businesses : 6 Effective Strategies

Wiki Strategies

Hello people!

Has anyone heard of Wiki strategies? I, for one, have not.
I am opinionated that Wikipedia is just wikipedia - (yet another) platform/database of information(obviously). How could there even be the different types of strategies for that channel? It does not make any sense to me at all.

So, out of curiosity, and in order to try to prove everyone else wrong(or RIGHT), I went around doing some research on the different types of Wiki Strategies.

Here is what I have found:

Okie, I have to admit I do not even know the definition of a wiki, apart from the common term of 'wikipedia'. So, Wiki is defined as 'A wiki s a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor'.
Pardon me! How more un-original can I be, other than finding the authentic definition from its original website eh! ;)



















Some of the common uses of wiki by the organisations are:

1) Developer Network channels - like a forum for developers to discuss about any technical issues they have encountered, or even technical knowledge that they would like to share amongst their communities of developers.

2) Technical Documentation - to mainly store technical information of all sorts, and across all industries.

3) Effective knowledge sharing - Perhaps this would only work out for bigger organisations, so that employees in the different departments can share their operational knowledge with each other, instead of asking each other for answers up front.

That said, in my perspective, it is of course, most important, to gather feedback from the main bulk users - people like you and me(who are the technologically savvy ones, i believe ;) ). Being the group of people who use the system, we can provide genuine inputs as to what is lacking with the system - improve and what is not - in that sense, to further enhance the already-good product.

Interestingly, I found this fact about 'The First Wiki':
"The first wiki was a complement to the Portland Pattern Repository, created on March 25, 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who based the name on the Hawaiian term 'wiki wiki', which means 'quick.'"

It is amazing how Sony Ericsson has its own internal wiki - but obviously they don't call it wiki, but it is mainly their own internal website for their internal sharing, mainly their developers.

In addition, before I finish off, here are some links which I thought were pretty good:

http://www.elevatorview.com/2008/01/08/7-effective-wiki-uses-and-the-companies-that-benefit-from-them/
http://www.businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/Using%20Wikis%20in%20Government.pdf

Micro Blogging

So today, I have decided to research on micro-blogging.

To be honest, I have not really heard of this technical term. Maybe it's just me, or has anyone else heard it before? Ha...If so, pardon my ignorance, I am trying my best - I promise! ;)

Then, I was asking Google(obviously after doing a Google search) and not literally talking to someone named Google or even the organisation itself.
Anyway! I have learnt that micro-blogging is apparantly writing very short blog posts on UKOLN word document, similar to text messages. Okie(pardon my own spelling of 'okay'-although by now, you should be used to my crazy 'Yvonne-ish' terminology eh ;) ), in my own terms, or in maybe some of your terms as well, we commonly call it 'status updates'.. You know, like how we update our statuses occasionally, or maybe hourly(that is rather extreme for me though) for some of you..

I was wondering why do organisations bother to microblog - after all, personally, we only do our own status updates when something significant happens in our day-to-day life..- or for me at least! hehe
What I have found out from Sandy Carter's video is that micro blogging within the organisation, generally helps a whole lot of communication and bonding within the organisation. They include what employess are doing today(calendar), announcements, Conversation on your board, two way channel for ideas and feedback, asking for help to leverage network and lastly Executive Public recongnition. In case anyone might not know or might be curious, Sandy Carter is the Vice President at IBM in social business.

I found it incredible how IBM had implemented their microblogging internally. Check this Slide 11 of the slideshow . Incredible, isn't it! They include status update integrated with your intranet profile, employees can easily view updates from their contacts or from the entire organisation, etc.

Photo credits: Jeff Bullas











Then again, me being me, I like to always find out about the advantages and disadvantages of implementing microblogging. This is what I have gathered so far from:
Advantages would include:
- Greater understanding of what is actually going on in the organisation across teams or projects
- Personalizing and demystifying the aura of senior leaders
- Seeking opinion and exploring options before decisions are made
- Driving engagement and the feeling that everyone’s opinion is important
- Increasing social status of employees in business related matters

All in all, from what I see it, the benefits includes mainly on the bonding within the organisations and the employees, which is definitely a good thing.

As for the disadvantages, I guess the biggest one would be its limitation of text/characters - 140 characters?

Last but not least, personally, I found it amazing, even BBC has got its own social media strategy! Amazing!

What about u? Personally, do you microblog? Okie, apart from facebook and Twitter, are there any other Tools that you use?

Some sites that are worth a read!:

http://www.slideshare.net/delphRB/ibm-presentation-at-digital-media-barcelona-twitter-for-business-microblogging-goes-to-work-sept-09-barcelonal

http://www.howto.gov/social-media/microblogging

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/documents/briefing-35/briefing-35.doc

http://www.squidoo.com/micro-blogging

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/implementing-a-successful-corporate-microblogging-strategy/

Return On Investment(ROI) on social media

Return On Investment on Social Media. To me, is that even possible? That was the first question that came to my mind when I heard about Return On Investment for Enterprise 2.0. Well, since I am still quite a beginner in this field, I believe I should have the perogative to have some naíve thoughts about technology.

Similar to my personal point of view, Forbes has the same point of view - that there is no way ROI can be measured for social media.

However, that said, although it cannot be properly measured, I have to, unfortunately believe that estimation is still reasonable enough for the Return On Investment. Don't get me wrong, really.. I am still trying to convince myself that this can even be estimated at all.

Interestingly, I had even found this page, whereby it shared 14 Social Media ROI Metrics You Can Use Right Now!

Based on what I have seen around all-the-so-many-websites on ROI, so far,what I have concluded is that when it comes to Return On Investment and social media marketing, many organisations have found it rather challenging to connect returns with their social media investment.

Also, this other website, I must say that it did actually impressed me, with the social media ROI on the different types of components of the business that organisations might be interested to find out more about. For example, ROI on sales, ROI on Customer Insights, ROI on Customer support calls.

Photo credits by: Jeremy Victors



But, seriously, why do organisations want to bother with measuring ROI, since they have already decided to go ahead with the implementation, they should really just go ahead!- (If I'm the CIO, obviously.)

So, I believe at this stage, I am pretty convinced now, that ROI is definitely worth a measure and also would exist, given that it actually benefits many businesses - good or bad. My thought is that, if they were to track the incoming traffic on their website, they would have a good gauge of whether they have done the right thing by implementing social media or not. And if not, they will then be able to think of some other alternatives.

Some of the reasons why companies want to measure/estimate ROI:
- Negotiate budgets with your management
- Land prospective clients
- Retain current clients

Ah...I have found one fantastic one to share, off from this website. It said, "The most common social media measurement model used by marketers is last-click attribution, which assumes the marketing channel most responsible for a consumer’s behavior is the channel that the consumer last touched before visiting or making a purchase. It’s a model that’s been used since the days of email, search and other direct response online media channels. The model works well for these because it measures the behavior of customers who are further along in the decision-making or purchase funnel."

So yes, by now, if you were initially like me, I hope you are convinced that social media Return On Investment(ROI) can be measured/estimated.
Otherwise, let me know and I am sure I can very positively find further information for you. ;)

Interesting articles that I had found:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/08/28/3-reasons-why-theres-no-measuring-roi-on-social-media/
http://www.text100.com/hypertext/2012/03/first-click-attribution-the-more-effective-social-media-measurement-model/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-estimate-your-social-media-return-on-investment/

Another unfortunate incident over the use of social media

I just find it really scary how 'powerful' social media can be to that extent.. especially to vulnerable teenagers.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/14746433/teen-jailed-facebook-killing/

Update to my previous case study on Dawson's recent social media case

I was just reading on this article on The AgeThe Age - on Charlotte Dawson's case.

I am more strongly opinionated now, that for those famous icons who are not familiar with the basics of social media, all the more they should not use it.
Or, if they want to, at least engage/hire an assistant or agent who will take care of that for them.

Gee.