How New Media Changed The Game

January 2, 2012 By Isra García Leave a Comment

Lately, we have been talking about Human Media, but now I’d like to explore how the New Media has changed the game.

Human media wouldn’t be possible without New Media, which has revolutionized the way we market, communicate and do business. As an example, we are still using the telephone, post and TV but it is not working as effectively as it did before. Instead, we use Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Google Plus, Foursquare, Youtube, Spotify, LinkedIn, in different ways for different reasons, with different people from different places, cultures and backgrounds.

We Are New Media

New Media converts us into authors, publishers, protagonists, leaders, role models, lobbyists, affiliates, middlemen and information exchange points. New Media offers us a blank sheet where we can draw the lines of our personal brand, the way we want to communicate and market our company, the business strategy of our Startup or the actions that will take our small business over into the next year. New Media is only showing us that everything we do to create change depends solely on us.

User generated content is widespread on the Web, there are posts from people that get more visits than the most important current affairs sites.

So What?

So what’s happening here and now? Due to the disruption of Social Media and the opportunity New Media affords us, we need a redesigned model that focuses on the right thing, the most powerful tool on earth, people. The need for a more humanized media, the need for Human Media.

Photo credit: Kexino

Disruption Media: Do You Interrupt or Communicate?

December 7, 2011 By Isra García Leave a Comment

Lately, the Social Web has been filled with so much bla-bla: noise, many words headed in the wrong direction, intrusive messages, non-sexy robots, predetermined users…which is what I call “disruption media”.

When Nothing Else Matters

On Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stumble Upon, Digg or Reddit – more and more brands and marketing professionals dedicate their time to publishing, without a response (or chance to give one), without feelings or coherence, without worrying about the people beyond an artificial platform. They are not here to generate change, to make something happen, to mark the difference or add value to what you are doing. Not to mention helping you to achieve what you are aiming for…no, oh no. The only thing they are looking for is interrupting your smooth trajectory, your communication, your human interactions, your way of seeing and achieving things.

Artificial Is Not Cool

What matters is not your Facebook or Twitter account, your LinkedIn Profile or your Foursquare check-ins. These won’t come to you and buy your products, they won’t tell it to their friends, nor will they become your loyal clients. I really doubt that they would reserve a table for you at your favorite restaurant or buy a flight ticket for your next trip. I have a hard time believing that they will make you laugh, cry or fall in love at first sight, or at second.

Don’t Just Be Pure Substance

The difference between interrupting and communicating lies in the lack of response from brands, as they are not willing to reply to any comments. BAD! A conversation can’t happen without any interlocutor, without knowing that there’s a voice at the other end, someone who listens and allows you to connect and build long-lasting relationships that go beyond technology. By not taking this into consideration, you lock yourself in a room full of people, which in fact looks empty to you as there’s no way to chat or create resonance. It’s like a one-way street with no communication. Just a sender and a receiver. Purely insubstantial.

Welcome to the disruption era – this gives us the opportunity to make use of the new media to transmit our values, abilities, emotions and knowledge through the Internet. And this opportunity is Human Media.

Photo credit: tusharthinks.com

Filed Under: 3.0, Human Media, New Concepts, New Media, Social Media Tagged With: disrupt media, Human Media, robots, Social Media

Rutgers Online Mini-MBA: Social Media Marketing Program

February 18, 2011 By Isra García 3 Comments

The Rutgers Center for Management Development (CMD) will be offering an Online Mini-MBA: Social Media Marketing Program starting on February 28, 2011. This unique Social Media Marketing course is the first online executive education program to be offered as one of the Rutgers Mini MBA programs.

“From Facebook to LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube – firms and individuals are embracing social media platforms at an ever-increasing pace. This unique online program addresses the many issues surrounding this new phenomenon and provides a roadmap to help individuals and firms navigate social media to gain a competitive edge,” says Eric Greenberg, the Faculty Chair of the Online Social Media Marketing Mini MBA Course.

“While some people have flown to New Jersey from as far away as Seoul, South Korea, to take our in-class social media marketing course, we are excited to be able to offer our online course to a global audience. We will continue to increase the in-class offerings to additional locations, including China, but the online format will allow people, regardless of their location, to take advantage of our unique faculty and programs,” he adds.

Participants gain the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to immediately apply their learning in the workplace.

Justin Leshynski, the Vice President of Davanti Digital Media, who attended the first in-class social media marketing course in December 2010, created a video afterwards that is entitled, “Social Media for All: How Social Media Changed Small Business Marketing.” The video says:

75% of U.S. households use social media.
In 2010, 68% of small businesses increased their social media marketing, which drove immediate results to their business.
20% of tweets are about products or brands.
Companies that blog receive 55% more traffic to their website than those that don’t.
85% of social media users believe companies should interact with their customers.

Program

This program addresses questions such as:

How much should a firm invest in social media?
What are the best social media strategies and tactics to employ?
How can a firm measure and track social media?
How can a firm integrate social media into the overall marketing plan?
How can individuals employ social media to further their careers?

Topics

Topics covered include:

Intro to Social Media Marketing Strategy
Video & YouTube
Blogging for Business
Social Media Applications
Microblogging
Images & Social Media Marketing
Social News Networks
Viral Marketing
Online Reputation Management
Measuring Social Media ROI

The 12-week online faculty led program includes videos, faculty evaluated exercises, section quizzes, plus a final project and exam. Additionally, different faculty members will host live weekly “Virtual Office Hours” throughout the program to discuss the most current developments in the field and answer student questions. The program also features an innovative online learning environment, supported by a highly qualified team of Rutgers faculty mentors.

This online course is designed for executives or teams of professionals working in marketing, advertising, branding, communications, or sales. It is also appropriate for individuals seeking to employ social media to further their business careers.

The cost of the Online Mini-MBA: Social Media Marketing Program is $3,500, which includes all instructional materials and fees.

For more information go online to the Rutgers Center for Management Development at http://www.cmd.rutgers.edu/contact.html.

Greg Jarboe, the President of SEO-PR, is one of the industry experts in Social Media who will be teaching some of the modules in the Rutgers Online Mini-MBA: Social Media Marketing Program.

Review By Greg Jarboe

Filed Under: Professional career, Social Media, guestpost, review Tagged With: course, review, rutgers, Social Media, social media marketing

Understand How People React to Social Media

January 12, 2011 By Isra García 3 Comments

I’ve been in Social Media for a long time and met a variety of situations where social media’s overrated, overwhelmed, rejected, accepted, overstated, underestimated and of course, developed, integrated, implemented and successful. That’s a lot to say. Indeed, is one of the things that make so valuable my work, the experience: idea, experiment, failure, feedback and try differently.

When I work for a new firm or client, I’m quite honest saying that what we’re going to do is experimenting and trying news and different ways t implement social media fro real results. It may appear scary, but hey actually is what we do, don’t we?

What Happens

Surely, you’ll never understand how people resonate to social media, nor how they are going to cope with. Will be they attuned with it? or otherwise, will want they to diminish it?

Yo might find a strong willingness to integrate it into the business strategy or perhaps they will neglect it, arguing that is not going to bring any profits or changes at all – thus, status quo – think twice, perhaps they don’t want things change or get different.

You may find a discouraged team who has tried at its best, but they got nowhere – Wish they keep pushing – Has something to see with managing instead of leading? Remember you manage things and lead people.

So…

All this thing leads me to one question, Why is sometimes Social Media so polarized?

The attitude will prove essential either way. In one case, it (Social Media philosophy) will engage with the team spirit and increase the chances of being successful in it.

Then, the possible answer. Is all about your bias. Chances are that if you talk to people about Social Media in terms of sales, profits, income, database, increase, raise, ROI, etc. – Sure you got the idea – People will react more openly, ready and kindly to embrace Social Media. However, you can continue with “a sense of community”, “brand awareness”, “feedback”, “sentiment”…which are important too. But – and this is a great but – LET ME BE CLEAR on this, Do they truly matter when we want to make Business?

Thoughts? What say you?

Filed Under: Human Media, New Media, Social Media Tagged With: experience, Social Media, thoughts

blur Group Case Study: Starting and Growing a Social Business

December 29, 2010 By Isra García Leave a Comment

This is how blur Group has build a business only using the Social Web:

Businesses now see social media as an important channel but at blur Group it has been the only channel – for everything from staff recruitment to revenue generation. Showing the power of Social Media, Adictos Social Media, one of our first Crowd members, is now sharing this story at its event in Valencia.

When blur Group introduced the idea of Agency 3.0 it would have been easy to avoid practising what was being preached. Launch a Crowdsourced agency, demand social engagement, but promote and build using old media techniques. Many businesses have played safe and kept both lines well and truly open. Web 2.0 companies run by Web 1.0 people, using pre-Web selling.

The particular challenge that a Crowdsourced agency faces is that it has two audiences to entice. Any business needs customers and staff. Most early stage businesses recruit according to a fairly rigid model of planned growth, revenues, expectations, per capita returns. Customer acquisition determines the rate of the staff growth.

With blur Group the Crowd is the staff. It had to be built first. Without the Crowd, the model didn’t exist. Not just a skeleton startup team but, well, a Crowd. Step back a bit further. The Crowd had to have an office.

The office was a super-social managed platform. The intranet of a level of sophistication which a company could only dream about. Where the content is user generated, and the users are user generated, able to engage, discuss, share easily, gaining from each other’s expertise to strengthen their own crowd offering. A platform tailored to appeal to the type of Crowd member: subtly different options depending on the nature of the Crowd. The designers had to have a very visual platform, marketers want to show their specific skills through discussion groups. A truly social, if very virtual, office.

So how to recruit these Crowds? Blogs are the social media lynchpin. They start to tell the story that can then sail around the social networks. They give some words to be used in word of mouth. At the early stages, as with most social media campaigns, it had to be about educating. Then engagement followed. Sometimes directly through 1:1 messages on networks like LinkedIn. More often as outreach with strong messages about what Crowd membership could deliver. As people started to ‘get’ Crowdsourcing, they wanted to be in the Crowd. A simple video explaining ‘What is Crowdsourcing’ explained everything for the early community. Lesson: tell a story in as many ways as possible. Twitter, YouTube, WordPress are today’s fireside: the tale develops with each telling.

Part one of the mission accomplished: a large number of members of each of the Crowds. Or Crowdies as blur Group termed them.

To customers. blur Group needs them. The Crowd needs them. This is the point when many businesses would draw breath, mutter about social, but start a heavy duty marketing and sales effort to start to win business. Not blur Group. Holding to social principles we started to tell people what we were doing and created a simple method whereby they could use our services. The 1,2,3 of briefing and project delivery. Again, blogs to educate then engage potential clients. Encourage marketing directors, agencies, anyone with a need to run a campaign according to their rules, not those of a traditional agency, to come to blur Group and brief us. Promotion through Twitter and Facebook. Using good SEO techniques and small sums on AdWords. No resort to any other methods: if a potential client could see 8,000 people waiting to help them, then they couldn’t resist trying the process. Web only: no phone numbers are on the site. Submit a brief and then discover more.

Part two accomplished. The clients started submitting briefs; the Crowd could respond; blur Group and the Crowd started to win business and revenues. The additional managed Crowd approach that blur Group provided made it more valuable to clients and Crowd members than the free for all approach of the ‘designalogo’ sites. Today blur Group receives more than one new client brief a day, including from some of the worlds largest corporations.

Don’t think this wholly social approach was synonymous with a rapid startup. It took planning, took time and took effort. Three lessons there for those who believe that social is the cheap, fast alternative. It’s a different approach but needs the same disciplines as any other business growth plan. Belief being one of them. Flexibility is another: where do you need to plug more activity? What needs changing? When all the channels are social, it’s easier to adapt.

Now blur Group is moving to the next stage of growth and scaling faster. But it continues to adhere to its social standpoint. It may do more of it, the AdWords budget may increase, the Facebook pages may get a bit glossier and its PR beyond the digital domain and blogger community. We’ll even be attending some live events and organising some of our own to show our faces. But social will drive everything that blur Group does as it engages and grows both its Crowd Community and its Client Community. Community, Content and Collaboration are the Cs that make up most social marketing: blur Group adds Crowd to this mix and makes for a social business built and grown using social techniques.

What say you?

Attribution: blur Group

Filed Under: Case Study, Contribution, New Concepts, Social Media, guestpost Tagged With: adictos social media, blur group, business model, case study, Social Media

Implementing a Social Media Strategy

December 22, 2010 By Isra García 5 Comments

I Have been working on that white paper for some months, and trying to figure out how best explain – step by step – a social media strategy, so can guide people who want to develop a serious Social Media strategy for its business, but – and this is a great but – I’m not talking about the process going on, but focused on the development stage.

I’ve followed some steps from the latest projects I’ve been working on and then, put it together, when doing that I knew something was going to happen. It really happened, I was able to design a social media strategy based on the experience that these projects have brought to me.

Social Media Strategy step-by-step

A. Objectives. Define your goals, have a clear vision where you want to go and how you’ll get there.

B. Analysis. Know your limits, take into account what can help and what can hurt your company, have a plan B, even a plan C. Make a plan, a plan for success and of course, a plan for failure.

C. Rethink step A and B, shake it and see what happens, have some time to mature the ideas and concepts. Are you willing to continue? nice, go ahead!

D. This is what I call the philosophical stage. Same as strategy planning: let you feelings go, paint what you want to represent, define your identity and image – vision – , set up a sense of purpose – mission. Every platform, tool or action taken should have is own identity, features and goals. On the contrary, we’ll be talking about only a mainstream platform. However, all platforms have to be aligned into one workflow.

E. Once you have defined the key elements of your strategy – from analysis (competition, external factors and inside-out approach…) and brand identity – put ahead in every platform, and visible, what makes you unique.

F. Time to get serious. Brainstorm all the ideas and take what you’re sure you can carry on with the highest levels of accuracy: campaigns, tactics, contributions, team, partnerships, tools, platforms, APPs…everything counts.

G. Do some research about the audience you want to achieve/represent (likes, habits, needs, profile…), competition, limitations, brand identity, market, platforms, singularities…once you get it, structure all the information and resources, so you can draw a map for your strategy. Study also how you plan to tangle platforms and people, because no need to mention that at this point you know that you “want” to segment communities in social platforms

H. Integrate and implement this map in your business model strategy. That is to say, find key facts that can help you to create a consistent social media structure. This is structure is built as it follows:

1. Once you get the platforms, assemble them

2. Build the social media profiles, don’t forget to fill in every criterion

3. Don’t publish it yet, make a draft – draw it if you want first, so management and to board can see and approve it

4. Optimize the profiles: use tools, APPs, resources and tips for giving the profiles a competitive advantage. If is like every other, why should I buy from you?

5. Link profiles: You post and it goes to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…You know what it means right?

6. Set up your blog – at the end is what truly matters – (WordPress rocks) theme, plugins, CSS and ready to roll on

7. How will perform your blog in the social media ecosystem you’ve built? strategy-tactics effect.

I. Set up a trial period for all the platforms before you the launching and see how it works. You can test it inside your company, with colleagues or even with loyal customers. Get feedback, correct, polish and improve it as much as you can.

J. How are you going to market your social media strategy? If you don’t say what you are doing, how will the audience know about you?

K. In order to do step “J” allocate resources: people, calendar, tools, actions and of course budget – this will help you to get better results – Note: It’s really important that you allocate resources not just in short-term, but mid/long-term too.

L. Launching campaign. Do whatever it takes: guerrilla, offline, beta for your customers, offers, discounts, events, website, publicity, PR. Best results are achieved when you cross offline with online media.

M. Use optimization tools as: Posterous, Postling, TweetDeck, Tagthe, bit.ly, Workflowy, Storify, Curated.by, DropBox,MailChimp, Google Wave, Del.ici.ous, Docs, Reader, Evernote…- these are some I’m using now – it will help you to simplify the process and manage better your time.

N. As long as your strategy is on the field and deal with it. Consider – seriously consider – track, monitor and measure everything what you do on the Social Web. Identify how you can best meet your goals (step “A”) by assigning ROI measures. I strongly recommend that you tailor them depending on your goals.

O. Short-term. Don’t worry too much for it. Ensure that all fit in, your community is growing, therefore interactions happening around. People is talking about your brand, get feedback, creating traffic to your blog/website, some conversions

Q. Mid-term. Have it mind. Engagement, loyalty, brand reach, sentiment, sales, effort vs reward, opinion leaders

P. Long-term. What truly matters. Have you reached step “A”? If not, try different

Note: Notice how I haven’t set up a timeline for the time periods. Your mileage can vary: it can go from 3-6 months to 3 years. It depends your product/service and your goals, of course.

R. Time to earn $$$. Beautiful, isn’t it?

What’s your take? With me? What others steps would you add?

Filed Under: Models, New Concepts, Social Media, Strategy, Tactics Tagged With: diagram, infography, isragarcia, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Strategy

Building a Social Web Framework

December 8, 2010 By Isra García 1 Comment

Question: How can you build a stronger and effective Social Media ecosystem?

Answer: Designing a Social Media Framework.

Have you ever thought in your social media framework?

Due to the rapid adoption of social media, I’ve come up with a new Social Media Framework aimed to empower Business and Communities beyond Social Media. It’s based essentially on Human Business Interactions.

To me, the social media framework aids comprehension of workflow experiences by describing their components, it also optimizes my social media workflow in an easier way since a framework may include components that are applicable to them all.

Why do you have to care about? because badly designed processes lead to slow and inefficient response of your audience, ineffective communication, wasted time, disappointing experiences and poor degree of engagement. Not to mention driving yourself to nowhere.

Social Media Framework

This is how I’d do it – Actually, it’s how I do it -

How It Works

Optimize and manage your time in Social Media, designing a Social Media Workflow (link to the complete function model)
Did I mention the word sharing? Share news resources, tools, best practices, tips and guides through social bookmarking platforms.
Rock with Twitter: Use it heavily for different purposes such as, RT useful links, WOM, spread the news, share insights with professionals, learn what is hot, real-time conversations, gain more affluence on your social networking platforms, support interesting initiatives, building a reputation on the field I work on, promote your blog, look for trend topics , getting ideas and enlightening tips from brilliant people.
Your effort and sacrifice deserves be known and shared for the benefit of others: Posting papers, concepts, frameworks, reports, projects, strategies, marketing plans or campaigns I’ve developed, so people can get insights from it.
Knowledge don’t belong to you nor me, but the universe: Spread what you know, share what others shared with you, teach what you’re good at, learn from everybody, write about how you put in practice these campaigns, or explain how you reached this conclusion that made you point a success and so on. Don’t forget, quote your resources and tell the attributions!
Fall in love in “long-term relationships” with LinkedIn: Use it insistently for giving and receiving feedback, reading interesting posts, commenting on them, find your key connections and engage with them, share ideas in the groups discussions, also participating in Q&A (either giving advice or receiving it). Should increase your visibility, it will improve the chances of being contacted. Connect and be connected!
Have a break and have some fun on Facebook: Aim it to talk and engage with your friends. Create lists to giving different degree of permissions to your crowd and segmenting the information according to the content you usually share with them. Forget the Social Media Buzz and take a breath – if you wish -
Don’t make waves, ride them: Use Google Wave for a collaborative tasks, develop projects, exchange ideas, brainstorming, conceptualize campaigns and seeing how others can enhance your work.
Grease the hub of your timing belt: Your blog, Do you love it? No? You must, because it’s the place where all your efforts, time, money and even romantic relationships are going to end up. All you do on Social Media has being meaningful to your blog. If not, I suggest you may want to reconsider your strategy. Give a personality, a sense of humor, a purpose, a regularity, a bottle of Möet if he wants it and you’ll have your reason to give the very best of yourself in this URL. I always say that your blog is the extension fo your personality. Agree?
Managing and optimizing: As I explained in the post social media resolutions for 2010, it’s essential define your strategy, set your goals and monitoring your results but, it’s vital not being overwhelmed by its magnitudes. Hence, write down every procedure, pattern or system you follow to implement your social media workflow and start developing a schedule with all the tasks you performs every day, together with the time spent, the activities, the allowance, restrictions, and of course, deviations.
Make efficient use of Social Media through the available Social Web tools that best meets your needs: I Use tools as TweetDeck, Posterous, TwitterSearch, GetSocial, ShareThis, bit.ly, tagthe, DropBox, Postling, Storify, Skype, curated.by and many others…
Boost your Social Media initiatives with productivity tools as: Mindjet Manager, OmniGraffle, WorkFlowy, evernote, Silverlight and Docs
Take care of you – and your people: Monitor, track and follow all what’s being said about the brand (are you the brand? Yes you are!) Not to mention, the thought-provoking ROI. Here you have a few I use: Socialmention, Radian6, Trackur, FlowTown, FollowEye, ChartBeat, Google Alerts.
Plan for failure: If it doesn’t work, try changing and adjusting things to your needs. I know how it works to me, for you instead it can be slightly different. Be aware that you need to have hundred of bad ideas to have 1 or 2 great ideas. Do you get the idea?

Does it works for you? How would you enhance it? What would you add? Do you have your own social media framework? I’d like to know your thoughts…

Filed Under: Human Media, New Concepts, New Media, Social Media, Strategy, Tactics Tagged With: framework, infography, platforms, Social Media, tools

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