Looking into Social Media for Business?

Social Media for Business

Social Media is  no longer limited to games and finding classmate and friends. It’s an inevitable part of doing business. Anywhere there is an audience, there are potential consumers. No matter how you end up using social media, remember it is a platform, a distribution channel. How information reach people is what matters and the big trend right now is the mobile platform. People can connect their social media accounts to the phone and that’s where creating amazing content that invites people to share will come into play big time.

Mashable is a good source to read about what’s going on with Social Media companies and technology solutions. It’s one of many sites to stay abreast of industry trends in the Social Media industry.

Here’s what’s coming this year:

• Companies will start integrating social feedback in decision making and ROI
• Mobile will become “the” portal to everything – phones/tablets
• Like video, photo sharing will take off – already happening
• New Social Media platform will emerge, but the concept of sharing/viral remains
• True tools to track Brand Presence in Social Media
• How businesses use social media and the role of employees will continue to morph

Below is a link to the top 10 books. I like Groundswell and Virtual Loop. Again, it depends on how you want to use social media.

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/09/social-media-books-small-business.html

Here’s an example of amazing content people will share. The NBA, who by far are ahead of every other sports league when it comes to social media, put together this content around their 2011 All Start event. The All-Star Scene section is all about social media interaction:

http://www.nba.com/allstar/2011/

UFL Online Presence Sees 2010 Facelift

In the online information age, it is important for any professional sports league to have a robust presence on the Internet.

The United Football League took broad steps toward that goal in 2010.

“Our online presence experienced a dramatic facelift in 2010,” said Tomas Llibre, UFL Vice President of Information Technology, “from a revamped Web site design to social media account customization to a fantastic finish by broadcasting our Championship Game live on YouTube under our fully-customized channel with Facebook and Twitter chatter, as well as multiple camera angles, all integrated within a single page.”

Read More…

IT Project Drivers and Startups

Every IT project has 3 key drivers: budget, time and money. The sponsoring user is always in control of two of the 3 drivers while the remaining one belongs to IT. For example, if the sponsor wants the project yesterday with high quality, IT controls how much it will cost. Although this is true on every project in a well established corporation, there are other forces putting pressure on the business to deliver top quality in a relatively short period of time on a small budget. This is particularly true for small startups trying to market services and products ahead of the competition. You have to break all the rules and work a whole. The challenge is to do so while maintain good discipline and a clean house. If your company becomes a fixture, you will not get a buy offer from a big company unless your house is in order. On the same token, it will be extremely hard to adapt to fast paced growth while being efficient. From the mission statement to the final product or brand core message, everything must align and everyone must be on board with the direction the company is going. No matter how much we innovate, it will always be about people, their motivation and believe in a common goal.

If this resonate with you, I would love to learn about your thoughts/challenges.