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Social Media Trends – Part 4 of 4

June 30, 2008 By 1 Comment

In this last part of this series on Social Media Trends, but I’m sure to continue, I’d like to point out some of the cool sites and people I had the pleasure of hearing about in my trip to NYC.

Social Media Research – Ryan Williams (a nice guy, whom I had the chance to speak with for a while on my trip), Tudor Williams of twisurveys.com have done some great research in how companies and those responsible for communication are using social media.

Sites recommended by Ryan and Tudor:
trendpedia.com (searching trends on the web)
forrester.com/groundswell (an traditional book, Groundswell, recommended numerous times to learn more about social media and its effects)
ning.com (set up your own social networking site)

Shel Holtz, ABC, the guru of communication technology was also at the conference. Of course he had a list of cool sites that communicators could be using to help themselves and their company.

SlideShare- the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations. One of those “why didn’t I think of that?” sites.
Stopblocking.org – a blog that talks about a lot of the same ideas I do here and with a theme of work/life balance, corporations trying to block employee access to social media sites. I recently answered a question on LinkedIn that dealt with irrational behavior in corporate world.

View Tim Ernst, ABC's profile on LinkedIn

Blocking access to the web was my answer and it drew a response from the question’s author, Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway. Seems this type of irrational behavior is evident everywhere in the corporate world where trust of one’s employees is behind the repressive act. It was something I heard about over and over again at the conference, communication leads being blocked from the Web by their IT departments to “increase productivity,” my question is what information outside your company isn’t on the web? Being handcuffed from accessing it isn’t helping anyone. What are your thoughts?

Other sites to check out:
Dopplr- if you travel a lot, this is the site to keep friends and colleaques up-to-date on your travels.
FriendFeed – collects all these social networking profiles into one neat little package.

What sites are you using and what do you find appealing or wrong with them? Let me know.

Until next time, Tim

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Filed Under: Blogging, corporate blogging, Social Media, Work/Life Balance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Social Media Trends – Part 3 of 4

June 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Also last week, I had the priviledge to hear from Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights from Edelman Digital. Ya know, the trust study folks. I figured with a title like that this guy must know what he’s talking about in the digital world, and he didn’t disappoint.

Steve listed some great stats – such as – of all the Internet’s users, only 13 percent are creating content. I assume this means on social media or networking sites, as every person or company that puts up a website is creating content at one point. But I assume this is ongoing and regularly, which means most of us are just taking it all in and absorbing it. I would hope that number would grow as more and more of the younger generation take jobs and presumably create online content as a part of their daily lives. (i.e. facebook, myspace, or even ebay)

He also cited Edelman’s Trust Study where “people like you” increased in trust from 36 percent in 2003 to 58 percent in 2008. Which means we are growing to trust others on the net that are like us and not Nigerian business men looking to deposit $ in our accounts. Social Media is having an effect and giving voice to people all over the world that share common interests.

We also discussed the trends:

The increasing portability of the Internet,
The ever-shortening attention span of audiences,
The popularity of aggegation sites on the web (i.e. popurls),
Being able to compress the web into digestable bits (i.e. google),
Growth in collaboration sites (i.e. My Starbucks Idea, or Dell)

On the horizon…
The living room being hooked into the Web. Ala – Apple TV and Game Marketers
Digital Nomads (like me) who have left the corporate world to go it alone out on the digital frontier. (i.e. virtual workers, and with $4 gas – it’s a good bet others will follow)

Also checked out Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D. from the Gronstedt Group – he has some big name clients (EMC, ADT, Microsoft, Jamba Juice) and can be described in one word – passioniate – about Second Life as the future of collaboration. Worth checking out.

Until next time, Tim

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Social Media Trends – Part 2 of 4

June 28, 2008 By 1 Comment

Bill Marriott, Chairman and CEO, and elder spokesman for the Marriott Hotel and Resorts – blogs. After hearing him speaking at IABC’s International Conference, this last week, the excuses that “I’m too old to do this social networking stuff,” or this “this company is too conservative to blog” and all the other arguments that my fellow communicators hear from their management are evaporating as quick as the Arctic Ice Cap.

Next time, your boss or client says they don’t have time to blog and do this other stuff. Say “$4 million.” That’s how much revenue can be directly connected to Bill Marriott’s blog in room reservations. He records it into a recorder and his communication team types it up and posts it for a busy guy who has to look after his many, many hotels and more importantly his 300,000 employees worldwide. Bill’s blog advice: “Make it personal, not about marketing.”

Until next time, Tim
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Social Media Trends – Part 1 of 4

June 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

This past week I attended the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) International Conference in New York City. Three words sum up most of the sessions I attended – social media trends.

Aaron Uhrmacher from Text100 had a great session on Navigating the Social Media World. Some figures he put out there opened my eyes, but by the end of the conference I heard them again and again – the Corporate World is taking to social media very slowly.

Sacred Heart University Study from 1/2008 – 70% of Americans don’t believe “all or most” of media reporting. Yet, blogs are increasing being seen as the de facto news source.

2008 – Only 11% of US companies are using blogs.

Twitter use is growing rapidly – 145 characters – do we really need any more than that to say what we have to say?

Common Craft, LLC has some great online videos to explain social media to newbies.

According to Aaron a good Social Media Policy for a company should:

  • be transparent
  • be authentic
  • uses common sense
  • speak for yourself (no ghostwriting)
  • doesn’t share company secrets
  • asks for help

Over and over again, I was told to answer questions in a topic that you know something about on LinkedIn. It’s a great networking tip.

Aaron told us about utterz- mobile podcasting from your cellphone. Very cool. And he told us about summize, a google search feature for sites like Twitter.

Corporations can use the social media tools for good – Red Cross – Iowa Floods- established a blog, twitter account, and used utterz when the media could not get in to get the story out.

American Airlines – last summer when they stranded lots of people on their planes – established a crisis blog, but it wasn’t connected to American Airlines own site, was bare bones and horrible.

Well that’s it for this entry, as I download all that I learned at the conference I’ll share the highlights here. look for parts 2-4 coming soon. Do you have any social media trends that you are seeing?

Until next time, Tim


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Where was the Internet when I was Growing Up?

June 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Internet when I was growing up was the property of huge universities and a few corporations and could only do some basic chatting and information sharing. Today, kids have at their fingertips, or more likely thumb-tips as they text and surf the web from their mobile phones, a sea of information about each other, music, trendy fashion and science. Yes, I said science.

Seems teachers and professors as well as science magazines are using the media of video on demand and peer video such as YouTube to explain the science and physics behind some of the more physical or chemically induced videos. The site Popular Science embeds YouTube videos into explanations from physicists and scientists of such things as why extreme skiers don’t kill themselves by skiing off a cliff or the strength of the Incredible Hulk and his magical and equally strong pants.

Cool stuff, that I wish I had as a kid, but something I can still enjoy as an adult. I wonder if my life would be different, a different career, or living in a different location, had the Internet been available to the masses when I was growing up? What do you think, would your life be different?

Do you have a cool web site that is being wasted on children that you think other adults would like to see? Keep’em clean, but please let me know.

Until next time, Tim


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The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 Presentation

June 4, 2008 By 2 Comments

Looking for the slides from The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 presentation that VP and Chief Digital Officer of the Brownstein Group, Adam Deringer, Senior Communication Specialist, Siemens, Karen Saydlowski, and Tim Ernst from RavenWood Creative presented for IABC Philadelphia?

wonderful_web2_01

siemens_blogging_guidelines

Look no further.

Please share your thoughts on the presentation here and I’ll be sure to pass them onto Adam and Karen. I thank Adam and Karen for helping me put this together and we thank IABC Philadelphia for hosting us.

Until next time, Tim


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