My Bio Cloud

Andrew Baker, a fellow XeeSM user inspired me to do that. I thought it's interesting enough to share it:




Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

The End Of Email

I blogged about it a few weeks ago in a different context. But I'd like to shed more light on the dieing email technology. Yes, yes, yes, It will live on for a long time - but it's the end of it's relevance - and therefor eventually die.

My email account receives on average 36,000 emails a month. About 30,000+ are filtered by the server based spam filter. I don't even notice those 30,000 - other than in a mail server log file saying - deleted 31,074 spam emails.
From the remaining 6,000 email about 5,000 get filtered by my local spam filter. So I end up with about 35 emails per day of which 50% I still care less, 15 - 20 may be informative and 5-10 are real important.
In other words 0.5% of the email volume is important.
Or: 99.5% of emails are a waste of bandwidth, wast of money as I need to buy and maintain spam filters. It's a sad illusion for customers who trust marketers that they can "deliver the message".
OK - I get more than 5-10 important messages a day - much more but I get them through different ways. People contact me via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter direct messages, text me, skype me and so forth. Only 20% of what is relevant to me comes through email - and steadily declining. Friends, customers and peers know - if something is REALLY important they skype me.

Now - you may say but if 5-10 are very important you can't throw it over board. Right ! But it tells me that there will (hopefully soon) somebody come up with a cool new idea to get those 10 important messages to me without all the overhead of spam and filters.

I look forward to the day I can announce that I no longer use email - which I predict will happen within the next 18 month.

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

All social sites on your blog

It's been messy to put all your social sites on your blog, your website, your email signature and worst of all - your business card. If you have a twitter account, you have only one URL to tell your friends where else they can connect with you. On your blog the same.

Check out http://xeesm.com you see it here on my blog as an embedded script. You see it on my website as an embedded script, you see it on my email signature and many more places.

Change one - changed all others
The neat thing is: If I add or remove a site, like I recently added imeem, it appears on all sites and anywhere I use my XeeSM automatically. Check the XeeSM fan page, quite some more cool blog posts from other users.

A natural connection booster
The most surprising effect however was that so many of my friends and contacts connect on other places simply because they just didn't know I have a presence there too. And that drove their friends to connect with me too.

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

Last release before XeeSM's public Beta

Last night the team updated XeeSM one more time prior to public Beta next week. Here is what's new:
- Blogger, Wordpress, Website ... gadget
- Allow XeeSM owner to tweet about himself
- Provide URL suggestions (ajax suggest)
- Let your friends know where you are
- Make it a #FollowFriday feature

- Blogger, Wordpress, Website ... gadget
You can embed XeeSM in your blog or website. Go to "My Profile" and click on "Show XeeSM embed code". The code is based on your profile and you can cut and paste and add to your site. Let us know if you need any help. Like you see it here.

- Allow XeeSM owner to tweet about himself
Once you have your XeeSM or update your profile, you can Tweet about it right from the profile manager page.

- Provide URL suggestions (ajax suggest)
The most asked for request was to add a way to suggest the URL format when you add a site. At your command. Here it is.

- Let your friends know where you are
Share your social site directory with friends, customers and other contacts. Click on "Share it" and upload your email list from Outlook or similar address books. We will send your XeeSM to everybody you put into the list. This may help you to become more approachable.

- Make it a #FollowFriday feature
Each XeeSM has a new Tweet text to introduce the person to others on Twitter. But on Friday it automatically has a #FollowFriday hash tag included.

Please do us a favor and comment on our Facebook FAN Page.



Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Why most small / medium businesses struggle with social media.

Where is the expected added business?

Social media appears to be a new marketing tool. It looks like a new way to get closer to customers, win some more deals, creating a new communication channel. But where is the new business?

How can I turn it into an $800 Million business?
It was just a little bit too simple. And like anywhere else, there is no free lunch. But social media has a huge potential. It wasn't just for fun that Zappos, an online shoe retailer was acquired for $800 Million dollar by Amazon. So what is it that makes social media work for some and not for others?

It is actually only one tiny difference:
For some social media is a new marketing channel, get done with it and go on with business as usual. Honestly, how could that work? For others social media is a whole new way of doing business with existing customers, partners and the rest of the market across all departments. Yes, it needs some thinking - but again, there is no free lunch. The latter ones are the winner.

Customers across all industries complain that the vendors, channels and suppliers they deal with provide a mediocre to lousy service, the companies are not approachable and nobody seem to listen. Businesses are so busy with themselves fighting the "business climate" that they seem to oversee that the most important aspect of getting business up are happy customers. Obviously even the coolest social media campaign won't help at all - if the rest of the company does business as usual. If Customers complain about approachability social media can help to get the team more approachable. If service is a weakness, social relationships between service team and customer would be a great deal of improvement. If products lack functionality requested by users, social media is a great way to connect product management with the market. Interestingly enough, in none of the above scenarios a "cool social media marketing campaign" is the weakness or even required to engage.

How to solve the problem:
1) Understand that social media is a cross functional engagement
2) Don't hire an external social media team but create a social culture internally
3) Keep sales in charge of customer relationships - but in a more social way
4) Make product development more approachable and listen to the market by being part of the social web
5) Ask marketing to help gather data and reports from the social web and escalate alerts inside the organization
6) Develop a strategy based on a thorough social media assessment
7) Engage in the social web with the goal to increase customer advocacy
8) Have a small team well educated and professionally execute the strategy

The Social Media Academy conducts a complimentary webinar this Friday Aug 14, with further details on the topic.

Sorry - I unfollowed you

Since I started Twitter in 2007 I followed all kinds of people and over 25,000 followed and unfollowed me over time. I used other tools to get through the noise and a few weeks ago I started to unfollow. I am down at around 1,500 right now. Why 1,500? See further down - let me first say who and how.

Who did I unfollow?
1) People who have "I make you rich" or "follow me I follow you" in their bio.
2) People who still today have no photo up
3) People who have their dog or cat instead of their own photo. I understand you love your dog - but I'm not tweeting with your dog
4) People with over 10,000 followers and still follow more than they have followers. People collect all kinds of things, stamps, photos tinker toys - and today: Connections. Not my cup of tea.
5) If you didn't tweet in the last 90 days - tell me when you are back - happy to re-follow if it's interesting
6) People who basically RT all day long to stay in the game, I check carefully - some are actually very nice - others I just don't care.
7) Random noise & Bandwidth eater. Now if you read so far, please read this carefully: I don't follow if it is all about walking your dog. I LOVE people talking about there personal life as well - what they had for dinner and so forth but only if that is not ALL I read. I like the complexity of business, family, fun, personal, and what ever constitutes you. We humans are complex anumals and can assemble a social picture in seconds - challenge my ability to do that.

How did I grind through thousands of connections? I used a cool tool called refollow.com. It does it all. You can filter and slice and dice and then mass unfollow.

Who should NOT do this?
If you are follower collector, you shouldn't do that because your followers will go down right away. Many who auto follow (that's how you get many followers in the first place) have their tools also do auto un-follow - so you would loose all those who followed you automatically. In other words if Twitter is your follower game platform - it ruins your game ;-)

Now why down to 1,500?.
In accordance to Dunbar, an average human being is limited to about 150 social relationships as a meaningfull number. The limitation is our neocortex. But just a few hundred years ago we couldn't fly, we couldnet lift much more than our own body weight and had many other limitations. What the industrial revolution did to our physical productivity - the social revolution does to our social productivity - So my "Axel-Factor" is to be able to socialize with 10 times as many as Dunbar's number is - or about 1,500 people thanks to the social tools we have.

@AxelS
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
(XeeSM is my approachability utility)

Developing a social media strategy - prevent flops

The best way to prevent social media flops is to create a sound strategy in the first place. It sounds a lot of work and too much for many small businesses but this model has proven to work even in small organizations:

* ASSESSMENT
Social Media Assessment (4 quadrant assessment model) find out where your customers are, where they hang out and what is on their mind. Takes you a week or two to make it right. But you learn more than ever before. If you feel you know already - this is your first red flag to a social media flop. Check your customers presence, research how your brand is seen in the market, research your partners and your competitors.

* SWOT
The assessment leads you to a good ol' SWOT analysis. You will find out what your (brand, product, service) strengths and weaknesses are from a market point of view - develop your opportunity and threat profile. You do that in a few hours.


* STRATEGY
Now since you know more about your market from a social connection and conversation point of view develop your strategy: Goals objectives, value to the market, major activities to achieve your goals, resources, budgets. Develop a strategy team that includes some of your customers (the X-Team) - that is the most magic difference to old world strategies. May take a few days and online conference calls. But if you do it without your customers - you flop - guaranteed.






* PROGRAMS
Once the strategy is sealed, you construct and execute your programs together with your X-Team. Instead of the old model of blowing something into the market you work with the market. May take a week or two to develop. The key to successful programs is PARTICIPATION and CONTRIBUTION. Each program need to be designed that your eco system contributes and other participates. Otherwise it is just yet another marketing splash - random noise. But your X-Team will prevent you from that type of campaigns anyway.

* REPORTING
The key like in any other business project: Measure, Model and Tune your activities until they are truly successful. Select the right tools and monitor your activities daily - some in real time.


So all in all it may take a few weeks - but you have a wonder weapon - versus yet another boring marketing campaign nobody is listening to.

Make a difference WITH your market!

Social Media 2.0 - The Next Generation

Organizing Social Media Across Departments

Where most businesses start:
When companies begin to engage in social media they typically start in the marketing department with some rather tactical marketing campaigns. In those early models a large company either hired some social media "experts" to do the campaign or found some engaged people internally. The rest of the organization does "business as usual". The problem quickly surfaces in sales "What are these guys talking to my customers", on the service side "what are they promising to our clients", and the product management team still doesn't get any feedback how to better launch the next generation products. While it is obvious that social media is a key method to create a better customer experience, a better way to listen to the market, a faster way to react to needs and a less expensive way to become part of the market, the "social media marketing campaigns" alone can't do the job. An isolated "campaign" is often counter productive and it would be better to just not engage at all.

What did we learn:
Learning from the early experiences we developed a holistic approach, a cross functional organization model that is able to carry out a social media strategy. The so called ComStar model integrates all departments that have a touch point with the market into the social engagement strategy. Only a small core of social media trained and experienced people is necessary to help steer even large global enterprises into a new direction. An internal social media strategy and it's leverage effect makes it possible.

The Principle:
At it's core, the ComStar Model has one principle:
- Develop a social media service team (SMST) that supports all departments in the organization
The SMST members do not necessarily tweet, blog, comment themselves instead empowers others to do so.
Similar to IT team, finance support or HR that services an entire company, the SMST functions the same way.

How it works:
With the ComStar Model, the SMST (Social Media Service Team) is the guardian angel of the social media strategy. The main objective is to inspire, motivate and service the strategy relevant departments such as marketing, sales, service, product management, HR and other. The departments in turn engage with the customer base, prospects and the market in a whole. In this model the SMST is the cordial spine for the engagement, while sales keeps the control and the relationship to their customers (even so in a different more social manner), marketing keeps being the creative part in the new engagement model “not pushing the message” but fueling the conversation, product managers get the tools and methods to better listen to needs of the market and service teams get the support to be better integrated in customer issues.

Change
Behavioral changes, in particular with "the old guard" on the sales side, are as painful as necessary. Change has never been an easy task. But also change has never been more important and has never shown more successful results like today. Creating some fan pages and a few tweets don't create a better customer experience - nor does it generate the often promised millions of additional revenue. But a great and ongoing trust building relationship with the market does, as we can see in cases like Zappos.



Presentation:
We will present the model in greater detail on
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT
Leasdership Series Webinar


Agenda:
- Social media impact to our business operations
- ComStar, an organization model for social media strategies
- Comparing structural differences
- Implementation challenges
- Job description, work flow and responsibilities
- Motivation and compensation considerations
- Cross functional reporting models
- A holistic view to corporate social media

Registration

Social Media Evolution

ComStar, a Cross Functional Organization Model and Strategy for Social Media engagement

When companies begin to engage in social media they typically start in the marketing department with some rather tactical marketing campaigns. In those early models a large company either hired some social media "experts" to do the campaign or found some engaged people internally. The rest of the organization does "business as usual". The problem quickly surfaces in sales "What are these guys talking to my customers", on the service side "what are they promising to our clients", and the product management team still doesn't get any feedback how to better launch the next generation products. While it is obvious that social media is a key method to create a better customer experience, a better way to listen to the market, a faster way to react to needs and a less expensive way to become part of the market, the "social media marketing campaigns" alone can't do the job. An isolated "campaign" is often counter productive and it would be better to just not engage at all.

Learning from the early experiences we developed a holistic approach, a cross functional organization model that is able to carry out a social media strategy. The so called ComStar model integrates all departments that have a touch point with the market into the social engagement strategy. Only a small core of social media trained and experienced people is necessary to help steer even large global enterprises into a new direction. An internal social media strategy and it's leverage effect makes it possible.

At it's core, the ComStar Model has one principle:
- Develop a social media service team (SMST) that supports all departments in the organization
The SMST members do not necessarily tweet, blog, comment themselves instead empowers others to do so.
Similar to IT team, finance support or HR that services an entire company, the SMST functions the same way.

With the ComStar Model, the SMST (Social Media Service Team) is the guardian angel of the social media strategy. The main objective is to inspire, motivate and service the strategy relevant departments such as marketing, sales, service, product management, HR and other. The departments in turn engage with the customer base, prospects and the market in a whole. In this model the SMST is the cordial spine for the engagement, while sales keeps the control and the relationship to their customers (even so in a different more social manner), marketing keeps being the creative part in the new engagement model “not pushing the message” but fueling the conversation, product managers get the tools and methods to better listen to needs of the market and service teams get the support to be better integrated in customer issues.

Behavioral changes of "the old guard" in particular on the sales side are as painful as necessary. Change has never been an easy task. But also change has never been more important and has never shown more successful results like today. Creating some fan pages and a few tweets don't create a better customer experience - nor does it generate the often promised millions of additional revenue. But a great and ongoing trust building relationship with the market does, as we can see in cases like Zappos.

We will present the model in greater detail on
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT
Leasdership Series Webinar
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/404589362

Agenda:
- Social media impact to our business operations
- ComStar, an organization model for social media strategies
- Comparing structural differences
- Implementation challenges
- Job description, work flow and responsibilities
- Motivation and compensation considerations
- Cross functional reporting models
- A holistic view to corporate social media

Registration:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/404589362



Axel Schultze MyXeeSM