SociaLens

If your organization fails to invest in socially responsible measures, or even if anything about your business - such as a faked viral marketing campaign - is perceived to be phony, you will be found out. You will be tweeted about, and a Facebook Causes group will be created against you. As many corporate casualties have discovered, the result of such a campaign can be catastrophic to your firm's reputation and ultimately to its bottom line. Therefore, to avoid a public relations or financial disaster, integrity needs to be part of the DNA of every organization - not just to secure a healthy business environment, but for the organization's own sustainability and competitive advantage. It's worth noting here that I believe the word "integrity" is preferable to the expression "corporate social responsibility," as the latter puts too much emphasis on the notion that corporations should do "good" in the world and be "good" citizens out of some moral or ethical imperative. Of course, that is absolutely true. But what's new - and what organizations need to focus on - is the idea of integrity, as driven by transparency. Without it you cannot build trust, and trust is essential for competitiveness in this new environment. To put it bluntly, regardless of the moral arguments, there are now some hard, bottom-line business reasons for baking integrity into every company.

If you didn't hear, yesterday Charlie Sheen joined Twitter. Today he very well may reach 1 million followers (as I type he's already passed the 900K mark). How did it happen?  Why all of a sudden did he wake up and decide it's Twitter time? And how was it that Charlie Sheen went from non-twitterer to hardcore twitterer overnight?  Short answer: he got a lot of help from a team of experts at Ad.ly, a small Beverly Hills start-up that focuses on celebrity endorsements via Facebook and Twitter.

The problem we see today is that many leaders cannot themselves count on a long-term strategy; they know direction will change, and they find it "de-energizing' that they can't help their employees provide one concrete, accurate answer to direction. What we have seen is that dialogue about direction on a more frequent basis, being honest and open about the unknown, is the best strategy. Leaders need to learn how to do this because frequent, ongoing dialogue about direction and redirection are not part of the traditional leadership training manual that taught 5-year strategy planning.

At EMC, instead of starting long e-mail threads, employees can check updates about a project on a Jive page, search for relevant materials, and download the files as they need them. Sales representatives looking for insight about a competitor can query the "competitive community" on EMC's internal social network and get an answer as they walk to a client meeting, Pappas says. The company also now uses Jive's tools externally, to augment user-support forums and to create community or "affinity" pages for clients that use EMC software.

Surprisingly, a study of deception in e-mails versus phone calls found that people were more honest in e-mails because they can be documented, saved and aren't real-time communication scenarios, which is when most people drop white lies. Technology isn't the gateway to rampant deception; instead, Toma and Hancock both suspect that our distrust of communication technology is more likely rooted in our fear of it. "We've evolved as a species that talks face to face, and evolution is a slow process, and we're interacting in a new environment where our basic assumptions are undercut," Hancock said. So, in a way, it's natural to expect people to lie more online. "Every time a technology is new, it elicits great fears. Many people are fearful about what it's going to do," Toma said. "So I think fears about deception stem from this general fear of technology and certain features of technologies that make it easy to lie."

How important is Twitter in the political revolutions sweeping the Middle East? That was the topic of discussion on stage at the CTIA mobile and wireless convention today in Orlando, Florida and two very different, very strong opinions were voiced. "I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that sending a tweet is the equivalent of activism," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, "but it's another tool people can use." Kenneth Roth, executive director of of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's most respected human rights organization, framed things very differently though. He said on stage (above) that mobile technology in general would make it impossible today for something like Nazi Germany to unfold again the way it did historically.

It's easy for early adopters and social media enthusiasts to get caught up in the latest and greatest tool available but many companies are still seeking a basic foundation. According to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, only 12 percent of companies surveyed felt their organizations were using social media effectively.

Collaboration means different things to different people. When some people refer to collaboration, they're talking about technology. And that's part of the problem. Companies think that if they introduce certain technologies, that they're collaborating. But a central point in my book is that tools and technologies never create collaboration. Culture creates collaboration.

"Our goal at Zappos is to inspire -- not motivate -- employees to treat each other like family. For example, most Zappos employees when they leave the office leave to hang out with other Zappos employees. That's behavior you can't force upon employees. They actually have to want to do it." "Many companies are focusing on the current quarter or current year at best. The good news is that information is moving faster and faster and companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. As a result, the lag time between brand and culture is becoming less and less, so in the long run I think the 'good guys' will win."

The Grocer recently published its Top 100 advertisers report and showed that Coca-Cola cut ad spend by 6.6% in 2010 and invested more in social media. A spokeswoman at Coca-Cola said that while TV is still an important medium from promoting their brands,"many of our recent advertising campaigns and promotions have also utilised online facilities such as Facebook and YouTube more". With the launch of Coke Zone, a social media oriented site which offers Coke drinkers access to exclusive content and rewards, Coca-Cola has clearly realised the value of integrating offline and online marketing.

A "rogue tweet" referencing drinking and #gettngslizzerd was accidentally posted to the @RedCross account. They responded in a great way: owning up to the mistake, deleting the original tweet in the process, and thanking those who helped turn it into an awareness opportunity.

Journalist and NYU fellow Nir Rosen probably didn't know he was putting his career in jeopardy when he hit send on Twitter yesterday. After all, it was just one of 600-odd tweets he'd sent since joining the social networking site.   Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal.   It was probably something the war correspondent would say over a dinner party with buddies. Everyone likes a good joke at the expense of Anderson Cooper, right? The problem is the Twitter dinner party includes the whole world.

A new analysis by HP finds that old media has a decidedly greater impact on what becomes a trending topic on Twitter, a ranking which identifies what is "immediately popular." Rather than being driven by personality or frequency, the study found that "(t)he main determinant of whether an item trends - much more than who tweets about it or how often - was the specific subject of the tweet."

Strapped for time and cash, small local businesses are increasingly turning to free and low-cost social media tools for their marketing efforts. Not surprisingly, the world's biggest social networking site tops of the list of preferred tools. Seventy percent of local businesses use Facebook for marketing, according to a new report from Merchant Circle, a network of U.S. local business owners. This represents a 20% increase over the previous year. The report notes that for the first time, Facebook is being used more than Google by local businesses for online marketing.

Great quote: "Creativity comes from being willing and able to look past the first idea or concept that comes into our heads."

Customer-orientation and vision need to complement each other in order to stimulate breakthrough innovation. A visionary approach is essential to secure long-term success as well as to provide truly differentiating offerings to the market. However, this vision cannot be defined in a vacuum without customer insights. These insights are gained through shifts in focus from solutions to needs and broad understanding of customer's context, andmarket majorities to minorities, i.e. unserved consumers with dedicated needs.This leads me to the following conclusion: Innovation based on needs of edge customers tends to result in higher likelihood of breakthroughs than involving average customers in solution development. When it comes to breakthrough innovation, a customer-centered vision seems to be indicated.

YouGov BrandIndex shared some findings with us regarding brand perception around Groupon in light of the company's (what some might refer to as) blunders.  A spokesperson for the firm tells WebProNews, "With two strikes under its belt within 10 days of each other (Super Bowl ad, flower debacle), how's Groupon consumer perception faring? People love the bargains of Groupon, but they are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with what's been going on." "YouGov BrandIndex looked at three scores to get a much fuller picture -- buzz (what are you hearing), satisfaction (are you a satisfied customer) and value (does this give you good value)," he says.

While i understand the logic behind the institution of organizational policies, it is easy for a policies themselves to be more detrimental than the things they are trying to prevent. In many cases, a policy may even have the exact opposite effect from what was intended. Something (many things, actually) tell me that this is one of those cases.

ChompOn has released some interesting findings (pdf) related to social media sharing and its value to e-commerce. Specifically, the firm sought out to answer the question: "What is the value of a social action in online commerce?"  What they came up with is that a Facebook Share was worth $14, a Facebook "like" was worth $8, a tweet was worth $5, and a Twitter follow was worth $2.

The typical ambassador ecosystem for a mid to large scale business likely consists of hundreds of employees, customers and partners which can potentially be harnessed for the benefit of the organization. Participation in thought leadership in places Google indexes such as Quora and even Slideshare can influence what shows up on sarch results. Marketing partners should be re-calibrated from focusing primarily on paid media efforts to being active in the overlaps between paid, earned and social media while tapping your companies most active advocates. Your organization has a workforce of employees active on social networks, yet most organizations remain content to have their employees "locked down" vs.being empowered for the benefit of the business.