March 22nd, 2012 by Mathias Buerk
Erik Qualman
Erik Qualman is an MBA Professor at the Hult International Business School, book author, speaker, and CEO and founder of Socialnomics. Erik Qualman is the author of “Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business.” Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List for the US, Japan, UK, Canada, Portugal, Italy, China, Korea and Germany. Qualman is a frequently requested International speaker and has been highlighted in numerous media outlets including: BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Mashable, Financial Times, Forbes, CBS Nightly News, and The Huffington Post. His Socialnomics.net Blog is ranked as a Top 10 Social Media Blog by PC Magazine.
1. Which 5 recent numbers in social media impressed you most?
- 840 Million Users on Facebook
- Pinterest driving more site traffic than Twitter
- Social commerce company Bazaarvoice going public at $18.45
- SXSWi Conference attendance up +30% this year
- 1 new user joins LinkedIn every second
2. Social Media Trends – which is the next big thing in your opinion?
- LindedIn isn’t talked about enough. More people will move this out of HR and put it into the hands of the Digital Team.
- Putting structure to Big Data so we can make predictions.
3. Will mobile use change social media?
Advances in mobile technology will increase the usage of social media.
4. Which is your favorite social media tool?
LinkedIn.
5. How well can social media monitoring predict the future?
Putting structure to Big Data so companies can make predictions is just starting but will be important for years to come.
March 2nd, 2012 by Mathias Buerk
Lon Safko
We are honoured to interview Lon Safko (@lonsafko) in today’s Friday5. He invented “the first computer to save a human life” (Steve Jobs) and numerous other software and hardware solutions for the physically challenged. 18 of his inventions and more than 30.000 papers are in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. Furthermore he is the author of “The Social Media Bible” that ranked #1 in both marketing and business on Amazon, and is available in four languages. Moreover, Lon Safko founded 14 successful companies.
1. Which 5 recent numbers in social media impressed you most?
1) Of course the number of Facebook members always impresses me, especially as they approach their 1 billionth member.
2) Myspace is still out there and growing with over 200 million members.
3) Twitters is still going strong with their 106 million users and active use.
4) It’s China that surprises me. Their Qzone has 190 million members and RenRen with 170 million members. This surprises me because Facebook is still banned and doesn’t compete, and they also have 1.3 billion people! I would have thought their two largest social networks would have larger memberships.
5) Lastly, the number of people calling themselves “social media gurus”.
2. Social Media Trends – which is the “next big thing” in your opinion?
It’s what my next book is about, “The Fusion Media Bible”. If you are still calling yourself a “Social Media Expert” then you’re announcing to the world that you have been left behind. Fusion Marketing is the next step that brings our 6,000 years of traditional marketing, the exciting digital marketing tools of the Internet, and social media together, and fully integrates them into one seamless tool set that will accomplish every goal you set. Fusion Marketing is about looking at all of your campaigns, conversion strategies, tools and tactics as one integrated marketing strategy. If you have a V.P. of social media, then why don’t you have a V.P. of billboards? Traditional, Digital, and Social Media is all just media; technology that allows us to communicate with our customers.
3. Will mobile use change social media?
It already has. The Nielsen Company announced in 2011 that for the first time in history the number of televisions in America dropped from 98% to 96%. We are rapidly moving to mobile for our news, television show, movies, and social connections. The rest of the world is driving this phenomenon as most of the world’s population cannot afford a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, and broadband, but they can afford one smartphone. Smartphone marketing is growing exponentially and smart marketers today have to embrace mobile.
4. Will Google+ challenge facebook seriously?
I think so. This is reminiscent of the Apple vs. Windows battle of the 80’s and 90’s. When you have $24 billion in contextual advertising at stake, there will be war. Both Google and Facebook have been knocking off each others features / benefits for the past three years. This also part of a trend where the technologies are also integrating such as Google Hangouts Skype like video chat and Twitter like chat. When you have the kind of budgets that Google and Facebook have, you can afford to reverse engineer the best features of each others platform. This is only the beginning of the battle.
5. Social Commerce – what do you expect in the future?
Absolutely! We’ve seen the power of “reviews” and “Others who have purchased this has also purchased these…” what technically isn’t social commerce, but it was the beginning and heavily influences purchases. We will see more NFC (Near Filed Communication” or “Tap-&-Go” payment systems. Again, Europe is way ahead of of implementing NFC than the U.S. The smartphone will someday replace the credit card much the same way the credit card replaced the personal check.
February 24th, 2012 by Mathias Buerk
Henrik von Scheel
Today we are pleased to have Henrik von Scheel (@von_scheel) answering our Friday5. Henrik is member of Board of Directors at ethority. Furthermore he is Advisory Board Member at Google (EMEA), as well as Managing Partner and Senior Vice President for Venture Capital at 3i Capital Group. Prior to this he was a board member at IBM Venture Capital Group and responsible for the development of strategic partnerships and potential markets. Additionally, Henrik von Scheel was visiting lecturer at the Copenhagen Business School. He also was book co-author of “Applying Real-World BPM in an SAP Environment”.
With more than 15 years of experience, Henrik von Scheel has led the reorganization of strategies, processes and technologies of various Fortune 500 companies. Henrik is recognized for his professional leadership in e-commerce and social commerce, as a trend spotter, author, event speaker and investor.
1. Which recent 5 numbers in social media impressed you most?
#1. The increased importance of making sense out of social media data as “Big Data” is a big market and big business with $50 Billion by 2017.
# 2. 63%: percentage of CMOs that said ROI will be the standard for performance by 2015 and less than 50% of all businesses measure ROI.
# 3. +27 Social Media monitoring tools acquisitions in 2011. What will happen this year?
# 4. 2012 Social media monitoring benchmark rates ethority #1 out of 26 leading global providers.
#5. 10 Mio: Pinterest the fastest standalone social media platform to reach 10 mio.
2. Social Media Trends – which is the next big thing in your opinion?
In my opinion there are two key trends within social media intelligence. First the ability to link social media data to online sales to measure the ROI, optimize the performance thereof and add predictive analytics to forecast your sales. Second, the four new forces in the new consumer centric business model that re-established the balance between new marketing funnel and consumer empowerment.
3. Social Commerce on facebook – pro or con?
I remember when eCommerce and social media monitoring was doomed dead before it really got started. Now with Social Commerce it is the same, there is only a pro, with more than 1 billion people or >70% of internet population on facebook it is a consumer platform that shouldn´t be ignored. It’s simple, participate and reap the fruits of the first mover advantage or wait a couple of years and join once a best practice.
4. The new timeline on facebook – better or worse than before?
Short and simple – I love it
5. Will mobile use change social media?
It already has: 38% of internet users have a smart phone. They are more intensive users of social networks than people without a smartphone. On average, people install 25 apps on their smartphone, but only use 12. Most used apps are social network apps.
May 13th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Within the channels of user generated media, family holidays are the most frequently mentioned issue. Users in weblogs like to discuss the topic of winter holidays, whereas a vacation in the snow does not enjoy great popularity in online communities. Here, users prefer to talk about cruises, while this topic cannot be found under the bloggers’ top 5 ways of travelling. Moreover, and in contrast to active online community members, bloggers rather choose to have conversations about package tours. Concerning the ways to travel, bloggers and online community members seem to agree on adventure and city travels. In both channels of communication, they are the most frequently discussed.
Top Ways to Travel – Online Communities:
Cruises
Last Minute
Adventure Vacations
City Trips
Family Holidays
Top Ways to Travel – Weblogs:
Package Tours
Adventure Vacations
City Trips
Winter Holidays
Family Holidays
Users in weblogs and online communities also agree on the way of booking travels. At this, statements for booking offline have the lion’s share of the topics. About 2/3 of the statements on both channels are allotted to the traditional booking method. This confirms the results of the recent AGOF study. Consumers like to obtain detailed advice in the user generated channels but prefer to book offline in a travel agency.
Booking Methods – Online Communities:
Internet
Travel Agency
Booking Methods – Weblogs:
Internet
Travel Agency
The here described booking behaviour indicates the path that marketers have to take in the future. The increasing consumer focus on information concerning products or travels in online domains sets new benchmarks for a successful marketing mix. No matter if it is a large-scale print campaign or an elaborate TV spot – traditional forms of advertisement impress consumers to a lesser and lesser extend. Therefore, it is essential to meet the consumer where he increasingly searches for information. More and more often, customers use portals such as Holidaycheck, TripAdvisor or Opodien in order to obtain information about their potential travel destinations and holiday accommodations before booking. In any case, marketers of the tourism industry should be prepared for this tendency, especially in consideration of the current number of internet users. By now, according to the latest survey of Bitkom, already 63% of the Germans roam the internet.
May 13th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Regarding travels outside Europe, the US and Asia are clearly the main topics in weblogs and online communities. This resulted from the quantitative analysis of consumer comments in the current study. For the intense buzz in the United States, surely the decisive factor is the favourable dollar exchange rate because of which the US has become something like a shopper’s paradise.
In online communities, the African continent ranks third as a potential travel destination, whereas it ranks fifth concerning the overall buzz in weblogs. Bloggers show a greater interest in American Oceania and South America.
This quantitative netnographic study was based on 6500 user opinions in weblogs and online communities concerning the topic of Social Networks. The categorized and evaluated comments originate from ca. 1000 blogs and 400 online communities which have been located with the assistance of the gridmaster technology. Within the scope of this process, the respective channels of communication, topics and the tonality of the comments have been recorded.
The ethority study illustrates the importance of the channels of communication within web 2.0 for the tourism industry. Online communities and weblogs are increasingly used by consumers as relevant sources of information. Furthermore, recommendations, which are exchanged in these channels of communication, exert direct influence on booking decisions. The studies conducted by the American market research institute eMarketer, in collaboration with Deloitte (2007), are able to document this influence by means of their data.
April 7th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Surely, several families are already busy with planning their next summer holiday. By now, as the recent AGOF Study was able to show, about 50% of the internet users arrange their holidays online. On holiday portals such as Opodien, users exchange their opinions about their favourite travel destinations and types of leave. The study Travel Trends 2008 conducted by ethority GmbH & Co. KG intended to record the holiday-buzz, at which the base data were provided by 6500 authentic user opinions. Here, the first part of the study was concerned with the evaluation of the most popular destinations within weblogs and online communities.
According to the ethority results, Germany is the top destination for german bloggers and community users. In the course of the analysis it became clear that the German’s favourite type of leave is a short trip betweentimes. At present, short trips to Berlin or to the Baltic Sea at weekends are extremely popular. The top 5 ranks regarding travel destinations are represented by the German tourism industry’s usual classics such as Austria, Italy and Spain. However, it is astonishing that the classics Greece and Turkey cannot be found among the most popular destinations of German internet users – both travel destinations are not represented within the 5 top countries. In the second part of the study Travel Trends 2008 the international top destinations of German users, the top types of leave and the favoured booking methods are presented.
