Twitter CEO Demoted?

A few weeks back, I noticed  news that the Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, demoted himself to focus on strategy. I hesitated to comment on the story because I wasn’t sure if the Twitter press release (not a tweet) accurately captured all of the details behind the demotion. Come to find out that the New York Times did an interview, posted below, with an open and honest Williams where he attempts to explain where it all went wrong for a young CEO of one of the fastest growing companies in the world. This is an interesting read that could be relevant for multiple MBA courses because it talks about a company growing faster than the leadership.

Reuters’ Editor-in-chief reflects on impact of social media

Wow, the Editor-in-chief at Reuters does a fantastic job of describing how social media has and is impacting journalism.  He understands some of the principles that we’ve discussed in class…such as being able to give up control.  In fact, not only does he allow ‘giving up of control’, he embraces it.

http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-editors/2010/10/15/changing-journalism-changing-reuters/

My favorite quote from the article:

The great press critic A. J. Liebling wrote that freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.

Great links from Twitter posts…

I’ve been trying out different social media platforms since class started.  Last month it was blogging (don’t forget about the class blog post challenge, yummy cake!) and this month it is twitter.

I follow a few folks on twitter who posted these this week (I’ll let the articles speak for themselves):

1.  Chris Moody:  cnmoody Come on Weezy. RT @MarkClayson: Lil Wayne’s iPod Lands Him a Month In Solitary Confinement [Contraband] http://bit.ly/c4MZAd 

2.  Scott Stratten:  unmarketing  How one screw-up made the Hilton look better to me http://bit.ly/9gHzoz  incident happened today. 

3.  Claudia Kimbrough:  calliekuhn  RT @smexaminer 3 Free Social Monitoring Tools | Social Media Examiner http://bit.ly/dctAFx

If you have trouble deciphering tweets, so do I, here is a  post that may help.

Ingrid

Social Media Malice

We’ve mostly been talking about the use of social media for good – marketing, leadership development, etc.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, this story illustrates the dangers of misusing social media.  It made me think back to my other post about using social media in the classroom: Even if it’s not used directly as a platform in schools, this kind of tragedy should spark educators and parents to teach kids just how powerful social media’s reach is. 

While this isn’t strictly business related, the article points out the sometimes irreparable damage that can be done by one person sharing unwanted information.  That’s something that everyone can relate to – personally and professionally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/nyregion/30suicide.html

Dilbert gets a Social Media Marketing Manager

I didn’t want you to miss Dilbert’s first experience with his new Social Media Marketing Manager. Too good to pass up for a Monday morning. Hope you enjoy.

The social media wine guy

A couple of years ago Gary Varynerchuk was simply the proprietor of his parent’s wine shop in New Jersey, but using the power of social media, he has become one of the most prevalent personalities of the social media landscape.  His main venue is his website on which he posts a new 5-30 min video on daily where he talks about, drinks and reviews wine and made it his mission to make the wine world approachable and understandable to the average joe.  This core mission, and his unbounded passion for his craft gives his content a genuineness and excitement that would be impossible for a marketing department to duplicate.  Beyond producing enormous volumes of content, Gary has a dogged commitment to engaging with his audience, by replying to emails, tweets and responding in chat rooms.  From his very successful website, he has made numerous TV appearances, speaking engagements, wrote a book and even founded a social media consulting company Vayner Media, Inc. and is a case study in how to build your personal brand in the social media landscape.

If you have any interest or curiosity about wine, he has nearly 1000 videos where he tastes and reviews wine and gives tips on food, wine and pro-wrestling.  I really recommend you check it out.

Twitter: @garyvee

Main website: http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

Wine Library TV: http://tv.winelibrary.com/

A cool ttip to brightten your day

Having taken note of your astonished faces and gazes of amazement and adoration as  Team COM unveiled our groundbreaking Twittergator: trademark pending for Twitter+Aggregator (sneak peak: the logo is the litter twitter bird being eaten by an alligator) we’ve decided to be good community members  and show you how you can get one too! (Please note how we are selflessly giving up (some of) its allure for your benefit, like Copperfield giving you cliff-notes to a disappearing Golden Gate Bridge.) (Revisit that magical experience by visiting OUR SITE: TeamCom doing its ning.)

Ok, ok, ok, so it’s basically just a widget and the following link will take you to the site that let’s your personalize the color, layout, content choices, display options, etc and then produces the HTML code for you to copy/paste (wish I had known that before I spent all that money outsourcing labor to write it myself). Think warm thoughts of Team COM and click HERE.

1. Enter in your basic information (There’s a helpful link right at the top for “advanced queries”  for how to format your search terms so your Twittergator (trademark pending) spitts out the right information for you when you implement it.

2. Make it pritty with the “preference, appearance, dimensions” options.

3. Make sure to do the “TEST SETTINGS” first so you can see how it’s going to look/act, and re-test every time you change something cause it doesn’t always work like you think it will.

4. “Grab the Code” and copy it.

5. In your blog (oh please! Don’tt ttell me you’re not blogging yett) add a simple Text-Box to your layout and then pastte it in there just like you pasting a typical message you would display (Like: “Wow! TeamCOM is hott!”) and then when you save it the magical HTML fairies fly in and turn letters into pictures and when you view your blog:

KAZZAM! (or whatever it is that Copperfield says) You’ve got yourself a Twittergator!

#NEATT!

(sorry if that was overly simplistic, and hope it helps!)

IBM Rational & Social Media

Stephanie Trunzo and Sera Lewis of IBM spoke with us recently about social media and IBM Rational.  IBM Rational software provides a software development platform that improves the speed, quality, and predictability of software projects. 

• Sera Lewis is an NCSU alumnus, with more than 15 years at IBM, currently managing the Rational Web marketing and developerWorks Rational teams.
• Stephanie Trunzo is entering her 10th year at IBM, currently as the Executive Dashboard manager and MCIF information architect at IBM.  Stephanie has an MA from Carnegie Mellon University, and in May 2010 will finish her MBA at NCSU’s Jenkins School of Business. She also teaches distance education courses on professional writing and digital media for NCSU and Chatham University. (Stephanie’s excellent presentation on teaching with social media will be covered in a future post on social media pedagogy.)
• Sera and Stephanie met on Twitter.  In fact, their first face-to-face meeting was in our class for the presentation!
• Stephanie and Sera gave an excellent presentation that was packed full of interesting, topical and valuable information. Here is an overview:

IBM’s Social Media Marketing Challenge is to balance listening to, learning from, and responding to customers. Everyone in the corporation is enabled to speak via social media and this is both a gift and a responsibility.  

(All images from Stephanie and Sera’s presentation)

Social Computing Guidelines at IBM

As previously discussed in this blog, establishing a social media policy is a critical step for any organization and the BEST guidelines are “by the people and for the people” of the organization.  IBM social computing guidelines are used as a model for many other organizations, and call for IBMers to be open, responsible, and honest and to be themselves. The guidelines evolved in one of IBM’s jams. (Since 2001, IBM has used jams to involve its more than 300,000 employees around the world in far-reaching exploration and problem-solving.)

• The IBM social computing guidelines

Social Media Used for IBM Rational

IBM has a huge breadth of social media in practice including:

Social Listening

There is a great deal that can organizations can gain by doing a better job of LISTENING, and IBM makes this a focus of social media activity. 

• Listening:
  •  IBMers work to listen first … to understand what is going on in the industry, with customers and other employees.  
• Reacting:
  • Once listening efforts are well place, members of the IBM Rational team react indirectly with statements such as “we’ve been hearing a lot about…”
• Responding: 
  • Team members will then respond specifically to direct comments about the product. 
• Engaging and Nurturing:
  • Focus on keeping the process going.

How?

• The process starts with team members listening for 70+ keywords that are important for the IBM Rational brand across social networking sites. Each team member takes 2 – 3 words – which makes this a manageable monitoring activity. Tweetdeck is a primary tool, as it is simple to create columns that filter for keywords. Other tools, such as Technorati, are also used.
• Let customers know that you are listening and focus on what is learned to improve relationships
• Show customers that you are interested in improving their experiences with your products by responding quickly with suggestions and/or fixes.
• Be sure there is a primary person who owns a particular topic so that too many people don’t respond to same customer
• Engage and nurture  through customer ratings and reviews – a low-touch consumer feedback mechanism in an “open” environment
  • Drive public dialogue around product experiences
  • Don’t filter out bad reviews – you want to follow up on negative reviews
  •  80% of IBM Rational reviews are positive  – nothing beats first hand feedback / word of mouth

IBM Rational Social Media Event Example

The recent Rational Software Conference, a huge event, showed how social media is becoming pervasive:

• Conference was advertised across social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as in traditional and Web media
• Customers could ask questions and get information in whichever channel worked for them
• Remote and live attendees could interact with speakers via live displays of tweets

A good idea for a conference using social media is to define hashtags (hashtags are ways to unite Tweets around particular topics) ahead of time and get these out to participants before the event.  This is a great way to keep people involved in the conference even if they aren’t there live.

Global Social Media at IBM Rational

IBM teams from around the world are adopting social media designs from the U.S. and other countries and localizing. In 2010, the IBM Rational team will offer “Social Media in a Box” kits. This helps create design continuity across countries and makes the process much easier to implement at the local level. 

In China, a virtual event had:

• Video with over 2 million plays on video sites (Youku, Tudou, Ku6, Google video)
• Online banners generated 21 million impressions
• Live broadcast increased availability to larger audience via 7 IT media sites

A big Thank-you & Resources

With its social media guidelines, social listening and “social media in a box,” IBM and specifically IBM Rational shows that it understands to potential of social media.  Thanks to Stephanie Trunzo for making this presentation possible and to both Stephanie and Sera Lewis for sharing their valuable insights with us.

Resources:

•http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/

•http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_22/b4086056643442.htm

•http://erikkaiser.com/wp/2009/06/the-experiment-ibm-social-media-jams/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/five-tools-i-use-for-listening/

IBM Rational software

Foursquare may bounce social media into money-making mode — chicagotribune.com

This seems to be the latest big thing. I’ve seen some of our local social media friends playing this. What do you think about it?

Foursquare may bounce social media into money-making mode — chicagotribune.com

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Pharma reacts to Social Media frontiers

Another industry questions the usage of social media.

http://www.lifescienceleader.com/index.php?option=com_jambozine&layout=article&view=page&aid=3922

It looks like an opportunity to me, especially when momnitoring adverse events (sometimes referred to incorrectly as “side effects”)  in patients using the meds.  Even bad news might still be OK.  Adverse events are usually bad news for drug companies.  But if those are reported in real time in controlled environments such as private tweets, the company has a chance to react.  Historically, pharma companies are too big to turn on a dime.  They don’t stop Phase III trials unless there’s a tremendous reason to do so.  Response times to these events MUST decrease in the 21st century. Profitability depends on it.  Accountability depends on it.  The public will not accept pharma companies who fail to respond promptly to what amounts to ignoring adverse events.

But HIPAA has yet to surface on the subject…

-Tim Tucker