Digital In Motion

Let’s Get Social

Social Media…Social Strategy…Social Technology. Web 2.0

 

While the online world explodes with new and interesting ways to connect and participate in social spaces, brands are sort of left scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get invited to the party.

 

First of all, let’s look at the broad definition and characteristics of social media on the Web today. It’s certainly about the power shift from corporation/brand to individual or groups of individuals that start to form communities of interest. Second, it is about the shift from read only, one-way information to a read/write, two-way conversation. This fosters customer/audience engagement, participation, conversation and collaboration. The more people use it, the better it gets.

 

Brands who are successfully engaged in social media in meaningful and relevant ways can see the following benefits:

• Increased customer satisfaction in all channels
• Increased loyalty, acquisition, retention
• Increased traffic and conversion
• Better SEO
• And support center/call center cost savings.
• Innovation and growth for the enterprise

 

Think multi-channel (Web, mobile, store, call center, other).

And internal to the organization as well as external.

 

Today, the big opportunities for business include:

 

Online Communities (Consider multi-lingual)

• Forums
• Blogs
• Micro-blogs
• Special pages and events

• Presence and participation across social spaces as a whole

Ideas Platforms

• Ideablob
• Dell Idea Storm
• MyStarbucksIdea

 

Web Services/Open APIs to drive growth on the web outside of your mybrand.com space.

 

As the Web 2.0 movement is about the power shift from the corporation/brand to the individual or groups of individuals, one of the hallmarks of the Web 3.0 wave will be the further personalization of the content and data that we receive and how we choose to receive it. Through an open API/Web Services strategy companies can see considerable extensions of their brand and increased conversion as a result.

 

Some other social applications to consider: Social Entrepreneurship and Social Shopping Sites. These deserve their own attention in a subsequent blog.

 

Where is social going?

1)      It’s going mobile. It’s already mobile, but this will get better and more sophisticated.

2)      It’s coming into your living room. With the next wave of IP enabled devices and interactive television, you will start to see social technology integration on your TV.

3)      It’s going physical. Think about the possibilities of GPS on your mobile, plus triggers from favored retailers. Now say you have a wishlist with a major retailers or a shopping aggregator like Wishpot. Then you drive by a retailer that has that flatpanel TV that you have on the list and pushes you a text message telling you you can get 20% off of that TV if you purchase within the next 60 minutes. Takes the whole know me, show me you know me philosophy to the next level. And drives incremental growth. Sweet.

What’s in a Name? Imagery Triggers: Poetry or Porn

The digital bullet train (our current mental mode of transportation in the interactive world) has succeeded in proving to me that even in the most innocent of things, care must be taken to investigate all possibilities.

And so, this my second blog, is dedicated to the quandary we may occasionally find ourselves in when we try to move at the same speed as the bullet train and end up being flattened by it instead.

This is a cautionary tale about how I came up with my username on Twitter. And how I learned to regret it. As a consultant and work gypsy in the interactive space for the past 14 years, I have become increasingly ‘corporate’ and have lost the ability to share much of the creative energy and spirit that drove the first part of my professional journey. Now there are a lot of reasons for this that aren’t part of this blog, but I do look for ways to try to inject some of this creative thought back into my every day life where I can, despite the fact that the day in and out of life in multi-channel interactive world can be pretty geeky and technical sometimes.

So, a while back when I wanted to join the fledgling Twitter community just to see what it was about, I was also joining a multitude of other social networking sites, all requiring unique profiles and user IDs and passwords. And so one late night while registering for Twitter, and not being able to use my real name as my Twitter name, I just came up with something completely different. Bluvelvetmuse. I liked the tactile and seemingly poetic nature of this name in a sea of bits and bytes. And without Googling it, I just used it.

Some months later now there are many people on Twitter. And someone yesterday asked me how I came up with this name. And did I know that Blue Velvet was a porn network in NYC. And a highly erotic indie film from the ‘80s. And honestly, the answer was no, I didn’t. I probably should have, but didn’t.

So, now my poetic and tactile velvet muse feels a bit tawdry and I am faced with the embarrassment of having associated myself with this name and also for not having done my homework beforehand.

So while I would have liked to have just found something else that plays on the senses, I decided to find a different outlet for that and ended up with /KempInMotion. Pretty safe, to be sure. It syncs nicely with my new blog, Digital in Motion, which will live under my Kemp & Company moniker. I may start a more personal and literary blog as a creative outlet and call it Poetry in Motion. 

Twitter started out as a fun creative outlet and turned into a space where my clients, colleagues and potential clients now follow me and clearly reputation management is of utmost importance.

In the end, though I made a safe and professional decision, I fundamentally believe that with care and purpose, the imagination is still ignited by words, images, and memories of what something feels like, smells like, and sounds like. These are the joys that color our world.