Monday, December 3, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Innovation is Not Creativity
Usually, managers equate innovation with creativity. But innovation is not creativity. Creativity is about coming up with the big idea. Innovation is about executing the idea — converting the idea into a successful business.
We like to think of an organization's capacity for innovation as creativity multiplied by execution. We use "multiplication" rather than "sum" because, if either creativity or execution has a score of zero, then the capacity for innovation is zero.
Companies tend to focus far more attention on improving the front end of the innovation process, the creativity. But the real leverage is in the back end.
Ideas will only get you so far. Consider companies that struggled even after a competitor entered the market and made the great idea transparent to all.
Did Xerox stumble because nobody there noticed that Canon had introduced personal copiers?
Did Kodak fall behind because they were blind to the rise of digital photography?
Did Sears suffer a decline because they had no awareness of Wal-Mart's new every-day-low-price discount retailing format?
In every case, the ideas were there. It was the follow-through that was lacking. In fact, we have found that innovation initiatives face their stiffest resistance after they show hints of success, begin to consume significant resources, and clash with the existing organization at multiple levels — that is, long after the idea generation stage.
Managers seem to be enamored with the Big Idea Hunt for three reasons.
First, coming up with an idea does not create tension with the core business.
Second, ideation is sexy, while execution is long, drawn out, and boring.
Third, companies think they are good at execution. But generally they're good at execution in their core businesses; the capabilities making that possible are poisonous for innovation.
Thomas Edison, the greatest innovator of all time, put it well: "Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Reflect on how much time your organization spends on inspiration versus perspiration. What are the barriers to execution? How are you attempting to overcome them?
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Friday, November 23, 2012
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
An important aspect of Search Engine
Optimization is making your website easy for both users and search engine
robots to understand. Although search engines have become increasingly
sophisticated, in many ways they still can't see and understand a web page the
same way a human does. SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is
about, and how it may be useful for users.
A Common Argument Against SEO
We frequently hear statements like this:
“No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires
websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or
indexed. Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through
any architecture, parse any amount of complex or imperfect code and still find
a way to return the best and most relevant results, not the ones that have been
"optimized" by unlicensed search marketing experts.”
But Wait...
Imagine you posted online a picture of your family dog. A human
might describe it as "a black, medium-sized dog - looks like a Lab,
playing fetch in the park." On the other hand, the best search engine in
the world would struggle to understand the photo at anywhere near that level of
sophistication. How do you make a search engine understand a photograph?
Fortunately, SEO allows webmasters to provide "clues" that the
engines can use to understand content. In fact, adding proper structure to your
content is essential to SEO.
Understanding both the abilities and limitations of search engines
allows you to properly build, format and annotate your web content in a way
that search spiders can digest. Without SEO, many websites remain invisible to
search engines.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Social Media Measurement
Social media measurement or ‘social media monitoring’ is an active monitoring of social media channels for information about a company or organization , usually tracking of various social media content such as blogs, wikis, news sites, micro-blogs such as Twitter, social networking sites, video/photo sharing websites, forums, message boards, blogs and user-generated content in general as a way to determine the volume and sentiment of online conversation about a brand or topic.
Social media monitoring allow users to find insights into a brands' overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, identify opportunities for engagement, assess competitor activity and share of voice, and be alerted to impending crises. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific topics, brands or products. This is the work of cross section of people including market researchers have created tools to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels from blogging to internet video to internet forums. This allows companies to track what consumers are saying about their brands and actions. Companies can then react to these conversations and interact with consumers through social media platforms.
The social media monitoring sector
There are a wide range of monitoring platforms available, from entry-level free tools to much more powerful enterprise tools, each of which provides different functionality and methods to find, manipulate and work with the relevant data. Some tools are geared more towards engagement, offering solutions to track and respond to mentions of a brand, whilst others are more data-focused, though most tools offer, to varying degrees, a combination of both.Due to the industry being relatively young, new tools and offerings are still emerging and evolving
Quantifying social media
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to measure all social media conversation. Due to privacy settings and other issues, not all social media conversation can be found and reported by monitoring tools. However, whilst social media monitoring cannot give absolute figures, it can be extremely useful for identifying trends and for benchmarking, in addition to the uses mentioned above. These findings can, in turn, influence and shape future business decisions.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Steps to an Effective Social Media Strategy
1: Assessment
Start with a single question: “Why social media?” The answer will dictate everything you do in this first phase. Assessment is to evaluate where you are, where you want to go and what the wins will be along the way.
Put Your Audience First
First things first: You need to clarify your audience’s needs, wants and challenges—not to mention where they’re spending time online. Use tools like Survey Monkey or Google Docs to quickly and inexpensively survey your customers. Each time I want to learn more about my audience's behaviors, I create a quick survey and post it on my social networks to go straight to the source.
5 major benefits of knowing your audience are considerable:
Laser focus: You can create content that resonates instantly.
Break barriers: Confront pain points head-on to build trust.
Language: Increase engagement by being a person your audience relates to.
Empathy: The more you listen, the better you can respond to specific needs.
Positioning: You can become the go-to source in your niche.
Step #2: Implementation
Next up: execution. The implementation phase is all about zeroing in on the details and day-to-day tasks you and your team are now responsible for.
Have a Step-by-Step Plan for Promotion and Growth
There are literally hundreds of ways to get your team promoting and sharing on the key social media sites you plan to use. Here are a few to get you started:
Visible social media icons and social plugins are some of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your social media networks. Integrate social media on your website with plugins and icons.
Visible social media icons and social plugins are some of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your social media networks.Run contests and promotions or offer rewards.
Showcase your expertise. Drive traffic (and build a reputation) by offering webinars and training programs,interviewing experts and guest blogging, to name a few.
Promote your networks consistently. Add networks to letterhead, email signatures and business cards.
Identify Core Sales Campaigns
Yes, social media is about relationships first. But the fact is, once you’ve built solid, genuine relationships online, you’re going to want to use your influence to grow your business. That doesn’t mean shoving it down fans’ throats or putting sales above the relationship. It simply means that you can and should promote what you offer to the people who believe in your mission.
Establish an action plan for the core campaigns you’ll use to collect and nurture leads, like:
Outline promotional policy—what is acceptable, and what is not allowed?
Identify and implement opt-in opportunities—like a custom welcome tab on your Facebook page.
Determine where to direct leads—for example, will you create an eCommerce platform on Facebook with a custom tab, or sell only on your site?
Thursday, February 16, 2012
5 Essential Things of a Social Media for Brand ...
1. Connectivity
If you aren’t connected to your consumers, and conversely they are not connected to you, then social media success is impossible.
Whether you have customer service chat available on your website, a support forum, commenting enabled on the company blog or even a company presence on Twitter, you must have a connecting point for your customers to find you. Social media is about conversations. Conversations cannot be had if you’re nowhere to be found.
Being connected doesn’t just mean you throw up a form on your website, though. It means you have a person or persons monitoring conversations about your brand online, answering questions, even if the questions weren’t posed directly to them.
2. Generosity
If you’ve read anything about social media on- or offline, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Give to Get.”
Online social media is an almost identical environment to a social gathering offline. People gravitate to individuals, groups or conversations they feel they can get the most out of. By providing something of value to your customers, or potential customers, in your online activities, you earn trust. The more trust you earn, the more influence you’ll have.
Those relationships, over time, will equal a much higher return on investment than one-off, one-time customers.3. Honesty
If what you’re doing in social media is building relationships, you can’t build them without honesty.
If your product is made with a lesser material than your competitor’s, don’t hide it. Either get better material or find a positive reason it’s made that way (e.g., it’s cheaper, thus saves consumers money).
If the company makes a mistake and has to recall a product, simply say, “We made a mistake. We’re very sorry.” As long as you mean it, people will believe you.
And you don’t have to suddenly treat confidential company information with open records policies, either. The public is a lot smarter than you think. When sensitive information is in question, simply say, “I’m sorry. That’s information we don’t talk about outside the company for competitive reasons.” That answer is honest. “No comment?” Not so much.
4. Personality
If you had to boil successful communication in the social media realm down to an essence, it would be to be human. Consumers flocked to social networking sites and blogs to get away from one-way blasted marketing messages hurled at them all day.
To put it simply, people want to talk to another human being when making buying decisions, discussing products and services and discovering new products and services. You cannot have a conversation with a logo, a building or a company. You have conversations with human beings.
5. Imagination
Social media is much like a social event. But after a while, social events or conversations with the same groups of people become stale and predictable. The conversations that last are those where at least one person always has something new to say, a never-ending stream of stories or jokes.
Approach your planning as if you’re the person who will keep the life in the party. Develop an editorial calendar for website or blog content and brainstorm a contest, promotion or game for customers and fans to engage with on a monthly or quarterly basis. Remember that you’re building relationships, but, like dating or even marriage, you have to be creative to keep the relationship fresh and invigorating.
Globuzz :
Through Social Media its easier for a brand to understand their end consumers ..
we help you to build your brand through social media and online activation .........................................Sunday, December 18, 2011
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