Last week I visited Ford and attended the North American International Auto Show, along with around 150 other social media folks from around the world. (Ford paid the bill for my travel and hotel; I wasn't paid for consulting and this post is a personal opinion.) There were Mom and Dad bloggers, design bloggers, green bloggers, and a collection of random others. Besides US attendees, I met people from Canada, Germany, and China. It was - to use an old Ford tagline - a bold move: invest in hosting a big group of virtual loudmouths in your backyard and at your facilities and let them talk about whatever they want.
Continue reading "Ford as Social Business" »
A few years ago, I put together a list of social media marketing examples. The list contains 324 examples of brands putting social media to use and at that point in the social media industry's evolution, it was the best of what was around (and still might be).
Now that initiatives have been in market, any reasonable business manager would expect to see program results. However, quantified results in social business and brands willing to stand behind them are difficult to find. But the truth is out there...
Continue reading "101 Examples of Social Business ROI" »
My company Dachis Group has a tool called Social Portfolio Insight to help brands manage their social presences.
Today, Jeremiah at Altimeter Group has released a report looking into 27 social media management tools used by brands to activate their social media accounts - 178 on average at each company.
The report is embedded below.
Continue reading "Tools for herding cats" »
I went skiing last week. My last time out was about 13 years ago and while the mountains are pretty much the same, a lot of the technology has changed. I used to own my own pair of skis - straight, 195. I still own my Turtle Fur hat. Lift tickets were stickers that you attached to your jacket using a flimsy wire hanger. I sold my skis a while back, so I rented a pair - they're all parabolic/shaped now. Helmets aren't just for kids anymore. And the lift tickets aren't stickers anymore - they're RFID cards that open automated gates.
On my trip, I finished reading Michael Lewis's The Big Short, which I bought because I wanted to understand what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis. What's amazing is that some people could see what was on the horizon as early as 2004. They might not have been able to predict that the crisis would have been triggered precisely in 2008 - but they could see it coming. To be fair, the "crisis" might not have happened at all if Deutsche Bank, The Fed, AIG, or others had acted differently - but hindsight is 20/20.
Continue reading "The realistic pace of change" »
People who manage social media in a corporate environment know that the activity is often less about business management and more like herding cats.
Anyone can create an account on social media platforms and I often see companies where well-intentioned individuals create official-looking brand pages without corporate sanction. These typically aren't a matter of "asking for forgiveness, not permission" - there's usually a lack of controls or generally understood process in place to manage these activities. For example, a financial services provider where individual mortgage consultants create personal Facebook pages to market their services. Or a hotel company where an individual property has forward-thinking management and creates their own YouTube account. Or the software firm where a regional recruiting team starts a Twitter feed to promote their specialized activities. On aggregate, the brand appears to the public as a herd of feral cats.
Continue reading "Herding your cats in social media " »
[ This was originally posted on the Dachis Group Collaboratory by Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE. ]
We need to change the way we think about change.
Continue reading "Change is changing" »
