Brian Beehler – Social Media Talk

Is social media influencing online purchases this holiday season?

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Brian Beehler

A recent comScore survey found that 28% of online shoppers were influenced by info on Facebook or Twitter in making holiday purchases.

For the week ending Dec. 6, online shopping sales reached $4.6 billion — more than any individual spending week in 2008. In its latest poll, comScore found 13% of poll respondents indicated that consumer-generated product reviews influenced their purchases during this period. 11% citied expert reviews influenced their purchases; followed by 7% from a Facebook page, 6% from a Facebook friend’s recommendation within their status update, 5% came from company recommendations on Twitter and 3% from a friend’s “tweet”. Although there is still 2 weeks remaining, I believe that these indicators will continue to grow as people become more familiar with the tools. They are simple to use and have become an integral part of our lives.

Companies must always remember that communication is by far the most important aspect in marketing. If they can make their customers feel safe and that the choice that their about to make is the right one, then more often then not a consumer will share their experience through social media. Social media offers a great opportunity for companies to gain a competitive edge against their competitors who do not believe a strategy is necessary. If you are struggling to figure out what this all means remember that social media is just a bunch of tools – its really “about people”. Once companies realize this fact only then will social media be the influencer I know it is. This is just the beginning and over the next five years e-commerce will begin to redefine itself with social media leading the charge.

comScore survey: U.S. Online Holiday Spending Reaches $16 Billion for First 36 Days of the November-December Shopping Season

Filed under: Social Media | Tagged: comScore, e-commerce, Facebook, shopping, Social Media, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Can social media change corporate culture?

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Brian Beehler

Over the past year the cultural forces of social media has become so great that corporations will have no choice but to have some sort of compulsory involvement. Those that freely use it with sincerity will prosper; those that reluctantly use it because they “have to” will not.

Most corporations have a top-down approach that typically seeks to maintain tight control over it’s employees, although that’s increasingly difficult these days. This “top-down culture” is contradictory to the fundamental values of social media. Social media are “bottom up” largely — though there are “influencers” that may drive certain conversations. The simple use of social media to drive change can only imply a culture shift within organizations that pushes some degree of authority and control down to front-line employees. Since it also implies more transparency and “openness” we can only assume that it could change an organization’s culture.

Is it possible? Well it just might be. The company I work for has recognized the value of social media to engage employees and drive innovation. This summer we decided to look beyond our traditional marketing approaches and asked our employees to create a short video commercial about one of four non-traditional services. The results have been nothing short than staggering: 120 submissions from employees from every business area across Canada such as letter carriers, postmasters, clerks, supervisors and customer service representatives with over 80,000 video views from around the world. I have received numerous emails stating what a great idea this was and how they felt about creating their video. Employees also expressed their appreciate for the opportunity to have a say on how we market our services. However the one thing that made me believe that we may have taken the first step in changing our culture is how engaged our employees were throughout the submission period. It was exciting to see their enthusiasm, creativity and passion for the company they work for.

Time will tell if we were successful. My hope is that we will build on the momentum and continue to engage our employees through the use of social media.

Let me know your thoughts – please leave me a comment.

Filed under: Social Media | 1 Comment »

Ben Parr’s “The Top 10 Social Media Stories You Might Have Missed”

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Brian Beehler

One website I like to go to every Sunday evening is Mashable.com. On a weekly basis Ben Parr writes a blog titled “The Top 10 Social Media Stories You Might Have Missed“. It’s a great post that summarizes the week’s top stories in the Social Media world. On several occasions there has been stories that I haven’t heard about. It’s become a rich resource that has helped me write a few of my blog posts as well as provide valuable information in some of the strategies have built over this past year. I would like to share it with all you, please take the time to read the post and who knows you may actually learn something new this week.

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Two big events dominated social media channels this week: the memorial of Michael Jackson and the announcement of Google Chrome OS. Both events captured the attention of people across the globe.

But while the King of Pop and Google dominated the headlines, there was a lot more buzzing in social media circles. We covered everything from ImageShack getting hacked to some absolutely stunning Vimeo videos for design inspiration. Without further ado, here are the top 10 social media stories making headlines this week:

1. Google to Launch Operating System – Google shook up the tech world by announcing Google Chrome OS. Learn about Google’s entry to the OS market.

2. ImageShack Hacked by Anti-sec Movement – Every image on ImageShack was replaced yesterday with a very unique message. Learn more about what happened and why.

3. 12 Gorgeous Vimeo Videos for Design Inspiration – Natasha Wescoat explores 12 breathtaking Vimeo videos that will bring out your inner creative.

4. Michael Jackson’s Memorial: The Biggest Web Event in History? – The response to Michael Jackson’s passing was staggering. Read my analysis and predictions about the event’s impact on the web.

5. Google Chrome OS: Will It Kill Windows? – Let the debate on Google Chrome OS begin! Will it be the OS to beat Microsoft, or will it not be able to run Photoshop?

6. Michael Jackson Memorial: Where People Watched It Online – Michael Jackson’s memorial was one of the biggest events in the history of the web. See who was carrying the feed.

7. Fail Whale in Pop Culture – Fail Whale creator Yiying Lu has opened a new website with a collection of fan-made Fail Whale imagery. You have to see it to believe it.

8. Influx of Twitter Account Suspensions Creating Confusion – A wave of account suspensions hit Twitter last Sunday. Find out what happened and who was affected.

9. 4chan Versus Twitter: Round One – 4Chan was able to spam Twitter’s trending topics. Learn what happened and its implications on Twitter spam.

10. 14 iPhone Apps With Push Notification for Productivity – Elliott Kosmicki highlights 14 useful apps utilizing one of iPhone 3.0 OS’s biggest features: push notifications.

Filed under: Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Using your employees to promote your business through social media

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Brian Beehler

On many occasions I have written about how businesses need to adopt social media tools within the workplace to help facilitate connections between their employees. Well, this week we did just that by introducing “The super-fun make a commercial and win an awesome prize employee video contest“.

The objective of the contest is to market our products and services to our employees so they are more aware of what we have to offer Canadians. Canada Post has great products like epost, Picture Postage, Xpresspost and smartmoves. Some are more well-known than others, but they’re all worth bragging about. The contest is all about being creative and having fun in this great age where it’s easy to make and post videos, and use social media to share it!

Employees will be uploading their video entries into the YouTube contest channel where the world can comment, vote, or post video responses. Entries will be received until September 30, 2009 and the submissions will be judged using the following criteria: originality and creativity, brand appeal and awareness. The finalists’ videos will be posted to YouTube on October 12, 2009 where the general public and employees will be able to rate their favorites. All finalists’ will get a Panasonic HD video camera and the grand prize winners (chosen by the general public and employees) will win a trip to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.

YouTube is only one of the social media platforms that will be used during contest. Twitter and Facebook will be used to spread the word virally to as many people as possible. A contest page has been setup on Facebook for people to become fans and to receive real-time updates from YouTube. Twitter will be used to transmit the updates from YouTube into Facebook. Because we have automated the process of publishing updates the contest will utilize two social media platforms at the same time thus increasing the viral factor. Spreading the contest virally is a great way to “personalize our brand” and is a great strategy to get the word out about our products or services. This contest has the potential to drive a massive amount of traffic and awareness to the four products being advertised in this campaign.

It is uncertain how this will all play out with our employees but I’m excited that they’ll be able to participate in something that could actually make a difference and at the same time have fun doing it!

Please take a moment to watch our introductory video to the contest and leave a comment to tell me what you think.

Your probably asking yourself “how can I follow the contest on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?”

Here are the links:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/yourownvideo

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Your-Own-Video/90582651503

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/yourownvideo

Filed under: Social Media | Tagged: canada post, Communications, Employees, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube | 5 Comments »

Riding the Google “Wave”

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Brian Beehler

Again today in a meeting someone asked me if I heard about Google Wave. So I decided to write a quick post about Google Wave and give you some of my thoughts.

It was last week when I first read a blog post from Mashable.com about how Google unveiled Google Wave an in-browser communication and collaboration tool that could redefine email and web communications within the next year or so. Google has defined a “wave” in their “About Google Wave” section of the website as follows:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

From what I could gather from the various posts I read, Google Wave could work in the following way: Once logged into Google Wave you would create a wave and add family, friends or colleagues to it. Once the people you added receive the wave everyone on your wave could then use various media formats to reply or edit at any point within the wave. As people reply, add, or edit the wave you’ll be able to see it happen in real-time since it is in real-time conversations could occur as someone contributes to the wave. At any point you’ll be able to rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

Ben Parr one of my favorite social media bloggers recently wrote about Google Wave. In his post titled “Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?” he gave a great illustration on how it could be applied in a business environment:

The key to it all is the faster line of communication. Attaching documents, like you do in email, is unnecessary in Google Wave. Real-time conversations and collaboration make it an ideal tool for business teams as well. Imagine an entire office having Google Wave open to quickly share and receive files. It combines some of people’s favorite aspects of many different web communication tools.

After reading his statement I suddenly started to day dream on how Google Wave could solve many of my web development issues. Google Wave could potentially allow my team to collaborate with clients directly and in real-time during the User Acceptance Testing phase in any web development project. If we could have the ability to see proposed changes in real-time and apply the edits as the client sees it happens, we could save valuable time and money.

Google Wave could very well redefine email and web communications but I see it as a valuable tool that will allow me to connect, communicate, and collaborate with colleagues. Until it is available to the general public at the end of this year, we can only speculate how it may revolutionize communications on the web. I can’t wait to start using it!

Make sure you watch Google’s video presentation, a little lengthy but worth the time.

Filed under: Social Media | Tagged: Collaboration, Google Wave, Mashable, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Asking the right questions – computing knowledge…

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Brian Beehler

As you are all aware of I tend to research social media websites and tools during my weekends. This weekend I came across a website that could increase your overall IQ and knowledge if you ask it the right questions.

Mashable.com recently wrote an article about a website that has figured out how to make knowledge computable. After reading the article I quickly went to Wolfram Alpha to discover if the website could do as the article says. Well, I was thoroughly impressed with the capabilities and how precise it answered my questions.

In my quest to discover new tools to measure and monitor Social Media, I used Wolfram Alpha to compare Facebook.com and Twitter.com. I typed both URLs in the query field as one string and the results separated each website into two columns with statistics appearing for both. It also allowed my to expand the results further to view server locations and traffic fraction. To top it off, it gave me the option to download my results as a PDF. An extremely useful tool in analyzing site traffic and particular trends on the internet, however it fell short in delivering Social Media data. In a recent interview with Wolfram’s founder Stephen Wolfram, an author from Mashable.com asked “Does social networking data have a place in Wolfram?”, here is how Dr. Wolfram answered the question;

Does social media have a role in Wolfram Alpha? In Dr. Wolfram’s mind, social media has several big roles to play. One of the biggest is using community feedback and tools to help improve the computational engine:

“Since Wolfram alpha went live…we had 49,000 pieces of feedback from people. … One question that we have is okay, what is the most important thing for us to do? … We’re sort of hoping that some of these social network and social media mechanisms will help us to organize the things that people think should be in Wolfram Alpha and help us cluster these things and be part of the co-evolution…of what we can actually put into the system.”

Now, if you’re wondering about whether Wolfram Alpha will be taking social graph information or your tweets and using that data to compute useful answers, the answer is that it’s still really early in the process:

“It’s sort of an interesting question to what extent we can take the data of what’s going in social media and make use of that in actual computations we’re doing within Wolfram Alpha. We’ve certainly played around with that; we don’t yet have anything terribly interesting there.”

The technology being used to drive Wolfram Alpha could be very useful in making sense of all the social media data that is being posted on the internet everyday. One of my objectives over the past year was to develop a tool that can monitor and analyze Social Media and as I continue on my quest to come up with the perfect tool, I believe Wolfram Alpha has taken the first steps in making knowledge computable. To have the ability to organize and plot social media data in a meaningful way without human intervention will allow businesses to monitor, measure and react at speeds much quicker than we know today. It has been foreseen that computers would have the ability to compute knowledge and as Dr. Wolfram forges forward we may see a revolution occur among search engines.

Try this for fun…

If you really want to be impressed start asking Wolfram Alpha questions like “How old are you?”, “Can you eat”, “Hello”, and even “Where do you live?“. Let me know what you think and if you feel that search engines may have met their match.

“Live your dreams through the eyes of the unknown”

Filed under: Social Media | Tagged: Computable Knowledge, Facebook, Mashable, Monitoring Social Media, Twitter, Wolfram Alpha | 6 Comments »

Brian Beehler – Social Media Talk

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