Social Watchlist 2.0 is out! Regional Facebook data and insights at your fingertips...

Earlier this month I wrote a post about a great discovery, namely Social Watchlist, a website allowing users to keep an eye on Facebook Fan pages from across the Middle East and North Africa region, I call this impressive initiative, geographical imagination. As Social Media develops we are starting to see more and more of those initiatives emerge around the region and I would like to spend some time particularly on this one for you to enjoy.

Interface:

The revamped interface has a better design and layout. The effect is two fold:

• The user can by one click observe a bar chart of the top 25 Facebook Fan pages, smooth and slick approach. 
•  The navigation from one metric to another is intuitive. With that in mind, comparison by location or category makes this Social Media hub an extremely important element of your Social Media strategy.

 Analytics and metrics:

Once you launch your Facebook Fan Page(s), add a new campaign to the page, a new product, content, contest... the list goes on and on. You have to be able to measure, benchmark and optimize whatever activity you undertook on that medium. Truth be told, knowing which metrics to follow on an ongoing basis is paramount for the success of your enterprise... If it's not measurable, it's miserable, I would even add.
Using metrics to keep an eye on those perspectives, experiences and opinions shared on Facebook Fan pages is what increases engagement. In fact, Social Watchlist is a dashboard that allows, when used in an appropriate manner, to build, nurture and shape my relationships as a brand with my audience. It's part of my toolbox.
Concerning individual page history, it has now been extended from 60 days to 120 days. Moreover, you get even get a page's growth history over the past 4 months. Isn’t that fantastic!  I love it, there is so much information in this Facebook Fan pages hub!

·  

The previous version allowed users to access only to the top 100 pages per country or category, now you can browse through all the pages.

Questions that the tool can answer:
(Just click on the question to get the answer)

• Which page has acquired the highest number of fans since last week?
• Which page has moved up the ranks fastest this week?
• Which category in Saudi Arabia has the highest percentage of growth since last week?
• Which countries do FMCG pages perform best in?
• Which category of Facebook pages is the most popular in Egypt?

  Bottom line: Data is critical for many reasons, including measuring performance, that is perhaps one of the most decisive.It's time to get serious about Social Media data and what it can do for a brand and I'm glad that Social Watchlist team are helping the community with such a great website.

Social Watchlist 2.0 is out! Regional Facebook data and insights at your fingertips...

Earlier this month I wrote a post about a great discovery, namely Social Watchlist, a website allowing users to keep an eye on Facebook Fan pages from across the Middle East and North Africa region, I call this impressive initiative, geographical imagination. As Social Media develops we are starting to see more and more of those initiatives emerge around the region and I would like to spend some time particularly on this one for you to enjoy.

Interface:

The revamped interface has a better design and layout. The effect is two fold:

• The user can by one click observe a bar chart of the top 25 Facebook Fan pages, smooth and slick approach. 
•  The navigation from one metric to another is intuitive. With that in mind, comparison by location or category makes this Social Media hub an extremely important element of your Social Media strategy.

 Analytics and metrics:

Once you launch your Facebook Fan Page(s), add a new campaign to the page, a new product, content, contest... the list goes on and on. You have to be able to measure, benchmark and optimize whatever activity you undertook on that medium. Truth be told, knowing which metrics to follow on an ongoing basis is paramount for the success of your enterprise... If it's not measurable, it's miserable, I would even add.
Using metrics to keep an eye on those perspectives, experiences and opinions shared on Facebook Fan pages is what increases engagement. In fact, Social Watchlist is a dashboard that allows, when used in an appropriate manner, to build, nurture and shape my relationships as a brand with my audience. It's part of my toolbox.
Concerning individual page history, it has now been extended from 60 days to 120 days. Moreover, you get even get a page's growth history over the past 4 months. Isn’t that fantastic!  I love it, there is so much information in this Facebook Fan pages hub!

·  

The previous version allowed users to access only to the top 100 pages per country or category, now you can browse through all the pages.

Questions that the tool can answer:
(Just click on the question to get the answer)

• Which page has acquired the highest number of fans since last week?
• Which page has moved up the ranks fastest this week?
• Which category in Saudi Arabia has the highest percentage of growth since last week?
• Which countries do FMCG pages perform best in?
• Which category of Facebook pages is the most popular in Egypt?

  Bottom line: Data is critical for many reasons, including measuring performance, that is perhaps one of the most decisive.It's time to get serious about Social Media data and what it can do for a brand and I'm glad that Social Watchlist team are helping the community with such a great website.

New Methodology for Social Media Customer Intelligence - Media Marketing Contacts Directory - MediaBizNet - News

New Methodology for Social Media Customer Intelligence
Mining and understanding customer feedback creates a powerful lens into the customer experience. The problem, however, is that while many brands are listening to the online chatter, too few are deciphering what they have gathered in a meaningful way. In fact, a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that while more than half of the surveyed companies are using social media, less than one-quarter (23 per cent) are using any form of social media analytical tools and only 5 per cent are using some form of customer sentiment analysis. Diving deep into online customer chatter is an unprecedented opportunity to identify and remove the obstacles to delivering superior customer experience. Social analytics is an increasingly used methodology to achieve these goals. Unfortunately, most available analytic programs gravitate toward tangible metrics such as "followers," "likes," or star ratings because they are measurable but severely lack the actionable analysis and value executives need to drive business decisions. Social business intelligence -- or the intersection of social media customer feedback, business intelligence, and industry-specific technology -- provides brands with clear industry-specific performance indicators and opportunities to grow their business. By capturing and aggregating a complete view of social media feedback and synthesizing it into customer insight, social business intelligence turns volumes of unstructured mentions online into a real-time performance indicator dashboard that provides clear opportunities to improve customer experience. A true social business intelligence platform delivers four key areas of actionable insight: Social Customer Satisfaction: Your customers are tweeting, posting, and blogging, about whether they will buy your product again, return to your store, or recommend you to their peers. As a result, it is critical for brands to not just resolve the existing issues, but to be proactive in averting future issues that may come down the pike. Advances in analytics -- including sentiment and credibility analyses -- give marketers the power to drill down into the most relevant customer feedback and identify ways to enhance the overall customer experience. Social Competitive Intelligence: In today's socially connected, consumer-led world, there are few places that are more effective at helping companies gather a goldmine of information than social media. Social competitive intelligence enables brands to capture competitor performance, as defined by customers online, and analyse it so they have a clear and timely understanding of competitor strengths, weaknesses, and the latest initiatives. Social Marketing Intelligence: With the rise of social media, how do marketers better understand when, where, why, and how consumers choose to engage with their brand? How do they know what social media channels are most effective? Analysing online feedback gives executives insight into the most relevant customer impressions of their brand and identification of and access to the most pertinent online influencers. Brands also gain critical demographic data on customers online, engagement opportunities, and true voice-of-the-consumer insight. This level of intelligence gives marketers the ability to measure the value of specific social media interaction, which is vital to developing online marketing strategies and informing ROI measurement. Social Advertising Intelligence: Every brand wants to capture new audiences, add revenue opportunities, and maximise the value of advertising inventory. Mining and analysing volumes of real-time, highly influential online customer feedback gives advertising executives the intelligence they need to learn from and transform messaging campaigns. Armed with this direct social media feedback, retailers can easily measure the efficacy of campaigns during and after their run! A comprehensive social business intelligence picture is a must-have. By mining and analysing customer feedback intelligently, organisations gain the depth and breadth of customer insight needed to leverage social media for a true, bottom-line competitive advantage.

New Methodology for Social Media Customer Intelligence - Media Marketing Contacts Directory - MediaBizNet - News

New Methodology for Social Media Customer Intelligence
Mining and understanding customer feedback creates a powerful lens into the customer experience. The problem, however, is that while many brands are listening to the online chatter, too few are deciphering what they have gathered in a meaningful way. In fact, a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that while more than half of the surveyed companies are using social media, less than one-quarter (23 per cent) are using any form of social media analytical tools and only 5 per cent are using some form of customer sentiment analysis. Diving deep into online customer chatter is an unprecedented opportunity to identify and remove the obstacles to delivering superior customer experience. Social analytics is an increasingly used methodology to achieve these goals. Unfortunately, most available analytic programs gravitate toward tangible metrics such as "followers," "likes," or star ratings because they are measurable but severely lack the actionable analysis and value executives need to drive business decisions. Social business intelligence -- or the intersection of social media customer feedback, business intelligence, and industry-specific technology -- provides brands with clear industry-specific performance indicators and opportunities to grow their business. By capturing and aggregating a complete view of social media feedback and synthesizing it into customer insight, social business intelligence turns volumes of unstructured mentions online into a real-time performance indicator dashboard that provides clear opportunities to improve customer experience. A true social business intelligence platform delivers four key areas of actionable insight: Social Customer Satisfaction: Your customers are tweeting, posting, and blogging, about whether they will buy your product again, return to your store, or recommend you to their peers. As a result, it is critical for brands to not just resolve the existing issues, but to be proactive in averting future issues that may come down the pike. Advances in analytics -- including sentiment and credibility analyses -- give marketers the power to drill down into the most relevant customer feedback and identify ways to enhance the overall customer experience. Social Competitive Intelligence: In today's socially connected, consumer-led world, there are few places that are more effective at helping companies gather a goldmine of information than social media. Social competitive intelligence enables brands to capture competitor performance, as defined by customers online, and analyse it so they have a clear and timely understanding of competitor strengths, weaknesses, and the latest initiatives. Social Marketing Intelligence: With the rise of social media, how do marketers better understand when, where, why, and how consumers choose to engage with their brand? How do they know what social media channels are most effective? Analysing online feedback gives executives insight into the most relevant customer impressions of their brand and identification of and access to the most pertinent online influencers. Brands also gain critical demographic data on customers online, engagement opportunities, and true voice-of-the-consumer insight. This level of intelligence gives marketers the ability to measure the value of specific social media interaction, which is vital to developing online marketing strategies and informing ROI measurement. Social Advertising Intelligence: Every brand wants to capture new audiences, add revenue opportunities, and maximise the value of advertising inventory. Mining and analysing volumes of real-time, highly influential online customer feedback gives advertising executives the intelligence they need to learn from and transform messaging campaigns. Armed with this direct social media feedback, retailers can easily measure the efficacy of campaigns during and after their run! A comprehensive social business intelligence picture is a must-have. By mining and analysing customer feedback intelligently, organisations gain the depth and breadth of customer insight needed to leverage social media for a true, bottom-line competitive advantage.

Virginia Intermont Certified for Leading Equine Assisted Psychotherapy Program

Horses and people can be a match made in heaven. No wonder equine assisted therapy is becoming more popular.
Virginia Intermont College, Bristol, Va., has become one of only two colleges in the nation to achieve endorsement by the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA) for its Equine Assisted Growth and Learning program.  Founded in 1999, EAGALA is a nonprofit organization,

Social Watchlist for the Middle East Facebook Fan Pages

Serendipity leads sometimes to great discoveries. This week, Social Watchlist is one of them. And, it set the stage for a series of discussions comparing and contrasting Facebook Fan pages within the Middle East & North Africa (MENA). Indeed, Facebook is rocking the Social Media universe, and with as much heat as it has drawn, it only persists to spread like wildfire within the Arab world. All the data provided within Social Watchlist is publicly available to anyone who bothers to check but it is structured and given within a list updated on a weekly basis. Let’s stop briefly to explain the importance of having the data structured. Data is the mountain of raw and unstructured materials that exist in the blogosphere, and being able to get this data presented in a well thought-out manner turn it into information. Social Watchlist can be used to capitalize on the information held within the reams of unstructured data currently available out there from a single point of access. Bottom line: "All the right information at the right time in one place"

 Furthermore, the data can be filtered by country or region (e.g. MENA, GCC, North Africa) and also by category (e.g. Airline, Automobile, banking) which enables the user of the Social Watchlist website to benchmark the number of followers and the trend from a single interface, and hence,  to see the bigger picture in far greater detail. Up to now, the website is monitoring a total of 1040 Facebook Fan pages with a total of 32,808,376 fans.

Besides the ranking, Social Watchlist offers the movement of a Facebook Fan Page and the growth. It came to my attention that each page, part of the ranking, has tags that permit when you glance over the top 10 pages or more to recognize the category in which the page falls into. That’s the kind of attention to detail that gets my attention.

In an era where Facebook Fan Pages are sometimes more important than corporate websites, this initiative definitely seem to be moving in the right direction. Indeed, it is an epitome of the kind of tool that does not require complex algorithms but that makes the life of digital marketers, Social Media professionals and the likes far easier in a world where time is the most expensive currency.

All they might be lacking is that little extra bit of insight. It is a tool that is most effective when combined with a strategic arsenal of relevant insights about the Facebook Fan page.

The idea is to fuse the list for a specific vertical with what makes the page popular (is it the welcome page, the community manager, the content, the design...). My message to marketers is don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can afford to keep going without this vital piece of the business puzzle. It’s no longer a matter of if, nor when, but now a matter of practice and evolution in order to determine success and failure.

 The good news is that it’s still at the beta stage so I am genuinely excited by what will come next. Stay tuned.

Social Watchlist for the Middle East Facebook Fan Pages

Serendipity leads sometimes to great discoveries. This week, Social Watchlist is one of them. And, it set the stage for a series of discussions comparing and contrasting Facebook Fan pages within the Middle East & North Africa (MENA). Indeed, Facebook is rocking the Social Media universe, and with as much heat as it has drawn, it only persists to spread like wildfire within the Arab world. All the data provided within Social Watchlist is publicly available to anyone who bothers to check but it is structured and given within a list updated on a weekly basis. Let’s stop briefly to explain the importance of having the data structured. Data is the mountain of raw and unstructured materials that exist in the blogosphere, and being able to get this data presented in a well thought-out manner turn it into information. Social Watchlist can be used to capitalize on the information held within the reams of unstructured data currently available out there from a single point of access. Bottom line: "All the right information at the right time in one place"

 Furthermore, the data can be filtered by country or region (e.g. MENA, GCC, North Africa) and also by category (e.g. Airline, Automobile, banking) which enables the user of the Social Watchlist website to benchmark the number of followers and the trend from a single interface, and hence,  to see the bigger picture in far greater detail. Up to now, the website is monitoring a total of 1040 Facebook Fan pages with a total of 32,808,376 fans.

Besides the ranking, Social Watchlist offers the movement of a Facebook Fan Page and the growth. It came to my attention that each page, part of the ranking, has tags that permit when you glance over the top 10 pages or more to recognize the category in which the page falls into. That’s the kind of attention to detail that gets my attention.

In an era where Facebook Fan Pages are sometimes more important than corporate websites, this initiative definitely seem to be moving in the right direction. Indeed, it is an epitome of the kind of tool that does not require complex algorithms but that makes the life of digital marketers, Social Media professionals and the likes far easier in a world where time is the most expensive currency.

All they might be lacking is that little extra bit of insight. It is a tool that is most effective when combined with a strategic arsenal of relevant insights about the Facebook Fan page.

The idea is to fuse the list for a specific vertical with what makes the page popular (is it the welcome page, the community manager, the content, the design...). My message to marketers is don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can afford to keep going without this vital piece of the business puzzle. It’s no longer a matter of if, nor when, but now a matter of practice and evolution in order to determine success and failure.

 The good news is that it’s still at the beta stage so I am genuinely excited by what will come next. Stay tuned.

Adapting to change

Organizations always have a set of fundamental needs. The organization does something -- it provides a commodity to consumers, it provides services that individuals pay for, it provides charitable services based on foundation funding, it employs specialists to steal credit card information on the Internet. All of these activities consume resources.

For the sake of clarity, let's have two organizations in mind: a mid-size company that produces cigarette lighters and a non-profit organization that provides adult literacy education in a high-poverty environment.

Key to an organization's "metabolism" is its regular access to resources, including especially revenue and people. Generally an organization has an existing model for satisfying these needs. It generates revenues through sale of goods and services or through gifts from foundations, corporations, and individuals who have a commitment to the organization's purposes. It acquires a talent base by hiring talented individuals and by attracting motivated volunteers. Call this a business plan--keeping in mind that profit-based and non-profit organizations alike need a business plan. If the business plan is a good one, the revenues match the expenditure needs of the organization, the talented members of the organization use their time and budgets to produce the organization's "deliverables", and the cycle begins again. The organization is sustainable.

A particularly bad scenario for a non-profit service provider is to begin its work on the basis of a large initial grant which is spent down until the organization expires. The profit-based equivalent is the new business that starts up with a large infusion of venture capital but never develops a revenue stream to support its activities.

What happens when the organization's business environment changes abruptly? Significant changes might include --

• Abrupt change in demand for the organization's product
• Abrupt change in the consumer's ability or willingness to pay for the product at the current price
• Change in the willingness of donors to provide support for this kind of activity
• Change in the costs of inputs necessary for producing the deliverables
• Appearance of a strong competitor who draws off demand and donors

We can easily think of examples of each of these changes. Gasoline prices spiked in summer 2010 and demand for large vehicles plummeted. Rapid increase in unemployment results in a massive decline to demand for mid-range restaurants. Foundations get frustrated about the slow rate of progress in education reform and cut back on funding for education reform NGOs. Digital photography rapidly undermines film companies. The iPod swamps the market for digital music players and other suppliers fail in the marketplace.

The question I'm raising here is a difficult one: what does an organization need to do in order to perceive and adapt to persistent changes like these? If we were asking this question in the field of ecology, the answer would be simple: many local species facing this kind of change simply will not be able to adapt in time and will go locally extinct. Natural selection is not a rapid-adaptation process, in general. Random variation and selection take time and large populations.

But this doesn't need to be the case for organizations. Organizations are led by intelligent and forward-looking people, after all, so in theory it should be possible for organizations to perceive impending change in their business environments and adjust accordingly. However, we also know that many organizations fail to do so. Think of the newspaper industry, the music publishing industry, the film-based photography industry, and some sectors of charitable providers.

So what are some positive heuristics that support effective adaptation? And what are some common sources of failure?

On the positive side:

• Be fact-driven and honest in assessing current conditions in the operating environment. Don't permit wishful thinking to cloud the assessment.
• Be rigorous in analyzing the consequences of these changes. If you are the leader of a non-profit with a great mission in an environment where funders have decisively turned away from this issue, consider the alternatives: downsize the delivery plan, reduce the cost of delivery, change the priorities of the organization, find new revenue partners, or find new sources of funding.
• Be innovative; search carefully for new ways of accomplishing the organization's goals at lower overall cost. A labor union might consider whether its army of organizers might be made more efficient (lower resource cost) by making use of social media.

On the negative side, we can think of a number of psychological and institutional factors that impede successful adaptation. Wishful thinking is at the top of the list. It is very easy for decision makers to persuade themselves that observed trends will quickly reverse -- "the foundations will soon return to a focus on poverty," "digital photography will never achieve the resolution and color fidelity of film," "the state's support for poverty programs will return after the next election."

Second, decision makers may reason that careful but painful adaptation in the near term may be more painful for them individually than the consequences of eventual failure of the organization in the long term. This may be worsened by CEO compensation packages that create perverse incentives for them. The CEO of our fictional cigarette lighter manufacturer may reason that another 10 years of gradually declining sales, leading to bankruptcy, may be preferable to the turbulence and conflict associated with downsizing, shifting to another product, or introducing a lot of new technology.

Third, institutions have an enormous amount of inertia when it comes to change. Consolidating services within an organization, for example, is almost always met with a great deal of resistance from the various divisions that will need to "share" their IT person, their budget specialist, or their web designer.  And rethinking the "deliverable" of the organization, or the way that it is provided, is also often met with a lot of internal resistance.  A poverty-focused organization like the United Way may decide that its old model of distributing charitable funds needs to be more focused on a few central priorities; and this shift of delivery is likely to be met with resistance both internally (from existing staff) and externally (from powerful beneficiaries of the earlier system).

Fourth, there are very real limits on our ability to project current information onto future realities. What was called wishful thinking above might well be accurate in some situations: the current dire circumstances do sometimes get better and the existing business plan turns out to be sustainable after all. So there is always a degree of uncertainty associated with efforts to assess the current and future business environment.

No organization wants to be classified as a "dinosaur" -- the perfect embodiment of an "organization" (species) trapped in a period of change that moves more rapidly than its ability to adapt. But many do in fact find themselves in the contemporary equivalent of the tarpits when they run into unfamiliar and rapid periods of change. I have to hope that universities don't allow themselves to slip into that kind of endgame as they face the difficult and changing environment that currently confronts them.

How To add this Label Style to your blog/blogger?

Labels are a overnice way to initiate your activity on the blog. It makes grouping posts easier and gives your diary a writer regular looking. The fail Brand gadget provided by Blogger has whatever customization options but doesn't wage some manipulate over the Ornament vista. Today I gift by sharing a CSS3 supercharged organization for the Option Adjudge gadget. I came crosswise them on WebDesignTuts+ and thought that a correspondent style for Blogger Labels would also wait pretty awful.

Before you get started play trusty that your Journal has the Brand Widget say already and set the Demo deciding to Cloud.

This organisation by Evangel Spoor has some intelligent use of CSS3 transformations and :before & :after selectors. For the backgrounds it uses CSS Gradients.

How  To add this Label Style to your blog?

• Go to Blogger > Design.
• Click add a Gadget > HTML/JavaScript.
• Paste the code and save it.

<style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[*/
.label-size {
    float:left;
    margin:0 0 7px 20px;
    position:relative;
 
    font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size:0.75em;
    font-weight:bold;
    text-decoration:none;
 
    color:#996633;
    text-shadow:0px 1px 0px rgba(255,255,255,.4);
 
    padding:0.417em 0.417em 0.417em 0.917em;
 
    border-top:1px solid #d99d38;
    border-right:1px solid #d99d38;
    border-bottom:1px solid #d99d38;
 
    -webkit-border-radius:0 0.25em 0.25em 0;
    -moz-border-radius:0 0.25em 0.25em 0;
    border-radius:0 0.25em 0.25em 0;
 
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=0,StartColorStr='#feda71', EndColorStr='#feba47');
 
    -webkit-box-shadow:
        inset 0 1px 0 #faeaba,
        0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.1);
    -moz-box-shadow:
        inset 0 1px 0 #faeaba,
        0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.1);
    box-shadow:
        inset 0 1px 0 #faeaba,
        0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.1);
 
    z-index:100;
}

.label-size:before {
    content:'';
 
    width:1.30em;
    height:1.39em;
 
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
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    background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    background-image: linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 218, 113), rgb(254, 186, 71));
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=1,StartColorStr='#feda71', EndColorStr='#feba47');
 
    position:absolute;
    left:-0.69em;
    top:.2em;
 
    -webkit-transform:rotate(45deg);
    -moz-transform:rotate(45deg);
    -o-transform:rotate(45deg);
    transform:rotate(45deg);
 
    border-left:1px solid #d99d38;
    border-bottom:1px solid #d99d38;
 
    -webkit-border-radius:0 0 0 0.25em;
    -moz-border-radius:0 0 0 0.25em;
    border-radius:0 0 0 0.25em;
 
    z-index:1;
}

.label-size:after {
    content:'';
 
    width:0.5em;
    height:0.5em;
 
    background:#fff;
 
    -webkit-border-radius:4.167em;
    -moz-border-radius:4.167em;
    border-radius:4.167em;
 
    border:1px solid #d99d38;
 
    -webkit-box-shadow:0 1px 0 #faeaba;
    -moz-box-shadow:0 1px 0 #faeaba;
    box-shadow:0 1px 0 #faeaba;
 
    position:absolute;
    top:0.667em;
    left:-0.083em;
    z-index:9999;
}
#Label1 {height:210px;}
.label-size:hover {
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: linear-gradient(top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=0,StartColorStr='#fee18d', EndColorStr='#fec86c');
 
    border-color:#e1b160;
}
 
.label-size:hover:before {
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    background-image: linear-gradient(left top, rgb(254, 225, 141), rgb(254, 200, 108));
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=1,StartColorStr='#fee18d', EndColorStr='#fec86c');
 
    border-color:#e1b160;
}
/*]]>*/
</style>
<a href="http://bloggers-hero.blogspot.com/" >Blogger Hero</a>

Hope you liked the Label Design, leave be publishing statesman of these designs

soon. In person you hold any difficulty implementing these on your Diary, 

believe unrestrained to ask .

Group buying in the blogosphere is gaining pace

One of the major trends in Social Media is group buying and we all heard about the usual suspects being Groupon, SocialBuy and a rising star in the Middle East, Cobone.

In the case you have been living under a rock, group buying is the process of forming a group of buyers with the intent to purchase a particular item or service at a bargain price. I am not here to talk about the success of social buying companies because this subject has already caused a lot of “digital” ink to spill.

I would like to shed light on an existing phenomenon similar to group buying, however with  its own earmarks – community buying.

I am myself part of an online community of expats within the Middle East with a sizeable number of members. The main goal of this social grouping is to assist newcomers to accommodate in their new environment. But not only, (it also caters) a list of products and services is shared with the community. And this is how it works:  

First Phase: the review

In this whole buying process, Word-of-Mouth (WoM) is a powerful medium, particularly during this first stage. Indeed, a discussion between the involved participants allows current owners of one of the products or a community member that used one of the services within the list, to share recommendations, comments and feedbacks. Needless to say that people trust their peers’ opinion more than they trust what companies tell them. Just a side point though, this type of WOM tends to be even stronger than a comment posted online lost in a (immensite et l anonymat du web) because some of the community members interact face-to-face. My point here is that we have a captive audience and it makes a world of difference.  Well, after this rate-it or slate-it episode, we then enter into the negotiation phase.

Second Phase: the price is right

 

The shallow pockets of online consumers who constitute this community, and of course the always guilty economic crisis, press the former to look for cheaper offerings and competitive pricing. The idea is simple: when a threshold in term of buyers is reached for each product and service selected, an order is placed. The more people are interested, the cheaper the price. Well, you get the picture. From laptops  to car rentals, to hotel offers, they have it all.

The experience is authentic and you do know that it does not take people long to lose their faith in something nowadays, especially when that something comes from a company.

This community is composed of two basic mainstays: authenticity and relationship.

If you are using Social Media to bond with your online audience, you must be aware of the importance of maintaining a genuine relationship with your readers /consumers. The thing about WOM is that it is viral in nature – people solicit feedback, share insights, update the community with their experience post-purchase. For better or for worse.

Third (and potentially lethal) Phase: Post-evaluation

It ranges from the “knock your socks off” customer experience to the disaster that sometimes starts like this: “I don’t usually write reviews, but I strongly felt this is worth informing as many people as possible”. Once more, WOM spreads like wildfire even outside the great wall of our community. If I wanted to be boring, I would tell you that no firm can offer a flawless experience to all of the customers all of the time. But, when a majority of the community experience delivery failures, the brand is blacklisted. Period. End of story.

Here is a tip: some customers will slip through that first safety net but a company without a good to great customer experience management, with a pledge to turn those who are satisfied into loyal advocates, will remain in the undesirable list. If I was to put together a top 5 list of the ingredients that makes this group buying a success, authenticity and trust would probably sit pretty squarely at the top.

Group buying in the blogosphere is gaining pace

One of the major trends in Social Media is group buying and we all heard about the usual suspects being Groupon, SocialBuy and a rising star in the Middle East, Cobone.

In the case you have been living under a rock, group buying is the process of forming a group of buyers with the intent to purchase a particular item or service at a bargain price. I am not here to talk about the success of social buying companies because this subject has already caused a lot of “digital” ink to spill.

I would like to shed light on an existing phenomenon similar to group buying, however with  its own earmarks – community buying.

I am myself part of an online community of expats within the Middle East with a sizeable number of members. The main goal of this social grouping is to assist newcomers to accommodate in their new environment. But not only, (it also caters) a list of products and services is shared with the community. And this is how it works:  

First Phase: the review

In this whole buying process, Word-of-Mouth (WoM) is a powerful medium, particularly during this first stage. Indeed, a discussion between the involved participants allows current owners of one of the products or a community member that used one of the services within the list, to share recommendations, comments and feedbacks. Needless to say that people trust their peers’ opinion more than they trust what companies tell them. Just a side point though, this type of WOM tends to be even stronger than a comment posted online lost in a (immensite et l anonymat du web) because some of the community members interact face-to-face. My point here is that we have a captive audience and it makes a world of difference.  Well, after this rate-it or slate-it episode, we then enter into the negotiation phase.

Second Phase: the price is right

 

The shallow pockets of online consumers who constitute this community, and of course the always guilty economic crisis, press the former to look for cheaper offerings and competitive pricing. The idea is simple: when a threshold in term of buyers is reached for each product and service selected, an order is placed. The more people are interested, the cheaper the price. Well, you get the picture. From laptops  to car rentals, to hotel offers, they have it all.

The experience is authentic and you do know that it does not take people long to lose their faith in something nowadays, especially when that something comes from a company.

This community is composed of two basic mainstays: authenticity and relationship.

If you are using Social Media to bond with your online audience, you must be aware of the importance of maintaining a genuine relationship with your readers /consumers. The thing about WOM is that it is viral in nature – people solicit feedback, share insights, update the community with their experience post-purchase. For better or for worse.

Third (and potentially lethal) Phase: Post-evaluation

It ranges from the “knock your socks off” customer experience to the disaster that sometimes starts like this: “I don’t usually write reviews, but I strongly felt this is worth informing as many people as possible”. Once more, WOM spreads like wildfire even outside the great wall of our community. If I wanted to be boring, I would tell you that no firm can offer a flawless experience to all of the customers all of the time. But, when a majority of the community experience delivery failures, the brand is blacklisted. Period. End of story.

Here is a tip: some customers will slip through that first safety net but a company without a good to great customer experience management, with a pledge to turn those who are satisfied into loyal advocates, will remain in the undesirable list. If I was to put together a top 5 list of the ingredients that makes this group buying a success, authenticity and trust would probably sit pretty squarely at the top.

Social media has taken the world by storm

Social media has taken the world by storm, connecting people, ideas and activities, and social networking mediums like email and instant messaging are the norm. A group of people that has embraced social media is journalists. In particular, Twitter is the most widely used for networking, according to new research from Spain. The results were presented at the recent International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) 2011 Conference in Istanbul, Turkey.

Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain have found that journalists who use mainstream social media prefer Twitter. They use this networking tool primarily to disseminate information. The group of professors that carried out the 'Join the Conversation: how Spanish journalists are using Twitter' research study were from the LABàPART group (The Medium is the Lab) at UC3M and assessed the responses of 50 journalists with active Twitter profiles to determine how they are using this media at work, how they feel about it and what their expectations are.

LABàPART is a permanent communication and social media laboratory designed to evaluate the status of online participation by the local news media, as well as the latest web-based collaborative strategies to emerge. The researchers are also cooperating on the 'Journalism and Social Analysis: Evolution, Effects and Tendencies' (PASEET) project.

'The first step was to analyse the participative scene, relating it to journalism,' says Pilar Carrera from the Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at UC3M, who also heads LABàPART.

The team's data show that the journalists, who have been active in their field for an average of 15 years, diligently use Twitter to publish and distribute information (95%), identify tendencies (86%), seek information (82%), 'viralise' information about their particular media (86%) or build audience loyalty (78%). It should be noted though that only a quarter of those polled said they use Twitter to conduct investigative reporting.

On the heels of Twitter came Facebook (41%), blogs (26%) and YouTube (8%). In terms of viralising information of their own news media, Twitter surpassed Facebook (82% vs 66%); in terms of viralising information from other media sources, Twitter again topped Facebook (67% vs 45%).

The researchers point out that journalists use social media in a way that does not essentially involve taking advantage of the specificity and logic of those networks to develop new content.

'For the most part, the journalists use these networks as 'viralisation' mechanisms, as systems to disseminate content that has mostly been generated outside of the logic of the social media, according to the traditional forms of journalistic production,' remarks Professor Carrera.

The results also shed light on whether or not the media has guidelines or accepted norms regarding the use of social networks. The figures show that 13% of those polled said their medium has such guidelines, while 54% recognise that no guidelines exist. The other 33% confirmed that their medium is currently working on such guidelines. Source; European Union

Balkans.com Business News : Social media has taken the world by storm

Social media has taken the world by storm

Social media has taken the world by storm, connecting people, ideas and activities, and social networking mediums like email and instant messaging are the norm. A group of people that has embraced social media is journalists. In particular, Twitter is the most widely used for networking, according to new research from Spain. The results were presented at the recent International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) 2011 Conference in Istanbul, Turkey.

Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain have found that journalists who use mainstream social media prefer Twitter. They use this networking tool primarily to disseminate information. The group of professors that carried out the 'Join the Conversation: how Spanish journalists are using Twitter' research study were from the LABàPART group (The Medium is the Lab) at UC3M and assessed the responses of 50 journalists with active Twitter profiles to determine how they are using this media at work, how they feel about it and what their expectations are.

LABàPART is a permanent communication and social media laboratory designed to evaluate the status of online participation by the local news media, as well as the latest web-based collaborative strategies to emerge. The researchers are also cooperating on the 'Journalism and Social Analysis: Evolution, Effects and Tendencies' (PASEET) project.

'The first step was to analyse the participative scene, relating it to journalism,' says Pilar Carrera from the Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at UC3M, who also heads LABàPART.

The team's data show that the journalists, who have been active in their field for an average of 15 years, diligently use Twitter to publish and distribute information (95%), identify tendencies (86%), seek information (82%), 'viralise' information about their particular media (86%) or build audience loyalty (78%). It should be noted though that only a quarter of those polled said they use Twitter to conduct investigative reporting.

On the heels of Twitter came Facebook (41%), blogs (26%) and YouTube (8%). In terms of viralising information of their own news media, Twitter surpassed Facebook (82% vs 66%); in terms of viralising information from other media sources, Twitter again topped Facebook (67% vs 45%).

The researchers point out that journalists use social media in a way that does not essentially involve taking advantage of the specificity and logic of those networks to develop new content.

'For the most part, the journalists use these networks as 'viralisation' mechanisms, as systems to disseminate content that has mostly been generated outside of the logic of the social media, according to the traditional forms of journalistic production,' remarks Professor Carrera.

The results also shed light on whether or not the media has guidelines or accepted norms regarding the use of social networks. The figures show that 13% of those polled said their medium has such guidelines, while 54% recognise that no guidelines exist. The other 33% confirmed that their medium is currently working on such guidelines. Source; European Union

Balkans.com Business News : Social media has taken the world by storm