These are my links for January 29th through January 30th:

  • Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right – Pepsi are another major brand who are dropping their Superbowl ad this year and diverting the $20M (!) into social media engagement campaign. Staggeringly their crowd-sourced new brand development Mountain Dew gained traction from half a million Pepsi fans. This show, where brand loyalty exists, social media is a superb way of using fans to test the market and create word-of-mouth engagement. Big bucks thrown at social media will shift the landscape again, perhaps not all in a postiive way for smaller businesses.
  • CIPD – Social networking for HR – I'm speaking at this CIPD event on 4 Feb in Kettering with Alec McPhedran from Skills Channel TV. We're talking about social media for HR professional and developing social media strategies.
  • The state of social learning and some thoughts for the future of L&D in 2010 – Detailed article with links to top 100 social learning resources and how learning professional are using digital/online tools within learning contexts.
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These are my links for January 14th from 14:03 to 17:45:

  • Finland makes broadband access a legal right – The Finns are leaps and bounds beyond the Brits in making access to the internet a human right – 1Mb connection for all, going up to 100Mb by 2015. Meanwhile, Britain's Digital Economy Bill seems us reach for the hills with 2Mb connections by 2012, and a proposed 'three strikes' internet policy (emulating France) to kick people offline for file-sharing accusations, without a proper legal process.
  • 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic – More straight-down-the-line advice for small businesses as to how to lightly plan their social media engagement strategy, and ways to monitor it. It's tricky as social media is a slow build tactic, but may not suit a fast moving start-up. It's also worth testing it out, and if it's taking up more time than it's hitting the goals, look at other tactics. I'd argue SM is an integrated tool within a larger marketing/engagemnt strategy – not a standalone thing.
  • Employers reject jobseekers over social networking – Further to my recent post, it seems recruiters are getting heavy-handed at screening applicants using social media. Interesting stats but to me it doesn't stack up: how are companies they accessing personal updates on private network sites e.g. Facebook? This shows also that emloyees should update their privacy settings (and favour closed networks like Facebook over open ones like Twitter or MySpace) or only let real 'friends' see their updates if they're likely to get personal in what they are posting. This sort of suggests it's better to NOT be doing anything real on social media, which is sending out the wrong messages to particularly younger job seekers. It's also furthering a divide between the heavy-hand of corporate employeeism, and the open and transparent expectations of enterprising and freelance employment.
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These are my links for January 13th from 09:54 to 13:34:

  • Digital Strategy: It’s Not About The Tools – Hear hear! Ace article by Digalicious that speaks to me: marketing teams are under pressure to dive into social media, but they need to think about the strategy, not the tools. Resist the allure to dive in and plan, the results can be unforgiving: "The difference is that if you try a test in the cable TV channel and it doesn't work, nobody notices. (If a TV ad runs on cable, and no one sees it, is it still an ad?) Social media and the Web are not so forgiving. If you jump into social media, and don't give it the proper attention, people may notice for a long time."
  • Can businesses monetise social networks in 2010? – The question everyone is asking me lately: it's still looking tough, but Dell and Debenhams have monetized social media presences, but on the flip side Facebook is dropping banner ads as they don't work for 'user experience'. So social network involvement is proving 'exciting' for cash-strapped brands, but with limited effectiveness.
  • Coca Cola: Online Social Media Principles – I was talking at a CMI event yesterday and asked the group what their business's social media policy was: 'we can't use it at all, or will be disciplined' several said (including Barclay employees). How very sad. However, this document on guiding employees as to how to use social media when representing the company or refering to it by Coca Cola is a little more enlightened: it acknowledges people will be talking in these spaces, and advises what they expect of their relationship with employees. I like the idea of people being 'scouts' to pass up both good and bad conversations to experts internally.
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These are my links for January 11th through January 12th:

  • Facebook Founder on Privacy: Public Is the New "Social Norm" – Intriguinging developments in social media network privacy land: as public edges towards being the new 'default setting' in how we use personal data online, users will need to make proactive choices to avoid sharing data (and some sharing, like friends lists, is unavoidably public). This is seismic shift not just in social networks, but how the internet is forcing a more translucent society. Lots of good, heaps of bad things here. Will blog about this soon.
  • Why Most CEOs Are Bad at Strategy – A searing assault on why strategy is so damn bad (I'm humbled): strategy needs to combine a 'where to play' (markets) with 'how to win' (USP) approach – and rarely the two work together due to global market forces. "The majority of people who seek to become corporate strategists or strategy consultants do so because they are much more comfortable with analysis than what they perceive as guesswork."
    Touche – however I like to think that people who are from a creative background (and not the typical corporate strategist) like myself can help make the links to combine strategic analysis with good creative ideas.
  • How to Build a Digital Strategy with Edelman Digital Vice President for Interactive Solutions, Gary Goldhammer – An interesting podcast on growing a digital strategy (mainly big brand, US focus) with some comments on selective disclosure in public companies financial services and pharmaceutical industries and duty for response.
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These are my links for December 24th from 11:02 to 13:50:

  • Social media as a crisis management tool – Some sage advice on using social media to manage problems in your organisation: keep people up-to-date, correct any factual inaccuracies, engage people and make sure the people managing your social media are knowledgeable.
  • Build your own community or go where people are? Do both – An interesting view from Fresh Networks on working with social networks: engage with people in Facebook, YouTube etc. but provide another space to link back to which you control – this is a 'hub and spoke' model.
  • Black Swans and Strategic Planning – Interesting aricle on strategic planning, knowing the uncertainties and horizon-scanning for current changes affecting your industry. Based on Taleb's "black swan" theory, the most unlikely events (e.g. financial crash) may have the highest impact on your business.
  • Social Media Sites: Here to Stay? – Stats on global social media usage and profits. Including Ogilvy's five rules for social media optimisation:
    o Make it easy for your audience to tag and bookmark your site.
    o Reward backlinks
    o Make sure your content can travel
    o Enable mashups, applications that combine data from multiple sources into a single tool.
    o Increase your site’s linkability.
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