Success can come in many forms. Three very different success stories. Listen to the replay for details.
This week, Partner Velocity (Cisco’s program to help partners’ marketing efforts) held a one-hour webcast to help you get started with social media.
It’s a topic near and dear to my heart, so I led the webcast and provided some guidance for beginners and more advanced practitioners, tips, and tricks to help launch a social media presence.
If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry as there’s a replay available. Be sure to listen to this replay and attend the next two webinars in the series: you’ll be entered to win a US$2500 marketing consultation.
Head to the Partner Velocity site for details, and to register for the next two sessions (Social Media for Events and Creating an Integrated Campaign).
Here’s a quick recap of the topics covered in this week’s session “Building a Successful Social Media Program”:
How to develop a listening strategy
How to define and segment your audience (and create content for each persona)
Tips and tricks for engaging with your audience
Ways to design a measurement/metrics plan
And finally, some key takeaways and next steps
Keep reading for my seven questions to ask before launching your own social media program.
In the words of Morley Safer from the American news program 60 Minutes, “Stand back all bosses, a new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred.” What a nice way to put it Mr. Safer, but to be honest, it sounds a little biased.
Why has there been controversy between Generation Y and the current workforce? It may be due to our abnormal perspectives or the fact that we appreciate when others want our input -- whatever it is, the media has enjoyed writing about our “non-traditional” ways of working. The truth is other generations are now embracing some of our methods: such as communicating through social media and “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) because of its convenience and efficiency.
Yes, we may be viewed as discourteous to what the current workforce offers, but considering we represent some of the earliest adopters of new technology, we believe there is always “a next best thing”. Read More »
By Ian Symes, Director of Marketing, Cisco UK and Ireland
Throughout the Games, just steps away from the Olympic Stadium, crowds have gathered around CiscoCloud, our interactive digital installation at the heart of the Olympic Park.
The installation is positioned opposite the Arcelor Mittal Orbit and is made up of five interactive pods which use 3D image technology to capture visitors’ faces, and create their Olympic ‘GamesFace2012’ using London 2012 images sourced from the web.
When you think of Thailand, historic Buddhist temples and shrines usually come to mind. However, during my visit to the golden land last week, I was pleasantly surprised by the proliferation of social and digital media. From QR codes to Facebook logos splattered across the many storefront windows, it’s no wonder Bangkok is ranked the largest Facebook city and Thailand ranked 16th largest Facebook country. While dining at a local restaurant in Chiang Rai, it was hard not to do a Facebook check-in when promotional materials were easily visible on tables, walls and even menus. And yes, I checked in and received my 5% discount.
Although Thailand is considered a developing country according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it’s use of digital and social media certainly makes the country advanced by any standard. According to eMarketer, Thailand is ranked fourth among Southeast Asian countries in the percentage of “likes” and “follows” corporate brands receive from consumers. The top three are Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia. Here are additional data from an eMarketer report:
47% of APAC companies use SM, and 56% are planning to use SM
47% of APAC companies use SM, and 56% are planning to use SM
This year, Asia-Pacific will pass North America as the region with the most Facebook users
Asia-Pacific has three times as many social network users as North America
For marketers and communicators, this presents a great opportunity to expand your company’s digital and social footprint. At Cisco, we are continually experimenting how to reach customers and influencers in various countries through social media. We currently have over 200 social channels globally, and approximately 12 in APAC. That includes properties on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as global outlets such as Weibo and VKontakte.
Take a look around. Almost everything you see is touched by technology today, sports included. Imagine a spray-on clothing within a couple of decades that repels water or Triathletes could enter a “spray chamber” to change their clothes between events and 3D printing to build kit such as running shoes to suit the weather on the day or compensate for injury before a runner goes out on the track. All this and more will surely work up adrenaline to technology savvy sport lovers.
Technology is the new game changer in Olympic sport. And all sport fans would agree that technology is as much a part of an athlete’s armory today as nutrition, training and coaching. As human pro-thletics advance, science and technology will not only make possible the disabled to compete, but the able-bodied to do better. Do you know, Tiger Woods had eye surgery to improve his (normal) vision. Well, sounds fine to me. But consider this.
In 2009, the swimming regulatory body, Fina, banned high-tech swimsuits after 94% of races at the 2008 Beijing Olympics were won by competitors wearing the LZR racer suit. The suit is said to cut an elite swimmer’s time by around 2%. Michael Phelps himself said, “When I hit the water [in the LZR swimsuit], I feel like a rocket.” Within a week of its launch, three world records were broken by swimmers wearing the suit. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZR_Racer)
Seems to me it’s less likely that poorer countries with less sports budgets can keep up. Is it not surprising that poorer countries compete less in sports involving a lot of technology, such as cycling, sailing and rowing. And lets not forget the amount of investment that goes into training elite athletes is phenomenal.
Dr Emily Ryall, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Gloucester and vice-chair of the British Philosophy of Sport Association, says “The Olympics is never going to be a fair competition. So much high-performance sport is driven by technology now, from sports nutrition to psychology to clothing and footwear.”
But enough on technology impacting players…that’s one side of the story. What about technology impacting the fans, the audience themselves and how. One big shift is clearly social media. But why? It’s simple: Four years is an eternity in Internet time and since the last Summer Olympics in 2008, social media has exploded.
2012: Facebook claims more than 835+ million users, is fast becoming a portal to the web at large for many and is a publicly traded company. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg is a global celebrity today. (Source: www.internetworldstats.com/facebook)
2012: On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday while also announcing that it has 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets per day. The number of users is up 40% from their September 2011 number, which was said to have been at 100 million at the time. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)
YouTube
2008: In July 2006, Youtube declared more than 65,000 new videos uploaded every day with 100 million video views per day. By fall of 2008, YouTube users were uploading 10 hours of video to the site per minute. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube)
2012: London Olympic moments are sure to go viral and become immortalized on YouTube seemingly as they happen this summer, and it’s easy to see why. Youtube says it receives over 800 million unique visits per month watching more than 3 billion hours of video per month and upload 72 hours of new video content per minute.
Just looking at the staggering numbers of these three social networks reveals a sporting scene and world at large that have been transformed by social media since the last Summer Olympics.
And did I miss to add that I have’nt taken into account services like Pinterest, Foursquare and Google+ — none of which even existed in 2008. This summer, expect news to break, social sharing records to fall and moments to live on as never possible before, all thanks to social media!
One wonders to think — will all this pale in comparison to what 2016 has in store? One can only imagine.
How innovatively did you leverage social media during the 2012 London Olympics?
Please note:“The opinions expressed in this blog are my own views and not those of Cisco.”
