Best Buy Responds In 5 Minutes
This morning the tub door seal on my Whirlpool Duet popped off after a wire popped off underneath. My husband quickly got to work to see if he could fix it and I quickly turned to Google after scanning my Best Buy service plan. Two years before I had purchased the washer online along with the service plan but discovered the link to the receipt no longer worked.
So, I turned to Twitter.
Within 5 minutes I heard back.
After a few more tweets I was on the phone with Jason and a fix to my problem was in the works. Tomorrow the technicians arrive and hopefully everything will go as smoothly as today. But for me, what was important was that Best Buy was listening (on a Sunday morning!) and willing to engage me online to ensure I was pleased with their customer service. Is your Brand listening to your customers?
Do governments lack the will to thwart the piracy of software, music and movies?
photo credit: World Economic Forum
Piracy of software, music, movies is a huge issue across the globe and the fight against it is being waged on many different fronts. For instance, 41% of software worldwide is unlicensed, counterfeit or pirated. From the recent marketing communications project I participated in, it seems that one approach that makes sense is the intervention by internet service providers (whether on their own or forced by the countries they operate in) to thwart known pirates whether they realize what they are doing is wrong or not.
In October 2009 Greg Sandoval reported for CNET, that “France has adopted a strong antipiracy law, one that may mean those who chronically share unauthorized movies and music online will lose Web access for up to a year.” Sandoval wrote that Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America said:
“Today’s decision is an enormous victory for creators everywhere. It is our hope that ISPs will fully honor their promise to cooperate and that the French government will take the necessary measures to dedicate resources to handle the enormous task ahead.”
In December 2009, Sandoval followed up by looking at where the recording industry was in their fight against piracy and began by writing, ” A decade after the rise of Napster and a year after promising a new antipiracy strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America appears to be floundering on the piracy front.” According to Sandoval “the number of ISPs that have acknowledged adopting the RIAA’s graduated response program is zero.”
Sandoval quoted RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol “Are we prepared to make an announcement that is broad in scope and cuts across ISPs? No. Are we engaged in significant discussions that we believe will ultimately prove productive? Hell yes.”
In an op-ed piece for the NY Times, Bono said that the people benefiting most from online piracy are those running ISPs “whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.”
In December 2009, Disney CEO Robert Iger wrote a piece for the Huffington Post discussing “Two Common Sense Ways to Improve the Economy”. In this post, Iger asks Obama for tougher anti-piracy legislation:
“But there are many who use the Internet to profit from pirated content and who have no interest in voluntary solutions that would put an end to their commercial exploitation of the creative output of others. For that reason, there is a role that government must play to stop piracy on those platforms and services unwilling to police themselves. The confirmation last week by the Senate of Victoria Espinel as the nation’s first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is a great step. But it’s critical she be given the necessary resources to get the job done.”
The question is since anyone today can pirate a movie as stated by Paramount CEO Huntsberry, do governments have the will to pressure and force ISPs to shut down the pirates.
Five Social Software Predictions from Gartner
2009 saw an explosion of growth in the use of social media by business users. According to Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner “A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business. Success in social software and collaboration will be characterized by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business.”
Gartner’s report, “Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond” makes five predictions about how social networking will transform business in the coming years:
By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
“The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer email capabilities,” said Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner. “While email is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services.”
By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organizations to look for an “enterprise Twitter”, that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.
“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president for Gartner. “When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”
Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, email, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organizations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70% failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives. 50% of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20% of IT-driven initiatives.
Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
As we move toward three billion phones in the world serving the main purpose of providing communications and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end-users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use.
Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.
Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.
Social network analysis is a useful methodology for examining the interaction patterns and information flows that occur among the people and groups in an organization, as well as among business partners and customers. However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations.
You can read more about the report here.
Tiger Woods Slow Climb Back
Yesterday I watched Tiger Woods deliver his apology to his friends and his public. I was really curious from a public relations perspective what he would say, how he would say it, would he be convincing, and of course how he appeared. Obviously, it was very late in coming. He and his team went against every dictate in how they handled this crisis. But for me, the apology in its entirety marks his slow climb back. I was struck by a number of things but probably most of all by his appearance. I hope he makes it all the way back.
Are you Stupid? Olympic Gold Medalist Sven Kramer Asks
On the first day of the Olympics, Dutch speedskater Sven Kramer won a gold medal. He was then asked by a reporter to state his name, country and what he just won. Here’s his response. His response is a great reminder to all in and out of the media to do your homework!
24% of US Small Businesses Now Engaged in Social Media Survey Says
American small businesses are pushing the limits on new ways to improve efficiency in the prolonged downturn, including a steady increase in social media adoption according to results of a study from the Small Business Success Index™ (SBSI) sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business . The SBSI reports social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12 percent to 24 percent in the last year.
The SBSI found that nearly one out of five small business owners are actively using social media in their business. Small businesses are increasingly investing in social media applications, including blogs, Facebook® and LinkedIn® profiles. The biggest expectation small business owners have from social media is expanding external marketing and engagement, including identifying and attracting new customers, building brand awareness and staying engaged with customers. Sixty-one percent of the respondents indicated that they use social media to identify and attract new customers.
photo credit: harrietbarber
“Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service,” says Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Time spent on Twitter®, Facebook® and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”
Small business owners use social media to attract new customers:
- 75% surveyed have a company page on a social networking site
- 61% use social media for identifying and attracting new customers
- 57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn
- 45% expect social media to be profitable in the next twelve months
Small business owners still have concerns with social media:
- 50% of small business social media users say it takes more time than expected
- 17% express that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet
- Only 6% feel that social media use has hurt the image of the business more than helped it
To download a copy of the Small Business Success Index and also find out how your business scores on the six key dimensions of small business success, visit www.growsmartbusiness.com.
Has your business adopted social media? What is your company doing? What have been the results so far?