Dec 15, 2011 | Collaboration, Management, OE, Social Media
Ronald Coase was first to recognise and articulate the economic relationship between individuals and the co-coordinating structures necessary to organise the work of individuals, coining the term “Transaction costs” in his 1937 essay “The nature of the firm”
Coase in his original paper set up the theoretical framework for the huge cost reductions now possible, enabled by the tools of the web 2.0, which are gathering momentum at a huge rate.
What he did not spend too much time thinking about, because it was not relevant at the time, were the costs imposed by a redundant status quo. Cultures of organisations often require that costs to be absorbed simply because the operating environment has not evolved sufficiently to allow the collaboration tools now available to be used to their potential, leaving co-ordinating overheads to do the work now possible with a mouse, and a bit of nouse.
The possible competitive advantage to organisations, particularly ones with widespread operations is huge, as most of the competition will have trouble making the leap.
Let them pay the cost of yesterday, you have the opportunity to grab the future in recognising the power of the new collaboration tools.
Dec 2, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
How do you calculate the value of an investment in social media?
Any investment attracts the need to try to quantify the returns, both to measure the success of the investment when it is too late to do much about it apart from ensuring the same mistake is not made again, and to prioritise competing investment options against a limited pool of funds available.
Accountants love the discounted cash flow, and real options type analyses that prevail, but how do you do these on an investment in media, social or otherwise?
It makes sense to start to consider “data chains”.
Cause and effect;
Influence and action;
Believable and buy;
These are all examples of the chains of connections that are on the surface largely subjective, but lead to an outcome that can be measured. The task of measuring the return on the exposure that can accrue from a presence in Social Media, and even conventional media, is fraught with challenges, but with systemisation of the pools of data generated from your sales, customer retention, prospect identification, web analytics, and all the other data collection options now available, you can start to see the patterns emerging that can be used to calculate a return, even if there is a “fudge factor” present.
At some point you simply have to acknowledge that behavioral patterns are not easy to quantify, and even harder to predict, but by explicitly acknowledging the chains of cause and effect that exist, you can start to anticipate, if not predict, the returns
Dec 1, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Marketing on line is no longer the “next new thing” it was just a few short years ago, it is mainstream, a major consumer of marketing resources, and source of huge marketing value when done well. As with all new things, you get better with practice, and we are just at the beginning, learning how to use the tools now becoming available to build an experience for our customers they relate to, and can value, building the relationships they have with our businesses in the process.
In past blogs, I have noted the success of Tesco, particularly in Korea with their virtual shops, and the astonishing range of innovation that can be generated using QR codes.
In this link to what is in my view the best curator of web marketing topics, the Businessgrow blog, there is an accumulation of the best on line campaigns done to date. It avoids the usual suspects, and concentrates on those that are pushing the boundaries, and is therefore a valuable glimpse into the opportunities emerging. The web may be a free medium, but it is one where content is king.
Being different takes creativity, guts, foresight, and resources help, but are not a substitute for the other three. In the end being effective on the web is way more than just being there, because almost everyone is there now, you have to stand out, be relevant, engaging, and useful.
Nov 28, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
The internet is choked with lists, 10 ways to do this, 5 best ways to handle that, bloggers put them in because a list is a proven driver of blog traffic. People seem to want the core of an idea to be trimmed down to a set of bullet points, perhaps it is just more digestible that way.
I have certainly done it a bit, with 12 facebook tips for SME’s, How to make twitter useful, 6 rules for strategic alignment, and many others, some my lists, others a link to the lists of others, each for one reason or another seemed to be useful and worth sharing. In the case of the lists I created, mostly they emerged from work I was doing for a client at the time, and the process of assembling a list assisted me to order my thoughts, and so hopefully, helped a few others in a similar way.
Today, the “Uber-list” from Forbes magazine, which has a whole feature on the worlds most innovative companies, the worlds 2000 leading companies, the most powerful people, the richest, and so on.
It makes for interesting reading, almost wherever you make your dollar, there is some reference to the industry, who is who in the zoo, and what they did right.
Thanks Forbes, something for everyone.
Nov 27, 2011 | Communication, Leadership, Personal Rant, Social Media
The digital world has taken over, but the emergence of social media tools that host a lot of pretty low grade stuff sometimes overshadows the huge impact the tools of the web can have, sometimes life-changing and even saving, impacts. Just look at the role played by social media during the floods in QLD, the disaster in Christchurch, and the changes happening in the Middle East.
Consider the site Ushahidi for instance, born in crisis, and evolving in a manner that has, and will continue to make a huge difference to many peoples lives in times of crisis. Such a tool would have been impossible without Tim Berners-Lee, his colleagues and subsequent innovators.
The value of just one site like Ushahidi, and the useful utility of social tools makes up for all the junk that appears to be the other side of the coin, making up the volume.
Nov 22, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Since I was a kid in this industry, the standard terminology has been to “buy media” meaning stick an ad somewhere, and hope somebody you want to reach sees it, and takes action as a result. However, the reality is that we have just rented an audience from a newspaper, TV or radio station, not bought them.
The net has changed this, as with almost everything else. Now we can buy an audience, over time by developing content that engages and draws people back again and again, encourages sharing of and comment on the comment, effectively building digital “stock in trade” that is stored for access when appropriate.
In other words, at last, we are able to create stock that we can use in the selling process, or in the case of on line retailing, a sale results directly from the stock on the net.
