April 10th, 2012 by Sten Franke
It is proof for the success of a young, ambitious web service, when others are being built on its basis augmenting it. Looked at it this way, Pinterest seems to become a huge success story in the net, as ever more services integrate the online pin wall.
The most exciting tool amplifying Pinterest is PinReach. The new service measures the reach a member of the hyped network attains. The US-Americans developed the PinReach Score depicting the latter.
PinReach doesn’t reveal how this score is evaluated, though. Nevertheless they explain that, for instance, repins are more important than own pins. “Once members start repinning your item your score will increase much quicker. Another similar relationship exists between followers and who you follow. Simply following 500 members will do far less for your score than having 500 new followers on your account“, an illuminating text states.
PinReach of Christine Martinez
The tool integrates the amount of pins, repins, likes, followers, followings, comments and boards in one piece. Extra graphics are analyzing the pin-history on top of it and identifies the most popular boards.
Never mind the statistics and analyses, the experts of PinReach are aware that Pinterest is all about easy stuff: „Ultimately, the goal should be to produce and share great content on Pinterest.“
April 4th, 2012 by Sten Franke
This catchphrase has the potential to become an all-time classic on all conferences from Hamburg to San Francisco: Digital Darwinism. Creator of this saying is Brian Solis, one of the most interesting thinkers in the digital era, Principal Analyst of Altimeter Group, bestselling author and keynote speaker.
What he means by Digital Darwinism is the excluding competition around awareness which brands in the social web are facing. Now all of a sudden extremely hungry and customer focused newcomers compete with established brands that long profited of their tradition, reputation and their rather sedate product cycles. Now the latter notice that the former are growing excessively, and are only one click away of heralding their decline.
An important factor is the new power of the consumers – so to speak the right to communicate and co-determine that is being lived on social media platforms for long.
In Solis’ point of view on Facebook & Co. an excluding competition is fought that only those companies will survive that are willed to accept this change and think differently. To consist in this competition there are 10 principles to abide by that he had articulated. Among them there is strategy, culture, people, and vision. In respect of the last point Brian asks rightly, when one has read the mission statement of his company lately? Whether you live by them and whether they are matching the times. Basically he says that an enterprise has to be able to create a working environment that leaves each employee the room to invest his entire creativity and innovation.
A business that strives to maintain in the Digital Darwinism, always has to question itself, and has to be ready to adapt their business goals and strategies anytime. Further keywords that are of huge importance to Brian Solis are: Localization, Philanthropic Capitalism, and Intelligence. On it is is said:
„One of the biggest trends in 2011 was the development of social media command centers. At the heart of these sophisticated data gathering silos were conversations and tools that allowed community managers to listen, respond, and promote engagement within the company. While social media is introducing the art & science of monitoring to marketing and service teams it is the organizations that invest in technology, teams and processes that will translate activity into actionable insights.“
However, the most exciting thought of Brian Solis is to demand more leadership qualities by the Top-Management. They have to provide the strategy and exemplify them through their own life. They have to cater the adequate corporate culture, and should be the first to listen to users and consumers in social media.
Source: eMarketer
The US-American reaffirms a trend we have covered only recently. According to a study by Brandfog, the social media awareness of a brand is influenced positively by the circumstance whether the CEO engages on Twitter, Facebook, and Co. personally. For instance 78% think, it has positive consequences when the boss hits the keyboard or smartphone on his own. 71% believe this improves the brand image and 64% are sure a twittering and facebooking management’s business is perceived as more transparent than others.
Brian’s approach is extremely fascinating to me, so I want to dig deeper into it in further blog articles. Though, it has to be admitted that these principles apply foremost to consumer-centered business models.
April 3rd, 2012 by Sten Franke
In the social web the boss can make a difference. According to a study by Brandfog the social media perception of a brand is influenced positively, when the CEO engages on Twitter, Facebook & Co. personally. 78% of those questioned hold the opinion that it has positive consequences for the business, when the chief hits the keyboard of his computer or the touchpad of his smartphone. 71% reckon that it improves the brand image, and another 64% are convinced that the business in question is perceived as more transparent, when the manager facebooks or twitters.
Source: EMarketer
Once being asked after it, 82% answered that it is “important” or even “very important” when the CEO engages in social media. A particularly astonishing result of the study furthermore is that a CEO, who is representing the interests of his enterprise on Twitter or Facebook, increases the trust of his employees in the respective business. At least that is the persuasion of 82%.
Nevertheless it is of major difference, whether the boss twitters, comments, and posts personally or has entrusted it to an external agency. At least a current Swiss study by Zurich-based Bernet PR proves once again that authenticity generally is one of the most important currencies in the social web. “This only works with the personal voice”, Micheal Walther writes. “It is possible to depute concepts, strategies, and programming, on your own you should speak.” In the beginning it would suffice, if a spokesperson or a close colleague would do the talk.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and her spokesman Steffen Seibert constitute a good example. Since the former ZDF journalist twitters, she is – at least perceived – closer to the citizen.
In the end – at least in businesses – it always is about sales and profit. Here, again, a CEO can assert improvements. The study by Brandfog concludes that around 77% of the questioned buy a brand’s or business’ commodities, whose marketing team engages in conversations with the consumers about their own products.
Having read these results, we ask ourselves: Which CEO of a enterprise twitters personally? Not many, that’s for sure! Although it is apparent which huge potential almost all businesses leave untouched.
>>CEOs and Top Executives on Twitter:
Ranking Tech Companies Executives on Twitter by Robert Scoble
Atkinson Public Relations – list of top executives using Twitter
April 2nd, 2012 by Sten Franke
Years ago Mark Zuckerberg surprised with his notion of turning Facebook into its own systems software, on which all applications run and get connected that Homo Sapiens 2.0 needs for his happy and fulfilled web existence.
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
In spite of all discussions about the new timeline, or the question which brand has most fans, it has been lost sight of Facebook’s continuation of exactly this project. Or rather: how it lets others continue it. Indeed in the past months a multiplicity of new web and mobile applications emerged that turn personal data of Facebook into a decisive part of their own network. That’s how Facebook is becoming the foundation of a whole new generation of fresh social networks and offerings.
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
The two most popular ones surely are Pinterest and Spotify. But there are further thrilling networks: For instance the business networks BranchOut and Identified. “Identified already has 2.9 Mio monthly users, according to numbers by AppData, BranchOut even 11.2 Mio – to be on a par with Xing”, Basic Thinking has investigated. “Both Apps give something to Facebook users that the social network has missed out on: a formal career network besides the fun.”
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
Applications like Highlight and Glancee, for their part, offer a lot of fun. To Marcel Weiss they are “a perfect example of which new things become possible at the intersection of mobile and social web”.
Highlight and Glancee, in his opinion, distinguish themselves “by not only taking the relations of Facebook and tell who of their friends or of their friend’s friends is near (which is how Sonar.me works). They also use the data of their ‘likes’ to point to individuals sharing their interests.”
Pinterest, Glancee, or BranchOut: Why Facebook is its own internet for long
From a social media intelligence point of view these offerings are an incredibly fascinating field, as they access a multitude of data that the Facebook-API supplies. This demonstrates the value of the user information the US-network provides.
