@stewarttownsend

Applying social business to China social media.

by Rand on 2011/07/20 · 2 comments

in Case Studies,China Social Media,Insights

3tweetsretweet

Let’s try something a bit different today; rather than talk about China social media or communications campaigns, let’s attempt to use the underlying principles learned from our experience with social media to “fix” some fundamental issues faced by Chinese businesses, with a specific targeted emphasis toward problems experienced on the entrepreneurial/start up levels.

To do this we’ll need to go beyond “social media” to “social business”, which according to my own semi-correct  definition is the alignment of social resources to accomplish multiple business objectives with a corresponding decrease in micromanagement.. ie: do one action, get ten results.

This may get intuitively technical, so bear with me as I establish the overall challenge and work my way toward a solution; your sustained concentration on my obtuse syntax will lead to a potentially rewarding climax.. tested and case studied near this article’s conclusion.

Let’s get started: so as we discuss social, lets analyze one of the most commonly overlooked problems in building businesses in China: human resources; ie: the very high demand for talent, and the inversely proportional supply.

This is counter-intuitive to most; popular thinking: “doesn’t China have [x] billion people?” which somehow implies within that conceptually huge number exists the managers, planners, strategists, and directors needed to properly run complex multi-tiered projects requiring knowledge either acquired through years of matured industry experience, MBA-level understanding of systems and processes, or visceral ”brave new world” thinking.

Those familiar running companies in China have perhaps intuited the foreshadowed ”bad news”.. for the rest: the above simply isn’t true - yes the workforce is huge, but also remember consulting-level, complex, service oriented business (ie: anything not related to manufacturing) existence as mainstream workforce options are probably little more than 10 years old..? Less?

Going my way?

So how does one solve this triple-sided human resource problem of initial supply, applicable skills, and long-term retention? Well so far I’ve learned it’s a mix of patience, with a little patience, and then add some more patience.. but this begs a better solution if only for preserving one’s sanity.

Winning the patience game will ironically require a lack of patience, thus inspiring a frustration-powered push toward adopting a new set of (made up) strategies. What I’ll talk about below won’t sound familiar, will be more intuitive than logical or practical.. most likely to set off a push notification in the heads of those seeking; a ringtone alert slithering through awareness some hour past midnight, a vibrating cellphone against your thigh, a digital itch you can’t quite scratch.. suddenly scratched. 

Challenging a challenging set of challenges.

Solving this issue from the surface won’t work.. so lets dig a few layers deeper.. here’s the primary challenge in the form of a question, posted by a Brand Development intern at Unilever China in Littleredbook’s linkedin group:

Being a marketeer with agility requires us to keep learning new things and forgetting conventional thinking, but sometime I just found it’s much more difficult to forget than learn…

Do you have any advise for “forget”? Or what can we do when our thinking is defined by the old convention and can’t easily break through to come up with new idea?

The above is an omnipresent issue in China, made larger due to rigid systems deeply ingrained into the culture; a focus on nuanced familial and government hierarchy, and an educational emphasis on memorization, contribute to people of limitless potential, limited however by a de-emphasis on possibilities potential, replaced instead with binary thinking sometimes paralyzed by challenges creative.

China’s quick boom has increased new workforce options of creative/consulting fields, yes, but the flip side has lead to high demand for great talent, high turnover rates for talent headhunted to new positions, and professional title hyperinflation as part and parcel for the job hop.

This chaotic forward movement produces confusion and unreliability as a by-product of double-digit progress, eventually leading to forced HR sourcing from other Asian countries for titles above “[x] manager”.

For the entrepreneur? The challenges are perhaps greater; we’ve got the above plus limited resources to hire, and limited time to spend training, ie: “should I spend time developing my marketing to get new clients, directly pitching and wine/dine current clients, micromanaging current projects or develop/train my staff to handle these projects independently?”

This often without support of an international branding gravity well makes each endeavor more intensive.. developing clients is harder as you play on skill vs. brand recognition; and finding, hiring and retaining also becomes more difficult without the social proof brand-relation brings.

What the solution must solve.

So as we do, let’s kill this problem as much we’re able; approaching from the entrepreneurial level, lets assume all China challenges must be solved; a quick list:

• Break at least 20 years of conventional thinking per individual.
• Consistently drive internal motivation to create new ideas per individual.
• Integrate process into daily activity when servicing client projects.
• Slow or stem turnover and attrition of successfully trained staff.
• Reduce director-level micromanagement vs. traditional methods by 95%.

Feel the sting? You are, or you will. These challenges are traditionally battled one-by-one; but as entrepreneurs managing growth, we’ll assume we’ve no time or resources for a process that historically doesn’t work.. or works so slow we have yet to see significant results.

Pulling a “Skywalker”.

Before we continue, a quick, semi-relevant tangent: you remember the first Star Wars movie? The Death Star battle at the end? Well these problems listed above are a bit like the Death Star, a big hulking mass of which you have no clue where to start your attack.

Big problems need nimble solutions.

Our solution needs to be like Luke Skywalker’s torpedo trench run – a single point of applied pressure that breaks apart the entire system.

Rather than attacking from multiple angles the outside, we attack a single point connecting all parts; a solution that addresses the source problem rather than the superficial symptoms.

Curiosity makes the cat, a cat.

So what’s our “torpedo” that breaks apart the problems above? As with all things correct, the answer is never complex – it’s simple, straightforward and ethereal.

As does, the solution came in parts, masked in the little things overlooked when not seeking. The first came while depressurizing my brain by watching cable TV.

A semi-epiphany pierced my mind and forced me to pull my finger out my nose: beyond a brand slogan “live curious” means much; as once the mind regains curiosity it grows, queries, and seeks truth.. not to answer questions on a test, or to look intelligent in the eyes of peers or clients.. curiosity seeks truth for the pleasure of seeking truth, the subtle joy of twisting problems, and the layering of deep levels of satisfaction from problem’s solutions.

The pressure of the peers.

So curiosity is great, but it isn’t enough, as it’s based on pleasure and not pain. Let’s then consider the second part of the mix: peer pressure, reminiscent of your pimpled high school “halcyon” days: a powerful omnipresent, somewhat subtle force, which in itself is pain only conformity subdues.

Don't lose face.

One great positive of Chinese culture is conformity pulls society up rather than down.. as the group to conform to is “upper middle class” (as defined by our communist benefactor’s approved propaganda), of which the vast majority of China is not.. though thanks to media censorship singularly aspires to be.

If social media has taught us anything, it’s that people are shaped by other people; influencers, key opinion leaders, comments, votes, “likes”; symbiotic in nature, dependent on the other as reflection to reflected. Think of the increased speed of connection via Internet also as an increase in the speed of normal human interaction, of which conformity plays a subtle, though dominating role; not the mountain, but rather the mountain’s shadow.

Gravitational influence.

The third element is attraction.. but what is it that attracts one thing to another? It usually isn’t a direct focused pull, but rather some general aura that gradually eats away at barriers and eventually captures consent; starting slow but exponentially multiplies vs. time; it’s a lot like gravity – greater attracts lesser, thereby making the greater exponentially greater, and harder for other lessers to pull away.

Whirlpools, tornadoes and gravity wells; the greater attract the lesser.

Big brands and internationally respected agencies have gravity in their branding; the simple benefit of associating one’s name with a big agency or brand is a facet; you’re likely to stay with that which others recognize and respect.

Got gravity?

You’ll find that the brand you work for becomes a part of how others unconsciously define you; the better the brand you’re associated with the more implied respect you gain; ie: the better the brand the stronger the gravity; these intangibles are difficult to leave behind, unless left for something greater.

But going beyond big names, other elements that may contribute to gravity (especially for the entrepreneur) are anti-corporate lifestyle, high-level flat hierarchies, innovation and defining new ground, traveling paths unexplored; either that, or less hours spent unpaid overtime, or processes that reduce unnecessary workload. So names are one, emotions and quality of life are another; the two may overlap, but rarely intertwine.

Three ingredients.

So the question begged: how do we use the idea of curiosity, coupled with pressure and gravity to break the thick glass walls between brain and mind and achieve the goals stated above?

What I do not have is a bullet-proof answer.. having said that, I do have a potential solution. The way we’re approaching it at Resonance is through a simplified employee-run training process, a bit similar to Barcamp where members become speakers.. though different.. let me explain:

The theory of “social media creative” is that if it’s structured right, it should run itself as it leverages social triggers (ie: the 3 forces listed above) in a holistic way where each feeds the other in some sort of sociologically-self-sustaining ecosystem. You can see this in a lot of crowd-sourced user generated content campaigns.

What is required from directors however is the “rules of engagement” more similar to natural laws (ie: gravity) than government directives (ie: state laws); the rules should naturally sustain the engagement and allow interaction to continue undisturbed by unnecessary distraction from core goals, ie: set the game up right and it should run on its own; the system should work naturally without conscious thought (Mac) vs. breakdown periodically thus leading to actions apart from your original intention (PC).

OK enough chit chat, lets see what this looks like. Keep in mind as you review, this method is specifically crafted for employees who’ve gone through China’s education systems, and demonstrate related dominating culture behavior and attitudes.. the guess is this may work in any situation requiring a focused effort in drawing out creativity, but then that’s a guess; buyers do be aware.

Typical scene from weekly trainings -

Rules of engagement, first iteration. 

• Every week one person is chosen (based on pre-approved schedule) to pick any online China social media campaign they find interesting, case study it, and present to the rest of the staff.
• Once presented, each member of the staff is called on to make some comment; these can range from casual to intense, but whatever it is, they must comment.
• Afterwards, each presentation is ranked on a number pre-determined factors by the staff. Results are presented the following week.

What does this accomplish?

• Curiosity: The speaker is allowed to choose any brand or any subject they want to present. They can explore whatever subject is of interest to them as long as they can present it intelligently and coherently to staff. 
  
• Peer Pressure: Training is witnessed by everyone in company, which turn them from simple obliged homework assignments to demonstrations of intelligence, skill and abilities to fellow peers (not to directors or “bosses” who are of arguably less significance/influence to staff); it’s not about content, its about what the presentation implies about the speaker to that speaker’s peers. This expands from speaker to audience, as each person is called to comment, they are also implicitly pressured to ask intelligent questions as a micro-version of the speakers presentation. Everything is public and transparent, contribution (or lack thereof) is obvious and immediately identified by everyone attending.
• Gravity: Though a relatively stressful event for speakers and attendees, what becomes obvious is that we’re looking to develop them, help them grow past where they are, allow the top and the bottom to share the same issues and ideas. One thing we’ve noticed is that after events, staff become more open, more willing to voice opinions and more willing to share ideas, and thus seem to enjoy sessions now, vs. the sheer terror experienced before. A barrier is obviously broken, but also obvious is that it must be broken consistently over a long period of time. This attention is noticeably different from other companies, and may provide a bit of the gravity we need to retain our talent, as we show an open, dedicated, and visceral interest in developing their talent and socially rewarding them for performance; this in addition to whatever pull our branding and position in the market may have.
• General Training: Throughout this process, they are learning cases of brands Resonance does not manage. They keep up-to-date on the latest trends, newest platforms, latest technologies, successful (and unsuccessful) strategies and can apply knowledge from their presentations and those of their peers on new client China social media campaigns.
• Reduced micromanagement: Director-level involvement is reduced to calling everyone into the room, and moderation of follow up Q&A. The rules of engagement dictate the rest.

Does this actually work? Good question. I would argue that it does, but rather than, here instead are results from the first iterations when initially testing the idea (roughly 2010.11 – 2011.02):

Dior | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China.

MG3 | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China.

One thing we notice from these presentations is that the level of skill for each varies, but also all are pushing hard to do well. While the first few case presentations brought roomfuls of blank stares, over time those stares became inquisitive looks followed by volunteered questions driven by curiosity rather than my constantly badgering them for not asking questions.

A tablespoon of truth.

Rather than assuming they know this or that, we open up to reality and see what they really know vs. do not; allowing for easier identification of strengths and weaknesses leading to proper assignment of work that’s challenging but not too; and identifying those who are ready to take a step up vs. those who are not.. from this process we’ve identified several managers from executive level staff, which we’ve given more responsibility, projects and pay, and have seen results that correlate to their performance during presentation.

But perhaps more, we’ve seen friendships develop as our staffers bond uniformly through the shared mutual experience of having to put up with my half baked ideas and weird social experiments. This shared experience seems to be improving team dynamics and openness of discussing challenges and has resulted in a noticed increase in searching for solutions, and a sincerity in seeking positive action, vs. hiding from, or “redistribution” of, responsibility.

A few steps further.

So that was the first iteration; the second is an improvement on the first with two specific goals: [1] Put more focus on curiosity and creativity, and [2] standardize presentations as much as possible for use in future marketing.

Now this is where it gets a bit more interesting. We’ve begun alternating cases with competitions which consist of grouped teams that create topics for viral spread across the web. Teams are judged by their peers on creativity, results, and applicability to client campaigns.

Viral Competition | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China.

Results were quite interesting; we had one team pair a picture of a pretty girl with a Dior watch with the headline “My boyfriend makes RMB 30,000/month but still won’t buy me a Dior watch” which got the most page views online, but generally deemed unusable for brands (especially Dior) by the other teams.

Another team created a guide to dating for gamers that game too much to find girlfriends and launched a targeted campaign specifically toward that online demographic.

And the winning team created “the perfect man” and put his profile on Douban; during the course of the week this perfect man received contact from 50 women interested in meeting him for a variety of interests. This winning case was done in such a way that it could be intricately tied to some current campaigns.

Now keep in mind, all of the above was ideated by our teams; directors had nothing to do with it, we simply allowed our staff to follow their curiosity to wherever it may take them. There is something powerful here in these trainings, though not fully isolated and identifiable, it is certainly more apparent than it was before.

Re: standardization? You may have noticed that the first iteration of cases were a bit messy and unstructured. The second iteration features structured templates, starting with clear identification of objectives and target audience and ending with SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis of each case presented.

Guerlain | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China

Vancl | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China.

McDonalds | China Social Media Case Study.

View more presentations from Resonance China

These templates help to target discussions specifically at the SWOT analysis portion; allowing both speaker and audience to focus on the source meaning rather than the superficial message.

Social Business.

So how do we tie this back into social business? It’s really just connecting the inside, to the outside.. presented in flowchart form:

Flowcharts are a (business)man's best friend.

So beyond continuous training for current staff, developing a company culture of curiosity, opening minds, etc, we can also use materials produced for marketing purposes and as training documents to new staff just entering the company.

In fact, future LRB posts will likely be reviews of weekly trainings, as they help to highlight what brands are doing, keep me updated on what’s going on, allow us to appear to be semi-knowledgeable regarding China social media to our agency and client partners, are easy to write as they are already written (just sprinkle opinions and voilà) and will probably improve an already overflowing sales pipeline. Not so bad.. not so bad.

You know what social business is? It’s really killing several birds with one stone; except the stone is social triggers and influence points available resources, and the birds are business objectives both inside and outside the company. Yeah. Something like that.

And there you have it. 

Perhaps the greatest fault of the above system is that it will not solve your problems immediately; admittedly this is a long term play to build not only the competence of staff and quality level of service offering, but also internal company culture, which affects company brand and gravity retention of talent.

A bit like watching the Death Star blow up in super slo-mo, though not immediate, it does work toward solving the issues stated at the beginning of this post; ie: breaking through the barriers of the mind to unearth the rich resources that lay within; using tools provided by sociological nature that when properly calibrated produce natural ecosystems that organically align and improve themselves.

Yes, I know this problem is not solved, and no, I wasn’t trying to trick you into thinking I had solved it (but I did sorta come close-ish.. right?).

The conclusion.. isn’t; there is more to learn and grow as we learn and grow.. but I do believe we’re on the right path, we’re going the right way, and night be seeing this in the right light.. and perhaps that’s enough.. for now.

Whatever it is, to be perfectly honest, I’m just glad I finally finished this post, cause between you and me, writing this thing took forever. 

• 5

  5

  5

  5

  5

  5

  5

  5

  5

Dancing with Gorillas ...

Spotlight on Author, Dr. Shameen Prashantham! 

Globally renowned author, lecturer, professor, and advisor to White Bull, Dr. Shameen Prashantham specializes in the internationalization of smaller firms, or SMEs, specifically as it relates to their interaction with large multinational corporations. He calls this Dancing with Gorillas.

I was lucky enough to catch up with him recently. Here's the scoop!
 

Elizabeth Perry/White Bull:
How did it all start? How did you end up in the academic world?

Dr Shameen Prashantham:
A decade ago I was working for an Internet start-up in Scotland having acquired a Master’s degree in international business and previously worked in advertising. While being part of the “real” business world was stimulating and rewarding I found myself increasingly drawn to spending more time on conceptualizing ideas than was practicable or appropriate in my day job. I decided to return to grad school as a full-time doctoral student. I enrolled at Strathclyde International Business Unit (SIBU), one of Europe’s top research centres for international business. At that point in time several SIBU scholars were looking at how smaller, young firms internationalized, in contrast to the traditional focus of research on large multinational corporations (MNCs), and that’s what I focused on too. My specific interest was in how network relationships of these companies aided their international expansion. I took the view that not all networks are good for all things – and that some networks aid certain facets of internationalization more than others. To explore these ideas, I studied a bunch of young Indian software firms and discovered that what their coethnic ties overseas (fellow Indians living abroad) could do for them tended to be different than what their non-ethnic ties did. The former were great for going deeper into a market by, for example, setting up an alliance that gave the start-up local “presence”. The latter were much more potent in actually driving up international revenues. Of course you can have exceptions to this but this was the broad pattern I observed. And it strengthened my view that the characteristics of partners matter – different relationships tend to have different things to offer and the better this is understood the more effective can one’s networking be.

WB:
How did you come up with this idea "Dancing With Gorillas"?

SP:
I was done with my doctoral work by 2005 and had started my first academic job. I was looking for my next project. While doing my doctoral research I had noticed that both academics (myself included, I guess!) and entrepreneurs tended to look overseas for relationships to aid internationalization. That’s of course perfectly reasonable. But I had begun to pick up “weak signals” – that is, occasional examples or anecdotes – of young firms leveraging a local relationship that fed into their international expansion. And more often than not the relationship in question involved the local subsidiary of a large multinational. Thus, it was conceivable for a start-up called HMD Clinical in Edinburgh to form links with a local unit of an American company to co-develop a product for international markets. Similarly I learned of a start-up called Skelta in Bangalore that had developed a valuable relationship with Microsoft India which had then grown arms and legs that ultimately resulted in a close working partnership in the US market. I found this intriguing. When I talked about this to colleagues I got the impression that I was onto something that might be interesting and hadn’t been examined a great deal. The final affirmation came at a conference in the US. The late CK Prahalad, a distinguished professor and thought leader, had been recognized with an award and gave a talk. In the subsequent Q&A I asked him whether it was reasonable for young firms to look at partnering with large multinationals. His response was: “Many of them don’t really have a choice…they need to learn to dance with the big gorilla”. From then on, for over half-a-decade now, I have invested a lot of time and energy into studying how young firms “dance with gorillas”!

WB:
What does it mean?

SP:
“Dancing with gorillas” is about start-ups developing meaningful engagement with a large multinational corporation. Given that a lot of my research is outside the US, this often – but not always – involves Asian and European start-ups partnering with a large US company (e.g. Microsoft) and leveraging the relationship in a range of geographies. 

 

The baseline insight that has come out from my early research is that there is a big difference between dancing with gorillas and a small company partnering with another small company or a multinational partnering with another multinational. The sheer differences in size, scale, ambition, structure and so on between start-ups and large multinationals mean that these relationships are vastly asymmetric. Whether you are looking at forming these relationships, consolidating them or extending them, at every stage these asymmetries show up and you can’t do business as usual -- this is business as unusual. On balance, the small companies need the big company more than the other way round, and it often tends to be an uphill struggle. The onus is on the small company to be proactive and make this happen.

 

But on a more positive note, large MNCs are recognizing more than ever before the need to develop an ecosystem that offers access to resources and knowledge to their SME partners (including start-ups). Consider the example of the British start-up mediasift (evolved from fav.or.it > tweetmeme > datasift) which I learned about from Stewart Townsend who used to head up Sun Microsystem’s partner program called Start-up Essentials in Europe.

 

Stewart tells me that this start-up was able to gain valuable publicity and technical support by engaging with Sun. He had first met the start-up’s founder and CEO Nick Halstead at an industry event. The following year, when he launched this partner initiative in Europe, Stewart reached out to Nick to explore ways in which he could add value to the start-up, and Nick was quick to spot a massive opportunity. Technical support was a key part of this: things like loaner and discounted hardware. But also business-related activities including introductions to investors and potential customers through sales teams. All of this meant that the start-up could keep going in a bootstrapped manner. Stewart also observes that “the fact Nick could state he was partnering with Sun and we were helping him would give extra kudos and respect when approaching third parties for support, funding, or more PR/marketing.” Key to this is the MNC partner’s credibility that opens hard-to-open doors.

Of course, Stewart does recognize that start-ups can experience frustrations in dealing with a “gorilla”. For instance, timelines can be long because multiple actors – often including the legal department – need to approve certain actions. This is completely at odds with the flexible and speedy manner in which start-ups try to operate. But then, the payoff is potentially significant: in this particular case, the founder even got to meet Scott McNealy, Sun's founder, and did a video interview and customer story that was carried on Sun.com, a website that received 1 million hits a day – not bad in terms of publicity that cost the start-up nothing apart from time! Stewart also presented Nick with numerous opportunities to present at large scale events which allowed him to gain visibility with an audience that he wouldn't be able to readily reach due to cost restraints.

 

The bottom-line is that it isn’t easy to accomplish – and of course it takes two to tango – but dancing with gorillas can be an important ingredient of a start-up’s success.

WB:
What are your top 10 tips for the SME as they prepare to approach the MNC?

SP:
#1 Be specific and clear in your mind about what you want to achieve.* 

 

#2 Create links with local allies and initiatives to help broker ties with gorillas.

 

#3 Build commitment early on to an (initial) engagement plan in black and white.

 

#4 Draw upon available past experiences that give you insight into how the gorilla operates.

 

#5 Capitalize on your strengths that align with and complement the gorilla’s own.

 

#6 Be prepared for any unexpected “twist in the tale”; it tends not to be a linear path.

 

#7 Modularize activities and knowledge transfer into discrete milestone-based outcomes.

 

#8 Build links to individual managers who can help broaden the scope and scale of activities.

 

#9 Expect things to be ambiguous and not always clear if and when the relationship expands.

 

#10 A happy ending is not inevitable – don’t count on it.

 

*Here’s a great quote from Stewart Townsend on the importance of having clear objectives: “Know what you want out of the partnership. Key is to define that first and be up front. Gorillas don’t have time to dance too much and appreciate a quick tango not a long waltz. So, in terms of communicating what you require, don’t mince words; for example, state: I require a sales pipeline, can you give it to me? etc.” I think that’s great advice.

WB:
At White Bull, we talk about the Pathways to Exit. When should a firm begin to prepare ... or should they focus on business at hand until the opportunity arises?

SP:
That’s a great question! I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Most of the entrepreneurs that I’ve studied are interested in figuring out how to make a successful exit. Although a few entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed (actually more so in Europe than Asia or North America) have expressed diffidence about being taken over, many see dancing with gorillas as potentially contributing to a lucrative acquisition. In one case that I came across, the start-up got a great valuation for some of its intellectual property by a gorilla it was engaging with. The gorilla went on to make an acquisition resulting in a great exit. But in another case a start-up hoped very much that the gorilla it was working closely with would acquire it. Its hopes were dashed, however, when the gorilla extended its own product line so that it was now competing more and more with the start-up – and the increasing overlap meant that an acquisition didn’t happen. At this point the entrepreneur shifted to Plan B. He positioned the start-up for acquisition by other gorillas that operated in adjacent ecosystems. This worked. And it did help that the start-up had a track record of successfully partnering with the original gorilla. I reckon start-ups will almost inevitably have one eye on a bigger prize, such as a successful exit. As one entrepreneur I know puts it: “We’re one of the best-looking girls at the dance but we want someone to take us home”. In the meanwhile, though, start-ups like that one need to make sure that it is making the most of the ongoing dance.

With the name Weiner, you'd think a guy would be careful with his, um, wiener. But not Congressman Anthony Weiner who has been at the center of a media storm resulting from Twitter-based exchanges surrounding his patronymic appendage. Beyond the obvious jokes, you'll find some important lessons for businesses engaged in social media. Further, you can proactively take some steps to ensure that you're not caught with your pants down.

Anthony Weiner's 5 Social Media Lessons

From a marketing perspective, Anthony Weiner's actions, while naïve on the surface, underscore the need for businesses as well as individuals, particularly teens, to understand the longer-term implications of social media interactions. By definition, social media is about the community where it facilitates the speed and breadth of information dissemination. Here are five lessons based on Anthony Weiner's experience.

1. Think before you post on social media and other Internet platforms. Remember that a fast, impulsive moment on your screen stays on the Internet forever. Therefore, don't let your response go directly from your brain to your screen without a timeout before you hit the send button. Consider what your employer or clients would say if they saw this.
2. Understand social media's social responsibility. Regardless of whether you're representing a business or yourself, know that there are real people with real feelings and emotions reading and interacting with your content who could get hurt.
3. Be transparent. At Digitas' New Front 2011, P.J. Crowley stated that every organization has secrets and proprietary information. He specifically cited Google's secret algorithms and Coke's special formula that are these firms' competitive advantage. Transparency means that you need to be above board in your interactions, not tell all. Rick Stengel noted that, while we talk about transparency in black and white terms, it really has gradations.
4. Don't intentionally mislead or misrepresent the truth. The bottom line is that the truth will come out and it will be at the most inopportune time. Remember that, in aggregate, the public knows more than you, so don't lie! Think the "wisdom of crowds."
5. Come clean fast if you have a problem that goes public. Initially, Anthony Weiner should have kept quiet with a brief non-committal no-comment. After the facts emerged, he should have made a short statement and shut up. Instead, he made the situation worse, feeding the media frenzy. Therefore, if an issue about you, either personal or corporate, enters the social media discourse, don't cover it up. The sooner you fess up and tell the truth, the faster you'll take the air out of the conversation. Of course, if the issue goes deeper, it may not stop the interest.

5 Steps to Be Prepared for a Social Media Flare-Up

Whether your organization is proactively involved in the social media ecosphere or sitting on the sidelines, it's critical to be prepared for an issue to flare up because you don't control the social media conversation. Therefore, take these five steps to ensure your company is ready in the current 24/7 media cycle.

1. Monitor social media for brand mentions. Here's where social media metrics and analytics are involved. Even without a social media program in place, you must vigilantly track the conversation and listen to what's being said. Use the best service you can afford. From free services like Google Alerts and Social Mention to higher-priced Radian6, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Synthesio. Be aware that strong brand monitoring requires complex data analysis and takes time to implement.
2. Create a set of social media guidelines. It's surprising that only 50 percent of firms have social media guidelines after three years of social media involvement. The reality is that every firm needs them to define what employees can do when they represent your firm and how they should identify themselves on their personal time.
3. Develop, update, and practice your crisis management plan. Go beyond just having the name of the PR crisis management firm. You need a detailed plan complete with employee names and cellphone numbers across your company, not just PR and/or the CEO. Think every customer touchpoint, because the most likely time to have a crisis is at night, over the weekend, or on a public holiday.
4. Have a contingency plan. Since there's little or no talk about contingency plans, I assume most firms don't have them. This is a plan that outlines the protocol when your social media representative(s) aren't available.
5. Build your social media audience before you need them. To be able to effectively mitigate the impact of a social media firestorm, it's critical to have a social media platform where you have an engaged audience. For example, Ford's Scott Monty was able to contain an issue due to the support of his loyal Twitter following.

Even if your organization isn't active on social media platforms, the bottom line is to make sure that everyone in your organization understands the implications of their personal and professional social media interactions to mitigate the chances that your firm will face an Anthony Weiner-type situation. Further, take the Boy Scout approach and be prepared with brand monitoring and guidelines.

Do you have any suggestions to add to either of these lists? If so, please include them in the comment section below. (Please note that this isn't a platform for venting about Anthony Weiner!)

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Register now for SES San Francisco, which is part of ClickZ's Connected Marketing Week, and save up to $500. Sessions and labs cover search and social media marketing, mobile, video, site optimization, and site usability. Early bird rates expire July 22.

Illustration by Robert Podgorski/BlackMoon Design

Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the way people live and work by making it easier to connect and engage online. They have also enabled major changes in customer behavior, which in turn has revolutionized industries that have successfully incorporated these technologies into their distribution models. In travel, for example, sites such as TripAdvisor combine trip planning with social networking features, and in telecommunications, Internet services such as Skype are finding success by undercutting traditional telephone operators. Yet even as these industries and others have embraced Web 2.0, retail banking has largely remained on the sidelines.

The Internet has already significantly changed many aspects of banking. For example, online banking has grown substantially over the past decade, with online bill payment particularly strong in the United States. But most banks have yet to seize the true potential of today’s abundant new technologies and tools. And as consumer preferences and expectations continue to adapt, the imperative for banks to respond with new offerings will only increase. To retain their competitive edge, retail banks need to reach out to younger, more Web-savvy customers (we call them Generation C, or the Connected Generation), devising new products and services that are simpler and more transparent, and using the power of social networking and other digital platforms to improve their marketing. (See “The Rise of Generation C,” by Roman Friedrich, Michael Peterson, and Alex Koster, s+b, Spring 2011.)

The traditional banking model has long been made up of discrete segments — for example, retail banking, mass affluent banking, and small and midsized enterprise banking. Each segment depends on several sales and distribution channels, including ATMs, branches, contact centers, the Internet, and, more recently, mobile banking. Each segment also offers a range of traditional products, including checking and savings accounts, consumer and small business credit and mortgages, and investment products and advice. These products and services are marketed through traditional centralized functions, including brand management, promotions, and sponsorships.

Now, however, several factors are converging that will force banks to reconsider every aspect of their distribution systems. With Web 2.0 technologies, consumers are changing their behavior, and they are demanding a more user-friendly, networked banking experience, one that provides a greater level of trust, transparency, and interactivity. The banks’ goal, ultimately, is to attract new, digitally savvy customers by building their confidence in banks through increased involvement. The greater loyalty such efforts will generate, across all customer segments, will help banks increase revenues and compete more successfully. We have identified three key opportunities that await those banks that are willing to take the leap.

1. Reaching customers. In developed markets, virtually every member of Generation C uses the Internet — and almost two-thirds use social networks — to access information, entertain themselves, and stay in touch with friends and family. Already, 12 percent of this cohort read dedicated finance and investing blogs and participate in online investing forums. Despite these changes in consumer behavior, most banks still use their websites primarily to provide information and enable standard transactions, limiting real communication to branches and contact centers.

New Web technologies have significantly opened up the possibilities for better communication over the Internet and through smartphones. Banks could start blogs, for example, enabling discussions of specific economic developments, new services, or the latest research of interest to target customers. Active participation in social networks could increase loyalty among existing customers and attract new ones. Wells Fargo in the U.S. is an early adopter of these technologies. Its website offers several blogs covering such topics as general financial information and environmental sustainability, and includes a blog especially for students. It also offers YouTube videos about the company, Facebook pages, and the ability to contact the bank through Twitter.

For years - decades, even - Sun Microsystems held some of the world’s greatest engineering talent fast in its cozy embrace. Then, as so often happens, acquisition unleashed a storm of change. A year later, a good deal of Sun's top talent has moved on, including some well-known names from Solaris engineering. I’m sure this tech diaspora will benefit the industry as a whole, as Sun talent spreads far and wide.

For three years at Sun, I worked closely with top Solaris engineers. Many became friends, so I have kept in touch with those who left, and kept an eye on where they went. A number of the best and brightest settled at a cloud computing company out of San Francisco, called Joyent.

Bryan Cantrill, Jerry Jelinek, Brendan Gregg (with whom I worked very closely on the DTrace book), and several other members of Sun’s FISHworks team made the move to Joyent in late 2010. In addition, Joyent had brought on Ryan Dahl (the creator of Node.js, a hot new technology the world was beginning to hear about), Isaac Schlueter and more recently, Tom Hughes-Croucher (author of the upcoming Node.js book for O’Reilly). Putting all these elements together, it was clear that Joyent must be up to something very interesting; I had to become a Joyeur myself to find out exactly what was going on in the company!

We should first spend a few words to answer the question: What exactly is cloud computing? As Steve Gillmor said when asked at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in 2008: to developers, cloud computing means being able to implement ideas at a very early stage, without having to concern themselves about future scaling up. This applies to start-ups and enterprises as well - companies too want a place to implement and deploy their applications or games quickly and flexibly with confidence they can scale rapidly if needed.

A good cloud hosting company provides the just-right amount of computing infrastructure, exactly when you need it. This includes "bursting" CPU capacity, so that your Facebook game doesn’t fall over when it suddenly goes viral, making you a victim of your own success. A good cloud hosting company has monitoring tools that can tell the difference between a short-term surge in traffic and a longer-term need to scale up capacity. Launched in early 2004 as one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, Joyent was the platform of choice for many popular web startups, including Twitter, Wordpress and more. Over time, Joyent’s public cloud service became hugely popular with casual/social game studios, retail and ecommerce companies and many social networking applications. While the public face of Joyent has been a cloud computing service much like Amazon’s (but [url "" "a lot faster"]), at heart Joyent is a software company.

I was already familiar with Joyent as one of the most innovative users of OpenSolaris: Ben Rockwood was a frequent conference speaker on OpenSolaris and related topics, and was active in the OpenSolaris community. Joyent was also one of the biggest contributors to OpenSolaris patches and is now a supporter of Illumos.

Based on Illumos, Joyent has created its own operating system, SmartOS, optimized for cloud computing. Why make a cloud kernel based on Illumos? From the cloud operator’s perspective, the advantages are obvious:

Maximize resource usage

• Illumos virtualization (zones and Crossbow network virtualization) lets a cloud hosting provider put more customers on the physical server (each in their own SmartMachine), while still giving all of them phenomenal performance. Joyent’s servers typically run at 70% CPU capacity, against an industry standard of around 30%.

• Creation and startup of additional zones - in other words, adding new paying customers - is nearly instantaneous.

• 100% of RAM is allocated to SmartMachines or repurposed for SmartCache as an ARC-cache layer between application and disk.

Maximize performance

• No hardware emulation means the machine runs much faster; SmartOS is the hypervisor.

• In cloud computing, latency is everything. ZFS with ARC dramatically improves disk performance, reducing a major source of slowdowns.

• 3X more transactions per second compared to Amazon EC2 of similar size and cost.

Know what’s going on

• Users of Solaris, Illumos, Mac OS X and FreeBSD know that DTrace gives you an unprecedented view throughout the software stack. But all that power comes at a price: using DTrace effectively requires expertise. The Joyent team is now harnessing the power of DTrace in a more user-friendly form with cloud analytics, which will be available to Joyent customers via a GUI and an API.

Companies who want to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud - variable costs, flexible resource usage, and affordability - are choosing Joyent for the efficiency it offers compared to legacy cloud systems. Thank you, Illumos, for giving us much better utilization and faster performance, and hence lower costs to customers.

The power of SmartOS is now available to another kind of Joyent customer: the Service Providers (telcos, ISPs, datacenter operators) who are using Joyent’s cloud software to deliver cloud services to their customers. With the cloud market expected to grow from 30-55% in coming years, it’s no wonder that so many existing providers want to get into the cloud business too. And Joyent is making this very, very easy to do.

Led by VP of Engineering Bryan Cantrill, Joyent’s very talented engineering team has rolled up years of cloud computing experience into a powerful yet easy to use software package, SmartDataCenter 6. This is the fruit of a major engineering effort around multi-tenancy operation in the cloud, including enhancements to OS-level virtualization, DTrace and ZFS. These technologies - powerful and revolutionary as they are - are only the foundation of a cloud operating system. Using Node.js - a Joyent framework for high-throughput, evented-oriented systems - Joyent has built orchestration and management software that turns these foundational OS technologies into a revolutionary cloud offering.

I’m excited to be here at Joyent, working with amazing people on wonderful things. If you’re a current Joyent customer, or a prospect interested in learning more, please drop me a line or go to Joyent.com or JoyentCloud.com to learn more. I’m Deirdre@joyent.com.

Special Offer for Solaris (Illumos) Users

By the way, Joyent is offering a special promo to readers of this article. Go here to experience Joyent’s cloud services.

Keywords:

• Amazon
• Analytics
• Brendan Gregg
• Cloud Computing
• Crossbow
• DTrace
• Fishworks
• FreeBSD
• Infrastructure
• Mac OS X
• Management
• Monitoring
• OpenSolaris
• Performance
• Rockwood
• SAN
• Solaris
• ZFS
• zones

Contact Me About This Article	ShareThis	fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter

Other articles in the VendorVoice section of Volume 157, Issue 5: ”Move your mess for less”; Solaris Modernization Illumos in the Cloud: What is Joyent Up to? (this article) See all archived articles in the VendorVoice section.

Top 10 Most Popular Articles in Current Issue (Vol 157, Issue 5) Illumos in the Cloud: What is Joyent Up to? ”Move your mess for less”; Solaris Modernization What’s New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 Oracle Solaris 11 Express Networking Virtualization Technology Linux Offerings: Oracle Linux and Oracle VM; RedHat Enterprise Linux; and SuSE Linux SAM-QFS 5.0 What Works With What Self-Directed Solaris 10 Branded Zone Demo SPARC T3-1B Doubles Performance on Oracle Fusion Middleware Traffixsystems' Diameter Router and Load Balancer Scales on Solaris SPARC T3 Recent Blog Entries as of April 7, 2011, 11:28 am Oracle Solaris 11 Express Package Management with Image Packaging System (IPS) Java Spotlight Episode 23: Netbeans Dream Team on Embedded Development Oracle's Sun Purchase: Grading the Results so Far 'Move your mess for less'; Solaris Modernization IQNavigator Inc. Invests in Oracle Exadata Database Machine More Telcos are Using Oracle Exadata Dapey Zahav Chooses Oracle Exadata Illumos in the Cloud: What is Joyent Up to? Whitepaper - Oracle Exadata Innovations Drive Greater Customer Value Oregon State University's Leading Edge Climate Research CenterTurns to Oracle Blog RSS Feed

Porsche Cars USA is launching a social media game together with FourSquare. The game involves spotting a Porsche in Dallas during the NFL game between Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, and updating the location of that Porsche with its photo on FourSquare.

Porsche wants to create a real-time photo gallery of Porsche cars on FourSquare at the best hangouts and landmarks in Dallas. According to the press release issued by Porsche:

Porsche is turning every square inch of Dallas into a playing field and everyone in town for the big showdown is invited to participate.  The challenge is to help Porsche create a real-time online photo gallery using the Foursquare’s social media application and snapshots of Porsche vehicles at the Big D’s best hangouts and landmarks.

Once a Porsche is spotted a user would have to take a snapshot of the Porsche in the foreground and upload it to FourSquare with the hashtag “#Porsche”.

So what do the users get in return ? Porsche will be featuring the best photos in its “Porsche spotting at the big game” photo gallery on Facebook. Not a bad reward, but a free Porsche for the winner of the contest would have been an even better prize.

Jun 8

13 Fantastic Tools For Knowing How They’re Doing It

• Posted in SEO, Tools
• 56 Comments »

by Editorial

Sometimes, (if not most of the time) you want to know exactly what your competitors are doing and how do they excel in doing it right. Today we wanted to share with you a comprehensive list of more than 13 online tools that can help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

You can use these services to benchmark your site performance versus your competitors, where You can analyze your competitor’s in-links, and assess your goals before starting any campaign.
Statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, Feed Count, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.

Checking out your Competition

1- Feed Compare

A free web application that you can use for comparing FeedBurner feeds. You can use Feed Compare to compare your feeds against up to three other feeds. All you have to do is input the name of your feed, and then the name of your competitors feeds. Visit Tool

2- Blog Juice Calculator

It’s a fun tool that allows you to compare your blog to other’s based on: rss subscribers, Alexa, and Technorati rank and links. Visit Tool

3- SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data. Visit Tool

4- KeywordSpy

Help you find which keywors your competitrs are using. Increase your Ad Campaign revenue by finding the most profitable keywords. Visit Tool

5- Domain Stats Tool

This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor’s domains. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc. Visit Tool

6- Backtags

Backtags allows users to assess, analyze and rank the popularity of any website on leading social bookmarking sites, identify tags used to describe websites, rank websites according to tag/user popularity and compare and rank competitors. Visit Tool

7- WebSiteGrader

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. The software will provide a competitive analysis for websites of your competitors. Visit Tool

8- SEO Tool – Rank Checker

To use this tool you enter a URL, Keyword, and what search engine you’d like to search and it will automatically check your rankings and report back. You can use it to check the ranking for your competitors and report back to you. Visit Tool

9- Keyword Difficulty

You can use this tool for multiple domain check-ups for Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking. Visit Tool

10- Compete

Compete Site Analytics provide free information to analyze the difference in growth of two or more web sites, including site traffic history and competitive analytics; a list of available promotional codes across thousands of online retailers; and site-specific trust scores based on up-to-the-minute data from Compete and third-party security services. Visit Tool

11- Touch Graph

TouchGraph graphic tools reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites. It gives an interesting view of your site and your competitor’s site relationships. Visit Tool

12- Check Your IndexRank

IndexRank is a 0-10 metric (higher is better) that uses an algorithm based on Google’s indexing data to determine the indexing rate of a website. It measures the rate at which your site is being indexed, which also translates into the rate at which it is growing. Visit Tool

13- Xinu Returns

Find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics. Checks PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages, Rankings and more. Visit Tool

14- SeoDigger

You can use this tool to analyze your competitor keywords and know which can be used to find a given domain in Google or MSN. Visit Tool

Further Online Tools to check

• Quantcast- An open internet ratings service.
• Spider Test- Shows the source code of a page, all outbound links, and common words and phrases.
• Joost Link Analysis- This Firefox extension gives you a bit more information when opening pages, it gathers the PageRank for the linking page, the anchor text used on the link, and checks whether the link is nofollowed or not.
• Myriad Search- A nice tools that search all 4 major search engines at the same time: Google, yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN.

Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) December 6, 2010

 

IngBoo today announced that Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a visionary and industry icon is serving IngBoo™ as an advisor to the company’s founders. IngBoo is pioneering keywords-based social syndication, a new frontier in social media monetization. Over 1500 publishers and bloggers are benefiting from IngBoo’s solution. Publishers can now connect with the largest communities on the web for ongoing updates and sharing via search, tags and feeds.

Mr. McNealy is the visionary behind Curriki.org, a social network for educators who wish to develop, collaborate and share world-class tutorial resources. He serves on the Curriki Board of Directors and leads the charge in the use of social media for making great curricula universally available. This interest in social media, specifically in sharing and distributing great content, is what IngBoo is all about!

“The explosive growth of the Social Web creates tremendous opportunities for young startups,” said Scott McNealy. “IngBoo has a talented team with a vision to transform social syndication to a more relevant engagement model that benefits both publishers and consumers. I am pleased to support IngBoo and its mission.”

Web publishers are expanding their reach into the Facebook community via fan pages and integration of social plug-ins. IngBoo’s solution fully supports Facebook Open Graph social plug-in tools and provides one-to-one content syndication – from a website to a user’s Facebook News Feed. Learn more at http://www.ingboo.com.

About IngBoo, Inc.    
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, IngBoo brings new and powerful social marketing solutions to publishers. Thousands of web sites use IngBoo’s cloud-based social syndication services to connect with their audience via Facebook, Twitter, mobile and email. For more information, visit http://www.ingboo.com.