Steve Jobs, genuine innovator, visionary, entrepreneur
As the flowers and messages gather at the #Apple flagship store in #Covent Garden near our offices, we cannot let the day go past without noting the sad passing of this creative man who changed and shaped our world forever. You may not have agreed with everything he said and did but no one can deny that he made a huge impact on our world.
Barack Obama summed him up best: Steve was among the greatest of American innovators, brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.’
Some of the most notable articles of today:
#Businessweek says “Steve Jobs departs a world he helped transform. Jobs was a total original. He was somehow able to blend iconoclasm, rock-and-roll, and chic industrial design with the nerd sciences, as well as the unseemly profit motive of the corporation.”
#Venturebeat highlighted ten important products Steve Jobs has brought to the world
Moco News – a tribute in links and quotes including “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”—Bill Gates
And finally some of Steve Jobs own most memorable quotes – an inspiration
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” – Macstories.net.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.” – Wall Street Journal 1993, shared by UK Guardian.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Stanford University commencement address, 1995
Facing the challenges of social media: managing the crisis
Everyone talks about the great opportunities that social media offers to engage with customers in new ways. But, there’s another side to the story that’s less appealing.
Recent research shows the social media crises are on the rise and it seems businesses are unprepared. The good news is that 76% of the crises examined in the report could have been prevented had the brand been prepared to respond. According to the same research the top three reasons for the crises were lack of internal social media education, absence of professional staff to monitor and handle social media issues and lack of an emergency plan.
These results clearly demonstrate that despite the buzz around social media brands are not confident about using the medium when it comes to crisis situations. So how can businesses get the most out of social media and ensure they can effectively handle a potential crisis?
Taking social media seriously is maybe the most important advice to be given when it comes to managing social media crisis. Underestimating the power of the medium can have damaging consequences for the business. Monitoring social media regularly and developing an effective strategy that enables companies to deliver a consistent message across all communication channels is a necessary step in reducing the potential damage of such an event.
Having dedicated staff to handle social media issues is also a good way to ensure that your business will be better prepared to react effectively in an emergency situation. Another important step to consider is using the social media channel to choose the direction of your social media strategy in a crisis situation. Monitoring the reaction of your target audience for example could provide organisations with useful tips on how public opinion is changing and help them select the most appropriate course of action.
Google+ vs. Facebook: The battle of the two contenders
The launch of Google+ was the biggest social media story recently grabbing the headlines for good and bad reasons. Just a few weeks after its launch, the website is boosting 20 million users and rapidly gaining market share in the social networking space. However, last month Google+ asked businesses not to create Google+ profiles and caused a furore with the scandal around cancelling accounts using nicknames.
In the meantime Facebook has focused a lot of efforts into improving its relationship with businesses and does not seem likely to relinquish its supremacy as the number one site in the social media world. Last week it quietly launched Facebook for Business, a new service which offers help and advice for businesses looking to boost brand awareness and engage in a two-way conversation with the Facebook community. With more that 750 million subscribers, Facebook remains a valuable marketing and PR tool, and a great way of engagement with difficult to reach audiences.
In addition to creating a Facebook page or using Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories, business users can choose among plenty of free business applications to boost their marketing efforts. Applications such as RatePoint and Hudle for example enable businesses to create professional communities on Facebook by sharing reviews and testimonials or creating secure workspaces for colleagues and business partners. Furthermore businesses might soon be able to use conference video calling after Facebook recently introduced video calling to boost its service portfolio.
However, as Google+ is gaining momentum, Facebook is likely to face severe competition for the attention of business customers. Last week Google+ announced that it was planning to bring business profiles and analytic tools to its social networking platform later this year. The service will allow businesses to link their profiles to products like AdWords, enabling businesses to tap into Google’s substantial online advertising platform. Furthermore Google will be able to benefit from its strong enterprise customer base to drive business customers to its new social networking offering.
As Google and Facebook continue to diversify their services, there will be much more to witness in the coming months. The business offerings of the two internet giants will create great PR and marketing opportunities for companies looking to engage with online communities and make their brands visible in the social media space. However, we are yet to see how the battle between the two contenders for the social networking crown will unfold. I would only say that it is too early to make any predictions as the social media world is full of surprises and you never know what will be the next ‘hype of the day’.
Want to win the Election? Make sure you’ve got a strong social media communications campaign….
A Daily Telegraph article which explores the rising importance of social media for grassroot democracy activism in China, prompted me to write this posting.
The popularity of Twitter-like microblogs and internet chat forums has made it harder for the Party to control the system with more than 100 “independent” candidates standing for local elections in China.
Social media tools have been increasingly influential in election campaigns elsewhere. The US presidential and UK General Election are two of the most recent examples of the impact of social media on large-scale campaigns. Obama’s presidential campaign was one of the biggest success stories in this regard with his social media programme driving more than 5 million new supporters, 8.5 million visitors to his website and 80 million YouTube views.
Last year the UK witnessed its first general election in the social media age with almost half of the population turning to the Internet for information about the parties and candidates. A study of the elections revealed that 97% of the polled participants used Facebook during the election and the majority of 18-24 year olds preferred online media as their primary source of information.
Furthermore the social media space was inundated with comments and tweets providing real-time opinion and information about the progress of the election campaign. The immediacy of the social media ‘coverage’ could not be matched even by good old TV, with Twitter and online forums quickly becoming the harbinger of public opinion trends.
The recent experience clearly shows that social media is no longer a nice to have addition to political campaigns but a must-have tool which should be integrated into the overall communication strategies. The strength of the online medium is that it enables different levels of engagement with the audiences, i.e. on personal, social and political level.
It will be interesting to see how social media usage in election campaigns will evolve with the development of new technologies. In upcoming elections campaigners will be able to use mobile apps, geolocation tools and users’ data to tailor political messages to smaller areas while encouraging people to engage in interactive conversations on the go.
The ‘personalisation’ of political messages will be further enhanced by a deeper interaction between traditional and social media, empowering people to take active role in the political ‘conversation’.
Social media sites are walking all over UK laws
To say that our current laws and jurisdictions can’t cope with global social media sites is becoming more and more self-evident with the latest football scandal which escalated over the weekend. Whilst the name of the footballer was revealed via Twitter and abroad, the English media were enforced by the injunction to stay schtum. It’s clear that our laws will need to be changed to embrace our new global world of communication and social media.
Whilst said famous footballer tried to obtain a High Court order asking Twitter to reveal details of users who had revealed his identity, legal experts claim it was doomed to failure because the High Court in London has no jurisdiction in California where Twitter is based.
There was an avalanche of online publicity with 100s of Tweeters repeating his name which was further reinforced when the Today programme, BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs show appeared accidentally to reveal the footballer’s identity – BBC correspondents then tweeted his name making matters worse. As the Scottish Sunday Herald also revealed his name, it’s quite clear that the our global world that shares news online cannot be restricted by injunctions. The law needs to be modernised because enforcing injunctions and controlling the media can’t last.
