Posts

Vanessa Chris

The end of the (written) word as we know it?

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As someone who prefers writing over speaking any day of the week, one Rosemary O’Connor quote has always resonated with me:

 

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

 

If you feel the same way, then you may have a similar reaction to Facebook’s prediction that, in five years’ time, the written word will be out—at least when it comes to social media—and video will become the communication method of choice.

 

According to the social media giant, the number of text updates has already started to diminish, while video is on the rise. As someone who gets clunky in front of a camera—who trips over her words, can’t remember what she wanted to say, and says “like”, “um” and “uh” an embarrassingly inordinate amount of times in one sentence—I can’t imagine a day when I’d ever turn a camera on myself to announce a mundane update in my life.

 

That said, I understand the whole notion of “show, don’t tell”—and while it may be difficult to capture many of life’s personal, spontaneous moments on camera, I definitely see how businesses could start relying more on video when it comes to social media marketing.

 

What do you think? Could the written word eventually become extinct? What would that type of world even LOOK like?

Michael Rabinovici

Social Media Marketing in B2B vs. B2C, what’s the dif?

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As companies and internal marketing departments evolve their social media strategies and refine their tactics, research is becoming available to shed light on these efforts.

One area of particular focus has been the potentially different impact that social media has on B2B marketers in relation to their B2C brethren.  In a recent study titled “2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report” Mark Stelzner asked marketers how they’re using social media, and more than 1,900 business-to-business (B2B) marketers shared their insights.

Here are some highlights:

•    Of the B2B marketers who took this year’s survey, over 93% use social media to market their businesses. While that’s slightly below their consumer-focused brethren (95.2%), there’s been a significant increase since the 2010 survey when only 88% of B2B marketers responded affirmatively.
•    Over 56% of B2B marketers acquired new business partnerships through social media (compared to 45% of B2C marketers)
•    Nearly 60% of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings from their social efforts (compared to 50% of B2C marketers)
•    B2B marketers are better able to gather marketplace insights from their social efforts (nearly 69% vs. 60% of B2C marketers)
•    The one area where B2B marketers significantly lag behind their B2C counterparts is in developing a loyal fan base. 63% of B2C marketers found social media helped them develop loyal fans, compared to only 53% of B2B marketers.

For more information on the report click here.

For more mind blowing research and insight about social media and mobile marketing, follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mikerabinovici or email me at michael at ar-com.com

Michael Rabinovici

Getting Social In House

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Most companies that have ventured into the social media space have focused almost exclusively on marketing.  Very few have considered the tremendous benefits that can be unleashed by using social media tools within their company.

In a good piece in IT Business, Robert Scheier gives a number of examples, including IBM, where “social networking isn’t just for spreading the word to customers. Employees use an internal Facebook-like network to find colleagues with the skills they need to solve pesky customer problems”.  It is these type of collaboration applications that deliver significant ROI for your business.  Read the full article here – http://bit.ly/ts7QTs

For another excellent article, I suggest “Using Social Media To Improve Employee Communication, Collaboration, And Even Compensation” by Shawn Graham which appeared in Fast Company.  You can read it here – http://bit.ly/tKbzJG

From all of us at AR Communications Inc., a joyous holiday season, and a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year.

Michael Rabinovici

Bringing Social Media into the Strategic Planning Tent

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting at Federated Business’s Strategic Planning Skills event.  When the invitation to present arrived a few months earlier, the topic at first blush seemed a little awkward.  Once I started to research it, I was amazed at social media’s potential impact on all the key facets of corporate strategic planning:  Sales & Marketing, Legal/Regulatory issues, Human Resources/Recruiting, and Customer Service. View or download the presentation at the link below – mind bending stuff, I promise.  Looking forward to your comments.

http://slidesha.re/social-media-in-the-strategic-planning-process

Michael Rabinovici

Go Mobile or Go Home

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A recent study covered by the tech site Mashable indicates that consumers are now spending more time on mobile apps than the Web. In June, consumers spent 81 minutes per day using mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes of Web surfing (see chart below).   This change in user behaviour is further confirmed by a recent report by Mary Meeker, a partner at the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which found that for the first time combined tablet and smartphone shipments eclipsed those of desktops and notebooks.  All this data also backs Wired Magazines’ article last year “The Web is Dead”, which predicted that apps would soon overtake the Web.

What does that mean for your company? If you’ve developed and implemented a mobile strategy, you are well positioned to benefit from this coming shift.  If you have started to give some thought  to this and you move the process into high gear, you should be OK as well.  If you’ve done neither, you better drop everything else and make this your top priority.  Now.

Will mobile rule everything? No.  But a significant segment of your current audience and your future one will spend an increasing amount of their time on their mobile devices.  The question all companies have to answer is whether not they will be able to serve and create value on the devices and media on which their customers choose to spend their time.

You can find a links to the reports mentioned above here:
Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror
Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends

 

 

Michael Rabinovici

Groupon Groupoff

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Chicago based Groupon ("group coupon")  is one of the great technology stories in recent memory.  For those of you who still spend most of the time in the physical world, Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website localized to major markets that promotes itself with the now well-known tag line: 1 Ridiculously Huge Coupon A Day.  It’s been described as the fastest-growing company in Web history.

Here’s how it works:  your business gets exposure to Groupon’s gigantic user base and, in return, you give potential customers a juicy discount.  Whenever Groupon collects money on behalf of merchants from selling  coupons on its Web site, it keeps an average of 50%. The twist – the deal is on only “on” if a pre-determined number of people sign up for it (usually 10 or more). The platform is used daily by a multitude of businesses, ranging from small enterprises to large brands such as the Gap and the Toronto Raptors.

Here are some Groupon highlights:

Launched November 2008
Number of subscribers who receive emails with “Coupon of the Day” offers – 50 million
Revenue (2009 est.) – US $30 million    Revenue (2010 est.) – US $760 million    Revenue (2011 est.) – US $2 billion
Number of employees (2009 est.) – 120  in 30 cities          Number of Employees (2011 est.) – 5,000 in 565 cities
Buyout offers  –  Google made an offer for $6 Billion (offer was turned down)
IPO  – rumours of an IPO within the next 24 months at a valuation of $20-$25 billion

Now that we’ve established that all is well for Groupon, how is it working out for the merchants?  Stay tuned for my next post.

Michael Rabinovici

Building Brands and Booking Business with Facebook

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When it comes to leveraging social networks for building your brand and generating leads, Facebook has not typically been the first site that comes to mind.  That honour usually went to LinkedIn and small business-focused Networks. Well, the times they are a’ changing. Facebook is increasingly becoming the focus for companies and professionals who are looking to leverage its fast growing user base, currently pegged at 600 million users. If you’d like to learn how to use Facebook for business, here are some good links collected by the smart folks at Mashable.

·  Essential Apps for Building Your Brand’s Facebook Page

·  Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page

These links should provide you with a good starting point for a Facebook campaign. Please share any experiences your company has had with Facebook in the comment box below.

 

Michael Rabinovici

Social influence – Do you have any? Does your company? Does your Boss?

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While many of our  clients are starting to leverage the power of social media for their companies, some are further down the path then others.  The ultimate test for effective use of social media is whether it influences opinion, propels action and engages the intended  audience.  The question then becomes: can you measure social influence? The answer is yes and it’s called the Klout Score (www.klout.com), defined as the “measurement of your online influence.  The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.  The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.”  When you go to klout.com, enter you organization’s name, your name,or your CEO’s name in the box provided and get your score.

Check out these “5 lessons from business leaders on social media marketing” –  http://on.mash.to/social-influence