WITI Summit: Summary of Social Media, Cloud, and Mobility Sessions

I attended the WITI Summit earlier this week, recapping the keynotes on the first day. On the second day, I attended three panel sessions on the Applied Cloud, New Opportunities in the Mobile Market, and Social Media Business Solutions. Below is my summary of these sessions:

Applied Cloud Panel Discussion

The panel discussion highlighted the benefits of cloud applications in terms of cost efficiencies, speed to implementation, scalability, and flexibility. Vanessa Alvarez, analyst with Frost & Sullivan, indicated that a hybrid approach (on-premise and cloud) may emerge which may ease issues with integration across multiple vendors and data.

While the benefits of cloud applications was discussed, the issue of data integration was present. According to R. Ray Wong, analyst with the Altimeter Group: ” Integration is very hard. Going backwards to best of breed … People are going out to procure apps themselves. Integration has to come back to have same reports. Everything is coming back as have to have a good data architecture and how the business processes get tied back for reporting. Then can talk about data integration.”

In the end, the possibility of SaaS suites will emerge.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile is becoming an integral part of our lives. The panel clarified that there are six types of mobile applications: 1. Communications, 2. Games, 3. Multimedia, 4. Productivity (email, calendaring, etc.), 5. Travel, and 6. Utilities (address book, task manager, etc.).

Considering that the US has double the number of smartphones than China, which is second worldwide, there is ample opportunity for marketers to leverage mobile. The key takeaway was to provide your audience with useful applications that address their needs. For example, applications for new mothers would be an interesting opportunity for Johnson & Johnson or other company targeting new moms.

Social Media Business Solutions

The panel consisted of representatives from Meebo, Paypal, and IBM. For me, I found how Paypal and IBM leveraged social business very interesting:

Paypal Leverages Social for Community Forum and Customer Service

Paypal is leveraging social media as part of the service’s web self-service. The goal is to provide a long-term community to better understand the needs of their audience. For Paypal, the value is understanding the cost of product development and launch. With web analytics, they are also able to track customers and determine the path for communications help.

IBM Connects with Partners with Virtual Event

For IBM, they built a robust virtual event to learn from partners and provide them the information they need from IBM. 5,000 partners attended the virtual event live with 2,500 accessing the archive. IBM’s goal was not to replace its physical event with virtual. Rather, they can be selective with face-to-face events, using virtual to supplement the face-to-face.

In terms of value, they reviewed the analytics to measure against their objectives, such as engagement, did the conversations continue beyond the event, or was the conversation at a deeper level.

WITI Summit – Summary of Keynotes

The WITI Summit was held this past week in San Jose. Founded to help women advance in technology, the first day of the summit had some powerful keynotes. I was able to catch presentations by Sally Jenkins, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Symantec; Sandy Carter, VP, Software Business Software, IBM; and (my favorite!), Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

I have summarized the presentations by Sally and Sandy below. And while I would like to summarize Dr. Ruth’s presentation, much of her content was very specific and not appropriate for the blog, if you know what I mean =) It was a great honor to hear her speak, as well as to meet her personally.  I will post summaries of some key sessions tomorrow. 
 

Brand Transformation – Sally Jenkins

Sally described the process that Symantec have been undergoing over the past 3 years to rebrand and reposition Norton. She highlighted key questions to consider:

1. What does the data say?

2. What is the buzz in the market about your brand and competitors?

3. Are you listening to your customers?

4. Can you wait any longer to change?

5. Are you listening to your gut?

For Norton, they looked at what story they had to tell to create buzz within the category. They decided to have a purpose which highlighted what they stood for and would lend itself to a dialogue. The story was about fighting cybercrime. The methodology included:
- research
- edutainment for engagement and to communicate the stats
- the media strategy was focused online
- and developed a physical exhibit that discussed the “black market” of identify theft to educate the masses

They implemented this through their channels and with one voice internationally. Internally, they wanted their employees to live and breathe the brand of fighting cybercrime:

- held seminars
- created brand story book for every employee
- gave employees new mission – fight cybercrime, not sell software.
- rethink role for each job- main competitor is cybercriminal

The results?
- Customers now stay with Norton for an average of 4 yrs
- 47 percent share of voice
- Winning on all channels
- Turned Norton haters into advocates
- Multiple product awards

Social Media Ecosystem – Sandy Carter

Sandy discussed how the ecosystem around your company is very powerful. Previously, it was about one-way marketing and now it’s more open. In fact, she quoted one study which stated that 80 percent of CEOs will go outside of the company for recommendations about services and the brand.

With this in mind, Sandy highlighted the ANGELS framework:
- Analyze
- Nail the story and strategy
- Go to market
- Energize communications
- Leads and revenue
- Scream – breakthrough the noise

For example, IBM leveraged a game to energize partners and students before placing it online. This online game is now the number 1 lead generation tactic, moving the game from edutainment to lead generation.

Using Social Media to Drive Virtual Tradeshow Leads

I authored a guest post on ”Using Social Media to Drive Virtual Tradeshow Leads“ for It’s All Virtual, an influential blog exploring virtual events and environments. In my post, I highlight key strategies on how you can leverage social media:

1. Identify influencers

2. Engage in conversations

3. Advertise Socially

4. Share Freely

5. Measurement and Tracking

I conclude my post by stating:

One word of warning is to first research and evaluate before plunging in with a social media marketing program, especially when contacting individuals and bloggers or participating in online discussions. While social media marketing takes time and effort, when done well, the results can be spectacular!

What has worked for you?

Recent Twitter Update and Implications for Marketing

September 1, 2010, Twitter sent an email to users regarding two new updates to its service. I found the update about moving to t.co URL wrapping intriguing, especially this sentence:

When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.

This signals more than providing protection against malicious content (which is important) and to provide better content for users. Rather, by “logging the click,” I see this as part of Twitter’s continued efforts to provide value-added services and data tracking for corporations:

1. Measurement and Analytics: The click-through rate will help with Twitter’s “Resonance” rating. While the resonance rating is part of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets campaign, there is value to provide companies – small, medium and large – access to this data, similar to a Google Analytics dashboard. Maybe Twitter can provide an entry-level offering with minimal information and then charge for for more analytics and optimization options.

2. Content Creation: One type of intelligence is understanding how your audience consumes and distributes the content. By analyzing these patterns, you can gain insight into the types of content that your audience is seeking. You can then develop a content strategy to reach and connect with your tareted audience segments.

3. Influencer Relations: By combining Twitter’s retweet information with the t.co click-through data, you can better identify influencers within your social graph. These would be individuals whose followers not only retweet content but also takes action via click-through information. 

Conclusions

I’m curious to see what future developments will be introduced (or maybe acquired) by Twitter to enable individual and corporate brands to optimize their presence on Twitter. And whether or not these services are complimentary or competitive to companies like Radian6.  What do you think? Anything I’m missing?

Meet Up at Upcoming Conferences

I always look forward to meeting people at conferences. I plan to be attending these two upcoming conferences. Drop me an email if you’re interested in connecting.

WITI’s Women and Technology Summit, September 12-14, 2010 – San jose Doubletree Hotel – I will be attending on the 13th and 14th. The conference brings together top technology leaders to discuss strategy and growth.

SocialTech 2010, October 26, 2010, San Jose Doubletree Hotel – This conference looks like it will be a powerhouse of speakers discussing how to leverage social media for B2B.

Look forward to seeing you in San Jose.

Geolocation Services for B2B

With the introduction of Facebook Places, geolocation-based services are about to hit the mainstream. Rather than focus on the news or consumer uses, I want to look at the potential of such services for business-to-business customer marketing.

MarketingSherpa recently wrote about an iPhone app developed by Morrison & Foerster LLP (subscription required shortly). This app allows you to browse bios, get directions to a local office, get news and even play a game. I suspect that one of the main objectives for the company’s “MoFo2Go” is to increase customer loyalty and referrals.

Now imagine if you take this type of app to the next level, enabling customers and employees to proactively share their geographic locations with one another. You’ve created a mobile community where customers and prospects can search, find and connect with others located near them.

And if they are able to preview information, such as company title or industry, they can reach out to your subject matter experts to resolve an issue or get feedback on the company and products. Almost anytime, anywhere.

The potential benefits of such services are:

1. Customer retention: Provides an alternative channel for customers to resolve issues, leading to happier customers

2. Customer referrals: With happy customers, they will be open to sharing the app to their colleagues and industry peers

3. Customer engagement: With the potential for real-time feedback and support, you are increasing engagement not only with your company brand but also with evangelists within your company

Conclusions

While the potential for geolocation-based services is just being uncovered, I anticipate that early adopters like Morrison & Foerster will demonstrate that the risk is worth it to increase customer retention, loyalty and ultimately engagement.

What other ways can geolocation be used?

Rebuilding a Personal Brand is Hard Work

At the beginning of last year, my personal brand was just beginning to take off. I had written a couple of posts, such as this one, that generated a lot of attention. I was even asked to be a guest on the Media Bullseye podcast and to write a byline for Dan Schwabel’s Personal Branding Magazine.

Just as the momentum was gaining speed, I put on the brakes, pouring my time and energy into my work.  My personal brand became more intertwined with the work I did on behalf of my company vs my original intent of providing thoughts on how public relations and marketing come together.

As I take a step back, here are some lessons learned as I rebuild my personal brand:

1. Engage online: My goal is to participate in at least one online conversation each day, excluding weekends. This will drive me to comment on relevant blogs, share my knowledge via LinkedIn answers or meet new people via Twitter.

2. Write on my blog: The writing on my blog has been quite irregular over the past year and a half. My goal is to write at least one post a day. By sharing my thoughts, I hope to engage with existing readers and further expand my online network of friends.

3. Balance work with personal: This is a  biggie. I have to do a better job of balancing my work “brand” with that of my personal one. While part of my job is to build awareness for any company I’m working with, I have to consciously participate as part of my personal brand too. In turn, this will help any company by building credibility in my personal brand.

Conclusions

In the end, it’s easier to build and maintain a personal brand than to rebuild one. In the former, you’re delivering a consistent experience and expectation. Once you discontinue that, it’s difficult to regain that type of momentum – and in a way – trust with your audience. So, what do you think? Did my personal brand diminish over the past few months or only get better like fine wine? And what tips do you have for building and maintaining your personal brand?