Social Media Management Software. Check Out Altimeter’s New Buyer’s Guide.

Januar 9th, 2012 • 1 comment Reports, Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: Altimeter, altimetergroup, Business, Facebook, Presentation, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tech, Tools, we are social

So once you have given all the presentations about the value of Social Media and explained that a fan is not worth $2.38 (or something) you will – at some point – face the challenge of managing real time interaction with your customer. Here SMMS, a type of software especially designed to support the management of complex social interaction platforms, are usually your weapons of choice. Especially in a world in which any major enterprise has to be able to manage its 178 social media accounts in average.

A Social Media Management System (SMMS) is a software tool that uses business rules and approved employees and partners to manage multiple social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This system contains features such as governance, workflow, intelligence, and integration capabilities across the enterprise. The success of these tools is dependent upon a business-led strategy, defined processes, trained staff, and ability to measure efforts.

SMMS are there to reduce the complexity of large real time social media platforms. And there are many, many different vendors on the market. From Hootsuite to BuddyMedia, from Wildfire to Spredfast, no two vendors are alike and there is no one-fit-for-all SMMS-solution. Altimeter’s new “Strategy to Manage Social Media Proliferation” serves as a great overview over the SMMS-scene and offers metrics to support the choice for specific vendors based on the social objectives of your organisation.

If you have ever tried to give your customer a founded recommendation on which SMMS to choose you will know how important the following report is. In a market as cluttered and dynamic as this we need more top-level reports like the following one instead of infographics on Mashable.

Read more »

Just a Question. Do you actually hate your Job?

Dezember 1st, 2011 • 1 comment Allgemein, People, Poll
Tags: Agencies, Business, careers, People, Truth, World

Working in an agency is a strange thing: Usually you work more hours per day than most of your friends who are employees of a Bank, an Insurance company or who may be Gardeners. Many in our industry earn less than what they could get paid if they would have gone to ‘the industry’ (a mystical word in agencies that describes an unknown Utopia, think: Xanadu). And few people really have a good plan what to do with their career once they crossed the 45 without being CCO. Long story short: Deciding to work for an agency is quite a stupid decision.

But then: You love the fact that it’s a dynamic and young environment. Sure, the typical agency has changed over time. But the places I worked at employed some of the most interesting, gentle and even some of the smartest people I ever met. It would be unfair to attach the term Playground to it – at least that’s not how I experienced it – but it was a good time wherever I worked. Agencies may be run sometimes by stressed, professional lifetime teenagers. But generally we are talking about very interesting places where people like each other and a kind of a community forms.

I guess there is not one agency person who at some point in his life raved about changing into ‘the industry’ (where everything will be good) or to be self-employed (where also everything will be good). So actually only few of the marketing peeps I got to know in my life would get up and fight to death if the concept of ad/marketing/whatever agency would be endangered. But isn’t that strange? Isn’t there a reason why we actually like to work for agencies as improvable as it is as a concept?

A couple of days ago I posted the following Dilbert cartoon on the Facebook page of this blog.

My Facebook page has about 520 members and an average post gets 5 to 10 likes. This particular one received 366 likes as it was apparently shared 280 times since I posted it (and I just stole it and re-posted it either). Oh…and that’s just my starting point. In the summer 2010 a hilarious Tumblr concept went viral: ‘Things real people don’t say in advertising‘…

The title says it all: It is a concept that makes fun of the idealistic way agencies and clients describe their clients. Because to be perfectly honest: Few of us really believe that the ordinary customer is interested in more branded messages. And yes, that is a conflict in what many of us must say professionally.

Did I mention ‘Women alone laughing with Salad?‘, another site dedicated to take the piss out of brand marketing. This time out of stock photos which pretty much look the same.

And I don’t even want to mention the brilliant video pisstakes John St did to ridicule award shows and narrow-minded agency concepts, Adverbatims – the most horrific client quotes and a lot more.

At the same time there is still this fascination for advertising, marketing and agencies. But: While digital marketing has more than obviously started (and won) the revolution against the ad agencies we seem to downgrade this in our relationship to the marketing industry.  Mad Men? This is a series about the dark ages of advertising, about BUY, BUY, BUY. And still agencies dress up as Draper’s agency Sterling & Cooper while their community manager simultaneously tweets about the dawn of a new agency era.

Seriously: Have agency peeps become a bit romantic? You know: Miserably living in the present while silently wishing back the past (when everything was clear, sexy and being an Art Director was exotic and very well paid)?

Read more »

Insights. TNS Launches Largest Global Study on Digital Behaviour.

November 30th, 2011 • Reports, Strategy
Tags: 2011, Business, Insights, Lifestyle, Media, People, Planning, Presentation, Report, Reports, Research, Social Influence Marketing, Study, target group, TNS, Trends, World

Research company TNS has launched its 2011 version of TNS Digital Life. Based on conversations with over 72,000 people in 60 countries this is the world’s largest global study into people’s attitudes and behaviours online.

I particularly like how they underline the necessity to think (before yelling Facebook or iPad or Flashmob):

‘Digital waste’ pollutes the online world as brands fail to listen to what people want.

It [the study] found that 57 per cent of people*** in developed markets* do not want to engage with brands via
social media – rising to 60 per cent in the US and 61 per cent in the UK. Instead, misguided digital
strategies are generating mountains of digital waste, from friendless Facebook accounts to blogs no
one reads. This is being combined with ever-increasing content produced by consumers – the study
shows 47 per cent of digital consumers now comment about brands online.

The result is huge volumes of noise, which is polluting the digital world and making it harder for
brands to be heard.’

Of course: This study does not at all say brands shouldn’t be digital. The opposite is true. But it repeats the one thing that I never get tired of to repeat: People are not interested in a brand’s content. And they are not interested in brand experiences. They are interested in stuff that is relevant for them – and sometimes this is a brand.

Check out TNS Digital Life here .

Thanks to Rubbish Corp for the link.

google Plus. Now for something completely different: Brands.

Juli 5th, 2011 • 1 comment Brands, Social, Tools
Tags: Brands, Business, Ford, google, google plus, Social, Social Networking, Starbucks, Strategy, Trends

High five Jeff Kwiatek. You asked the right question. But to be honest: Even though I want to be the first agency dude leveraging and embracing the hell out of g+ I still don’t know if it’s worth it. Well who knows?

My guess: Nice platform, it is not Facebook. But it’s a too little too late. And the worst thing: They don’t even offer the right tools to enable brands to give consumers the love that they need. Let me quote Jeff Huber, google’s VP of Local and Commerce (via Mike Blumenthal)

And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.

Thanks god a couple of people are a bit more visionary. They know what the consumer wants and that is brands of course. Sean Percival has sketched a concept of how future brand pages might look like (exactly like Facebook but a bit uglier). And indeed one brand has already started to build a presence on google Plus: Ford and Ford Europe. Congratulations Scott Monty. First!

As most of us haven’t even got an invite to g+. And the rest of us still tries to figure out why they would need g+ it is highly speculative to talk about the future of brands there. I wonder what google will come up with to convince brands that building a presence there is a good alternative to Facebook other platforms.

Anyway, I am more than interested which brands are going to start experimenting with g+. If you know of some, please leave a comment.

Intellectual Property. A Letter to Andy Harris.

Mai 25th, 2011 • Media, Social Business
Tags: Books, Business, Cool, freemium, Media, publishers, social business, Strategy

This is a letter of a fellow redditor to Andy Harris, author of the book “HTML, XHTML & CSS for Dummies“. I think the response came a bit unexpected.

Click the image to zoom in.

OMFG. It’s as if Skynet and Satan had a Brood of Soul-Eating Children.

Februar 23rd, 2011 • 2 comments Business, Social
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Business, Funny, Future, Media, Prediction, predictions, Shit, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends

Rubbishcorp calls it ‘Officially the most shittest thing I have ever posted on this blog.’ A Youtube commenter replied ‘If you work in marketing, kill yourself. If you made this video, kill yourself twice.’ And who am I to disagree?

‘We are the future’ is a declaration of professional bankruptcy. It is a video about the weird Reality filter that many media agencies use to look at the world (this time it’s the PHD network). It’s about people who believe that other human beings ask for more marketing content. Or – to quote rubbishcorp one more time – ‘it’s a reflection of the views of a bunch of middle aged ad-people about some random technologies that none of them have any actual understanding of.’ And yes, PHD rightfully is getting grilled on the intertubes right now.

If you watch it you will find out that it’s pretty much the video version of ‘Stuff real people don’t say about advertising‘. Only this time it is not meant to be ironic. To finally illustrate my thoughts with one more Youtube comment – ‘Oh jesus, its like skynet and satan had a multicultural brood of consumerist nega-children that eat souls through the innernets.’ Thanks.

Thanks to jkleske for sharing it.

The Truth. Adland according to 4Chan.

Januar 4th, 2011 • Brands, Business
Tags: Agencies, AKQA, BBH, Business, Funny, jwt, Mother, Ogilvy, Saatchi, Truth, W+K, World

My friend Johannes just shared this great, comprehensive overview of the (London) 4Chan perspective on agencies (by adland). Or to be more precise – if there was a perception of the ad world on 4Chan it would look a bit like the one below. What? No clue what 4Chan is? I think I know a couple of agencies to send your CV to…

Click the image for higher resolution.

2010. The Mobile Year in Review.

Dezember 21st, 2010 • Mobile, Trends
Tags: 2010, Business, Diagram, Media, Mobile, predictions, Tech, Trends, visual, World

One thing that hopefully stops in 2011 – info visuals that explain digital media. To finally celebrate this marketing meme of 2010 I’d like to post mobilefuture‘s Mobile Year 2010 in Review. Enjoy.

Thanks Yahoo. For killing delicious…and the trust in Cloud Computing.

Dezember 17th, 2010 • Brands
Tags: Brands, Business, cloud computing, delicious, PR, social bookmarking, yahoo

Seriously Yahoo? Are you serious? You close delicious? Well at least according to Techcrunch you do. Unfortunately you don’t talk to your community and instead decide not to comment at all on cryptic tweets by former employees…

For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team.  Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others.

I got two problems with this – or to be more precise three. Number one – I got my whole bookmark collection stored on your site. Number two – you don’t communicate. Number 3 – If you do kill delicious you will kill the trust in cloud computing. Storing data in the cloud is a nice idea as long as there is a cloud. If the cloud is gone -> no cloud computing anymore.

Question to my readers – is there a good alternative to delicious? Does Social Bookmarking actually still exist? Or is it something like a 2004 phenomenon? Where will you stuff your bookmarks when delicious is gone?

Morgan Stanley. State of the Web 2010.

November 18th, 2010 • Reports
Tags: Business, Lifestyle, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Tools, Trends, Truth, World

Every year anew Morgan Stanley’s state of the web presentations provide a lot of food for new thoughts in digital marketing. You can find the deck below. And I guess you’ll also be amazed by the dynamics that are reshaping our world. (via BBH)