Husbands in IT lingo

‎​INSTALLING HUSBAND !!!!
A woman writes to the IT Technical support.....

Dear Tech Support ,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and I noticed a distinct slowdown in the overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications , which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 , and then installed undesirable programs such as NEWS 5.0 , MONEY 3.0 and CRICKET 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Pls note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?
Signed,___

REPLY

DEAR Madam ,
First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Pls enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5... However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband1.0 to default to Silence 2.5 or Beer 6.1. Pls note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT in any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.) In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0 and Good Looks 7.7.
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

Outstanding Social Media Statistics That you cant Ignore - Are you Aware ?

Every month I read countless research reports and blog posts on interesting social media metrics. Instead of having them sit on my desk or in a bookmarks folder in my browser, I wanted to pass them along because social media continues to evolve at a rapid clip and it is very easy to lose sight of key metrics or research data that can help make more informed decisions.

Below are 30 of the top stats I have seen over the past few months that can help you either sell social media to the higher ups in your company or help you in securing additional resources for your company's social program.

• 5 percent of online shoppers note that social media influenced them to visit a retailer's website (Foresee)
• 82 percent of 18-29 year olds utilize a form of social networking (Pew)
• 42 percent of American internet users over 18 actively use Wikipedia (Pew)
• 40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage in some kind of customer service (Burson-Marsteller)
• In 2011 marketers will increase their social media usage by 75 percent (Brian Solis)
• 48 percent of consumers combine social media and search engines in their buying process (GroupM)
• 10.5 percent of CMOs say social marketing efforts are effectively integrated into their overall marketing strategy (MarketingProfs)
• 97 percent of the top US charities utilize Facebook in their marketing efforts (UMass Dartmouth)
• Of all social networks, YouTube has the highest Net Promoter Score with 50 percent of users saying they would recommend it to a friend (MarketingProfs)
• ~140 Million Tweets are sent each day (Twitter)
• 24 percent of adults have posted a review of a product they have purchased (HubSpot)
• 41 percent of the companies report that there is no staff dedicated to social media (Useful Social Media)
• 89 percent of companies note that social media will become a useful cog in their marketing mix moving forward (Useful Social Media)
• 35 percent of small businesses utilize social media in their marketing mix (eMarketer)
• Facebook expects to bring n $4.05 billion in ad revenues this year (eMarketer)
• Facebook is the leading social network for nine out of 13 Asia-Pacific countries (Edelman)
• One out of every six minutes spent online is on a social network (comScore)
• 73 percent of the US internet population visits Facebook each month (comScore)
• 62 percent of Facebook users between 35-54 years of age have liked a brand (eMarketer)
• 64 percent of Twitter users are female (Pew)
• 85 percent of LinkedIn users are Caucasian (Pew)
• 47 percent of journalists will use Twitter as a source for a story (Digital Journalism Study)
• Less than 3 percent of micro businesses utilize Twitter (Vistaprint)
• 61.2 percent of Facebooking females list themselves as married less than a year, compared to 44.3 percent of males (AdAge)
• The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300 percent increase in referral traffic (Search Engine Land)
• 61 percent of Facebook users who have liked a brand note that they are more likely to purchase from that brand (AllFacebook)
• 96 percent of Americans use Facebook (Business Insider)
• 80 percent of social media marketers are using the platforms to increase brand awareness (eMarketer)
• Only 8 percent of US internet users utilize Twitter despite having a 92 percent awareness level (Edison Research)
• 46 million Americans check their social media profiles daily (Edison Research)

• Original article
 

Sales, Service, Marketing? In the Social Era, They’re All The Same - Must Read

You don't need to be a user of social media to know that it's changed business as we knew it. Companies point customers to their Facebook page. Twitter has become mission control for customer complaints and praise as well as a place to cultivate brands. And engaging with customers has become an entirely different proposition from what it was even five years ago.

That's because social media has blurred the lines between sales, service and marketing. Consider, for example, the following tweet: "Thinking about adding 10 more tablets for sales team. What's the best way to share real-time data?"  That one tweet could go to sales to follow up a lead, to service for tech support or to marketing to offer incentives and reinforce branding. How does a company effectively handle this overlap? The answer has ramifications that affect customer-facing operations throughout a company: requiring a different blend of skills, greater levels of employee empowerment and shifting organizational structures as enterprises go social.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines CEO Peter Hartman confronted this challenge in April 2010, when a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland drifted across western Europe. The ash grounded flights for six days, and triggered a deluge of tweets and Facebook posts from stranded travelers asking for help. Like many companies, KLM had dabbled in social media, but hundreds of increasingly frustrated posts from stranded customers tested the company's nascent social strategy.

Shortly after the ash cloud, Hartman declared social media the center of KLM's customer service efforts, with the goal of cutting resolution time to one day at the most. Posts on social channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, would be responded to within one hour. Hartman told his social team to do what it thought necessary to resolve complaints.

In the year since the biggest disruption to European air traffic since World War II, KLM has defined new job roles, reorganized its marketing and service functions to support social media and launched a Social Media Hub to handle all incoming requests. The hub brings employees from across the company together, including e-commerce, customer care, in-flight services, IT and marketing. KLM places new emphasis on employees who can react quickly, solve problems independently, and know how to service customers – and do it in a way that plays well in a world where people instantly and publicly update complaints and praise.

When real-time technology demands real-time answers, old-style hierarchies no longer work. Customers want immediate results, and they waste zero time tweeting or posting their frustrations. And that means bureaucratic-fueled delays can hurt your brand and can cut into your company's top line. In his book The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss described how he authorized customer support workers for his nutritional supplement company to do whatever it took  to keep customers happy, as long as it cost no more than $100. The result? Quicker decisions, happier customers – and stronger customer loyalty.

And loyal customers are return customers. Dell is breaking down walls – literally – to get its key customer-facing employees working together over social media and ensure that customers stay loyal to the Dell brand.

The company filters conversations pouring into its new Social Media Listening Command Center to determine the nature of each comment, tweet, or post.  The dedicated Social Outreach Services team, working next to the command center, then does what it needs to do to keep customers happy.

So far, Dell's social media training has reached more than 13,000 attendees from all business units and functions within the company. Now, Dell's product managers can speak directly with customers, learning their needs and wants. In turn, those customers become advocates for the brand, helping to spread the network and engaging even more customers. The efforts are paying off.  Dell was recently declared the No. 1  social brand according to Headstream and became the No. 1  global brand on Renren.

KLM's and Dell's experiences illustrate the shift that has turned the traditional notion of sales, service and marketing on its head. To be successful, a company must transform itself into a more social organization that can nurture and defend its brands at the speed of Twitter. The days of separate silos are numbered.  Today your sales, service, and marketing departments need to be #onthesamepage.

atricle by Alex Dayon is the executive VP of CRM at Salesforce.com.

Social media marketing. Can you afford not to?

The rapid growth of social media has added another string to the bow of many marketing campaigns. Here we take a look at how social media can be beneficial to a B2B marketing campaign and the issues surrounding that all important return on investment (ROI).

Pretty much every survey you read on social media marketing cites the 'big three' as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so for the purposes of this article we'll focus on those three.

Many people use various social media sites for personal use – catching up with friends, sharing news and keeping up to date with happenings in our own areas of interest – but how does that translate in a business environment?

Many B2C companies use social media to increase sales, build brand awareness and launch new products and services (check out Kellogg's use of Facebook when it became the first cereal manufacturer to launch a product through social media). 

Using social media for marketing in a B2B environment is an entirely different ball game from either B2C marketing or personal use – so where do you start and, more importantly, what can you expect to gain? 

ROI is notoriously difficult to calculate where social media is concerned. According to a survey by BtoB Magazine (some excerpts from which are available here), 75 per cent of B2B marketers who conduct social marketing say they do not measure the ROI of their social media campaigns. When it comes to social media there is no 'one size fits all' measurement protocol. We wonder if the 75 per cent who do not measure ROI have actually sat down and asked themselves the question 'what do I hope to gain from this?' and then set themselves a series of KPIs by which they can measure success unique to their business and its needs.

In the foreword to Oliver Blanchard's recently publish book 'Social Media ROI', Brian Solis writes: "We must first design outcomes into the equation. What do we want to accomplish? What's the return we seek? Are we trying to sell, change, drive, cause, or inspire something specific? Are we reducing customer problems as measured by inbound volume, open tickets, public discourse? Are we trying to shift sentiment to a more positive state that increases referrals as a result?"

Until you know what you are trying to achieve it is impossible to know whether or not you are going in the right direction.

When integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy perhaps the question should not only be 'what do I want to gain?' but also "what can I gain?". There is little use in having unrealistic expectations. Know what is possible, then work out how you can gain from it. 

If you want to launch a new product, Facebook may not be the best platform. If you want to improve your customer service offering, however, Facebook and Twitter should be top of your list. For networking and business recommendations, an up to date, active LinkedIn profile should be your social media priority.

Whatever you decide to use social media for, make sure it aligns with goals across the business and integrates with your overall marketing strategy. Take, for example, new business. You want to generate leads and bring in new sales. Social media may not be your best bet for bringing in direct sales but it could just be the thing that clinches that new contract.

Think about your own personal use of the internet. In a world of consumerism it's all about reviews. If you're planning a holiday you turn to Trip Advisor for reviews of hotels. If you're buying a new car you read the relevant What? Car magazine article. Would you buy a new TV without typing the model number into Google first? Probably not. Now put your business hat on. You've seen an advert for a potential new supplier in an industry publication. What's the first thing you do? You Google them. The first hit you look for is the company's own website which is, of course, only going to have good things to say about it. What you need to know is what it's like to work with and whether it's as good as it claims to be. It may have the best tomatoes in the world but if the delivery is unreliable and the customer service is unhelpful, you'll wish you'd gone elsewhere.

A visit to a company's Facebook page could provide examples of how it deals with any issues. Has anyone posted a negative comment? If so, how has the company reacted? Maybe there's details of an offer which makes it a more attractive deal. Often the delay in publication of printed media versus the instantaneous nature of the internet means that short-run offers will appear on the internet rather than in print.

Next you turn to Twitter to scout out any interesting tweets. Maybe there's been an issue with a delivery and a customer is making their thoughts known on Twitter. Or, conversely, maybe a customer is thanking them for increasing the size of a delivery at short notice. Maybe they are thought leaders or are actively petitioning to change a rule or regulation and are calling for support.

Somewhere along the lines you consult LinkedIn. Who is in their network? Who has recommended them? What discussions are they involved in?

Now ask yourself – would numerous recommendations on LinkedIn or a positive Facebook profile or Twitter feed encourage you to get in contact with the company? Possibly. Would a negative online presence make you think twice? Probably.

If the company's Facebook page is out of date and the Twitter feed consists of weekly tweets of self-promotion it would do nothing to encourage you to get in touch. If it is being used to communicate with customers, to deal with any problems and ask for feedback (on which it appears to act), it would certainly spike your interest.

According to the BtoB Magazine survey, one of the top three obstacles to adopting social media marketing was management resistance. Chances are this is linked to the issue of ROI. In the example above, social media doesn't provide the initial interest in a company but it helps to keep the interest long enough for an enquiry to be made.

If you're looking into whether or not to invest time and money in social media marketing, maybe the question shouldn't be 'can we afford to'? but 'can we afford not to?'. What is the cost in lost sales of being invisible in the social media world?

explore dream discover

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‎"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 
- Mark Twain

Faith Trust Hope Confidence and more ....

1. Once, all villagers decided to pray for rain, on the day of prayer all the People gathered but only one boy came with an umbrella...THAT'S FAITH
2. When you throw a baby in the air, she laughs because she knows you will catch her...THAT'S TRUST
3.Every night we go to bed, without any assurance of being alive the next Morning but still we set the alarms in our watch to wake up...THAT'S HOPE
4. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future or having any certainty of uncertainties. ..THAT'S CONFIDENCE
5. We see the world suffering. We know there is every possibility of same or similar things happening to us. But still we get married...THAT'S OVER CONFIDENCE!‬

Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

It's Not Just for Facebook Anymore

Social networking gets a lot of attention, but the vast majority of that attention is focused on a small handful of very large social networks. Facebook and Twitter are great tools, but what if you could harness the power of social networking and bring it to your own site?

The value of social networking for a business--and the reason that it is important to establish a presence and learn to effectively use Facebook and Twitter--is that it engages customers on a different level. When you give customers a voice, and let them be a part of the dialog, it inspires a degree of loyalty, and gives those customers a reason to come back--to share their opinions, and provide feedback.

Leverage the power of social networking on a local level with your own community.More importantly, when you create a forum for customers to communicate with your organization, and with each other, you create a sense of community that takes on a life of its own. Customers will share with each other, and help each other. A social community can build word-of-mouth momentum for your organization, and provide free, self-sustaining customer support.

A survey released today from Ning puts some real world metrics behind the theory of the social Web. Ning provides a platform for creating custom social sites, and the Ning Point of View (POV) Report analyzes information gathered from nearly 100,000 such social communities globally with 67 million unique visitors per month.

According to the Ning POV, a new online community is born every 10 minutes as groups and organizations of all sizes around the world integrate the power of social networking into their own sites. Here are some of the key findings from the Ning POV:

• The Magic Number: It only takes 20 people to bring an online community to a significant level of activity and connectivity - when members spend an increasing amount of time on the site, and visit more regularly.

• Social Status: The Ning POV ranks the top 20 social categories online with Education making the highest grade. The ranking also shows that the Religion category (#6) has more fans than the Sports category (#16).

• Dialog Makes a Difference: The balance is shifting from broadcasting status updates to developing dialog. The most active sections of Ning community sites are those that foster a two-way conversation (the inbox and forum tools attract the highest engagement, outranking broadcast tools such as member profile, photos and video).

Most organizations have a website, and many are establishing a foothold on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But, it would be preferable to bring customers to the website and give them a reason to engage and keep coming back.

For example, look at Tony Hawk's website, shredordie.com. At face value, it just looks like a website about skateboarding, but at the upper right you will see links to log in or set up an account. Users who create an account can sign in to the site and join the shredordie.com community. They can set up a profile, upload photos and videos, write blog posts on the site, and invite friends.

There is still a very valid reason to set up shop on Facebook as well--no matter what your product, service, or cause, the ability to reach half a billion people is awesome. But, your social networking efforts don't need to be confined to Facebook. You can also create your own social Web on your own site, and you can use your efforts on Facebook to gain exposure and attract users to join your private community.

by Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Google has one billion users - wow !

London: Every seventh person in the world uses Google and other websites the company owns, a media report said.

The landmark figure in May revealed by ComScore shows an 8.4 percent rise year-on-year. Over one billion people among the world's current population of 6.93 billion use Google and its other websites.

Microsoft remained the second most popular destination with 905 million unique visitors in May, the Daily Telegraph reported.

This was up approximately 15 percent over the year, but Facebook rose by 30 percent to 714 million unique users, it said.

Yahoo, which was overtaken by Facebook in October, saw an 11 percent yearly rise to 689 million users.

A "global measurement panel" of two million users helps ComScore to compile its estimates, and the data is then refined with page-view data it receives from more than 90 of the 100 publishers of web content, the report said.

Google is one of the few publishers that does not contribute. The company declined to comment.

When ComScore first measured traffic, in 2006, Google had slightly fewer than 500 million unique users per month, with Microsoft taking the top spot with 539 million, the Telegraph said.

The addition of users to Gmail and Google has also been helped by the company's purchase of video site YouTube.

Users, however, spend more time on Facebook than Google; the social network's users browsed the site for 250 billion minutes in May, compared to Google's 200 billion, according to the newspaper. 

Four friends

Four friends, who hadn't seen each other in 30 years, reunited at a party. 

After several drinks, one of the  men had to use the rest room. 

Those who remained talked about their kids. The first guy said, "My son is my pride and joy. He started working at a successful company at the bottom of the barrel. He studied Economics and Business Administration and soon began to climb the corporate ladder and now he's the president of the company. He became so rich that he gave his best friend a top of the line Mercedes for his birthday."

The second guy said, "Damn, that's terrific! My son is also my pride and joy. He started working for a big airline, he then went to flight school to become a pilot. Eventually he became a partner in the company, where he owns the majority of its assets. He's so rich that he gave his best friend a brand new jet for his birthday."

The third man said: "Well, that's terrific! My son studied in the best universities and became an engineer. Then he started his own construction company and is now a multimillionaire. He also gave away something very nice and expensive to his best friend for his birthday: A 30,000 square foot mansion."

The three friends congratulated each other just as the fourth returned from the restroom and asked: "What are all the congratulations for?"

One of the three said: "We were talking about the pride we feel for the successes of our sons.... What about your son?"

The fourth man replied: "My son is gay and makes a living dancing as a stripper at a nightclub." The three friends said: "What a shame...what a disappointment."

The fourth man replied: "No, I'm not ashamed. He's my son and I love him. And he's lucky, too. His birthday just passed and the other day he received a beautiful 30,000 square foot mansion, a brand new jet and a top of the line Mercedes from his three boyfriends."

Will Facebook take over the mobile world ??

There has been endless articles and complaints surrounding the fact that Facebook does not have its own native iPad app. The truth is, no one really knows why the social marketing giant does not recognize the iPad for what it is, an industry pioneer. However, the latest news about Zuckerberg's plans might shed some light on the cold shoulder he has shown Apple for the past few years.

Of course, this is not confirmed by anyone, but maybe the reason Zuckerberg has not released an iPad app on the App Store is because he wants to release one on his own app store, a Facebook branded app distribution channel. Sound unrealistic? Keep reading.

Based on various TechCrunch reports in the last few days, Facebook knows all too well just how big the mobile space is and how crucial it is for the company's future to bring its Web dominance to the mobile phone.

Facebook's shift of strategy from a Web company to a mobile entity is starting to show its face. Of course, Facebook is not alone and just this week we witnessed how Google now launches new features on mobile phones, and only then pushes it to the desktop.

Facebook's jump into the mobile ring is composed of several steps, two of which became apparent to us this week.

Facebook Photo Sharing Platform

By now, we are all very familiar with the booming trend of mobile apps that enable photo editing and sharing. Instagram leads the way with over 5 million users, 100 million photos, and a 100,000 new users who joined the service last weekend alone.

The newest development is that Facebook itself, with its 100 billion hosted photos, 6 billion photos uploaded monthly, and 700 million active users will be launching its own app for photo sharing.

Here is the thing with Facebook's mobile development skills. Historically speaking, they rock, and based on initial photos of the app, this app is no different. The Facebook native app is the most downloaded iPhone app ever and this new photo app, whether integrated into the Facebook app or as a standalone, will really give other photo sharing apps a run for their money.

The secret to the success of a Facebook photo app is in its numbers. In fact, whether Facebook launches a photo app, a video sharing app, or any other app that involves sharing with your friends and contacts, the fact that the company brings 700 million users means the app will almost automatically become an overnight success.

Facebook App Distribution Channel

OK, as big as the photo sharing trend might be, that is not how the company intends to leave its mark on the mobile space. The next piece of news, also coming from TechCrunch implies that Facebook is entering the mobile game on the distribution front, which as far as apps are concerned, is the most crucial component of the development process.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has elaborate plans to create its own app store, which will be HTML5-based and will run on top of the popular iOS browser, Safari.

That's right. Facebook knows it cannot compete with Apple from within the App Store given Apple's tight grip on the whole iOS ecosystem, but the Web is an open space and Safari is the vessel Facebook is going to use to its advantage.

This new Web-based app store is part of a new mobile platform code-named Project Spartan and its initial goal is to reach 100 million mobile users via Safari.

Supposedly, there are already more than 80 developers working with Facebook on Project Spartan, including big names like Zynga and Huffington Post, which will surely help the new app store take off upon launch.

The basic concept of how this new app distribution channel will work is as follows. A user opens Safari, accesses Facebook, and is presented with a dropdown displaying apps to download. Once downloaded, the app will appear within a Facebook wrapper that will have some basic Facebook functionality, including payments and most likely social sharing.

Of course, all this is hot off the press so many questions remain unanswered, but one thing is for sure, if this is even partly accurate, and TechCrunch has apparently seen the new project first hand, then this may symbolize a true reversal in app distribution and monetization, as far as the industry is concerned.

Many experts claim they do not see this Facebook HTML5 app store taking off and users will always prefer the native app experience with Apple's tight integration over a Web app experience, even if it is Facebook-branded.

Of course the other side to that coin is that an HTML5 Web based app environment will offer true cross-platform distribution, as well as a significant decrease in app development time and resources. Develop once, deploy for all platforms. This can mean a heck of a lot more revenue for developers, whether they charge per download or use other models of app monetization, such as in-app advertising. Of course, that would require Project Spartan to be available on other mobile browsers, but that is the next logical step with Android numbers continuing to explode.

The one point that is undisputable here is that Facebook, like others before it, now clearly recognizes the explosive potential of the mobile phone and its surrounding ecosystem. Why is there no Facebook iPad app? You can be sure it is not because Facebook does not intend on entering the space, it might be because it wants to make a grand entrance on its own terms.

This post has been written by Hillel Fuld. Hillel  is a tech blogger who manages multiple sites such as Technmarketing, Appboy, and inneractive. In addition, Hillel has written on many leading online publications such as Mashable, Gigaom, and others. In addition to his blogger hat, Hillel is an active Twitter personality who defines himself as a "Social media addict". When Hillel is not blogging or tweeting, he is the Head of Marketing for inneractive, a mobile startup that deals with app monetization across all mobile platforms.

Jackson - Amazing

Should all your staff be engaging in social media?

Many brands are nervous about letting people engage on their behalf in social media; and their nervousness is often well-founded.

They think of cases such as the Nestle Facebook page, where the person managing the page on behalf of the brand lost control of the situation; generally they fear that people will say the wrong thing, to the wrong people at the wrong time.

This leads to policies that are about controlling and restricting use of social media, whereas the ideal would be the exact opposite.

The truth is that many brands have traditionally made it difficult for their staff to engage in social media; they block access to social sites on the work network and they have policies that are about what employees shouldn't do and how they shouldn't behave.

This has often grown out of a very traditional understanding of social media as something that distracts people from work. Most brands no longer believe this, but these restrictions are still in place.

For most brands, social media is seen as a channel (just as press is a traditional communications channel), and so only specific people are allowed to engage.

Just as you have a specific people who are allowed to talk on behalf of your brand to the press, so you have a small set of people who are allowed to engage in social media. The restrictions and policies remain in place, but a small number of people are exceptions to this.

For brands with a more developed understanding of the value of social media, it has stopped being just another channel in this way and started being something that is changing the way parts of the business function ('social business').

For these brands, restricting access to social media to just a limited number of employees is counter-intuitive. They need people to be using social media not as a separate channel but just as part of their job.

For these brands this raises the question of whether all employees should be engaging on Twitter or Facebook, forums or blogs.

There are some notable examples (such as Zappos or Best Buy) where large proportions of an employee group are encouraged to Tweet or engage on social media, and there are strong reasons for a social business to encourage this:

1. Encouraging all your staff to be using social media can help deal with a large volume of engagements in social media. 

   If every single employee had an hour or two each week to engage with customers, you could very quickly deal with a large volume of issues without any one individual employee feeling that they are adding a lot to their workload.

2. Getting staff from departments other than the communications team (where traditionally this channel might be run) allows customers to talk directly to people who know best how to use a product.
3. Allowing staff to build their own communities of people they engage with provides them with an ability to learn from, share and test ideas with people who are working on similar issues, in similar areas or use similar tools.
4. Finally, and perhaps most transformational, there is nothing more powerful that letting the people who work for a brand to have a direct channel with the people who pay money to buy that brand.

And this would seem to argue that getting your staff to tweet, use Facebook, and engage in forums or on blogs makes sense. And perhaps it does. Sometimes. But actually what this means is not that they should necessarily be engaging for you in social media, but that they should be finding the right way to use social media as part of their job. And this does not necessarily mean engaging.

The true social business encourages all employees to be using social media. For many this may mean interacting directly with customers online, however for some this will mean monitoring discussions on topics or brands of interest, or engaging in niche communities of likeminded individuals, or just engaging and interacting so that they understand how social media works.

Some of the best examples I've seen include plasma screens next to a CEO's desk that show the latest discussions of a brand online, or sales people who join groups and discussions about them and their competitors so that they can learn what people say about each, or programmes to get large proportions of staff across the business answering questions online that are in their area of expertise.

A true social business is about finding how and where social media should best be used by each and every employee.

But one thing is clear, we need to stop having policies that restrict use of social media, and start having policies that encourage it

Super Article Posted 13 June 2011 11:33am by Matt Rhodes 

Job seekers urged to network

Job seekers urged to network

Bill Silverfarb/Daily Journal Job hunters lined up at the Pacific Gas and Electric table at the College of San Mateo yesterday in an event hosted by U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo. It takes more than filling out an application or sending in a resume to land a job these days. In the down economy, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier has made it a mission to give those out of work the tools they need to find success. Yesterday, Speier, D-San Mateo, hosted her sixth local Job Hunters Boot Camp on the campus of the College of San Mateo with about 700 attending. Her first was back in January 2010 and she intends to keep putting on the events until they are no longer needed. Her message to job hunters yesterday was to take advantage of the resources available to them and to make at least one meaningful contact with a prospective employer before the day ended. More than 20 companies were represented at the event with several other resource tables set up to give job seekers advice on how to improve interview skills or how to land a job right out of college. Finding jobs for recent graduates, veterans and mature workers was the focus of yesterday’s workshop. Making connections and learning to network are the keys to finding work, Speier said. Recent college graduate Mitch Uzunoglu attended yesterday’s event in hopes of landing a writing job. Uzunoglu attended CSM and graduated from San Francisco State University last year with an undergraduate degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. Uzunoglu was encouraged by comments Speier made yesterday to the crowd of job seekers. “She spoke to everyone. Not just one group but to all of us,” he said. He is not nervous, however, about his prospects in finding a job. “If I don’t get a job today I will keep trying. I don’t think the job market is as bad as people think it is,” he said. Another job hunter who did not want to give his name, however, said tools and networking are fine but the real problem is a lack of jobs. “No matter how many lectures I hear about updating my resume or upgrading my interview skills it does not change the fact that there aren’t any jobs,” said the retired civil engineer. Lines were long at some employer tables, including the Pacific Gas and Electric table. Burlingame-based Virgin America also attended the event. Virgin America plans to hire about 800 people in the coming year, with many of them being hired locally, said company representative Frank Tizedes. Jobs will be available for in-flight services, finance and information technology, he said. Virgin America has now participated in four of Speier’s boot camps, Tizedes said. “We look to hire people with that entrepreneurial spirit, those who are upbeat with lots of energy,” he said. The CSM Cosmetology Department offered free makeovers to attendees yesterday and a student-driven initiative called Project Smile offered free photo services to job hunters for their LinkedIn profiles. “Many people do not post photos on their LinkedIn profiles and I wondered if it was because of a psychological barrier or some other issue,” said CSM student Alisha Willis. LinkedIn was a big topic at yesterday’s event with a workshop set up to teach people how to use the professional social networking website. “LinkedIn is a priceless tool. Recruiters use it and if you do not use it you are at a severe handicap,” said Jenny Kahn, who conducted a workshop yesterday on how to use LinkedIn. Speier encouraged those who have been out of work for a long while and have become frustrated in the job hunt to “not give up” yesterday. Bill Silverfarb can be reached by email: silverfarb@smdalyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.

Facebook most popular technology tool for churches

A recent study completed concluded that nearly half (47 percent) of churches these days use social media and social networking as tools of engagement and interaction. The survey of 1003 Protestant congregations was ...Whether by Skype, YouTube, email or other form of social media, churches are increasingly using technology to reach current or prospective members.

A recent study completed concluded that nearly half (47 percent) of churches these days use social media and social networking as tools of engagement and interaction.

Pastor Edwin Ford of Crossroads for Life Ministries said his church uses different kinds of technology to reach the public.

"Most everybody is going paperless," he said. Instead of an actual printed magazine,  members and others can access its online magazine, Then there's email, where they send out blasts on different topics, Ten-minute clips of church services are posted on YouTube.

AMAZING 

Is your Organisation engaging social media Tools effectively ??

India Inc rely on social media for marketing

Increasing number of Indian companies are using social media as an effective business tool with 83 per cent firms in the country agreeing that without social media activity, marketing strategies cannot be successful, according to a survey. 

The rising awareness among business internationally has seen social networking evolve from a nice-to-have to a necessity. 

According to a new global survey from leading office-space solutions provider, Regus, the last year has seen a rise in Indian companies using social networks, blogs, microblogs and forums to win new business. 

Nevertheless, Indian (66 per cent) and global firms (61 per cent) are also emphasising the need for a balance of marketing media, confirming their belief that without a combination of traditional and digital techniques marketing campaigns would not work. 

While 83 per cent of Indian firms feel they cannot do without social media activity, the global figure for the same finds 74 per cent of companies around the world in agreement with it. 

In 2010, Regus found that 52 per cent of Indian firms were successfully winning new customers through business social networking activity. A year later, the proportion has risen nine percentage points to 61 per cent. 

Two fifths (39 per cent) of firms globally and almost half in India (49 per cent) devote up to 20 per cent of their marketing budget to business social networking activity, the survey said. 

Fifty two per cent of businesses globally and 64 per cent in India use websites such as Twitter and Weibo to engage, connect with and inform existing customers, it said. 

In India, 67 per cent of firms encourage their employees to join social networks such as Linkedin, Xing and Video, compared to 53 per cent globally, it said. 

The global Regus survey findings are based on the responses of over 17,000 managers and business owners across 80 countries.

As reported by Economic Times 

Amazing Statistics

Some statistics regarding the spread of social media:

* Facebook now has over a half billion users worldwide; if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous behind China and India,   ahead of  USA  At least half of these users check Facebook every 24 hours and approximately 200 million are using their Mobiles or Mobile device to check their account.

* There are 175 million registered Twitter users, and over 95 million "tweets" are posted each day. That is almost 4 million tweets per hour.

* There are more than 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube  every minute and there are more than 2 billion videos viewed on YouTube every day.

* LinkedIn, the professional networking site, now has over 100 million registered users and there are more than 1 million companies with LinkedIn  pages. Nearly 2 billion people searches were conducted through LinkedIn  in 2010.

Amazing numbers to get to understand but it does mean more and more customers are using social media as their way to communicate and get their information. One must be aware .

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