 Giving 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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How Social Actions Have Pulled the Rug from under Banner Ads
 Facebook’s development schedule epitomizes the “white water, fast iteration” approach to serving company and customer. Although its mishaps are legendary, it succeeds in consistently fielding a mind-numbing array of features, so it is difficult to keep up and very easy to miss the significance of things. To whit, very few people people have noticed that Facebook has quietly revolutionized banner ads through a feature that is maligned by users but gold for marketers. This feature has created two opportunities for e-commerce marketers: a new means of inexpensive market research and an easy way to improve relationships with their viewers. Read on to do this to your competitors before they do it to you.
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Review: South by Southwest Interactive 2011 takes you behind the curtain of the famous confab and suggests why you might want to attend
 I had never attended SXSW before because I always had other things happening, and the value proposition was never obvious to me. In general, I attend very few “social media” conferences as the hype usually exceeds the delivery in an “industry” that’s particularly prone to self-congratulation. This year, a client launched a new venture at SXSW, so I decided to stay a couple of days afterward to see what the noise was about. Here are my informal impressions that I hope will be useful to you in deciding whether it might be worthwhile for you to attend. I invite your comments and impressions, too.
[Update: links to additional coverage below: Gowalla, TOMS, LinkedIn execs]
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Regina Herzlinger Keynotes Chicago Healthcare Executives Forum 35th Anniversary
Five-Point Prescription for U.S. Health Care—Involving Patients
 CHEF Chicago’s hospital executives listened raptly to Dr. Regina Herzlinger‘s impassioned message for transforming U.S. health care at their 35th anniversary celebration this month at the J.W. Marriott in Chicago. Dr. Herzlinger is respected and renowned for her message, so there were few surprises. The most distinctive element of her point of view is her strategy for taking a retail-led approach to transforming health care. She is very market- and consumer-focused, which is refreshing because it relies on the market and customers at least as much as the government. “Who Killed Health Care?” is her latest book, and she is a regular advisor to federal and state government officials.
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 2011 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 […]
Web 3.0 and Social Business—2011 Predictions and Recommendations describes a turning point, away from social media to social business. SocialTech Grows Up—Relationship the Foundation of Business Success—Digital Clodhoppers Become Sore Thumbs.
2011 will mark a turning point in the adoption of digital social technologies because the experimentation phase is drawing to a close, and stakeholder expectations are increasing. Organizations and people will no longer gain attention by executing badly. At the enterprise level, participation will wane in venues and initiatives that have no business strategy, focus, content strategy and commitment. Paying inexperienced people or agencies to “share” snappy content will expose brands as digital clodhoppers and push customers away. Individuals will also have to improve their game and focus on the most relevant people in their networks. Stop sending default invitations on LinkedIn. Proactively support people whom you respect and trust the most. The theme is determining and executing on strategy, focus and commitment.
In 2011, the bar to attract and hold attention will be higher, which will present organizations with a new threat: when participation falls, some executives will conclude that […]
2010 Year In Review Initial Glimmers of Social Business is the Editor’s Choice of the Global Human Capital Journal—The Best Strategy, Tactics, Case Studies and Insights of 2010
 Compared to its progenitors 2009 and 2008, 2010 was a relatively calm year because the amplitude of market gyrations was clearly less, and businesses began to find a new floor on which to build stakeholder expectations. Although I watched with high interest the unfolding drama in Europe, I didn’t have the time to conduct the research necessary to do a rigorous interpretation. I did publish a reflection in January, which is not included in this year in review. However, 2010 marked a major turning point in the adoption of social technologies: the recognition that analysis and strategy were necessary to achieve consistent results with social initiatives.
2010 Macro trends
Social has been in adolescence up through 2009-2010 in which “being on Facebook” was an end in itself, agencies produced vapid content and little interaction happened because people won’t interact when brands are talking at them and not listening. People feel it when a […]
Executives from Deutsche Telekom and Concord Music will highlight the morning session of pre-conference led by Christopher S. Rollyson at the Social Networking Conference June 16 in L.A. The pre-conference is a bootcamp for directors of social networking initiatives who want to understand and practice emerging best practices for strategy, tactics and project management. […]
These three examples showed how digitally produced social information could change entrenched human problems like war, excessive punishment and imprisonment and mass death by natural disaster. As such, they serve as examples of widespread change that will occur thanks to social networks and work processes. […]
The morning session focuses on strategy, planning and management of enterprise social network initiatives and will feature several speakers who are currently leading businesses and initiatives. The afternoon will focus on practice and show live example/demos of using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging tools for marketing campaigns […]
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