Danielle Gauthier

Social has been a catchword around marketing circles for a while, but now social is being used as a model for all business practices and strategies – social business is business. This is business designed consciously around sociology and social tools. This has many implications for businesses from within and without. Social customer relationship management, the corporate reaction to catch up with the fleeting customer, while plagued with challenges of scalability, includes brand monitoring and community interaction to listen to clients or customers. But this is not just a marketing or customer service concept, a social business must include an internally open culture based on sharing and collaboration.

This great webinar Social Business: Taking “social” to the core of your organization by Stowe Boyd, Peter Kim, Jeremiah Owyang, Joshua-Michele Ross, is a great introduction to these concepts.

In the video, they go on to say that 2010 is the Year of Social Business Policy, and they just might be right considering the Department of Defense has recently release their social media policy.

The social business, then, should exist within all sectors of the business:

1. Internal – employees of the company, lower level staff to management
2. External – customer and client relationship management

Internal Culture of Openness and Innovation

It is sad that not more managers are eager to encourage and maintain this model for their businesses. No employee should be too low to speak to the highest employee in the company, no idea should be considered based on the rank of an employee on the corporate ladder, and a frank and open environment should allow for opportunities for all employees to share their creative and innovative ideas.

There are obstacles to overcome – management might be resistant or on the other employees might not see the value in participating. But if the heads of the business can embrace the open culture of the social business,

External Candour and Responsiveness

Customer relationship management within a social model is a newer idea, and while the concepts of brand monitoring and community participation seem relatively easy to understand, the issue of scale is where most companies will find their greatest challenges. The addition of new tools and new areas of consumer behavior to monitor, while extremely exciting, must be integrated into a new social customer relationship management policy and process to ensure that it all does not become just noise.

But besides the challenges, adding social to your customer relationship management program allows for much deepened loyalties and consumer trust. One to one dialogue stimulates a solid business relationship if the proper best use practices are understood.

Any plans to take a look at your business model given the technological changes that allow for more social discourse? Do you know of any companies doing this admirably? (besides the Dept. of Defense)

By popular demand, here are some opportunities for learning the basics of social media participation and marketing across Canada in a classroom environment.

While I have gone to great lengths to only provide listings from programs at accredited institutions, inclusion here is by no means a recommendation and I urge you to make inquiries into the class thoroughly prior to signing up. I will update this post frequently as social media classes appear and disappear – I encourage you to send me details of social media classes across Canada so I can add them to this list. This list is not exhaustive.

London Ontario

Continuing Studies at UWO – Social Media Strategy

This course will provide strategic insight into why organizations should use social media and how to do it effectively. You will learn how to integrate social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube into your organization’s overall communication plan. This course will provide strategic insight into why organizations should use social media and how to do it effectively. You will learn how to integrate social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube into your organization’s overall communication plan. Learn about this social media course >>

Fanshawe College In A Day Workshop - Social Media Marketing and Small Business

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses provides an introduction to social media, emphasizing the impact of new technologies on small businesses. This one-day introductory course is designed to simplify and demonstrate the many new channels of marketing, advertising and communication that make up Social Media and Web 2.0. Students will learn about online social networks, social bookmarketing/tags, consumer generated content, blogs/microblogs, brand monitoring and optimizing their organization’s website for social media. Find out more about this social media workshop >>

Toronto Ontario

By popular demand, here are some opportunities for learning the basics of social media participation and marketing across Canada in a classroom environment.

While I have gone to great lengths to only provide listings from programs at accredited institutions, inclusion here is by no means a recommendation and I urge you to make inquiries into the class thoroughly prior to signing up. I will update this post frequently as social media classes appear and disappear – I encourage you to send me details of social media classes across Canada so I can add them to this list. This list is not exhaustive.

London Ontario

Continuing Studies at UWO – Social Media Strategy

This course will provide strategic insight into why organizations should use social media and how to do it effectively. You will learn how to integrate social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube into your organization’s overall communication plan. This course will provide strategic insight into why organizations should use social media and how to do it effectively. You will learn how to integrate social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube into your organization’s overall communication plan. Learn about this social media course >>

Fanshawe College In A Day Workshop - Social Media Marketing and Small Business

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses provides an introduction to social media, emphasizing the impact of new technologies on small businesses. This one-day introductory course is designed to simplify and demonstrate the many new channels of marketing, advertising and communication that make up Social Media and Web 2.0. Students will learn about online social networks, social bookmarketing/tags, consumer generated content, blogs/microblogs, brand monitoring and optimizing their organization’s website for social media. Find out more about this social media workshop >>

Toronto Ontario

When Google Wave came out I did not post anything because I really had nothing to say – like everyone I was excited to get my invite, but after signing up and feeling like I was part of a super exclusive club. Like most everyone else, I was disappointed at how few people there were on Google Wave and did not like the interface – it was pointless and really nothing very innovative. It was like a forum about anything that you could not browse. I just did not get it.

But now they have unleashed upon the world Google Buzz – integrated with Gmail and available via mobile, it allows for threaded discussions with no word or character limit, following other users and linking to other accounts such as Twitter.

Already, Google Buzz has been the source of some criticism. From the discussions on Google Buzz about Google Buzz these appear to be the main criticisms of the platform:

• There were major privacy concerns at the beginning – anyone could follow anyone to view anything, which were alleged to cause some real life problems.
• Do we need another way to dialog with people online or is this just another way for web geeks to talk to other web geeks?
• Not everyone uses Gmail so adoption rates will be slow – is Google Buzz compelling enough to get yet another email address?
• The threads get too long and there is character limit – you have to read through hundreds of sometimes long comments just to make sure you are not repeating something.

Google Buzz did not get the usual long testing and beta phase – it was tested internally by Google employees and individuals brought in to test at the Google offices. Likely Google wanted to move quickly to make up for the anti-climax that was Google Wave, but some say they were not ready.

Despite this, according to Google as of a few days ago they have already had 9 million posts and comments. I would wonder if that figure includes the tweets from Twitter integration, not to mention the other platforms that can be added to Buzz. Twitter is getting more than 25 million tweets daily last I heard, so 9 million in about a week is nominal if tweets are included. It figures that there will be a lot of traffic at the outset as well, as early adopters will spend a great deal of time testing out the new platform.

The big questions are: do we need another way to communicate online and does Google Buzz serve a purpose that other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook cannot. Pete Cashmore put it really way in his post for CNN.com: where Twitter is the town square and Facebook is the local bar, Google Buzz is the campus.

Built for inquiry, learning and collaboration, if Google refines the ability to form private groups this could become a valuable tool for small companies and academic circles – I can see how Google Buzz could mean easy dialog on problems to find solutions with a few more additions the offering. While Google might want it to be so much more than that, which I can tell from their video, nonetheless there is a need that is met with Google Buzz that cannot be found on Twitter or Facebook, or even in email.

How are you using Google Buzz, if at all, and do you think Google Buzz has any enduring qualities? If so, how do you see the value of Google Buzz?

When Google Wave came out I did not post anything because I really had nothing to say – like everyone I was excited to get my invite, but after signing up and feeling like I was part of a super exclusive club. Like most everyone else, I was disappointed at how few people there were on Google Wave and did not like the interface – it was pointless and really nothing very innovative. It was like a forum about anything that you could not browse. I just did not get it.

But now they have unleashed upon the world Google Buzz – integrated with Gmail and available via mobile, it allows for threaded discussions with no word or character limit, following other users and linking to other accounts such as Twitter.

Already, Google Buzz has been the source of some criticism. From the discussions on Google Buzz about Google Buzz these appear to be the main criticisms of the platform:

• There were major privacy concerns at the beginning – anyone could follow anyone to view anything, which were alleged to cause some real life problems.
• Do we need another way to dialog with people online or is this just another way for web geeks to talk to other web geeks?
• Not everyone uses Gmail so adoption rates will be slow – is Google Buzz compelling enough to get yet another email address?
• The threads get too long and there is character limit – you have to read through hundreds of sometimes long comments just to make sure you are not repeating something.

Google Buzz did not get the usual long testing and beta phase – it was tested internally by Google employees and individuals brought in to test at the Google offices. Likely Google wanted to move quickly to make up for the anti-climax that was Google Wave, but some say they were not ready.

Despite this, according to Google as of a few days ago they have already had 9 million posts and comments. I would wonder if that figure includes the tweets from Twitter integration, not to mention the other platforms that can be added to Buzz. Twitter is getting more than 25 million tweets daily last I heard, so 9 million in about a week is nominal if tweets are included. It figures that there will be a lot of traffic at the outset as well, as early adopters will spend a great deal of time testing out the new platform.

The big questions are: do we need another way to communicate online and does Google Buzz serve a purpose that other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook cannot. Pete Cashmore put it really way in his post for CNN.com: where Twitter is the town square and Facebook is the local bar, Google Buzz is the campus.

Built for inquiry, learning and collaboration, if Google refines the ability to form private groups this could become a valuable tool for small companies and academic circles – I can see how Google Buzz could mean easy dialog on problems to find solutions with a few more additions the offering. While Google might want it to be so much more than that, which I can tell from their video, nonetheless there is a need that is met with Google Buzz that cannot be found on Twitter or Facebook, or even in email.

How are you using Google Buzz, if at all, and do you think Google Buzz has any enduring qualities? If so, how do you see the value of Google Buzz?

The expansion of the “real world” using virtual computer-generated imagery is by no means a new idea – this once was the stuff of science fiction. Now, with developments in imaging, location-based applications and mobile data transfer, augmented reality has become a hot topic among marketers as brands struggle to cope with changing media and marketing rules. Augmented reality combines the real and the virtual to create a 3D interactive environment that appears in real-time. In the next year, there are predictions of great strides in augmented reality – Juniper Research has predicted $2 million in spending on AR in 2010, and growing to $714 million by 2014.

There are several different tracks of augmented reality currently being used or in development, but the retailer’s main concerns should be the use of AR in annotation and visualization.

Annotation: Annotate objects and environments with information: these could be public annotations whereby information was drawn from public databases, or private whereby private notes could be attached to objects and environments. For example, a mobile could display information about the products on the shelves as the user walks through a store.

Visualization: Visualization can be used to preview objects in the real world or to gain x-ray vision into real objects using a database containing information about the structure of the object. For example, a user could preview on their computer how different glasses would look on their face (this has been done, Ray-ban).

Likely the most authentic augmented reality experience would come from the use of a see-through HMD, much like the stereotypical virtual reality goggles but instead these are transparent in that the real world can still be seen with superimposed virtual objects and environments. This is not a very feasible format for marketers – instead the best way of building an augmented reality marketing piece would be to use a monitor-based configuration to be viewed in the browser or, better yet, go mobile. Mobile phones are increasingly intuitive and the GPS and imaging capabilities of modern phones is particularly conducive to augmented reality applications.

Augmented reality marketing campaigns have been employed lately by a number of big brands and while many of these approaches are no more than gimmicks, there are many viable uses for augmented reality that should make retailers sit up and pay attention. A few notable examples of augmented reality include the Esquire AR edition which included extra content when certain pages were captured by one’s webcam, Adidas shoes has introduced a new line of shoes that will double as game controllers, as well as more functional uses such as that by US Postal Service that allows users to compare the size of the object they want to send with boxes available.

The challenge here is weeding out the gimmicky uses of this technology to find pertinent, practical uses that could genuinely save consumers time and energy, and coincidentally shortening the sales cycle. Augmented reality allows the user to see the real world with with virtual objects superimposed upon it, which enhances the user’s perception of and interaction with the real world. Virtual objects can be made to display information that cannot directly be detected by the senses and this information can be made to help with real world tasks and aiding in the pre-shopping experience.

There is no doubt that augmented reality has several applicable uses that will only grow as the technology develops, but do you see any lasting value in using augmented reality as a marketing tactic or is it a gimmick that will quickly fade away?

The expansion of the “real world” using virtual computer-generated imagery is by no means a new idea – this once was the stuff of science fiction. Now, with developments in imaging, location-based applications and mobile data transfer, augmented reality has become a hot topic among marketers as brands struggle to cope with changing media and marketing rules. Augmented reality combines the real and the virtual to create a 3D interactive environment that appears in real-time. In the next year, there are predictions of great strides in augmented reality – Juniper Research has predicted $2 million in spending on AR in 2010, and growing to $714 million by 2014.

There are several different tracks of augmented reality currently being used or in development, but the retailer’s main concerns should be the use of AR in annotation and visualization.

Annotation: Annotate objects and environments with information: these could be public annotations whereby information was drawn from public databases, or private whereby private notes could be attached to objects and environments. For example, a mobile could display information about the products on the shelves as the user walks through a store.

Visualization: Visualization can be used to preview objects in the real world or to gain x-ray vision into real objects using a database containing information about the structure of the object. For example, a user could preview on their computer how different glasses would look on their face (this has been done, Ray-ban).

Likely the most authentic augmented reality experience would come from the use of a see-through HMD, much like the stereotypical virtual reality goggles but instead these are transparent in that the real world can still be seen with superimposed virtual objects and environments. This is not a very feasible format for marketers – instead the best way of building an augmented reality marketing piece would be to use a monitor-based configuration to be viewed in the browser or, better yet, go mobile. Mobile phones are increasingly intuitive and the GPS and imaging capabilities of modern phones is particularly conducive to augmented reality applications.

Augmented reality marketing campaigns have been employed lately by a number of big brands and while many of these approaches are no more than gimmicks, there are many viable uses for augmented reality that should make retailers sit up and pay attention. A few notable examples of augmented reality include the Esquire AR edition which included extra content when certain pages were captured by one’s webcam, Adidas shoes has introduced a new line of shoes that will double as game controllers, as well as more functional uses such as that by US Postal Service that allows users to compare the size of the object they want to send with boxes available.

The challenge here is weeding out the gimmicky uses of this technology to find pertinent, practical uses that could genuinely save consumers time and energy, and coincidentally shortening the sales cycle. Augmented reality allows the user to see the real world with with virtual objects superimposed upon it, which enhances the user’s perception of and interaction with the real world. Virtual objects can be made to display information that cannot directly be detected by the senses and this information can be made to help with real world tasks and aiding in the pre-shopping experience.

There is no doubt that augmented reality has several applicable uses that will only grow as the technology develops, but do you see any lasting value in using augmented reality as a marketing tactic or is it a gimmick that will quickly fade away?