Social Business Strategy – The Law of the Squeezing Social Media Networks
What happened in 2014 in the field of digital marketing can best be compared with the Law of Bernoulli.
This law is very simple to understand: put your foot on a water hose and turn on the tap. What happens next, in my imagination, is a bubble of water that appears in the hose, just like in the Tom & Jerry cartoons from my childhood. On one side of the bubble, the pressure is higher. And on the other side, at the far end, only a little bit of water comes out. Take your foot of the water hose, and “voilà”, there is again plenty of water. Agreed, Bernoulli’s law is more complex than that, but this is supposed to be Bernoulli’s law “for dummies”.
In 2014, we’ve seen that Facebook started putting both feet firmly on our social media water hoses. Where we used to enjoy delicious free organic reach for our content, with “Facebook Zero” that organic reach came to a standstill. If we want to reach our Facebook friends as a brand, an hose them down with our updates, we’ll have to pay “please-get-your-foot-of-the-water-hose”-money to Facebook.
What is less known is that not only Facebook is doing this. Other titans like Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking steps in this direction.
Why do they do that? Obviously it comes down to money.
But it’s about more than just money … Read more 
How have IBM, Adobe, and Dell become a Social Business? And what can a smaller company learn from them?
What can small and medium business (SMB) learn from giants such as IBM, Adobe and Dell about becoming a social business?
At first sight learning from these giants seems a crazy idea. SMB’s are different by every means. They have less budget, less employees, and certainly have different problems.
But surprisingly, when looking at how these large companies have become social businesses, there is a lot smaller companies can learn…
For this blog post I have:
- studied the social business strategies of IBM, Adobe and Dell in detail,
- mapped out a the best practices from these companies
- formulated some best practices feasible for SMBs.
The Shocking Truth about Sharing Company Secrets
A few days after I had trained some people about sharing on social media, I received an email from an account manager.
He was afraid we would be sharing too much details about what we do with customers. He was afraid we would give away to much information to competitors. And I heard the same remark of CEO’s holding back on press releases about customers wins because it could hurt the business.
This is an often heard dilemma: you make great new customers, you create fantastic webinars for customers, you do thought leadership speaking slots, and make customer cases. But by sharing this content publicly you are afraid you are providing valuable information to competitors. And that might hurt your business.
I do understand these reasons, I used to think the same. But companies that keep thinking like this will soon be gone. If you don’t want that, you’ll have to make a cultural shift to being open and authentic.
Let me explain you why… Read more
Influencing Tribes with Peer to Peer Marketing
(Photo courtesy of Martha Lou Perritti)
Peers trust peers. Plugged-in marketers know about the Edelman Trust Barometer. But in the end there’s no rocket-science behind this. You, dear blog reader, don’t trust strangers for starters. And people in similar jobs as yours, who have something interesting to say, well… you find them interesting.
CTO’s are connected with their fellow CTO’s. CMO with CMO’s. Middle Management trusts Middle Management. You could call these circles of people “Tribes.”.
Entering the Tribe as a vendor
The question is: how do you enter that circle as a vendor? How do you enter that circle in an authentic way? In a way which is relevant to the Tribe? In a way that doesn’t damage your reputation as a vendor? Read more
Sharing Company Secrets: Can you trust your Engineers on Social Media Networks ?
Image Courtesy of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Is it a good idea to have our engineering department be active on social media? That’s what Thomas asked me lately.
Thomas is a hardware circuit design engineer. I’m just calling him Thomas. It could be any engineer.
He had just followed one of the training sessions I organized around the increasing need for change towards a digital, social and content oriented company.
I’m into the bad stuff
“Very interesting stuff, Tom”, he said. Maybe the first hour a bit too much marketing stuff for him as an engineer, but still.
But that’s not why he came to me. He said : “Usually social media is all about the good stuff. But we engineers (support engineers, hardware developers or software developers), we’re also into the bad stuff: we actually fix problems! For some of us that’s even a full time job.”
Should he be active on Social Media if all he does is fix problems? And can you trust the guys on social media networks who sit on our intellectual property and secret roadmap information? Read more
