Giving as Cultural Glue and Smart Business: Blake Mycoskie, Founder TOMS Shoes

Giving as Smart Business: Blake Mycoskie, Founder TOMS ShoesGiving as Smart Business: Blake Mycoskie, Founder TOMS Shoes is a fantastic story and a smart business idea. Blake Mycoskie is a gifted storyteller in his own right, and, in this South by Southwest 2011 keynote, he entertained the audience with the story of TOMS Shoes while imparting a simple but profound principle of 21st century business: discovering the meaning and potential of giving. Here are the highlights of TOMS story, which will help you appreciate the context of the blockbuster business idea.

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2011 Social Business Predictions & Recommendations [Summary]

2011 Social Business Predictions & Recommendations2011 Social Business Predictions and Recommendations describes current social business adoption and advices firms and people how to get ahead.

2011 will be remembered as the year “social media” fell by the wayside, strategy became a recognized prerequisite for serious efforts, and “social business” began displacing it in boardrooms’ mindshare. “Social media,” which usually tries to use social technologies to talk at people, has been the predominant “first use” of socialtech because marketing drives most social initiatives, and marketers “communicate,” i.e. push content, to their targets. When they “listen,” they use limited legacy processes such as focus groups, email marketing, data mining and online surveys. However, none of these scratch the real itch because they emphasize the company asking individuals structured questions; they don’t allow customer to customer interaction, which is ten times more illuminating because it is spontaneous and customer-centric.

Socialtech gets there, but marketers are ambivalent about it because it means a loss of control. And more profits and career growth for marketers, but they have to let go first. It’s a leap of faith, but […]

New Age of Socialized Engagement: Monte Lutz, Edelman

New Age of Socialized Engagement: Monte Lutz, EdelmanNew Age of Socialized Engagement: Monte Lutz, Edelman continues the Alterian 2010 series. In this presentation, Monte gave his impression of the profound changes in marketing Edelman sees.

Social media is about story—and trust. Citing the Trust Barometer, he asserted that trust was at an all-time low among consumers. The 18-29 age group has more trust, but they don’t consume traditional media [maybe that’s why they trust more?] Trust in experts is up and “people like me” down. Billiam the snowman had the highest trust according to one survey [don’t know what to make of that, is he an expert? ,^) ]. When people are facing uncertainty, they will accept a new idea as truth when they hear it from 3-5 sources on average. This gives people peripheral vision. […]

Web 2.0 Single Sign-on Update: Federating Friends with Facebook Connect and Google Friendconnect

Pithy insights on major Web 2.0 transformation driver: reflecting on the significance of Facebook Connect and Google Friendconnect, which offer Web 2.0 single signon services […]

PricewaterhouseCoopers Social Business Case Study

Salvatore Reina shares insights about PricewaterhouseCoopers’ global social networking initiatives.. highlights of internal projects and client engagements […]

Social Networking Conference Wrap: Angela LoSasso on Engaging Customers

Emerging good practices for social networking at Hewlett-Packard, from Angela LoSasso, a full-time social networking manager.. thoughts on working in B2B and B2C contexts […]

Social Networking Conference Case Study: Marius Ciortea on Oracle Social Networking Initiatives

Overview of Oracle Mix and other enterprise social networking initiatives […]

Enterprise and Individual Drivers for Social Networks

Demand drivers for enterprise social networks: global enterprises suffer innovation crisis while individuals seek employment security; cross-boundary collaboration is a win-win for enterprise and employee […]