The Next 5 Years in Social Media: What We Can Expect

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Mike Dickman

This article first appeared on MASHABLE.

Over the last five years, social media has evolved from a handful of communities that existed solely in a web browser to a multi-billion dollar industry that’s quickly expanding to mobile devices, driving major changes in content consumption habits and providing users with an identity and social graph that follows them across the web.

With that framework in place, the next five years are going to see even more dramatic change. Fueled by advancements in underlying technology – the wires, wireless networks and hardware that make social media possible – a world where everything is connected awaits us. The result will be both significant shifts in our everyday lives and a changing of the guard in several industries that are only now starting to feel the impact of social media.

The Technology

The growth of social media in the past five years was fueled not just by innovation from Internet entrepreneurs and developers, but by several key advancements behind the scenes. The rise of YouTube – which I called the most important social media innovation of the past decade – would not have been possible without the wide availability of broadband and the advent of Flash 7. Similarly, the rapid rise of mobile apps in the last few years would not have been possible without major advances in smartphone capabilities (jump started by iPhone) and higher speed mobile networks.

Jumping ahead to today, consider for a moment that the first smartphone to run on 4G (the successor to 3G mobile broad and capable of significantly faster mobile broadband speeds) – the Sprint HTC EVO – hit the U.S. only this past June. Sprint’s 4G network, however, only covers about 40 million people. Similarly, wireless broadband ISP Clearwire reported in May that its network – which is also used to offer service to Sprint, Verizon, and Time Warner cable subscribers – only reaches 41 million people. At the same time, mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to surpass 1 billion worldwide by 2013.

Add to that a surge in public and private investment in wireline broadband that will give 90% of homes in the U.S. the option to have 50 mbps downstream broadband within the next few years, and the bottom line becomes clear: There’s currently an enormous supply and demand gap to be filled, and when that happens, it will enable a whole new wave of social media innovation.

Read more . . .

How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Mike Dickman

by Jennifer Van Grove

This article first appeared on MASHABLE.

This series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here.

Today’s CEO is not social. So says Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony. Very few of the CEOs at top companies in the U.S. and the rest of the world have any material presence on the popular social media sites. Colony believes they should be social though, and all signs are pointing to a future filed with CEOs who can speak the language of the people — social media.

While one can only speculate about the future of CEOs and social media, there’s no question that social media plays a huge part in life and the world as we know it right now.

As younger CEOs replace older ones, news consumption habits change and social media continues its trend towards ubiquity, there’s little question that the man (or woman) at the top will need a firm grasp on social media — whether that be for recruiting, scouting, public engagement or social CRM.

The Next Generation of CEOs

When it comes to CEOs, there’s a vast disparity between the young ones heading up startups and the more seasoned CEOs running the world’s most powerful companies. That disparity is social media — the young are more versed than the old. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to different generations and different attitudes around content and information meant for the public and private domains.

Read more . . .

Screw Viral Videos!

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Mike Dickman

by Jim Louderback

This article first appeared in AdAge.

There, I said it: Screw Viral Videos

Why the constant focus on viral videos is no good for the industry

Online video creators, advertisers and producers have an unhealthy fascination with viral videos, and that obsession is dragging down the entire industry. Why? Because viral videos are, at their core, no better than a fluffernutter white-bread sandwich, delivering little or no value to anyone.

Online video hasn’t been a hotbed of success so far, and while I used to blame discovery, being relegated to the podcast ghetto and the immaturity of some of our biggest practitioners, those are just symptoms. It’s the incessant focus on viral success, I now believe, that’s really keeping us down.

Let’s start with producers and show creators. Media is all about building habits. Successful producers bind an audience to their creation, building an insatiable hunger for the next installment, next episode, next post. But when you focus on viral success, you throw that focus on repeatability out the window. By its nature, viral videos are designed to surprise, titillate and entertain. They are, by nature, unique; the 27th keyboard cat or the 12th dancing baby is just plain boring. But once video producers taste the heady success of a viral hit, they keep trying to re-create lightning in a bottle. But let’s face it — we all know “David Goes to the Proctologist” isn’t going to be nearly as successful as his trip to the dentist.

Responding to Bad Publicity Online

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Mike Dickman

This article first appeared on Bloomberg Business Week.

Every business loves social media marketing when customers are raving about them in Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets, but what happens when there’s some bad press on a social network? How do you handle a potential public blemish without making it into a full-fledged stain? While the downside of social media marketing is that we cannot control what people say about our businesses, we can use these powerful connectors to make things right.

The key is not to engage in a public dialog with the person who is making the negative statement. A he-said-she-said battle in a public forum could exacerbate the situation. You can and should reach out to the person as quickly as possible with a simple “How can we help you?” and then attempt to take the dialog offline.

On Twitter you can use a Direct Message, and on Facebook you can use the Messages feature to communicate privately with disgruntled customers out of the public eye. Or, in your how-can-I-help response, provide a customer support line for the customer to call. (Make sure it’s open and staffed when you’re giving out the number—you don’t want an already unhappy customer dialing two minutes later, only to find out the office is closed.)

Once offline, treat the situation as you would an unhappy customer coming into your store or calling on the phone. More than likely, if you remedy the problem, the once disgruntled and vocal customer will again take to social media to praise your response, potentially turning bad publicity into good publicity.

What about a public response from you directly? Forget it. Instead, let your fans come to your aid. That’s one of the many upsides to social media marketing: Happy customers will provide both word-of-mouth referrals and defend those companies they prefer doing business with. Let these people be your social media knights in shining armor.

Eric Groves

Senior vice-president, global market development

Constant Contact

10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Mike Dickman

by Maria Ogneva

This article first appeared on MASHABLE.COM.

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Attensity, a social media engagement and voice-of-customer platform that helps the social enterprise serve and collaborate with the social customer. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @attensity360, or find her musings on her personal blog and her company’s blog.

Recently I wrote about the differences in social media monitoring and measurement, as well as the importance of doing both.

However, taking the first step to actually start monitoring can be daunting. And then what? How do you act on what you find when listening?

How do you engage? To ensure that you are successful in your monitoring and measurement efforts, here are some definitive steps you should follow.

I’ve developed these throughout my career and as part of my regular listening, participating and contributing to the space.

1. Define an Objective

Why are you monitoring? If the answer is “because everyone’s doing it,” you are in trouble. You need to have a clear goal in mind, such as:

I want to monitor because I want to be alerted immediately when people are saying bad / good things about my brand.
I want to quickly respond to all customer service queries, and I’m going to set up a way to collaborate and exchange information seamlessly with my support team.
I’m monitoring so I can quickly see who is talking about [insert industry keyword] and join the conversation to bring more credibility to my brand.
I’m monitoring so I can keep my finger on the pulse of the market so I can figure out what the market actually needs and then create it.
I’m monitoring so I can easily identify people in need of my product and help them at the point of need.
All of the above, and more!

Having an end goal in mind will help you target your resources correctly, select the right tool for the job and be more effective in the end.

Read more . . .

The Technology

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The Next Generation of CEOs

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Given Our Obsession With Social Media, It’s a Timely Question

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New Facebook Privacy Updates

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1. Define an Objective

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