social media marketing

IBM Delivers Online Merchants New Cognitive Capabilities That Turn Commerce Insights into More Powerful Customer Experiences

CommerceInsights_Social Tile

Watson Analytics Allows Brands to Use Everyday Language to Identify Hidden Data Connections and Drive Better Business Performance

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today (Dec 3rd) announced new commerce capabilities that help online merchants easily gain the insights needed to evaluate category and product performance and make quick and effective merchandising decisions. Leveraging cognitive capabilities from Watson Analytics, IBM Commerce Insights allows practitioners to gain a real-time view into customer behavior and market factors that are impacting their business, proactively identify opportunities and roadblocks and take informed actions to increase sales and business performance.

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Let Go of the Fear and Own Social ~via @InsideCXM

Just about every business owner recognizes the importance of using social media. To that end, they arrange for web sites to be built, have accounts on all the major social networking sites, and regularly post information about what their businesses are offering and doing. While that’s fine, these efforts are still relying mainly on pushing information toward consumers and attempting to treat their responses like data. That’s where things need to change.

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Brand Adoption Of Instagram Up 80% In One Year

A few weeks ago Jeff Bercovici of Forbes wrote a piece entitled Instagram Launches Ads, Promises, ‘We’ll Start Slow’ in which he told all us Instagram users that “the honeymoon’s over” and that the “long-promised introduction of advertising to the photo-based social network is upon us.”

The Instagram logo is displayed next to a smar...

In his piece Jeff made reference to a post from the official Instagram blog which says they (Instagram) will “focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.”

Well based on the results of the recently released Instagram brand adoption study from Simply Measured,

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It’s Not Just Big Data, It’s The Right Big Data That Matters Most

This past July Econsultancy issued a report which made reference to the fact that Big Data is causing big frustrations for those who make their living in the marketing world. The sub-headline that appeared on their site in announcing the report read: “Big data has become something of a buzzword over the past year or so, but is it actually useful?”

Well I happen to think Big Data is useful alright but only if it’s the right Big Data. I mean you can’t just have data just for the sake of having data, yes?big data

One company has found that leveraging a more accurate, scientific approach based on big data can help marketers socialize their data — giving them a way to understand and leverage their customers’ and prospects’ real-world relationships to substantially improve customer acquisition, cross-sell and retention.

In other words, identify the right Big Data.

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Ted Rubin shares, with @newscomauHQ’s @ClaireRPorter, the top 10 things businesses are getting wrong on social media

Using social media to broadcast a campaign or initiative isn’t social media, says Ted Rubin.

BUSINESSES should stop tweeting so much and shut up and listen to what their followers are saying about their brands on social media, according to Ted Rubin, Chief Marketing Officer of social media company Collective Bias.

And he would know. Of all the CMOs in the world, Ted has the most Twitter followers.

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Is The Social Media Slumber Finally Over For Big Brands?

Perhaps it is because I am the father of a 13-year old daughter but whenever I hear the word “slumber” I immediately think of the phrase “slumber party” – which then conjures up fun, unless of course you are the host parent of said party.

However, if you’re a big brand, say on the level of a Fortune 500 brand, your “state of inactivity” – AKA your slumber – when it comes to social media, may finally be over. At least it may finally be over for some as that’s the indication one gets from reviewing data from a recent study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

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Most C-level Executives, CMO included, view “Social” as media—but they don’t know how to interact with consumers there in a meaningful way. They want to buy CPMs or Likes—but don’t know what to do with them afterward.

CMO’s also make the mistake of assuming that the social audience has the same pain and passion points as their face-to-face or store audience. Most often that is not the case.

In order to get the real value out of Social, you must connect emotionally to the people who are there and find out what they’re looking for. CMOs are used to ads and campaigns, so that’s the place they gravitate, but even Facebook ads are only media buys. Ads are good for building initial likes, but they really are targeted to demographics just like any other ad.

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How Johnson & Johnson Is Using Social Media To Save Lives

Those who know me know that I am passionate about a lot of things when it comes to the world of marketing, advertising, branding and social media. From the latest campaign for Brand X to the latest techno-advance, I want to know about it, learn about it and in some cases, write about it.

But perhaps what truly gets my passion meter on the rise is when I hear of a brand doing something for the betterment of all of us; to truly  have a profound and positive impact on we humans.

That is why I am here today. To tell you of a phenomenal campaign that seeks to do good for the world – in a big way.

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New York Times Bestseller On The Perils Of Social Media

Back in April I wrote an article about the ill-timed and extremely insensitive Tweets put forth by a brand: Epicurious Uses The Boston Marathon Tragedy To Cross That Line. It was of course not the first nor the last example of social media gone bad in the context of a brand and those entrusted with the marketing of it.

Today, however, I want to talk about when social media goes bad from a human perspective. You do remember humans, right? Oh sure, there’s autobots and other techno-related gizmos that will Tweet, post and Like on we humans’ behalf – at least I think there is?

Cover of "Crucial Conversations: Tools fo...

But at the end of the day it is we humans who are traveling the highways and biways of social media on an ever-increasing pace.

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A New Social Media Muuver And Shaker

For those who don’t know me, I am a huge fan of (in no specific order): coffee, breathing, peanut butter and puns. The latter of course is the reason for my purposely misspelled word in the title above.

Ok, maybe it’s not a pun in the biblical sense but I think it’s a pun nevertheless. If you don’t agree with me, that’s perfectly fine. And while I am not the world’s greatest speller – although I did come in 2nd place in the 6th grade spelling bee a few years back, the reason for my incorrect spelling of the word “mover” is due to the fact that I want to tell you about something called “muuver.”

As per their description on the crowdfunding site indiegogo.com, “muuver is a simple to use social app that let’s you share your hypes and gripes, kudos & complaints, likes, and dislikes – about ANYTHING. muuver then takes your hype or gripe about an item and adds it to the ‘item page’ where you can see everybody else’s posts who hyped or griped about that item.”

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