GWT Blog – GlobalWorldTech

Facebook has become one of the most powerful marketing platforms on the Internet today. Not only does this huge site offer the most popular social networking system on the Internet, but they also offer businesses a streamlined and powerful way to directly interact with customers.

Using Facebook as a fast and easy sales funnel has become commonplace for many online professionals. If you are not sold on Facebook marketing yet, take a look at some of the reasons that other businesses are already moving their marketing resources into this active social space.

• Facebook Fan Gate Integration

One of the most effective and automatic ways you can grow your FaceBook fan base and also get users to interact with your Fan Page, is to implement a Fan Gate. These interact scripts require a visitor to “like” your page by becoming a fan before they get to proceed to your content.

If you are working on building a mailing list or need to find new ways to get users to “desire” what you have to offer, this is a perfect solution that will automatically help you build your online brand.

There are some free Facebook apps that will allow this feature, but if you want to have a professional online presence it may be a better idea to get help developing Facebook applications of your own that are not co-branded.

• Why Developing Facebook Applications Makes Sense

There are many companies that offer a streamlined service that will allow your company to take advantage of a customized FB application.

When you have a customized FB app developed for you, your company gets a high value and an unbeatable online marketing tool that you can leverage to acquire new clients and business connections for years to come.

The growth of social is still booming, if you want to get ahead of this growing wave, now is the time and a customized Facebook application is the way.

• Facebook Apps Are Mobile

It seems like everybody is scrambling to get their piece of the mobile pie right now. You can spend time making your main page scaled and accessible from mobile devices, but you will have automatic mobile integration when you create your own Facebook app.

The mobile market continues to grow and this is one of fastest ways to get your business in front of mobile web viewers and start to cash in on mobile marketing technologies.

• Compete With The Largest Companies On The Planet

If your business is brand new or it has been around for years, the Internet is the great equalizer. You can instantly start competing with the largest companies on the planet by developing Facebook applications that make people want to get involved with your company.

Apps can be a simple game, a free download, streaming media or just an iFrame view of your web page that is accessible inside the Facebook eco-system.

There is no right or wrong way to get involved with FB apps and they can be very versatile and can even be used to display your shopping cart to millions of Facebook users.

Now is the perfect time to start driving your business forward using the power of social media and interactive applications.

Need a facebook application developer? Contact us for more information.

© Global World Tech

Image: basketman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Whenever there is a new type of technology, media or fad of any kind everyone hops on  the new wagon. The foolish think just because it’s new, the seat on the new wagon  must be better. They think it will cost less, be easier, bring more customers. It is  normal to look for a solution. To hope that something will fix the issues that keeps you  up at night. It is normal to hope and dream of the day you can go to sleep without  waking up in the middle of the night to solve a problem. Many do the same thing with  social media. They think once they are on Twitter, have a Facebook page, and get  everything automated their business problems will be solved. Sorry to break the news  to you folks but it is simply not how it works.

The reality is that social media will probably highlight these issues even further. It may even shine like a strobe light on the very broken areas of your business. It may put departments, people and even individuals under pressure. Why? Because you will be forced to talk about these things. Why? Because it is now more out in the open. The communications can not so easily be hidden between a quiet email string between your sales department and strategic partners. Your partners will soon be tweeting you and Facebooking you.

Social media will not fix your broken marketing engine. It will not fix your broken sales department. It will not provide business processes that you don’t have. It will not provide you the glue that ties it all together.

Social media is not a bandaid. It is not something that should be bolted on to your business. It is not something you can throw in your back pocket in case you need it on a bad Monday.

The only way you are going to see a positive ROI leveraging social media is if you get yourself organized. You need to set objectives. You need to integrate social media into the DNA of who you are and what you do. You need to integrate social media into your customer service, sales and marketing processes.

Social media is not going away. Do not be one of the left behind. Get on the bus. Get on the train. Get on the wagon. Whatever you want to call it just do something.

Fix your business and leverage social media as a reason to have the discussions that you should have had the past five or more years. Have the guts to lead your team into a new dimension, market and world of opportunity.

15 Success Tips for Any Business New to Social Media

1. Realize you are not the only one. Most businesses have the same problem.

2. Take a leadership role in your organization if possible. If nobody steps up to take charge you are destined to fail.

3. Do not expect your agency to solve your broken business problems unless they are specifically contracted to do such.

4. Do not outsource all of your social media.

5. Develop a plan with goals, objectives and clear roles and responsibilities.

6. Be realistic with allocated budget and resource. Do not sign up for more than you or your agency/ consultant can deliver.

7. Determine success metrics up front.

8. Don’t be afraid to admit failure. There is no perfect cook book for social media. We all have good days and bad. Social media is about people and connecting with people. We can’t predict with a scientific social media calculator what the exact return on investment for 5 of your employees setting up Facebook fan pages.

9. Don’t over analyze or over complicate. Make the decision to either do social media or don’t.

10. Along with #9 don’t keep making your agency sell you on the fact that you need to do social media. Truth is if they are worth the paper the proposal is written on they have a waiting line to work with them. It is not good for you or them to continue to banter on if you should or shouldn’t do social media. Only you can make that decision.

11. Start somewhere. Sitting on the sidelines watching the happy social media train go by is going to do nothing for your business. Either get on the train or don’t!

12. Have fun. Don’t let it be a negative change in your company. Leverage social media to have the conversations you need to have. Leverage it in a positive way. Use it to redefine roles, processes and strategies if necessary. But keep it light and keep it fun while focused on business. Getting too serious over a tweet is just not a good way to start off a social media campaign.

13. Realize that not everyone is on the train. Even if you have made the decision to move forward with adopting social media as a channel, chances are there are minimum a few who are not on board. Ensure you communicate with your agency on this fact. Don’t be afraid to have open communication. Any good agency should be able to help you facilitate the buy-in of team members.

14. Investment in people and training is key. Since social media is one big relationship you must keep your own people as a priority. Focus on their role, objectives and engagement strategies. Your ROI on these activities will be exponential if you take the time up front.

15. Do not use social media as duct tape to hide a problem even longer. Instead leverage it to your advantage. Be bold. Be brave and you will see results.

Your Turn
What are your thoughts? Have you leveraged social media to have some of the hard discussions, to make needed change in your business? Or are you avoiding social media as you’re afraid of skeletons in the closet? If you’re an agency or consultant are you also seeing clients who expect social media to solve their business problems?

Written by : Pam Moore, CEO, FruitZoom Inc.

When it comes to business – and most importantly social media – measurement is still a vast, ongoing discussion that’s fraught with questions. Many of those questions start at the very beginning: How do I know I’m setting the right goals? As we’ve said many times before, the right goals for you are going to be heavily dependent upon your business. But, what we can talk about are the underlying reasons that most goals exist: to solve a problem.

One of you will undoubtedly point out – and you’d be right – that goals can often be set in order to create or capitalize upon new opportunities. But when you break down that opportunity into it’s pieces, what you’re again left with is a set of problems or challenges that need to be solved in order to put you on the path toward that opportunity. So when we say problem, think in terms of “thing that needs solving” versus a heavily negative connotation. Problems aren’t always bad things.

In a business context, and specifically social media, most external goals seek to solve problems in one of three constraints:

Money (M): there’s either not enough coming in, or there’s too much going out, or both

Attention (A): either the attention you have is the wrong kind, or you need more of the kind of attention you do want. You might want that for brand purposes, or even something like recruitment.

Longevity (L): you’re looking for more customer loyalty, or more referrals from your customers or the community at large.

Just about any goal you have can eventually tie back to one of these overarching business needs. Also, keep in mind that you can rarely if ever do all three of these at once with a consistent and equal level of effectiveness. You’ve got to prioritize your needs, and decide which one is going to serve as the backbone your social media efforts.

Well, Attention leads to money leads to longevity. They’re all dependent upon one another for survival. Right? What your social media goals are likely to be addressing, however, is the movement in between those stops on the business cycle. How are you moving people from zero to attention? From thinking you suck to thinking you’re pretty okay? From liking you to purchase? From purchase to loving you forever and ever and telling all their friends?

Should there be rules what anyone can write/post on any networking site? Should there be Social Computing guidelines? Well, we think there should be some restrictions when it comes to posting to any networking site. A single remark against anyone can lead to big consequences. We have seen how a single Tweet lead to resignation of a Minister and removal of Chairman of a famous league. Recently President Obama has been seen in cautioning people to think twice before posting to any networking site. Have a look at the Video:

Though many big IT companies encourage their employees to engage in Social Networking sites but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any policy or Guidelines for the same. If you are a company as big as IBM or Intel, any single update can lead to loss in Crores and can malign the image of the company.

Here are few guidelines which IBM and Intel want their employees to follow, complete guidelines can be seen from their respective sites here and here.

IBM Social Computing Guidelines: Executive Summary

• Know and follow IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines.
• IBMers are personally responsible for the content they publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time—protect your privacy.
• Identify yourself—name and, when relevant, role at IBM—when you discuss IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
• If you publish content to any website outside of IBM and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
• Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
• Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to IBM.
• Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.
• Respect your audience. Don’t use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM’s workplace. You should also show proper consideration for others’ privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion.
• Find out who else is blogging or publishing on the topic, and cite them.
• Be aware of your association with IBM in online social networks. If you identify yourself as an IBMer, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and clients.
• Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
• Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective. IBM’s brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on IBM’s brand.

Intel Social Media Guidelines

• Stick to your area of expertise and provide unique, individual perspectives on what’s going on at Intel and in the world.
• Post meaningful, respectful comments—in other words, no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive.
• Always pause and think before posting. That said, reply to comments in a timely manner, when a response is appropriate.
• Respect proprietary information and content, and confidentiality.
• When disagreeing with others’ opinions, keep it appropriate and polite.
• Know and follow the Intel Code of Conduct and the Intel Privacy Policy.

We would like to know, what you think whether there should be any Social Computing Guidelines or not.

Few small business owners and managers are joining the consumer trend towards increasingly using social networking websites and services, according to a new Citibank / GfK Roper survey.

According to the survey of 500 small business executives, 76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86 percent say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61 percent of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.

“Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses,” said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment. “While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”

Forty-two percent of small business owners and managers reported that in the past year they have made greater use of their company’s website to generate business leads and sales. Among companies with 20 to 99 employees the percentage rises with 57 percent saying they have made greater use of their website. Survey respondents are also using email marketing (28 percent) and online advertising (25 percent) to generate business leads and sales.

Source: Citibank

   CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a company-wide business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty. True CRM brings together information from all data sources within an organization (and where appropriate, from outside the organization) to give one, holistic view of each customer in real time. This allows customer facing employees in such areas as sales, customer support, and marketing to make quick yet informed decisions on everything from cross-selling and upselling opportunities to target marketing strategies to competitive positioning tactics.

Once thought of as a type of software, CRM has evolved into a customer-centric philosophy that must permeate an entire organization. There are three key elements to a successful CRM initiative: people, process, and technology. The people throughout a company-from the CEO to each and every customer service rep-need to buy in to and support CRM. A company’s business processes must be reengineered to bolster its CRM initiative, often from the view of, How can this process better serve the customer? Firms must select the right technology to drive these improved processes, provide the best data to the employees, and be easy enough to operate that users won’t balk. If one of these three foundations is not sound, the entire CRM structure will crumble.

It’s a strategy used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. After all, good customer relationships are at the heart of business success. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends.

If customer relationships are the heart of business success, then CRM is the valve the pumps a company’s life blood. As such, CRM is best suited to help businesses use people, processes, and technology gain insight into the behavior and value of customers. This insight allows for improved customer service, increased call center efficiency, added cross-sell and upsell opportunities, improved close rates, streamlined sales and marketing processes, improved customer profiling and targeting, reduced costs, and increased share of customer and overall profitability.

This sounds like a panacea, but CRM is not without its challenges. For CRM to be truly effective, an organization must convince its staff that change is good and that CRM will benefit them. Then it must analyze its business processes to decide which need to be reengineered and how best to go about it. Next is to decide what kind of customer information is relevant and how it will be used. Finally, a team of carefully selected executives must choose the right technology to automate what it is that needs to be automated. This process, depending upon the size of the company and the breadth of data, can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more. And although some firms are using Web-based CRM technologies for only hundreds of dollars per month per user, large companies may spends millions to purchase, install, and customize the technology required to support its CRM initiative.

In our earlier post, we wrote how Social Customer will first Listen, Analyze, Relate & then Act contrary to traditional customer. Social media presence and online communities can and should be part of a great customer experience. Here is how:

• Common knowledge with customer contributions
• Empowering customers to help each other
• Listen to customers to learn how to improve
• Design seamless experiences to turn customers into brand ambassadors
• Engage proactively: don’t wait until you see service issues
• Measure and improve continuously

Can you Measure Social Media?

Measurement means metrics/Statistics during a specific time period that shows what had happened. Purpose of measuring is to compare between actual and expected.

Why measure?
Ans: If you dont know where you are … how will you get anywhere?

Types of Metrics

• Organization – Metrics for the Shareholders.
• Social Media – Metrics for Social media means Engagement, Customer Satisfaction, Sales, Traffic & Research.

Why Google failed on Social Media front?

According to a former Google employee – “Google has an environment that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility, and I’m pretty sure this viewpoint was shared all the way up the chain of command to the founders.”

Consider this example: Google Answers focused on answers and failed; Yahoo! Answers focused on social and succeeded. The primary purpose of a social application is connecting with others, seeing what they’re up to, and maybe even having some small, fun interactions. Google apps are for working and getting things done; social apps are for interacting and having fun.

Google is from Mars, and social applications are from Venus. Google is ready to fight, but social applications are about loving not fighting.

With the Advent of Social Media, many of us have this question – Is there a Social Customer? If yes, Who is this Social Customer? But before we should answer that, we need to understand what is Social Business? Businesses that use Social Media are called as Social Businesses. Social Business includes a lot of information derived from customers, suppliers and partners, and this might be from any means, not just ‘Social’ means. Read more about Social Business.

Many people have this opinion that there is no such thing as Social Customer. They are just traditional customers who have discovered that online social networks and social tools can help them do some old jobs. Functional jobs like searching for information about involving new products, personal jobs like helping others avoid broken services, relational jobs like communing with your peers and social jobs like telling stories to friends. All these jobs existed before online social networks and social tools, but customers had to use other tools to do them. The customer hasn’t really changed, but the tools they use to do old jobs have.

What is Social Customer?

Social customer is the one who uses Social Media. He has lot to say and is connected to all the social networking sites i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Linkedin ..etc. He is Creative, Collaborative, Efficient at curating information and has his/her own relevant opinion. Social customer will first build the relationship with you/your competitor, will engage in meaningful conversation before making a decision/purchase and then chooses which one to support.

According to a survey – 90% customers trust recommendations from the people they know, 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.

How Social Customer is different than a Normal Customer?
89% tell everyone else about bad experience, 25% use social media to do it -> this is proof of how the social customer is diff. Social Customer will first Listen, Analyze, Relate & then Act contrary to traditional customer.

The new model in business is that you involve your community and customer in an ongoing conversation about every aspect of your business. In order for a conversation to occur, companies must speak and listen. Traditional marketing models are all about speaking. When a brand puts an ad in a newspaper, on a building or in a train, they are broadcasting their message, but there isn’t generally a direct method for responding. Social media is changing the ways brands approach marketing. Instead of broadcasting messages, brands are starting conversations and engaging individuals.

Successful social media marketing begins and ends with respect to your audience. Understanding what your audience wants to hear is key. Once you begin listening to what customers are saying about your brand, products and competitors, you’ll have a better sense of which platforms to monitor for certain types of feedback. You can listen all day, but if you don’t act on your learnings, you will lose an opportunity to generate a meaningful conversation with a customer that may be considering trying out your brand. Take action when you come across a useful comment, and make sure you clear up any customer questions when they arise.

What do you want to do with Social Media?

• Grow Fan follower base
• Increase WOM
• Encourage sharing
• Stimulate conversation
• Drive actions

What you can achieve using Social Media?

Social Media is an umbrella that covers your various activities and integrates technology, social interactions, videos, pictures and words. Not all of the above mentioned needs to be shared in one spot, but a few examples of such places that utilize these functions are most likely places you are either using or have heard of, such as; Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Mixx, YouTube and countless others. Social Media is the new-aged Media. It has traveled past radio and television, to allow us to connect globally in an interactive way. The difference between Media and Social Media is that we can receive information (what ever form it is in) in real-time and be able to share it with others in a fast fashion. The most significant difference is the social aspect, we are able to be heard, to share our voice, opinions and in some ways become the reporter.

With Media, there is a disconnect, we are the audience and we tune in to what ever news or entertainment news organizations that we’d prefer, with Social Media, whatever Social Network we belong to, we can not only be fed all types of news, but we are connected with one another as a community, with “like” buttons, comment sections and tagging to what or whom we want. We are limitless and in this fast pace society we are enjoying the less time consuming approach to being in touch with our world.

Examples of social media software applications include:

Communication

• Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga
• Micro-blogging: Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, Jaiku, fmylife
• Social networking: Bebo, BigTent, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Ning, Elgg, Drupal
• Social network aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint
• Social bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
• Social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic

Multimedia

• Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Picasa
• Video sharing: YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, sevenload
• Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, Skype
• Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter

Entertainment

• Media & Entertainment Platforms: Cisco Eos
• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online, Forterra
• Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate

Social Media is not a place to conquer but a place to be involved, to help shape the way we share and to be a member of a non-exclusive growing population.