Monday, August 22, 2011

Making the business case for social media still eludes many companies

Influencer marketing has been around forever, but the face and medium of the influencer has changed dramatically.

The term influencer has dual meaning in social media. It refers to those social media venues that generate the most conversation about you. And it refers to the individuals that are behind the greatest amount of that buzz.

Increasingly, consumers are younger, more informed, more connected, and more influencial. In short, marketers face a new world order that is customer driven, rather than business driven.

Need proof? Consider the results of recent research on social media and marketing by research firm Aberdeen Group. In June and August 2010, Aberdeen Group surveyed more than 500 business executives to learn the primary drivers of their marketing programs.

"The data revealed that marketing efforts within 77% of those businesses are under considerable influence of changing consumer demographics. And the findings indicate that social media plays a greater role than traditional media in marketing campaigns targeting Gen Z and Gen Y consumers versus traditional marketing mediums ,” according to Aberdeen senior research analyst Chris Houpis.

“Most companies understand the rising use of social media and plan to increase their investments in the medium accordingly,” Houpis continued. “However, most organizations are struggling to develop and adequate business case and strategy to leverage social media adequately in the marketing mix. In fact, a majority of organizations do not have executive support to undertake such efforts.”



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Are 2011 educational technology forecasts coming true?

As a business and technology journalist, I have had several opportunities to write about the use of technology in the classroom.

Keeping up with all the trends and advances in educational technology is no less daunting than tracking it in the corporate environment. Still, there are predictions made each year on what the top trends will be.

In December, 2010, educator Bridget McCrea made the following five K-5 technology trend predictions for 2011.

I would love to hear from others their thoughts on how accurate the list has been, now that we have passed the half way mark for the year.

1. There will be more momentum for mobile devices in classrooms with an eye toward affordable alternatives to traditional 1:1 rollouts.

2. Web-based instruction will gain more traction at the K-12 level.

3. More tech-based monitoring and assessment tools will be incorporated into to the instructional mix.

4. The cloud will help ease the financial burden on schools while helping to expand technological capabilities.

5. Teachers will have access to expanded professional development programs.

(Source: "5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2011: Education technology experts discuss their top technology trends for the coming year," by Bridget McCrea.)
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/12/02/5-k12-technology-trends-for-2011.aspx?sc_lang=en

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Bigger paychecks still the best benefits strategy

With the job market still refusing to recover, one might think that unusual benefits perks are a thing of the past.

Not so, says Jan Mercer, a partner and human capital market business leader with research firm Mercer.

"Interesting employee perks are still around, particularly in sectors where skilled workers are in short supply," Rose says.

Rose offers the following as examples:
  • "In some high tech firms, employees can take classes or get coached on how to raise venture capital."
  • "An increasing number of high tech firms allow employees to spend up to 20% of their work time on their own dream projects."
  • "A hedge fund permits workers (mostly Millennial-age) to wear shorts and sandals every day."
  • "An advertising firm provides free beer and ice cream on Fridays."
  • "Sabbaticals, time-off for charity, and flex-time are still prevalent."   
All of these examples are certainly nice-to-have perks and privileges, and reflect creativity, flexibility, and tolerance on the part of employers. But they may not hold as much value as they seem.

"While these perks attract attention, they are not primary drivers of engagement," Rose says. "Survey research from Mercer’s 2011 What’s Working research series indicates that employees have a strong preference of base pay over other types of rewards.  This research is a warning to organizations that they could be investing in reward strategies that will not have the impact they expect."

Friday, August 12, 2011

Identifying influencers in social media selling

In the realm of social media, almost anyone can build a following and establish themselves as an influencer in a specific market or industry. Complete unknowns can become virtual celebrities overnight. And viral marketing can create new trend influencers in the blink of an eye.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing for marketing professionals.

The downside is that individuals with no real credibility can have an awful lot of influence over others on how your products or services are perceived. 

The upside is that with the right effort, a lot of individuals can have influence over others on how your products or services are perceived. Engage those individuals, convert them to your cause, and you will have a lot of disciples carrying your message far beyond what your limitations are. 

The way influencer selling works is that organizations track the mentions of them on a variety of social media sites and platforms (usually termed “listening”). This includes blog mentions, news mentions, tweets, forum postings, social networking site mentions, web hits, etc. 

Tracking tools are essentially search engines directed to follow specific sites and types of content, looking for keywords and mentions, as directed. They identify and gather all such references, creating an enormous database of viral commentary, with associated information about the source of each commentary collected. 

Using a social media analytics tool, you can slice and dice the information in a variety of demographic views or geographic views. You can zero in on keywords that are of special significance for breakdowns that way. If gathering information from social networking sites, you can do additional demographic breakdowns, depending on the collective data in the profiles represented, such as the known educational levels of all collected Facebook consumers.

Again, you are gathering information on influencers as both venues, and individuals. 

In terms of individuals, once you’ve collected all the conversations, it might seem daunting to sift through it all to identify who the top influencers are. But it really only takes a little bit of detective work (again, the analysts tools come into play here), and some common sense. Just like trying to identify the authority figures in a crowded room, look for the ones that others look to.  

For example, you can filter by product name, industry, and sentiment scores to identify who is talking about you and your products, markets, and in what context. From there, you can dig into the analytics and determine who has the most followers, tweets the most, comments the most, posts the most content on their blog, drives the most traffic, etc. to determine where to focus your efforts in terms of influencing the influencers. 

In other words, when listening in on social media conversations (and you should be doing a lot of eaves - dropping), pay attention to: 

·         who has the most to say
·         who gets the most responses to what they have to say
·         who seems to be accepted the most, and challenged the least, by what they have to say 

Odds are that those are your top influencers.



Thursday, August 11, 2011

Pet insurance: the purr-fect benefits perk?

Employers that want to add a no-cost, but high-return benefits offering to employees may want to consider pet insurance.

The same health maintenance and medical care coverage that we all want is also available to our pets, and is growing in popularity as an employee benefits perk. The best news for benefits administrators: your employees will happily pay the bill, if you can provide the plan at group discount rates.

Consider the example of the Liberty Hotel in Boston, which recently signed up for pet insurance with Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), the largest provider in the market. Hotel general manager Rachel Moniz says she learned that pet insurance would be a very popular benefit item after talking with hotel "associates" at the hotel's weekly Yappier Hour.

Yappier Hour is the weekly social time in the courtyard of the Liberty Hotel (the former exercise yard for prisoners in the city jail). Hotel guests, and employees alike, are invited to bring their pets every Wednesday afternoon for fun, frolic, and special Muptails and Puptini drinks. The event caught on quickly.

Already pet-friendly, Moniz says the hotel was delighted to be able to offer pet insurance along with the hotel's other benefits items. Liberty Hotel took out a group plan with VPI in order to be able to pass along a group plan rate. Each employee that signs up for the benefits pays 100% for their coverage. Of the hotel's 250 staff, 8% have opted for pet insurance.

"In this industry, you work hard, and the hours are very demanding," Moniz says. "This was something we could do to say thank you."