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Using technology for networking at social media world forum

Posted: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:07:33 +0000

I’m heading along to the Social Media world forum event in London starting on the 14th of March and have arranged to meet lots of cool and interesting people thanks to social media!

The first thing I did was to find out the twitter hash tag for the event which was set as #smwf, I then started following the conversation and following some people. I then let everybody know I was interested in networking and I got in contact with many interesting people. Some of them are also guest bloggers so I’ll meet in the bloggers lounge, others are presenting and others are just going to the event.

I also checked out to see if there was a meetup organised and there was. Laura from bitzesty has organised a meet up in the bar before the social media networking event in the evening!

So if anybody is going along and wants to meet up I’d love to. I’m there to meet some cool people, have some fun, blog and exchange knowledge about social media. Make sure to follow me on twitter, come to the meetup, follow our blog or just follow the hash tag set up for the event #smwf

It’s great heading along to a networking event having already made some great introductions. Really looking forward to it!
Can online social networking replace traditional networking?

Posted: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:55:55 +0000

I was at a Dublin chamber networking meeting the other day and Sean Weafer (creates high trust advisors, leaders and teams) gave a talk on business networking. He said that business networking offline is going to become increasingly important because most countries will eventually ban cold calling. So it’s going to be more important than ever before to attend business networking events.

Even though I do a lot of consultancy around online social networking I still believe that turning up in person at networking events is extremely important. I probably network at these events much more than the average business. The perfect solution to networking is a combination of online and offline networking. You can’t just network online and expect to meet the perfect business partner, customer or employee and similarly you can’t just network offline due to the changing nature of how people like to communicate and the potential of reaching people you’ll never get to see in person.

Some of Sean’s excellent tips are listed below:

1. Wear your name badge on your right lapel to make it easier for people to see.

2. If you want to join a conversation of a group look for an open group where they have not closed off in a circle. This means they haven’t really formed as a group so if you ask them if they mind if you join they will say yes.

3. If there is a closed group that have formed in a circle wait until the group splits up, new members not welcome.

4. If you are talking with a person who is a clinger on(!) ask them if they want to go for a coffee. At this stage you may split up, if you don’t and they walk with you for a coffee find an open group on the way and ask ‘do you mind if we join you’ !

So work out a strategy for online and offline networking and work out how they will work along side each other. Linking up with someone online is never going to have the same effect of meeting somebody in person.

Is your networking strategy effective? What tips do you have that you want to share?
Social Media in the Enterprise – March 2010

Posted: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:43:33 +0000

I’m a guest blogger for the 2 day event on social media for the enterprise in the Olympia in London commencing on the 15th of March. It’s a great event with a fantastic line up and well worth a visit. If you’re an enterprise and want to understand how social media will effect how you do business then make sure to book your ticket.

The event covers social media strategies for the enterprise, CRM, enterprise bookmarking, Wikis, enterprise social software, knowledge management and internal community building.

There’s a lot of talk about social media marketing but social media and social business is so much more. There are many case studies that demonstrates how effective social networking and collaboration tools can be in the enterprise and for your customers. For example, Charles Schwab recently implemented a trial social networking platform amongst 10,000 of their traders and seen that by setting up this community and encouraging engagement the average number of trades went from 200 to over 350 with a resulting revenue increase of several million. They are now going to roll this out to all their customers.

The Bank of America implemented a social network platform to support their business customers and there was so much interaction their Google ranking went up significantly for terms they normally paid for with Google adwords. They were able to switch off Google Adwords for these keywords and saved several million dollars per year.

Registration and networking starts at 8 AM on March the 15th. If you’re heading along make sure to say hello, if you can’t make it I’ll be blogging throughout the event.
Will Television embrace the social world we live in?

Posted: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:34:15 +0000

Broadcasting advertisements on TV to potential consumers does not have the same impact as it used to. People now are smarter, don’t want the obtrusion of the advertisements and now also have the technology just to skip over them. So what are the TV stations going to do if advertisement revenue is going to continue to decline over the next few years?

A recent article in the Guardian in the UK shows that in the UK there is already more money spent online advertising as opposed to TV.

Another article talked about extending advertisements into TV programs, also known as product placement. As you can see from the article this didn’t go down very well! This movement to online advertising is going to continue to happen so TV stations need to wake up and decide if they want to be part of this social connected online world and embrace the changes required. The innovative, fast moving companies will survive in this world but there will also certainly be casualties.

In my own case the majority of time I now watch recorded material and with my sky+ box I skip over all the advertisements. This is typical of how many people are starting to watch TV. Even when I’m watching a live show I pause it for 10 or 15 minutes and then watch it so I can skip over the advertisements. How are TV stations going to survive without having advertisements? You seen in my previous post about Pepsi giving up on superbowl ads after spending 23 years advertising on TV during the superbowl. For TV stations it’s time to wake up and face the reality, pure advertisement revenue as we know it will not be a big growth area for them.

I was reading a very interesting article sent to me by a business partner in Australia and it was about TV shows going social. In the article it talked about TV shows having to become more multidimensional. It’s no longer enough just to have a TV show and in the future shows will have a whole package that connects people together. An example is given about American Idol. With this show you have people online communicating and sharing information, there are record sales as a result, merchandise, concert tickets and much more. It’s not just about the TV show, it doesn’t stop at the TV show that’s just the starting point. People are interacting on youtube, facebook, twitter and many more social networks.

In the article Elizabeth Murdoch (daughter of Rubert Murdoch and Chief Executive of the Shine Group) talks about one of their shows called “biggest loser” is more about Wii exercise games, diet plans, fitness equipment, and a host of other things.

Typically advertising space is sold through Advertising/Media buying agencies. These agencies have been very slow to adopt the new socially connected world and I think it’s unlikely that most of them will ever ‘get it’. As Jason Falls (Great blogger on social media) points out in one of his articles advertising agencies really struggled with web 1.0 so how are they going to cope with web 2.0. Well unfortunately for a lot of them they won’t cope with it.

In a time where time spent on the internet is now passing out time spent on TV it’s time for TV companies to look at their revenue models and change them drastically. The fittest will survive…

What are your thoughts on this?
Pepsi says goodbye to the superbowl in favour of social media

Posted: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:23:03 +0000

The superbowl is the championship game in the national football league in the US, the premier American football league. Exclusive television broadcast rights rotate amongst 3 of the 4 major American television networks and because of its high viewership advertising time is the most expensive of the year. This year is only the second year in history that advertising prices have dropped at the superbowl. 30 second commercials are selling at a bargain price of $2.5 million dollars, that’s a drop of $500,000.

During the super bowl in the US you can get over 90,000,000 viewers on TV and Pepsi have been one of the big advertisers over the last few years, however, this year they’ve decided not to advertise.

So why would Pepsi decide not to advertise after advertising for more than 20 years in a row? social media is the answer. They have decided to put the $20 million dollar budget into social media cause marketing.

Their social media campaign is called Pepsi refresh. This site will allow people to vote for worthwhile local community projects and pepsi will pay towards them. Their grants range from $5,000 to $250,000.

The benefits of social media cause marketing are numerous including increased brand awareness, sales, customer loyalty, increased employee morale and much more.

Advertising revenue on TV will consistently go down over the next years and so will Newspaper advertising revenue. The whole advertising industry is going through significant change both online and offline and it’s going to be interesting to see how it pans out.

Do you think that Pepsi will benefit more with their social media campaign instead of an advertising campaign?