What Twitter Needs To Do To Stay Relevant

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What Twitter Needs To Do To Stay Relevant (TechCrunch)
Twitter turned seven years old yesterday. But the important question is this: What does the future look like for the company? To remain relevant for the next seven years, Twitter has to stay true to its original mission of being an open communication platform. To do that, the company has to refrain from adding too many features and getting in the way of its core strengths, which is real-time notification of our stream of consciousness. Sure, the company can figure out how to monetize this all they like, because after all, employees don’t work for free and servers don’t pay for themselves. Read >>

Coke: Social Complements Long-Term Sales (Mediabistro)
Coke’s senior vice president of integrated marketing Wendy Clark wrote a blog post arguing that social does, in fact, play a large role in boosting brand perception and audience engagement — which leads to more sales. Her point, of course, is that the fact that data can’t directly link the number of comments on a Facebook post to the number of people buying Coke does not diminish the value of said content. This kind of “buzz” is only one part of Coke’s extensive branding/PR puzzle, which leverages earned, shared, paid and owned media to encourage the brand’s ultimate goal: driving consumers to buy more soda in the long run. Read >>

Google+ Is A Killer B2B Social Media Platform (Social Media B2B)
Recent studies indicate that, while many companies were asleep at the switch, Google+ has emerged as the killer platform for B2B social media marketing.

B2B marketers need to understand these four reasons that Google+ is the next killer platform for marketing, and why it should be an important part of your B2B marketing mix. Read >>

Ways To Expand Your Social Reach (Jeff Bullas)
Social media marketing is simple in one sense. Create content that adds value and then pop it out to as many people’s eyeballs as possible. That’s reach.

• Share useful content
• Organize a social media contest
• Guest post
• Learn how to maximize your marketing
• Join Twitter chats
• Use infographics

If you do it well then the crowd shares and it travels around the world at the speed of a click. Get lucky and it goes viral and those thousands turn into millions. Read >>

Mastering The Age Of Social Business (Wired)
Companies are combining social technologies, the cloud, mobile, and analytics to create a flexible, intelligent framework for making the most of social connections. According to IBM’s most recent survey of CEOs, 57 percent picked social business as a top priority and some 73 percent are making significant investments in analyzing data. For instance:

• Chief marketing officers (CMOs) use social to react more quickly to trends and create exceptional customers experience that inspire brand loyalty.
• Chief human resource officers (CHRO) are building communities for employees that help improve recruiting and talent management services.
• Organizations are adopting social technologies to create stronger, more productive links among their workforce, so they can share knowledge and creativity.

As the journey begins, something you must keep in mind is that becoming a Social Business does not simply involve going out and buying technology that plugs into existing systems. Read >>

Social Media Is Transforming Human Resources (Computer Weekly)
Business professionals who combine an understanding of HR and information technology are helping to transform the way companies manage their workforce. HR departments have come relatively late to IT, but the development of sophisticated, cloud-based HR tools, social media and big data analytics is transforming the way HR departments work. The convergence of HR and IT will mean that CIOs and HR directors— two areas of the business that rarely collaborate— will need to work increasingly closely. Read >>

Social Media Demographics (Pew Research via DR4Ward)
In case you missed the most recent Pew Research report on social demographics, this infographic sums it up. Read >>