SarahActiance
One time Taxi Driver, Skier, Reader, Wannabe Writer, Skier, Ocean Sailor, Bacon Afficiando. IBM Redbooks Thought Leader. GM Social Business @Actiance
Homepage: http://carterdockerty.wordpress.com
For the People, By the People: A week until Actiance Unleash 2013
Posted in Uncategorized on May 8, 2013
Sarah Carter
I’m excited to be in the last week before we get to Unleash 2013, Actiance’s inaugural User Summit, where we’ll be welcoming more than 150 clients, partners and friends from the industry to celebrate, discuss, and advance social business. I’m especially excited about the social track. (of course I would be with my focus on that particular area of our business!).
Now the full agenda can be found here and registration is open until Wednesday 14th May – so grab one of the few remaining seats while you still can. Why should you do that? Well you’ll love the social track that we’ve put together for starters. Here’s a taste of what you can experience:
Join the Social Stakeholders in our panel discussion because enabling Social in a financial services firm involves many aspects. Not least ensuring that all the stakeholders are involved – the earlier the involvement, the more successful the implementation of social tends to be. From Social Media and Digital Marketing, to Information Technology, Risk and Security, Compliance and HR – the enablement of social requires the buy in, education and advocacy of each of these departments and more. In this unique panel, we’ve brought together those stakeholders to guide you through the challenges – and give you key tips as to how you can safely and effectively navigate the successful implementation of social in YOUR organization.
Join panelists
- John Malone, Director of Broker Dealer Compliance, Pioneer Funds Distributor, Inc.
- Joe Correiro, Head of Digital Marketing, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
- Mitch Slater, SVP Financial Advisor, UBS Financial Services
Join us for what will be a lively discussion between interested stakeholders, with strong, but often opposing views and requirements and take away three key tips from each on effectively working with all the stakeholders involved in social enablement.
Then, take a deeper dive and join Carole Foster, Managing Director and First VP of CIBC Wood Gundy and hear how about “Building Social Media into a Wealth Management Practice”.
CIBC Wood Gundy began their journey towards building social into their business practice some two years ago. Hear from COO, Carole Foster, how the organization promoted the innovative use of technology to deliver social media to investment advisers as a key element in their communications tool kit. Understand the challenges that the firm overcame, the business drivers for the project and where the firm goes from here. Carole will share candid thoughts on how the stakeholders in her business came together to enable Wood Gundy to be the “first on the street” in Toronto to deliver social as a key element of the business and marketing mix for the wealth management community.
Finally – this conference is about you. Our customers, our users, our partners – so join “For the People, By the People: the Actiance Social UnConference”. We’ll gather for 90 minutes on Friday morning, with the Social UnConference, we have created a space that helps YOU make connections, share knowledge, collaborate and create brainchildren. This is your session – we encourage participants to give a presentation, create a discussion, or even chair a debate. Bring your ideas, your intellect, your debating skills – because there’s an entire room full of social individuals who WANT to hear your opinion and who want to engage with you.
The Social Business Team is counting down the hours to our kick off on Thursday 16th May – and we do hope you’ll join us for two days of engagement, interaction, sharing – and challenging of ideas. Hope to see you in New York!
SEC Clears Social Media for Use: What does it mean?
Posted in Actiance, eDiscovery, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Financial Services, Google, LinkedIn, personal v professional, Retail banking, Securities and Exchange Commission, Social Networking, Trends on April 16, 2013
On April 2nd the SEC issued a press release, which has been widely reported in a number of ways, as to what this actually means for organizations. In this blog, lets take a look at what it actually means.
WHAT DOES THE SEC SAY?
Here’s what the SEC actually says “companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information”.
The exact text is on the SEC website: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2013/2013-51.htm We’re pleased to see that the content was tweeted as well. Interestingly, it was in 2008 that the SEC actually cleared the use of websites for the dissemination of key information. It feels like its been a long five years to get the same clearance for social media. But perhaps not. On August 6th 1991, some 17 years earlier the first website was born, at CERN – the first URL for that website was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html in case you want to check it out. So, it appears progress is being made. Our world is speeding up.
WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
- It means that, so long as a public company announces in advance, what social outlets they will use, that they are able to disseminate key information through these channels.
- In general, key information is usually mailed out or put on a wire service like Marketwire or PR Newswire and also onto the company website.
DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY WILL NOW ALL BE ON SOCIAL?
- Not necessarily, it doesn’t meant that individuals in companies will necessary be all now posting content through their individual network updates.
- It does mean that firms will need to open up access to social media so that Financial Advisers, Relationship Managers and those assisting clients with investment information can access this information – it really IMO opens the floodgates for firms now saying, that if you have financial professionals who need to keep up to date with key publicly traded companies, then they need to see this information. If you don’t, then it would be like forbidding a professional to read the newspaper or watch TV.
- Usually when public companies distribute key information like this, they distribute it through a “corporate property” – in social terms this would be the company Facebook page, or the company Twitter account, or the company page on LinkedIn.
- Record retention requirements means that companies will have retain records of what they posted. i.e. LinkedIn company updates.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO THE DISTRIBUTED TEAM?
- It means that they will require access to social in order to conduct their work effectively.
- As a result of the SEC’s ruling, anyone that needs to keep an eye on key information from public companies will NEED to have access to social in order to remain competitive.
- The socially savvy public company will use individuals to push this content out, along with corporate brands. Take Reed Hastings of Netflix for instance – this whole thing started because it was HIS Facebook page, not the company page.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS and PUBLIC COMPANIES?
1) Archiving company updates for public companies will become a must have. Public companies will need to archive the company updates and any other updates that are related to Regulation FD.
2) Ensuring that the right person / people approved this content is key. They will need to prove that it was approved by the relevant individuals/groups in the organization.
3) Companies may choose to share content to a “Shareholders Group” on LinkedIn, a group on Facebook, or a private feed on Twitter, thus requiring that content is approved and archived, is again key.
4) Some companies might select individuals to share this key information – so ensuring that the content is again approved and archived is key. However, the SEC points out, that “The report of investigation explains that although every case must be evaluated on its own facts, disclosure of material, nonpublic information on the personal social media site of an individual corporate officer — without advance notice to investors that the site may be used for this purpose — is unlikely to qualify as an acceptable method of disclosure under the securities laws. Personal social media sites of individuals employed by a public company would not ordinarily be assumed to be channels through which the company would disclose material corporate information.” So ensure prior notification has been made – and that it is clear, which channels and which accounts will be used to disseminate this information.
5) Those firms that block social access for the wider team will not be evaluating their policies, in order to provide open access to at least view for instance LinkedIn news and company updates while on corporate machines.
6) Social networks outside of Facebook and Twitter should be lobbying the SEC – who referenced only Facebook and Twitter – but not LinkedIn as social channels. LinkedIn is the network that most business professionals feel comfortable with and with whom they connect with business colleagues on much more than Facebook and Twitter. It’s clear that the SEC needs to understand the company area of LinkedIn, but also the value of the personal network – using the Reed Hasting’s example – if he had used his LinkedIn network update to push this out, it would have had the same effect as he did with Facebook.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
1) Review your social policies, both for listening, and for distributing content. This great move by the SEC has opened the way for “no business reason for social” to be removed. Ensure that you’re including all the stakeholders into this review.
2) Ensure, if you are a public company, that any content you are sharing on social – goes through the same approvals that content for other mediums does. Archive it and retain it.
3) Embrace this new communications modality approval by the SEC. Those who disseminate key information in compliance with Regulation FD, through social channels, will certainly be in the forefront of the press and generate those softer elements of ROI, that we all strive for. So make sure you take this into consideration when you’re looking at the benefits of social.
Let me wrap up by asking a question. If you were to choose one social channel to share key information.. what would it be?
After 3,200 miles, I hit a concrete pontoon at 4.5 knots
Posted in #TeamActiance, Actiance, TravelTuesday on March 25, 2013
Today’s #TravelTuesday comes from Sarah Carter, who fulfilled a long term dream to sail the Atlantic. Here’s a much, much shortened version of her story..
Traditional Broads Yachts
I started my life as a sailor by booking a holiday in the Norfolk Broads, renting an original Broads yacht, with a mast that lowered to go under the bridges and a retro fitted outboard that kicked something rotten against the rudder. I also started my life as a sailor by reading a book on how to sail, while being driven to said Norfolk Broads. Skip forward some 12 years and an idea that had been growing with my sailing experience became a reality.
I decided I wanted to sail across the Atlantic. Belay that order, I wanted to RACE across the Atlantic.
The idea was to join the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, (the ARC) by buying a berth on a 40.7 metre Beneteau, along with 4 other paying crew, her skipper and first mate. The ARC runs from Europe to the Caribbean. That’s at the shortest point, about 2,000 miles. Add in that, I’d only met half my crew, and only for 36 hours. And oh yes, the longest stretch I’d sailed before was 300 miles – and this was over the course of a week, in a bikini, light winds and with a cold beer in my hand!.
Arc Route (ish, weather dependent)
It’s hard to pinpoint what I was expecting. Or expecting it to be like, because the whole experience was like nothing I’ve ever done before. It feels surreal, even now, years after the fact, It felt as though I lived a different life in the month I was away, but it also seems to have been over in a flash, I still remember the bruises on my legs, the tide mark on my wrist left by the watch, how my hair bleached almost white by the sun and how anything more than at most shorts and t shirt seemed restrictive.
I also have a series of snapshots in my head, which still have me smiling wryly, grinning inanely and almost shuddering as I flick through them. Some are silent memories, others come with bursts of music and there’s a disjointed nature to the memories, to the random reminders of conversations and the way that they jumble together, which rather reflects the emotions of the trip.
We were a strange crew, four IT people (although why I think four IT people is strange now is beyond me), a chap with his own sign business and our skipper and first mate and we were to spend more than 3 weeks in a confined space in a potentially stressful situation with people that we’d never met could not be one of our better decisions!
The Crew: As we crossed the finish line: Phil, Matt, Neil, Mary, Sarah
Our race started, 2nd across the start line, we rounded the Island and Venus (our Yacht was Spirit of Venus) – those Brits in the audience can summon up all the “good ship Venus” songs you want, believe me, after 19 days at sea, we’d done them all.. – so, we heeled over, Venus went on her side with the wind, as 30 knots of wind and full sails didn’t go that well. And so began our adventure, and the two days of seasickness for most of the crew..
We began our watch system at 1800 on 20th November. 3 hour watches during the day and 4 hours at night. Skipper Bonnie, Neil and I took the first watch, making our first day a long one. When you’re on watch, its like every watch becomes a day. I didn’t have 19 days at sea, I had 3 watches x 19 days at sea. No wonder if felt like a lifetime in itself.
It’s hard to sum up 3,200 miles, and 57 watches into one blog entry, so if you’d like to track more of the trip that I took, then head on over to my personal blog where I’m serializing it, but before you do that, here’s a few thoughts.
WATER on a DRY BOAT
There is very little fresh water on board. We have a water maker, but it takes somewhat MEH. We drink orange squash by the gallon. We wah our hair with wet wipes, or sea water, or not at all. Crew members who smell, are told in no uncertain terms. We are a dry boat. Until we hit half way across. Then we share a bottle of fizz between the 7 of us, to celebrate half way, Neil’s birthday and my wedding anniversary. I get to send an email to Nigel via sat phone connection.
NIGHT SAILING
Moonrise
I know the earth spins around, but I’ve never seen it before. The long nights of two four hour watches, seeing the stars in different positions as the night progresses made it all real. The Plough and the planet Venus become my lifeline at night, my drift off time. Shooting stars are everywhere; we puzzle for hours over those with green flashes and settle on space debris. Yet we’re alone. On still nights, where we ghost long, or barely move, we plankton spot, leaning over the side, torches in hand, and childlike fascination with glowing dots that go down infinitely.
Dark nights with cloud cover are miserable and last longer. The sensation of spinning or constantly turning left is overwhelming.
Watching the moonrise is more spectacular than the sunrise or the sunset and sailing by it’s light when it’s full is like having a torch on the sails. Squalls coming in black and thunderous is scary in a heart racing way, wondering whether they’re going to “get us”, or if we’ll escape with just a little windy nudge on our way. Waves rush by, in a hiss, fizz and effervescent bubble as they slide by the hull. White horses chase the stern, faster and faster, almost overtaking, I swear some nights you hear them snort as you see them pull up short out of the corner of your eye.
DOLPHINS, FLYING FISH and WHALES
Dolphins! Swimming alongside, and jumping up at the bow. Wow. Then a pod of killer whales swim across the bow, a momentary panic and they’re gone. Another whale days later, it seems our constant companion are the flying fish, fleeing prey, flying for what seems like forever, we dread them landing on Venus. Stinky little things. We “catch” five in our trip, one lies dead on the foredeck for a day or so, until we smell it’s there, tangled in the sail. Another lands in the cockpit, while we’re on an all girl watch. We shriek. No rescue; and brave Mary has to throw him overboard
Flying fish
(Never have I needed to sheet in so much in my life to avoid it!). Our worst encounter is the one that lands in the wheel well at the darkest point of night and dies shuddering while Neil helms, talking us through its death throes. As the sun rises, Monkey spears it with the bread knife and the boys examine it (it has real wings!!), photo it, video it for posterity and use it as bait on the fishing line.
And then almost as soon as it began, it’s over. We sight St Lucia, it’s dark as we sail into Rodney Bay. Racing to the end.
We’ve run our engine every watch to charge the batteries yet not engaged forward gear for 3200 miles. But now, it won’t start. It won’t engage forward gear. We’ll have to anchor off in the bay. No beer for us tonight! A frantic effort goes into fixing it. Victorious. We motor through the narrow gap into Rodney Bay Marina, wide eyed at all the people, the bars. As we motor through, applause rings out and we look excitedly at each other. For us? And then it hits me, that yes it is, we’ve done it! Made it across the Atlantic. Blimey. It’s a stunning thought.
Skipper Bonnie brings us into the marina, slipping Venus into reverse to slow us down, the revs go up and we head towards the concrete pontoon at 4.5 knots. A crowd is gathered to welcome us, music plays, the rum punch is chilling, our screams and waves of “no reverse” go un heard. Needless to say we stop. Suddenly. After 3,200 miles, we slam into the concrete pontoon and we made it.*
#TravelTuesday from Actiance is just one of the ways in which we get our extended team involved in social. Our team are passionate about what they do, whether that’s sailing, attending the Grammy’s, Turkey or just plain traveling to the office. What are YOU and YOUR team passionate about? What makes your team tick?
A serious consideration of Social Media ROI
Posted in Social Networking on February 14, 2013
This week’s thought leader Thursday commentary comes from our good friend Hyoun Park . Hyoun is a veteran of baseball, moneyball and telecom-related startups, a trained social scientist with experience in cross-cultural gender studies; Boston University MBA-trained marketer; and an industry analyst covering analytics, mobility, and enterprise communications. He’s currently principal analyst at Nucleus Research .
Social media, which I’m going to describe as public-facing social technologies that allow you to both converse and network with the outside world, is described as a new technology where best practices are still emerging and the value is difficult to quantify. Because of this, companies shy away from discussing the value and ROI associated with social media. To see if this is really true, think a bit about the history of social media.
Although there are new social media platforms that come out, such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine, the truth is that most of the core social media platforms used today have been around for nearly a decade and are based on technologies that are even older than that. Twitter was started in 2006 and, in functionality, has a lot in common with Internet Relay Chat, which was started in the late 1980s. Facebook started in 2004 and the friending aspects date further back to earlier networks such as Livejournal, which started in 1999, and the threaded comments associated with conversations, which date back to USENET and the bulletin board systems which were started in the early 1980s.
So, in some respects, social media has multiple generations: 1) the digital savvy, who started using social media tools in the 1980s and pre-Internet Service Provider world 1990s; 2) the ISP generation of AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy; 3) the Geocities and early bloggers generation of web page creators, and then 4) the modern generation of Facebook, Twitter, and other emerging social networks.
With each generation, the value of social media activity has slowly shifted from a purely personal value proposition to one where online branding, network quality, and broadcast have become increasingly important. As these external measures have become increasingly important, social media ROI has become something that can potentially be calculated.
To truly measure social ROI, companies must equate social activity to a financial business outcome such as increased deal size, customer churn, or service costs. Reverse-engineering this SaaS figure from David Skok’s http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/ is a good start. By doing so, companies can start to identify the actual contribution of social media to improving business goals and creating dollar values based on increased productivity, reduced service escalations, lead generation, and other key metrics. The numbers and technology to understand true social ROI exist already, but how long will it take for marketers to catch on?
Hopefully we are starting to turn the corner and will think less about social media as a pure broadcast media mechanism or a pure service channel and more as a set of interactions associated with business outcomes. Once we do so, we can finally stop talking about social media ROI as some sort of myth and start getting to the financial cost/benefit relationships associated with social media that justify the establishment and growth of social media endeavors in the enterprise.
What to do when social goes bad: The Lesson of HMV
Posted in Actiance, Compliance, Employee Behavior, Social Networking on January 31, 2013
It’s been a momentous day in the Twitterverse for HMV. (For those of my US colleagues, who don’t know the brand, here’s a snapshot – from Wikipedia.. if you want more, click on the links).
HMV Group PLC is a British multinational entertainment retailing company with operations in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index. The first HMV branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on Oxford Street in 1921, and the HMV name was also used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards.
HMVSite Down
Now I had to go to Wikipedia to tell you more about HMV, because the company was put into administration on January 15th, as you can see from this is all I get at www.HMV.com
As if that isn’t bad enough, what took place on Twitter earlier today should give any senior management team cause for social cold sweats. Normally it’s great for the brand when you’re live tweeting an event (like we did recently at #IBMConnect)
But I’m not sure anyone has tweeted their own sacking before. That’s right. Just before 130pm local time, HMV’s official and verified Twitter account sent out the following: “We’re tweeting live from HR where we’re all being fired! Exciting!! #hmvXFactorFiring“.
This tweet went viral with over 1,300 retweets in 30 minutes.
This tweet was followed by 7 others, which told the social world what was going on.
Posts such as: “There are over 60 of us being fired at once! Mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand. #hmvXFactorFiring” and, “Sorry we’ve been quiet for so long. Under contract, we’ve been unable to say a word, or -more importantly – tell the truth #hmvXFactorFiring.” Went out. And a little bit like car crash TV, we all watched.
Here’s the one that really consolidated for me the difference between those who “get” social and those who don’t. “Just overheard our Marketing Director (he’s staying, folks) ask “How do I shut down Twitter?” #hmvXFactorFiring.”
It gets worse. Several hours later the offending tweets disappeared from the @HMVtweets feed.
Not, though before you could pick them up on places like Topsy – the news and screenshots of the offending tweets have been trending through the Huffington Post, CBS and Business Week here in the US, and the story continues.
You can see more write ups of the story at Holtz Communications, TwoFourSeven and I found the news out through superstar @rhappe tweeting it (follow her, she’s great for breaking news like this)
So what can you do to make sure that #hmvXfactorFiring doesn’t end up at your door?
- Social has GOT to be part of any crisis management communications plan. Period.
- Make sure ownership of your Corporate Social Network Accounts is with a group that is part of the planning.
- Transparency is key. If you spin, lie or cheat, you will be found out.
- Deleting content, while it might be necessary sometimes (racist commentary, profanity and the like that you do NOT want on your Twitter feed have no place staying there in order to be transparent) should be undertaken with caution.
- If you do delete content, make sure you have a record of it. You can be sure that the rest of the world already does.
- Engage, understand the mood and the sentiment of the audience and go with it. Empower the team responding to do just that. Respond.
What else would you add to how you can deal with social in a crisis?
Without mobile where would you be?
Posted in Employee Behavior, Social Networking, Trends on January 21, 2013
I’m on a train as I write this. From Montreal to Quebec and @via_rail is taking the strain as I head north. At the same time, my mum and I are messaging each other in real time on Facebook, I’m iMessaging a colleague, tweeting and also checking my email.
Every now and then I stop and think how much technology has adapted to,our mobile life and how lost we’d be without it. Certainly the lithium Batteries might be awning all lithium battery devic on planes, following a series of fires, caused a moments thought. I can’t take my cell phone or my laptop with me?? Wow, the providers of collaboration platforms will be rubbing their hands in glee if this one spreads. I can’t imagine that. I can’t even check my laptop or cell phone… That’s going one further than the travel restrictions after 911.
Mobile access to technology that we see for both our personal, and our professional lives has become ubiquitous. Who, for example watched, hero Felix Bumgartner’s Space Jump historic jump from space? My sister in law was visiting at the time. We don’t have a TV here in the USA, so we were watching on the Internet, from laptops. Until we decided that we needed to get a move on and head out – we wanted to catch the tide as we were planning an afternoon sailing in the bay.
No problem. As my husband drove, I watched the proceedings on my iPhone and the relies watched in the back seat of the car on the iPad as we drove to the marina.
There’s also news today that Bank of America is adding 10,000 mobile users a day. Wow. Time and money stand still for no one!!
Today happens to be a vacation for me, but my use of mobile continues, as the applications, the tools that I use in my professional and personal life morph into one, the devices that I carry for the business meetings I’ll be at later in the week, become my communications tools for catching up with the family, for checking out the hotel in Quebec and planning where I might eat a late lunch, or sharing the photos’s from the train and comparing my experiences with Via Rail and Amtrak (Amtrak increased my Klout by using my Amtrak from the California Zephyr on their Facebook page!!).
What would I miss the most if I didn’t have mobile? I think I’d miss the “share” – and that’s not just me sharing, it’s others sharing too.. I’d not see the updates from fellow travelers, or be getting real time suggestions as to what to see and do.
What about you? What would you miss the most if your mobile access was curtailed?
Avoid the Social Ghost Town: Five Tips
Posted in Actiance, Employee Behavior, Social Networking on January 17, 2013
I’m presenting one of Actiance’s regular education webinars this morning, my topic is personal brand and how you can use social to build and maintain it. I’m checking my slides, working through my commentary and I get to my section on establishing a brand presence. The final bullet point on this slide is “No Ghost Town Here” and that makes me think that that’s actually one of the most important points about building a brand on social.
You’ve got to be consistent. What point is there in building a community, building a brand and then letting it fall fallow, go to waste and have no content? Building a brand is HARD WORK. It takes a heck of a lot of time, commitment and often a lot of money. Building a brand that is engaged and engaging is harder. And it takes serious commitment to maintain. If you’re not serious about that, then I question that you’re serious about the rest of your life/business.
By the time you read this, I’ll no doubt have delivered my webinar (its 0900 pacific and you can register here, if you do perchance read this in time), but fear not dear reader, we’ll be recording the session, and as with all our educational webinars, we run them live at a minimum every two weeks, so you can listen to the dulcet tones of one of the Subject Matter Experts here at Actiance, and ask us questions live on air!
However, I’m taking this opportunity to share some tips on how to avoid your brand becoming the social ghost town:
- Commit. You can’t be half committed to social. you’re either in, or you’re not. So either commit the time, or don’t. Be realistic about your commitment. If you’re only going to share content once a month, then, really, Twitter probably isn’t the place for you. Actually if you’re not going to engage with your friends, followers and connections, then consider if social is the right space for your brand at all.. if you want to lurk, you can do that anonymously.
- Have a plan. I know I should start this with strategy, but lets assume you have that. Now get tactical and look at what you’re going to share, how you’re going to engage and with what.
- Sort your content out. Content is hard work. So you need to look up to bullet point one, and then build content into that. And this isn’t as hard as it first looks. Every business has content. Fair enough it might not be in 140 characters of less, but you’ve definitely get content, and face it with 140 characters, you’re cutting it down, not adding to it!
- Associate your brand. You know the values that you want your brand to have (whether your brand is a personal or a corporate brand), so associate it with like brands – re tweet, re purpose, share blogs, follow news feeds. If you ask yourself the question “should I retweet this?”, then the answer is NO. Associate your brand ONLY with those that will reflect well on you.
- Crowdsource: Work through my list. If you associate your brand effectively you will find other good content. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the thousand other networks out there let you collectively share content, so look for what’s popular, what resonates with your network and your aspirations and work that crowd (baby).
- Darn it, I said five in the subject right? ok this is the bonus point. And to my mind its often forgotten and missed in our desire to see our Klout score go up and our Kred extend… LISTEN. (sorry, don’t mean to shout.. but sometimes, over all the noise, on social listening, and THEN engaging is the most important thing we can do.
What did I miss? What’s your tip for ensuring your brand doesn’t become a social ghost town?
PS: My graphic today comes from Bodie State Park, California – a ghost town apart from the park rangers, and well worth the trip, its a superb state park with some great stories!
Facebook Graph: The Supermarket Coupon Book of Social Selling
Posted in Actiance, Employee Behavior, Facebook, Financial Services, FINRA, Social Networking on January 16, 2013
You can’t possibly have missed that yesterday, Facebook made a big announcement, with the news that Facebook Graph is to hit our social inbox in the very near future. Here at Actiance, our financial services customers who use social focus to a large extent on LinkedIn as their primary network. Asking as to why, there are a variety of answers:
- It’s viewed as the “professional network”
- There are less concerns about “more personal” content being shared
- It’s pretty much where their customers are.
I don’t disagree with what’s written above, but actually I think Facebook and Financial Services were made for each other. I fundamentally don’t think that I can separate the professional Sarah from the personal Sarah. I’m very Gen Y in my thinking like that (actually I’m still 17 years old in my head, despite what the wrinkles around my eyes tell you). And for that reason, I have got over my concern that my colleagues, work acquaintances and customers might see something about my personal life through any of my social networks. As I say as I begin each demo of Socialite, our social engagement solution – you may see something inappropriate from my friends, family or colleagues, but you’re all adults.
Facebook gives me a different relationship with folks than LinkedIn. Would I know of the foodie habits of one head of compliance? or the horse riding antics of a Gartner analyst? or the movie mania of @AugieRay if I didn’t have Facebook? More than likely not.
Transpose this specifically to financial services. We – and that’s the Royal we – share so much of our lives on Facebook, that it actually complements the provision of financial services products. It allows more suitable product to be provided to us – and suitable product provisions are a key tenet of regulators such as FINRA. It allows us to actually connect more as human beings, we’re social animals, and have been for eons. The transparency of Facebook is perhaps what worries us, but you know, we’ll get over that as we become more social in the virtual world.
So, and yes there is a point to this blog. While the complete functionality of Facebook Graph is yet to be revealed, and we look forward to the beta, its one more step towards being able to use the information that we all so readily share to work towards social selling. I look at it as the supermarket coupon book of social. You have my shopping habits down pat, so provide me with more suitable product. @Safeway has my number in this regard, so why not my Financial Services provider?
Lunch is for wimps. A thigh trembling tale on #TravelTuesday
Posted in Actiance, TravelTuesday on January 14, 2013
Welcome to #TravelTuesday. The Team here at Actiance are a well traveled lot, whether it’s our regular trips to conferences, our offices around the world, customers or partners, or simply our latest vacations. We’re increasingly using social to expand our travel horizons, meet new people and share our experiences. Seeing as we can’t invite y’all around for a slide show in front of the TV, we’ll take you on a virtual trip every week on our #TravelTuesdays.
Our first trip on #TravelTuesday comes from Sarah Carter, and she recounts the exploits of the Cheapskis team way back in the mists of time, in the “chunnel”, on the autoroutes of France and into the Alps.
Once upon a time, there were a team of friends, family and colleagues, who discovered a mutual liking for adventure, skiing, snowboarding and driving. Luckily this collective weren’t real fans of much sleep, they didn’t have a huge amount of disposable income, but did have a great desire to spend time in the mountains. Sadly they lived in the south of England, not a location known for it’s mountains or even hills that you can ski on.
Our plan was simple. We’d leave from the office on Thursday evening. Get the 10 or 12 of us into 3 cars and drive for the Channel. Hop on the Chunnel, for a quick 22 mile trip to France and then, arriving on the Northern Coast of France, find an autoroute south and, well, drive. And drive we did. For round about 12 hours. Swapping drivers, navigators, lead cars and catching a few zzz’s in between times. Our plan was to end up in the mountains in time for breakfast and first tracks. From there on in, the plan was to ski all day, party all night through until Sunday after skiing, when we’d hit the autoroutes again, and the Channel tunnel, arriving just in time for the working day on Monday morning.
Now over the years, there were several Cheapski trips. The first, to Villars in Switzerland, where the highlights were the ski equivalent of a route march across linked resorts, that involved skiing across roads, taking a bus and ending up at the top of the Les Diablerets glacier in a snow storm, teaching a couple of the newbies that wiping out in about 4 foot of power was actually pretty fun and didn’t hurt. The lowlights: Well lets say we learned that we had passed the Youth Hostelling phase of our travel lives. There was a memorable trips to Les Deux Alpes, where the brightness of Andreas’s jacket still burns my retina’s and I think I can probably still taste the garlic from the home made garlic bread that Steve was responsible for. There was a trip too, to Italy, where we skied between Zermatt and Cervinia and enjoyed the glorious mountain restaurants, and a 15 mile top to bottom run down to Valtournenche. One of my favorites though, was Les Trois Vallees, the Three Valleys in France.
It was an upgrade for us, we rented a chalet apartment near the ski lifts. A wonderful place, close to the slopes, to bars and restaurants, with a great kitchen lots of space for us all – the group dynamics changed over the years, the cars got newer, the drivers older, the right feet heavier, but the premise remained the same. From Thursday night, drive, ski, party, repeat until Sunday night and arrive at work on Monday with weary bodies, great stories and planning the next trip.
Our group always had different levels of skiers and boarders, there was usually a beginner here and there, and those who were more adventurous, so we usually split up during the day, meeting perhaps for lunch or at least for beers at the end of the day, when we generally cooked group meals, to save on the costs of the long weekend, of course then blowing our savings by apres skiing in a local bar until the wee small hours.
The adventurers on the The Three Valleys trip had a mission. We planned to ski all three Valley’s – Courchevel, Meribel and Val Thorens in a single day. We’d start in Val Thorens, where our chalet was, head up the mountain, connect through to Meribel, head up the mountain and down the other side, aiming for the base in Courchevel. There we’d have a little lunch and head on back at the end of the day. Nothing like a challenge to whet the appetite. It turned out that we upped the challenge a little. Pushing our speed and now being experienced in how to navigate French ski lift lines (sharpen your elbows and get your ski’s on top of others, before yours get stuck), we decided that actually that wasn’t challenge enough. That’s right folks, we skied the Three Valleys and back before lunch.
There’s an old saying, “what happens on tour stays on tour”, so I hope the Cheapskis team will forgive me for sharing some of our stories. We’re all a little older, somewhat wiser, we definitely need more sleep, although we all still ski, board and drive with that joie de vivre that has never left us, I’m sure we all sometimes wish those times back, all, apart probably from that bathroom in the hostel in Villars of course.
What’s a memorable trip for you? Did you meet new folks? Have a great time with friends and family? Where are you heading to next? And who do you want to hear from next on #TravelTuesday?
Can you have a social army without a general?
Posted in Actiance, Collaboration, Employee Behavior, FINRA, LinkedIn, Social Networking on January 14, 2013
Sarah Carter
I argued recently in a discussion on LinkedIn that the future of social is the distributed team , that 17% of us trust a brand and 70% of us trust individuals in our network – the personal brands.
The growth of that personal brand is a key tenet in the paper that I put together in 2012 on the Six Principles of Social Success. It’s actually the second principle – immediately following that social needs to be an integrated element of your organizations business plan, not a stand alone solution.
The discussion came about, because of a great article from Erica Ayotte – who writes for Social Media Today – Erica wrote about the recent phenomena of “firing all the social media directors”, when the latest new big shiny thing comes along. Believe me you want to join this discussion, there are some great comments and dialogues going on.
I do very much agree that the growth of social is about the development of the personal brand, enabling the distributed team, empowering them, and making them brand ambassadors. This is where I believe we will see true value from social, the individual brand that we all engage with. That said. They’re the army, the foot soldiers, not the generals. Without a general you don’t have a strategy, a direction or a battle plan.
Strategy and battle planning takes experience and in the brave new world of social battle worn, campaign hardy individuals are absolutely what we need.
If you’d like to know more about what it takes to build a personal brand on social, then why not join me at 9 pacific on Thursday 17th Jan for 30 minutes and you can find out more – I look forward to seeing you there!
