SociaLens

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Old Spice's "Smell Like a Man, Man" campaign has been a huge viral success, but has it increased sales? The answer is an emphatic yes, according to The Nielsen Co. and new data from SymphonyIRI Group. According to Nielsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash-the line touted in the Wieden + Kennedy-created campaign-rose 11 percent over the past 12 months and since the effort broke in February, sales seem to be gaining momentum.

The story begins with a video shot about six weeks ago by Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth (now updated multiple times). In the video, a local panhandler named Ted Williams is found to have the gift of a "Golden Radio Voice". The Dispatch originally posted the video on their website on Monday, January 3.

Recognition, one of Herzberg's motivators, is important for employees to feel they are valued. To address this, Enterprise has introduced a system called 'The Vote'. This aims to support and encourage the development of exceptional customer service. It works on the basis of co-workers providing assessment on themselves and each other. All employees in rental branches rank everyone in their team, including themselves, in terms of their customer service efforts. They provide a constructive explanation of the rankings given. These are then fed back to all employees. Read more: http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--motivation-in-action--96-384-4.php#ixzz1AEO1R3Dw

Very useful thinking about social media ROI. In my experience with business analytics, the "last mile" tends to be the toughest--getting the stakeholders to use metrics to make actual decisions. 

If you haven't (yet) read Coase's "The Nature of the Firm" (and you should), this article explains why his thinking in 1937 lends strong insights into the impact that digital communications technologies are having on today's organizations and markets. 

While this is an interesting article, i don't think it provides sufficient nuance to be useful. A person's ability to operate in a situation (their digital fluency, for example), the types of tasks that they are doing, and the intensity of the attention they need to apply in a situation should determine the degree to which they attempt to multitask. The more fluent people we've seen know when to shut down their laptop or crackberry when they know they won't be able to pay attention, and when the context calls for them to keep it open.

While i don't really agree with Lynda's assertion that the job of middle manager will "disappear," i do agree that the nature of the job is already changing, because some of the original reasons for the necessity of professional managers has changed. I've written about this here: http://www.socialens.com/2009/11/12/recalibratingrule-of-thumb-vs-scientific-management/

Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers-more robust "voice of the customer" programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions. Of course, that doesn't mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.

Dave Carroll Music

Two new reports released from Forrester explore the state of video in the enterprise. "Information Workers Are Not Quite Ready For Desktop Videoconferencing" tells us that most workers polled do not want to use desktop video conferencing. Meanwhile, the "TechRadar For Content & Collaboration Professionals: Enterprise Video, Q1 2011" report looks at video in general across the enterprise. "Although video hasn't yet taken hold as the way we communicate or work, it will play an important role in connecting the increasingly distributed workforce," says the Radar report. The reports authors cite research showing that 46% of information workers are expected to be telecommuters by 1016.

Gartner's predictions include a very interesting statement, that "by 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments." What this means is that social media is starting to be integrated tightly with hard-core business intelligence functions in support of decision making. 

I wrote about how NBC has handled Keith Olbermann's departure from his show on MSNBC. Writing that story put me in mind of one of the hoary chestnuts of public relations strategy, which is to let sleeping dogs lie for some situations. Veteran PR folks are fond of refering to a minor flap as a "one-day story," meaning that you read about it in the newspaper today, but it disappears tomorrow. Unfortunately, the Internet has forever ended the technique of letting the storm blow over.

A workplace's key employees may be at the greatest risk of experiencing high levels of work stress, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Look around any organization and chances are you'll be able to find at least one person whose negative behavior affects the rest of the group to varying degrees. So much so, say two University of Washington researchers, that these "bad apples" are like a

Study highlights the importance of hiring people of good character

Slides from a SocialFish presentation at IAEE about building open community around a tradeshow or conference.

These Tubes Are Old!: Vintage Website Ads

The increasing use of text-messaging by teens - and increasingly often, by younger children - has given some people cause for concern. They argue that the abbreviations used in texting are detrimental to literacy development. Spelling, grammar, phrasing - these are all somehow poised to suffer, critics of texting contend, because of the use of shortened words and sentences. Soon, they predict, students' essays will be filled with LOLs and L8Rs. But a new study from Coventry University finds no evidence that having access to mobile phones harms children's literacy skills. In fact, the research suggests that texting abbreviations or "textisms" may actually aid reading, writing, and spelling skills.

Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to polarize corporations and people in charge of networks, judging by a new report from OpenDNS. The sites showed up on both "top blacklisted" and "top whitelisted" lists covering the entire year of 2010.

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