Big Corporations are AFRAID!

Yes that's right, the dinosaurs are afraid. Many are running scared. Why? Simple, they want to "manage or control" the conversation and their corporate structure is less than transparent. Not to suggest that they're hiding something illegal, but most internal corporate environments are filled with political turf wars, that many corporate cultures are less than open, empowering and engaging.

Culture is extremely important in the context of developing a winning social media strategy, especially for a large corporation. If the culture itself enters the social media world with doubt, fear and barriers, it's my opinion that the overall strategy will most likely reflect these same elements.

Do you think "corporate culture" plays a key role in the development of a social media strategy?

Follow me on Twitter to keep in touch and let's talk more about the issue above. Also, the first of my (4) articles on social media came out today, if you'd like a copy don 't hesitate to ask.

fusedlogic is on the Twitter Brand Index

Johnathan over at Fluent Simplicity was kind enough to add fusedlogic to his Twitter Brand Index. We thank him kindly for that and I think you'll find it interesting to see all the various brands currently on Twitter, I mean beyond us of course. No doubt you'll recognize many of them.

Also, stay tuned, I'm currently writing a series of (3) articles on social media for Troy Media's technology beat news. Troy Media has well over a hundred thousand subscribers with the overwhelming majority being media and journalists of all shapes and sizes throughout North America...

To that end, as recently as this morning, I finished a phone interview with a world renowned author and entrepreneur...this is going to be a great story.

My next interview is with yet another world renowned author and entrepreneur on Monday...so this becomes an even bigger story, if that's possible. (Tooot, there goes my horn!!!) Toss in a top business executive from a large enterprise in my home province of Alberta possibly and a couple of bloggers and we've got ourselves a ball game.

I feel especially blessed today to say the least...

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Brand Index, fusedlogic, Troy Media, bloggers

Twitter, LA earthquake and my family...

A few days ago I commented here on a blog post related to the fact that people on a plane in Bangalore were using Twitter to communicate about what was happening to their plane. I was a taken aback by the near real time reporting of something like that.

Well, I'm working today and I see someone mention an earthquake in LA on Twitter. My wife and daughter and other family members are in LA today. They were in fact at Disneyland at the time of the quake. My wife and sister-in-law were in line at Space Mountain when the quake hit. My daughter was with her grandmother in line to see Goofy. She, thankfully doesn't know what happened being only 3 yrs old, she moved on to the next ride she wanted to go on pretty quickly as I understand it...the evacuation shut that down of course.

I was attempting to get in touch with my wife while watching the various "tweets" on Twitter about the quake.

I've officially lived through a world event on Twitter today where my family was directly involved...quite an experience. Social media has all sorts of benefits to it and there are drawbacks too but in this case I was happy to be able to ascertain the severity of what happened in near real time and without a CNN producer deciding what was being told. Further, I was able to combine both CNN coverage with Twitter to get a more complete picture.

The great news is basically everyone in LA is ok, including in this case, MY FAMILY and that's the main thing. A pretty nerve racking hour to say the least...

Jeremiah Owyang and a proper thank-you...

Yesterday, I complimented Jeremiah Owyang on his blog post by providing my own post here and also publicly on Twitter, he responded with a "Thank-you."

We're all busy and still, I believe that's no excuse for poor manners. Jeremiah demonstrated that even though he has thousands of followers collectively in "his" community on Twitter and elsewhere online, he is still able to take the time to thank someone specifically for something they've said or done.

Like my wife and I say to our daughter, "manners never go on a holiday."

Of course, we all get to choose who, how and if we want to respond to someone online or offline. That said, I believe that just like a general lack of ability to effectively and properly follow-up in a business context when opportunity knocks, there also seems to be a general lack of "manners," on the Internet today as well.

Call me "old-fashioned" if you like but I believe it proper to "thank" people when they take the time to respond to anything I've done, regardless of the intent or comment being good or bad. This is especially tough when someone is saying something less than positive about you, your company or the work you're doing. This is the true test of the Internet today. We continue to see large companies running and hiding because they don't want to stand up to the scrutiny.

Welcome to a general test of our morals, philosophy and character, how we respond or don't respond says something about us as human beings. To me this is at the core of who I am, it guides me and my business dealings every single day and I don't ever waver from it.

So to everyone who cares to make contact with me or my company, know that I will always "thank-you" for your time and comment regardless of its content, as long as, you're being respectable. I respect your opinion, I may not always agree with it and I understand that you are entitled to it. The fact that you took some of your valuable time on this planet to communicate with me in general says something positive about me and/or my company.

Thank-you for reading this post and I hope you have a profitable day.

The power of Twitter - Bangalore

I was at the Edmonton Indy today and had a great time. Took some great video track-side and met some great people too. That said, today's post from Jeremiah Owyang is today....more important!

Just read this!

Not on Twitter yet? Start by following me.

Technorati Tags: Bangalore, Jeremiah Owyang, Twitter

Business on a silver platter...(shakes head)

One thing that really annoys me is when I attempt to land quality business right on the doorstep of others and they don't even acknowledge the email, tweet, plurk, or phone message I may leave or a combination thereof in some cases...

Yes it's true, I may smell...

That said however, it may be likely that "they" are the ones smelling up the joint. Smelling of arrogance, rudeness and possibly incompetence. There's no doubt I'm better off, I certainly wouldn't want to put my clients within a country mile of someone so ignorant. In this day and age of multiple ways of communication and notification...there's simply no excuse.

I was just chatting with a client about how brutal some business people have become at actually following up.

So, the status of which firm will be getting the video/portal/seo work on one of my projects is, simple. That nice piece of business will now be directed to a competitor.

Want more business? Learn to be nice and to follow-up effectively...

What's the point of using micro-blogging, if when someone reaches out to do business, you ignore them to talk about BS instead? It makes little sense to me...

Acknowledging me would have taken 3 seconds on Twitter...this girl is well-known on Twitter and Plurk and else where...even Guy Kawasaki and the gazillion emails he gets has returned my emails...class act.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, plurk, Web 2.0, social networking, micro-blogging

When will social media be profitable?

In many boardrooms, top exec's are struggling with questions around social media and Web 2.0, at least that's what I'm being told...if, and if so, how, why and what to implement are questions of the day.

The tendency to jump in with both feet as part of being a forward thinking organization (or at least to have the appearance as such) is great and why not? After all, there is potential value everywhere. Research, ability to respond to, and engage with, customers, innovate regarding products and services, shift markets with new strategies, the opportunities for value generation are immense.

Unfortunately, quite often the wrong questions are being asked. In the context of a large organization that can be really scary and expensive. For example: When trying to justify the investment of a social media strategy, its development and implementation, a CEO might ask.

"When will this social media initiative be profitable?"

Not an entirely unreasonable question in many cases, however, CEO's and their executive teams need to understand something fundamental about this entire space, culture and community. This isn't a new marketing event. Social media success is a long-term immersing of cultures. The corporate culture with that of the Web 2.0 or social media culture. Clearly most are starting at an obvious disconnect if you consider the question stated above. This will eventually permeate throughout the organization if it's not addressed early.

Social media and Web 2.0 IS innovation. It's innovation related to how we communicate with our customers, innovation in how we engage in commerce related activities with our customers, how we build and grow business models, in this case highly focused on our customers.

For example, micro-hacking sessions are going on as we speak and will be done in an hour or two from now, and as a result, large amounts of caffeine and/or pizza will be consumed. I'm also willing to bet innovation has taken place and a new micro-app will have been launched. The Internet is the raw and real "focus group" of today, if the app is cool...it spreads, if it isn't cool the team will know quickly. No discussion about profitability or break-even points, no business plan constructed or spreadsheets compiled. Talk about innovation on the fly. Now do you have to take into consider the legal ramifications of these moves, in some cases, more than others the answer is yes.

So, how does a slow moving oil tanker of an organization react to that mentality? Should they? Ahh, YES! Large industries are being impacted one micro-app at a time and many of them have no idea at this point. For example, micro-financing. The rumor is that Twitter will soon integrate a micro-finance application called Tipit.to. Is the banking industry aware of the potential impact here? Maybe. We'll see.

The overwhelming majority of CEOs and execs have yet to experience this and still these situations are producing new opportunities for business (it certainly has for my company). Social media is changing the way people are living, growing, engaging and yes "profiting" within the social media and general business spaces.

So where am I going with this? Simple. CEO's and their exec's need to answer their own question regarding the potential profitability of a social media strategy. They need to better understand what the experience is like at least from an observation perspective and when they've done that, their question most likely won't be...

"When will this be profitable?" Rather, "how can we continue to effectively immerse our divisions in this new customer centric philosophy and continue to have more 'meaningful' customer conversations and engagements from which to learn from?"


Technorati Tags: social media, Web 2.0, Canada, branding, strategy