Social Media trends of 2013 – is it all positive!

During 2012 the corporate world, has taken Social Media into the communication strategy and have started to collaborate with their costumers, surveys indicates[1] that 72% of top management, will work much more with collaboration and social media in 2013. Is this just a statement that corporate companies want to express or can the consumer expect a much stronger engagement from the top management?

In 2013 we must expect to handle Social Media on two levels – the Strategic corporate level and the Personal level, this will be the trends. Starting with the Strategic corporate level the most spoken subjects is;

·         Mobile social media usage.

·         Social Media grows as a marketing tool.

·         Big Data gets a lot more manageable

Turning to the Personal Level we must expect to see some more critical voices telling us that Social Media can have a flipside which is not all that beautiful. The backside of Social Media is described as:

·         Social Media could harm your self-esteem

·         Social Media is bad for your blood pressure

·         Online is not a substitute for offline

Social Media at the Strategic level

As mentioned above there are 3 most spoken subjects that corporate has to take into consideration in 2013, as they will affect their strategic decisions. 

The first mentioned is Mobil social media usage, the first prediction is that mobile internet users will overtake the wired internet users in USA by 2015 and this shift is expected to go much faster on social platforms. This will give an advantage to networks engaging on “The go easy and visual platforms” like Instagram. This will again force the traditional networks to be able to better differentiate their desktop and mobile experiences. In other words providers of mobile interfaces must have more streamlined and fast-loading interfaces, while also being able to take fully advantage of GPS and exchanging information by touching smart phones. Then we have the field of gaining revenue from using the mobile devices as advertising options. The Achilles heel is to squeeze ads into the small Mobile screens and make costumers read these without deleting them before they are read.

Secondly we will see a further increase of using social media as a marketing tool.

To solve the above mentioned mobile revenue puzzle, social networks will strive to implement new social ad models. Today we have the banner and interruption ads which is something costumers dislike and therefore eventually will decline. Costumers want a proper content and they want to have “user generated content “and therefore a new innovative style of offerings will appear such as Promoted Tweets and Sponsored Stories. This is what marketing people refer to as native advertising. A definition of Native advertising is an ad strategy that allows brands to promote their content into the endemic experience of a site in a non interruptive, integrated way. Some costumers will resent this kind of intrusion into their home streams, but native ads enables brands and companies to interact with their costumers on their own turf and on their own conditions. This is an idea that ads and content can be interchangeable and therefore will be able to start collaboration among companies and costumers on their home field. The concept of native ads is used by companies in sending Tweets to followers from the company social media channels. Another tool is the available social - analytical software which can identify which are the most read tweets the company are sending out. This gives the company the possibility to selectively amplify the best of the bunch of Tweets and then turning the best tweets into Promoted Tweets.  The strategy is simple turning content into ads and herby reaching an even larger audience.

The third strategic objective is the use of Big Data.  Big Data appears in the media world still as a buzzword but as it gets more manageable, Big Data will be an advantage for companies. Social Media has provided companies both access and volumes of information and data about costumers buying behavior on an aggregated level. The challenge with these huge amounts of Data is how companies can turn the information into a manageable strategy towards the costumers so the companies can take advantage of the data. A survey made by Oracle states that 93% of the CEO in North America believes that they are losing revenue by not leveraging the Data available to them properly. What is needed is better social media analyzing tools and software that are capable to processing the huge amounts of data flowing in from social media and link it to other touch points consumers have with the company and brand. Big Data will in the future, give us the ability to track multiple social statistics in real time from tweets, Likes and even Instagrams to customer sentiment. This will lead to improved customer service and predict future buying patterns and collaboration can be increased between company and customer.

Social Media at the personal level

The strategic level of Social Media trends 2013 could be seen as some what predictable. We the customers, consumers are living in a technological driven world where devices are produced to increase our productivity and some even say our life quality. But who are looking into the more personal level of Social Media and how it affects our personal well being. Most companies will not accept that the there are consequences in working in a social driven world and environment. Most companies will not accept that they have a responsibility for their employee’s personal level of interacting and collaborating on the Social Media.

Who will take into consideration that social media could harm your self-esteem?

While evidence for Social Media Anxiety Disorder is not proven and largely anecdotal an UK study[2] from fall 2012, found that 50% of Social Media users have found that their participation on social networks has had an overall negative effect on their lives. Some of the participants have even mentioned that the more time they spent online the bigger possibility is there for harming their self-esteem.  The reason for poor self-esteem may be due to the increasing numbers of false portrayed images people are putting on the net to exaggerate their profiles and be more valuable towards employers among others. This comparison of profiles is one of the biggest blows to people’s self-esteem. The funny stuff is that Facebook has estimated that there are approximately 42 million profiles which are faked, where people have exaggerated or are lying about themselves in their profile.

So before you start feeling a less valuable person continue to be honest on your profile and secure that you update with facts not fiction – the last one will be discovered in an interview.

The second personal level indication is that social media is bad for your blood pressure. Social Media is by some described as a hotbed of bad behavior in the way of using the language and grammar and the way that users are bragging and faking to appear more likable towards the world. If you find yourself getting unduly irritated by all this exaggerating and lying then turn to other places on the Social network which appears more trust worthy. It is not worse to exaggerate your blood pressure.

The third personal level indication is Online is not a substitute of Offline. When participants in surveys are asked if they have missed any important life moments by being captured in their quest of being social, 25% of the survey respondents say they have missed important life moments. Some will even mention that with the ubiquity of communications technology in our daily lives it can be easy to convince one self that “online life” directly correlates to your “offline life” and that having a face to face dialog with a good friend can be replaced by an online chat you will be wrong. Just remember you can not make the online attempts to get a job you have to secure that you work offline as well otherwise you will miss opportunities.

Reflection

Can we expect the above mentioned of 2013 Social Media!  We are working in a world in crisis, where it should be possible to gain a closer collaboration with the costumers- some says that the social technologies will revolutionize the social media collaboration in 2013. What is most important for me both looking on the strategy and the personal level you as an individual has to take into consideration, as in all other aspects of life, make a full stop and think what good can the social media do to you and what is the disadvantages of the communication form. There is nothing which are just black and white and you should not say that you have to start to direct your energy elsewhere just because there is obstacles in using and communicating on Social Media.

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[1] IBM CEO study 2012 Social Media collaboration

[2] Forbes article ”3 reasons to quit Social media in 2013”

Does Social Media affect the private consumers purchase behavior?

Happy Social Media New Year.During 2012 we have seen a growing regulation of behavior which on one hand is a part of the many to many communication among consumers which Social Media is a strong influencer. On the other hand Social Media is also in use from governments (particular from the western world) who want to affect the public opinion on various subjects. We have seen that the environmental subject, are a hot topic, animal welfare is another and corporate taxation is the last one in Denmark where Social Media plays a role.

The sustainability of the corporation depends on the choice and behavior of the consumers.

The consumers can affect the corporations through their social network and social media and general information to be able to affect the behavior of the corporations. The environmental issue is one area where corporations start to communicate the message that their production is environmental sustainable. This information is often written on their homepages and if they are active bloggers they will send the message to their costumers. Corporations know from surveys that consumer purchase behavior is very much affected from how sustainable the corporation is in animal welfare and how they interact in third world countries concerning production and how they treat their employees. The use situation is structuring purchase, form the assessment framework for the choice of shopping location. This is where social media and Social Network will start forming attitudes and creates behavior of the individual consumer that will influence how the corporation should act if they want to keep costumers purchasing their goods and services.

How does social affect the general consumer that a corporation does not pay any corporate tax in the country they are situated in?

The Danish socialist government has chosen to publicize in an easy to read manner who and how much big corporations pay tax in Denmark. This act has one specific purpose; to create a public demand among the Danish citizens that if the citizens should purchase, anything from one of the listed corporations they should have a good explanation for not paying tax in Denmark. The fact is that Danish citizens are one of the most heavily taxed people on the planet earth – so if people has to pay high personal taxes the corporations has to pay their part as well. The Socialist government has now made it up to the individual citizen to demand tax payment from the corporation – the citizen could start boycotting products and services from the corporations who have chosen to send their turnover home to their mother countries.  The next step from the Danish government could be to demand that each time the public sector should make a purchase it is a demand that the corporate company must be able to show that it has paid Corporate Tax in Denmark during the last 5 years. This is how you as a government through the public opinion and with the use of social media create a demand for corporate sustainable taxations.

There are no doubt that social media used as described above has a behavioral regulation effect on how corporations in the future will communicate everything from their accounts and in general how they want to appear to their customers in ethical issues. This could have a huge impact on their turnover and their position in the country they are operating in. The corporate companies will on the other hand have to use Social media as an important communication channel towards their costumers to secure that they are satisfied with the corporate company's transactions. The power has definitely changed from the corporations to the consumer.

Will Social Media continue to be a powerful communication channel in 2013?

During 2012 corporations and individuals, who have been in the social media market have discussed;

1. To find the tools to get the measurement right, so the accounting people can see the investment in Social Media pays off.
2. On the other side the communications people have been discussing context and content.
3. And least but not last a lot of private people has started a “battle” to keep their integrity intact and secure that their information belongs to them instead as they claim to the corporations.

Ad1. From a corporate perspective there will still be a battle in 2013 to find the right measurement tools or more correct the best measurement tool available for the specific social media task you as a corporation want to present to the market.

Ad2. In 2013 Marketing and communication people will continue the discussion of content and context. This discussion purpose is to be able to reach the consumers in a better and more direct way to create a dialog with them to make them purchase more products or services in the future

Ad3. In 2013 the integrity battle will continue and maybe even grow among consumers and corporations. The interest in this subject from a corporate perspective is to secure that possible costumers do not lose their trust with a service; they will go find a different one.

To help consumers to have more faith and trust in what is going on at the social media at least two important actions must be implemented:

1. We need to have a better privacy setting and an ethical default sharing options.
2. Search engines, social networks and other data storing Medias need to provide ways for users to easily remove hide or at least curate their personal data that has been cached or stored permanently.

The social media presence in 2013 will have the dimension to keep the consumer more secure and faithful of being part of the social media. Consumers must not feel that the power of their social media presence is controlled by search companies and the social media it self.

I want to whish all people reading my blocks a happy and prosperous social media new year 2013.

Social Media sustainability in an enterprise is part of the value creation!

An increasing part of the enterprise value creation model is how sustainable the social media are. Both enterprise management and other stakeholders have numerous opportunities and challenges with the value creation and herby sustainability. The enterprise organization has a challenging job in creating a safe and controlled environment for the sharing of ideas and collaboration among its stakeholders. The whole idea is to improve the social and financial performance of the enterprise and creating more value to the organization.

To create a social media sustainable environment for the stakeholders, the enterprise will need to act and behave in a certain way to convince both internal and external stakeholders that the social media effort is real, honest, open minded and not guided and controlled in a specific way to enforce the enterprise values directly on the stakeholders.

When an enterprise want to create value using Social media it has to consider how it approaches all their stakeholders. Stephan Burckhardt wrote (Social Media and sustainability: Seven key lessons, May 8 2012) that there are 7 key lessons for social media value creation:

      1. Listen, Listen, Listen

To create sustainable value with your Social Media is less about managing downside risk and more about listening to your key stakeholders. Your stakeholders will bring emergent thought to the surface and tell you their truth if they experience reel collaboration. Listening to your stakeholders will create sustainable value to the enterprise business and make you stay ahead of the market.

      2. Be authentic

In the emerging social ecosystem authenticity is the key for making reel collaboration.  Feeding the enterprise line either falls flat, or worse backfires. Let the content and the context speak for itself, and create an open and honest collaborative environment.  Being authentic will also engage your stakeholders to give you the understanding of what questions to answer. (Source: Editor Matthew McDermott – Treehugger; Business, Politics & Energy)

      3. Be humble, self critical and willing to adapt

One thing an enterprise should not do is making self promotion which will be taken by the stakeholders as a social death-knell. What the enterprise should do is to show its humble attitude towards the stakeholders, this is when the social media model with the push/push effect is in use, that is collaboration and that is when you have the dialog with the stakeholders. The stakeholder can go all the way from awareness to interest to desire to action all in the same medium at the same time. The popular way of expressing this new communication style is mentioned in the  figure below.

This is when you as an enterprise should be willing to adapt and be self critical to get the best out of collaboration.

      4. Be a real person

What is real important when the enterprise want to be social, is when it has to have a real person to do the collaboration. Anonymous corporate voice with lingo and the occasional enterprise CEO quote do not get any hits nor engagement with the stakeholders. Stakeholders want real people to collaborate with, they want “to feel and have the picture and name of whom you are going to collaborate with.” Stakeholders want to know the personality they are collaborating with.

      5. Engage over time and on multiple platforms

It is important for any enterprise to engage social media on multiple platforms, as all platforms seems to serve stakeholders engagement in their own unique way. Some enterprises use Twitter for quick internal ping-backs and dialog uses YouTube and a wiki for prospective employees. An others uses Linked In and even Face book for checking on prospective employees.

      6. Be relevant

Stakeholders want value, especially in the B2B market. As an enterprise you need to be able to deliver a valuable content in an engaged context. What that means is that stakeholders seek expertise and want their problems and suggestions taken seriously. On the other hand the enterprise managers want to be addressed by specialists who know what they are talking about and can help solve their specific problems. What is important when  enterprises are working the Social Media they have to remember that they are “telling each other” which mean the enterprises have a dialog with their stakeholders and they have to find out how they can relieve their pain.  You have to be able to take your own and your stakeholders pain seriously and are able to use both suggestions and problems to solve the pain to the mutual benefit for both parties – then you can grow into an industry leader.

      7. Be fearless

It is important for the enterprise to dare do collaborate with its stakeholders. In the “old days” when the enterprise used the model of “Tell us what you think of what we tell you” approach does not make you fearless as an enterprise. With this approach you stay in your comfort zone and do not dare to engage with your stakeholders. We all know that it is risky business to start a dialog where you can get some critic from your stakeholders even some dislike which can make the enterprise internal shiver. It is easy to say that we should collaborate with our stakeholders but it is hard to convince the internal powers that be. But those enterprises who dare will suddenly feel rewarded with increasing reach, and value creation more leads and attention all the way up the credibility chain.  As social media are not a direct sales tool you as an enterprise will indirectly see the value creation in the sales funnel.

  

Following these basic guidelines developed in the trenches will get you on the right social path to credibility and relevance in fulfilling the enterprise social and environmental responsibilities, and create sustainable value to your enterprise. 

Social Media demands leadership to create real value!

In my recent post “How valuable is Social Media for the corporate business” I described that getting real social the corporate company needed a cultural change. The cultural change which is demanded depends on having an environment of openness, information sharing and trust. This sort of culture is acquired to create value out of the social media investment. To create such a culture you need to have top management in the leading position of being social acting social and communicating social.

How does CEO participate in Social Media?

In IBM latest CEO study, 1709 CEO around the world was asked if they were participating in Social Media. The answer to this question was from my point of view quite embarrassing for the CEO´s - only 16% (274 of the CEO) was participating in Social Media. This number will eventually grow to 57% with in a 5 year period. This question in the IBM CEO study actually pinpoints clearly that Social engagement is not seen as an important value creator for top management at the moment. Further more, if it should take 5 years to have a new leadership in place in the corporate companies to start participating in the social collaboration, I doubt that these corporate companies will be present in their size and shape we know them today. There is no doubt that the success of Social engagement demands active top management participation, this participation will have a significant impact on the culture of the corporate social collaboration.

How can we quickly change the CEO social participating?

It is obvious from the IBM CEO study that the CEO do not recognize Social Media and the collaboration as an important value creator for the company. How can this be changed?

First thing which always counts for companies is the impact on bottom line figures – so if you want the CEO getting social quickly he/she has to be measured on the social collaboration engagement he/she does?

Second thing to do, are getting Social collaboration as a part of the annual report, just like environment responsibility and other societal values. When you are making social collaboration visible towards the shareholders and the board, the CEO will be accounted for this parameter as well.

Third thing you aught to do is to have a direct access from costumers to the CEO – collaboration is needed directly from the top. A good example of social collaboration on top level is the former prime minister of Denmark Anders Fog Rasmussen who used face book to communicate whit his voters.

Will these steps work to get the CEO participating in Social collaboration?

You can not guaranty anything but first secure measurement of Social Collaboration, secondly have social collaboration as a part of the annual report, this will give some kind of pressure on the CEO to start acting on social collaboration.

If non of these will get the CEO in action on Social collaboration he will be one of the ones who will wait for 5 years to interact in being social and use social media to communicate with the company costumers, and properly out of his business.

How valuable is Social Media for corporate business in 2012 and ahead?

During the last seven years the internet has changed from an interactive information tool where you as a costumer could tell the corporation about what they have told you. This was a one–to-many communication. The change which made all social and made the social media, was when the communication changed to many-to-many and went out as collaboration between costumer and corporation.

Corporate value creation from Social technologies

Corporate business is still not using the fully potential of the social technologies. An estimated 1.5 billion[1] people around the globe have a social network account. Corporations are not using this potential fully to collaborate with this huge amount of potential costumers. The reason for most corporations not fully using social media and networks is the lack of control towards the costumer – this is not only a one- way communication where the corporation informs the user of their products it is a new arena where you as a corporate business will get immediate feed-back on your product, and performance a collaboration will occur between corporation and costumer. It is here the value creation appears from social media and technologies – you get a feedback, which can generate new opportunities for your business.

Costumers part of the value creation due to social technologies

The costumers has created a new and more powerful role in the entire world of sale and marketing – today you must not expect that costumers just buy your product, information. Costumers starts putting questions about your product and services; they even create news and make regimes fall (the Egyptian spring 2011). The important question for a corporate business is how will social media create value for the corporation?

Thousand of corporate business has found that social media and communication can generate rich new forms of costumer insights – at a lower cost and faster than conventional methods. Products as perfume and services are being re-launched to costumers on YouTube and in blogs to cut cost and trying (with success) to engage costumers directly on the social platforms.  The value created is unfiltered feedback and behavioral data – do people like your tweet your YouTube video or even your brand. Corporate business are beginning to discover that social technology platforms, provides a much more efficient way of communication and collaborating. A further benefit is that on social platforms, communications become content – forming a searchable archive that can be continually enriched with comments from costumers, experts and other stakeholders. The latest example I have heard on this is by open up service platforms, where costumers are able to check service status on their own equipment on a social platform. This creates a much more efficiently and effectively use of the data opening up for the costumers to use the corporate business collected data. Further more opening up for data is creating value to both the costumer (Easy to access data) and time consuming for the corporate business not sending abstracts on email to costumers on data they can get by themselves.

Corporate value creation on social media demands openness.

Participation on social media using the technologies, in turn, depends on having an environment of openness, information sharing and trust. This sort of culture, that is acquired to create value out of the social media investment, is not established fully in many corporate organizations. This change of mindset in behaviors and in corporate cultures to get the value out of social media and technologies demands an openness and sharing which is a challenge to corporate organizations.

The award for the ones who really creates the conditions of openness and trust in the corporate organization and are able to let this openness and sharing reach the costumers in real collaboration, will find that the value and benefits from using social technologies and media, will make the corporation more adaptable to changes and crisis in their business and in the society. The ability to absorbing and acting on new ideas and possibilities and even threats is another value of this transforming from an information corporation to a collaboration corporation.  

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[1] According to Mckinsey latest research 2012

Social Media in big events – how should corporate react?

It is quite obvious that Corporate has an opinion on how and when members of an organization react during a big event. During the London 2012 Olympic Games Twitter, Face book personal blogs and other Social Media, are becoming a more important part of the promotion of the individual sport performer. The International Olympic Comities are trying to form rules of engagement for the individual performer to make sure that corporate (The Olympic concept) will be respected.

But can you make rules from Top management (IOC) and is it the proper way to control or try to control social media?

"The International Olympic Comity (IOC) objective is to secure that each of the athletes treat each other respectfully and live up to the Olympic ideals perceived as restrictive."

In my opinion there is no problem in advising your employees or Athletes in how corporate want to be presented in the public room.  If you are part of a corporation or an athlete in the Olympic Games you have to apply to the rules as long as these rules do not limit the individual’s freedom of speech and expression.  The rules made by IOC do not in my opinion limit the athlete’s right to express them self. All athletes are encouraged to use Social Media to tell their fanes about themselves and how they progress in the games. The rules/objective made by IOC; is do not use Social Media to express your feelings about other athletes and do not report directly from the competitions.

These simple rules will not destroy the power of Social Media but just prevent the media to be abused in the way to create hate towards officials and competitors. The idea with Social media is not to use it as a smearing media not in the Olympics nor in corporate context.  When a corporation or and individual uses social media it is important to take into consideration that you have the proper content in the right context. Social Media is about creating communication and interaction among the creator of an activity and the fans you have as an athlete. So every initiative you as an athlete or an employee create should, at a minimum, track three key social metrics:

• Activity is the amount of outbound activity you as an athlete or your company brand share, publish and communicate with online users.
• Reach serves as the measure of how large a community you as an athlete or an employee are reaching through your social media activity
• Engagement represents the overall interactions you as an athlete or an employee are experiencing in social channels.

If the athletes in the 2012 London Olympic Games look upon the IOC Social Media engagement rules it should be easy to aligned their own Social initiatives with the IOC objectives - that each of the athletes treat each other respectfully and live up to the Olympic ideals perceived – and herby secure that the athletes do not have any limitations in their ability to express themselves freely.