Is your marketing strategy in your employee's pocket?

In case you're wondering why I believe Social Business to be absolutely crucial to your marketing strategy, just think about this: In the very near future (think months), Social Business will just be referred to as Business, simply because everyone will be doing it as a normal course of their communication strategy.

Apple's iPhone is a great example to illustrate what I mean.

Steve Jobs was laughed at for predicting the end of physical buttons back in 2007.

When it first came out, the handset was referred to by the industry as a 'Smartphone'. As more competitors rushed to catch up, the smartphone became more universal. Along with Samsung Galaxy's, Nokias and Androids, today they are just referred to as 'phones'. (Funnily enough the old style mobiles are now called 'Feature Phones'. How ironic.)

Don't believe me?...

Today, most phones sold in the UK look like this:

So what does all this mean for your business? Well just remember that pretty much every chef, every waiter and every manager in your business has one of these in their pocket. 

As do most of your customers. 

Now THAT is a massive opportunity that Social Networking can give your business. You can't run from it, so you'd better embrace it before everyone else does.

What are you waiting for?

Social Media and Social Business: Distant cousins

Over the past few months I have been very lucky to meet some key thought leaders in digital marketing and chat with them over pizza about latest happenings in the world of Social Media and Social Business. There is certainly some astounding stuff happening at the bleeding edge of innovation, but for one reason or another, I haven't written about it up to now. Hopefully this will go some way to putting that right before I stop being invited for that inspirational banter. Or pizza. Which wouldn't be very social at all.

The first question I guess is What is social media? 

We need a starting point, so let's begin with a loose definition of what social media communication looks like for most people, although this is changing faster than I can type.

Many colleagues and friends I talk to are very confused with all the brands they hear about. 'There is so much Facebook this and Twitter that', they tell me as they shrug their shoulders and in the end they give up before they've even tried to understand. 'Tis better not to engage, than to look foolish, seems to be the logic.

To be fair, I can't blame them, so perhaps this image might help to illustrate the various channels that most people are communicating through currently. And apologies for the uncouth spelling. Ugh. No really, 'ugh' is missing from every doughnut...

Now that's not an exhaustive list. My daughter for example, uses Snapchat and Kik as her social networks of choice. (No, I don't either.) Nor does it include Blogger, Wordpress or Tumblr (recently bought for $1.1B by Yahoo) which are kinda like personalised websites people like me use to write blogs (derived from the word 'weblogs'). This post you are reading is hosted on the Google-owned blogging platform Blogger.

What then, do we mean by Social Business?

This is a little more difficult to explain, but essentially it is similar to what a person would do in the above scenarios, but in the context of a business or brand talking to it's customers, stakeholders (think suppliers or employees for example) and each other. 

Please remember this is not a full answer to the question posed, just a starting point to get the conversation moving. First however, let's take a look at another graphic that I picked up from Sarah Duncan's blog promoting her fab little consultancy called Sleeping Lion. (Lions. I know, right?) It certainly correlates nicely with the previous image and helps to give some direction on how you might use social media in your business. 

I'm sure the Swindon factoid is tongue in cheek, but you get the idea...

In the next few posts I am going to try and explain more fully what I mean by 'Social Business', why this is such a perplexing challenge and most importantly, why this is so crucial to your business today.

Kred Summit: Four new tools to empower your Social Media reach

As promised, I wanted to revisit the Kred London Influencer Summit and just give you a brief overview of the new products that Andrew Grill announced that are due for roll out in the next few months.

For me, it was the sheer volume of data that Kred has at it's disposal that blew me away. For example they have access straight through to the Twitter 'firehose' which means live access to over 10,000 posts a second and so far have collected over 150 Billion tweets. Across Twitter and Facebook Kred has an audience reach of 500 million people and have picked up over half a trillion conversations to date. So what can you do with that 'Big Data' in a marketing environment?

Well, first up was Kred for Brands, a tool aimed at Brand Managers. Thankfully they've produced a slick little video on the topic, but basically this sums up the application best:

It helps identify and engage key influencers on Twitter and Facebook to create successful word of mouth campaigns: it filters lists of influencers based on interest, network, connections, for brands to engage with the most effective brand advocates and community leaders, learn about them and activate their communities and increase social media ROI (Return on Investment). 

Kred for Brands from Jessica Irvin on Vimeo.

Next on the roll call was KredNet which was unveiled as a tool for creating what could be described as a 'pop-up' network for a specific event, timescale or company project. Again, because of Kred's access to the social platforms, it is a way of engaging with your key influencers or, if you're a company, you might want to find out who are the people in your organisation who are most engaged with the outside world on Social media channels.

Then we came to what I felt was the most astounding product; the Social Simulator. Since Kred has access to all of the tweets on record, they can load up a particular conversation that happened around an event, almost like putting photos into a slide show. You then replay them in a classroom environment to learn form that experience. I can really see this coming into it's own as a training tool to demonstrate in a hand-on way how to use social media within a business setting. The example Andrew gave was a shop running out of milk. The simulator loads up all the tweets that happened around that event and you start to play them out. At any time, you can pause the simulator and ask participants what they would tweet next. And since it is a closed environment, they can tweet without it going public to see what the consequences might be. A terrifically useful training tool for any kind of organisation that wants to empower its workforce in engaging on social media and social business channels.

Kred for CRM. The first thing you might want to know is what is CRM? Put simply, it's Customer Relationship Management. Beyond that it's the ability to leverage your customer relationships - and the interactions they have with others - to increase your brand's influence and ultimately lead to higher sales and visibility. This is taking the marketer's role to the next level in today's environment and is worth following up, if only to understand what is now possible as a result of all this big data that exists.

Domain Names. The final item on the agenda was a few new 'top level' domain names being unveiled which will be rolled out later in the year. Kred bid for and won the rights to distribute .kred, .best and .ceo. Personally, I like the .best err the best. If you get in quick I can imagine service roles being snapped up straightaway. For example if you're a piano tuner, wouldn't it be cool to own the website www.pianotuner.best. Or in my case I think www.hospitalityspeaker.best would work... come to think of it, save that one for me Andrew. Thanks.

If you're interested in this kind of social media stuff , then here's the full video of Andrew's presentation. It is worth a watch just to see how deeply integrated this has become. But one thing's for sure, it's not going away.

Kred London Influencer Summit from Andrew Grill on Vimeo.

Apple's Latest Acquisition Puts Them Inside the Building

Mitch Joel writing for the Harvard Business Review highlights a little-known story that Apple just bought a small start-up last week for $20M called wifiSLAM. Basically they provide GPS for indoors and it is thought this will help Apple to augment the shopping experience in or near Apple Stores (initially) as you walk around the Mall.

The interesting thing here is that we as consumers, are willing to share our most private data with stores and brands that we wouldn't want shared with security firms or government agencies.

"Internet Retailer reported: "80% of smartphone owners want more mobile-optimized product information while they're shopping in stores, finds 'The Shopping Experience in a Smartphone World,' a study conducted by ad agency Moosylvania."

And what that might look like:

"This aisle by aisle, real-time ability to flip offers, while getting a better understanding of how foot traffic flows, where consumers stop and engage is going to affect everything from pricing to shelf space to how end-cap placements are sold."

Apple might suck at Social Media, but they're at the leading edge of Social Business.

Social climbing at the Influencer Summit

Exchanging ideas with CEO of Kred, Andrew Grill, Karen Fewell, Tania Duarte & Mark Batchelor

Another trip to London and another epic evening in great company at one of London’s iconic hotels. This time it was The Mayfair Hotel for a very exclusive invitation-only event in the company of some of the most influential movers and shakers in the world of Social Media and Social Business (Yes, there is a difference.) You’d also be right in wondering what the heck I was doing there...? Looking around the room, I had to wonder myself now and then, but that’s part of the fun; It’s a brave new world and I want to be at the frontier. 

To understand what it's all about, I’d better just explain to those unfamiliar with this stuff, that on that thing we call the internet there are a couple of tools (think of them as websites that you sign into) for measuring how much ‘influence’ one has in their social groups online. The two major players in this arena are Klout and Kred. (I like that they begin with ‘K’ - it is a very influential letter you know.). Klout was first, but Kred is better due to it's transparency. Since it was the 'Kred London Influencer Summit' that I was attending, I guess you can figure out my allegiance at this stage. But how did I get invited in the first place?

Attending a party a few weeks ago, I was chatting with Jeremy Waite (Social Strategist for Adobe - Get Well Soon Jeremy!), when we were interrupted briefly by the very dynamic entrepreneur Andrew Grill who went on to explain why he had a free iPad under his arm courtesy of EE. (It’s a good story by the way and worth a read here.) On my way home I saw that he had connected with me on Twitter, which was very generous and that was when I realised he was the CEO of Kred. Wow. Since then, we’ve had a few exchanges on the philosophy of ‘Social Business’ and probably the reason why I found myself on this prestigious guest list tonight.

To put Andrew Grill and Kred into some sort of perspective, I learned tonight that they have

200 million subscribers with a potential audience reach of 500 million people on Twitter and Facebook. That’s a lot of influence right there.

Now before you get all hung up on the flaws and challenges of influence being benchmarked as a number, you have to remember that it is only relevant within your zone or sphere of influence. Justin Bieber will have massive influence in your life if you happen to be a hyperactive screaming ‘tweener, but he will have no influence whatsoever in the world of offshore oil exploration as an example. At least online that is. Furthermore, he also has a very low score in terms of ‘reaching out’, since he hardly replies to these hordes of marauding teenagers. So the bottom line is that your ‘influence’ can be very large when looked at through the niche audience that you might appeal to.

From a personal perspective, my twitter feed has about 375 400 followers made up of mostly Hospitality professionals, social media guys and some public speakers. So within the realms of talking and tweeting about hospitality and marketing, I could be described as a giant. Beyond that however, I am merely a footnote at the bottom of the page in comparison to the Stephen Fry’s and Jamie Oliver’s of this word who command huge influence over all sorts of people since they're exceptionally famous AND are generous enough to reply and engage with their respective audiences.

That said, I have found the ‘Social Media Set’ quite an interesting bunch due to the crossover nature of their medium. They operate in a place where IT, Marketing, Mathematics, Sales, Research, PR, Sociology, Psychology, Entrepreneurship and Communications all get together to drink from the same watering hole. But the one thing that brings us together is our love for humanity and that social interaction, even if it is with someone you haven't met personally.

I’ll write a little about the products and vision Andrew revealed tonight in another post, but I am honoured to have been invited to have a sneak peek at his new kind of future and wish all the team at Kred every success in the coming months with this hugely ambitious rollout.

You guys rock.