Logic+Emotion

Is Social Business Innovation?

Watch this video, because it's worth watching. But don't confuse social business with innovation. Social Business can lead to innovations—but it's inherently about doing business in a more connected, open, transparent, collaborative, ethical, and ultimately human way. All of which can affect the bottom line of your business. Sound innovative? Yes. The two are related, but not necessarily the same.

Building A Disruption-Proof Business

 
Originally wrote this back in 2010, but with news of Blockbuster selling, and Borders shutting down stores—to name a few recent example of business disruption... I thought it would be worth  re-visit.

Over the last two years, businesses have tightened belts, cut spending and some have gone out of business altogether due to the economy. But there is another threat that many organizations face which will likely remain, even as the cycle of recession begins to fade - disruption. Many business models are simply not disruption proof.

The media industry has been turned upside down partially as a result of technologies which empower anyone to act like a journalist. Newspapers have seen their classified cash cows cannibalized by free or low-cost services such as Craigslist.  Web designers who once charged premium fees for their services now compete with Wordpress or other do-it-yourself services. The music industry has been upended, with record stores going out of business as a result of the iTunes ecosystem and digital file swapping.

The advertising industry has been thrown into chaos by technology which empowers the consumers to skip over ads and demand value in place of messaging.

Disruption fueled by technology, such as a younger generation that lives more digitally, and other global trends will force businesses to re-assess how they spend media dollars and influence the creation of new products and services. This will gradually trickle down into every facet of an organization, forcing changes in job descriptions, demands and skills. In an effort to become a disruption-proof business, brands and organizations will need to become more connected and in tune with their customers, employees and partners than ever before.

Disruption-proof businesses will need to become better at predicting possible outcomes and adapting quickly to changes in their environment before their business models become disrupted. Listening tools and “real-time” focus groups on social networks will make meaning from the data. These will become increasingly essential for enabling an organization to stay informed, while internally they will improve how their own employees share information and collaborate.
In 2010 2011 and beyond, technologies and the human behavior it influences will continue to disrupt — but organizations who learn to adapt quickly will thrive.

Facebook Wants To Boil Frogs

You know how the old story goes—a frog jumps into a pot of water. The water is the perfect temperature so the frog starts swimming. Slowly the temperature rises ever so gradually, little by little. Eventually, the frog is cooked. As the tale goes, the cook avoids having the frog jump out of the pot not by throwing the frog into boiling water—the frog would just leap out.

Enter Facebook's "boiling frog" strategy. They know that people will naturally over time live more public lives and feel comfortable with it. But, they have to turn up the heat of privacy settings very slowly. Consider the newly released Instant Personalization feature. It allows certain non Facebook sites to access certain personal information. Of course, you can turn off the setting. But that's the point. It's default setting is turned on. Frog, meet water.

Chevrolet Presents: Allhat III @ SXSW

We're in the final stretch of planning the third "Allhat" event at SXSW which will be co-hosted by myself and Dell's Richard Binhammer. This year we are really excited about it as it is being sponsored by one of the more prominent brands you'll see at SXSW, Chevrolet. However—there's more to Allhat than just another event you'll hear about at SXSW. We think it's pretty special. In a nutshell, here's what it is:

“Allhat” is a very unique event held just off Congress Ave in the heart of Austin at the authentic tex-mex establishment, Guero’s. The event is co-hosted by well known social media practitioners and personalities Richard Binhammer and David Armano. Approaching it’s third year, it attracts some of the most influential names in social media marketing ranging from Hugh McLeod to Brian Solis as well as many brands, agencies and organizations pushing the envelope in all things digital & social. However, the vibe is uniquely relaxed, authentic and the brunch/music format is designed to facilitate quality conversation as opposed to power networking.

Here's a few sights, sounds and word of mouth from previous events:

Video

Photos

Allhat
Allhat II

Word of Mouth
“I went straight to the Allhat2 event in a really cool area of Austin I had missed on previous trips. It was down on South Congress in a great, outdoor taco joint called Guero’s. It was definitely the best SXSW party I’ve ever attended. A warm breeze, live music you could speak over without shouting, great people, tacos and breakfast burritos.”

“Best party of the weekend in my opinion?  All Hat 2 at Guero’s Taco Bar on Sunday at noon. Why?  Not because it was thrown by social media giant David Armano and big business Dell..but because I felt it truly captured what Austin is about.  Guero’s is a local favorite.  They have fabulous margaritas and breakfast tacos.”

“The best parts of this year’s SXSW largely took place outside the framework of the actual conference. The best parties are always those that are purposely kept quiet, and this year was no exception, with David Armano and Dell’s Richard Binhammer reprising the daytime All Hat party for social media types”

This year's event sold out quickly, but if you're a friend please put your name on the waitlist as review it reguarly. See you in Austin!

Social Search Will Force Your Business To Recalibrate

One of the trends collegue Steve Rubel and I identified for 2011 was the re-emergence of Google through furthering the integration of social into their search ecosystem. Google's latest iteration of social search now further integrates platforms such as Quora, Flickr and Twitter more aggressively and points to a new reality for businesses in how they approach social integration themselves. In short, ignore at your own peril. So what's a business to do as search increasingly integrates signals from multiple ecosystems? Here's a few tips:

Refine Your Social Intelligence Infrastructure
It's now more important than ever to formalize and scale the ways your organization monitors and listens to conversations which occur across the entire digital landscape. Ad hoc solutions without putting in the right people, process and platform(s) in place will only give you samples of what's being said about you, or the topics you care about and where. You have to have the right intelligence in place before you can act upon it.

Evolve Approach Beyond Traditional Optimization
Increased social integration emphasizes further the need to go beyond traditional search tactics such as keywords. As Google continues to tweak its algorithm to be more effective in indexing social systems—content which is produced and shared within these systems become increasingly important. A content strategy which focuses specifically on this new dynamic will be needed.

Mobilize Your Ambassador Ecosystem
The typical ambassador ecosystem for a mid to large scale business likely consists of hundreds of employees, customers and partners which can potentially be harnessed for the benefit of the organization. Participation in thought leadership in places Google indexes such as Quora and even Slideshare can influence what shows up on search results. Marketing partners should be re-calibrated from focusing primarily on paid media efforts to being active in the overlaps between paid, earned and social media while tapping your companies most active advocates. Your organization has a workforce of employees active on social networks, yet most organizations remain content to have their employees "locked down" vs.being empowered for the benefit of the business.

While Google looks to index any social system they can, Bing continues to integrate Facebook in how they display search results. The larger impact which both signify is that search will eventually fuse with social platforms in ways that alter how your business is found. Get ready for it.

Targeting Influence

The e-mail landed in my inbox and I immediately had 2 reactions. The first, was that of marveling at the brilliance of the idea—one of the ways Klout will seek to monetize will be through targeting influentials in a new kind of e-mail marketing initiative based on ones influence. I can see a great deal of brands signing up for this—who wouldn't want e-mail access to individsuals on the Web with large and effective social footprints?

My second reaction was that of surprise. Why was I being targeted by Nike basketball? I never talk about sports, don't follow teams and am not all that involved in local sports sans whatever my boys are interested in doing which at the moment is tennis. So why did the e-mail proclaim that I had "serious basketball klout"?

I don't. What I do have is a larger than normal "social graph" that shows signs of life as measured by certain digital factors (and this is only Twitter and Facebook)

Klout's scoring system is highly imperfect, BUT seeing the e-mail caught my attention because I realized that the future of tapping "influentials" will come down to targeting, and the quality of how well this gets executed. So when the next e-mail comes from something closer to my interests—I'll know they are on to something. The future of harnessing influence will be highly targeted.