All tagged social media for business
Those of us who are in the media space; have "social media in their title"; are in PR, marketing or advertising, have been tooling around with Google+ for what would be coined in Internet terms, "a minute."
Since the launch of Plus, some brands tried to sneak their way on to the platform, but were quickly booted as a result. Google was basically saying to them, "Hey, we appreciate the eagerness, but we're just not ready for you to set up shop yet."
Well, the
store sort of opened yesterday with a slew of brands launching on the platform.
Today IBM announced new software and services that indicates Big Blue can see the forest through the trees in terms of social media's potential impact on business.
The new software is part of Lotus Notes Connections 3.0, a platform that provides enterprises with communities, forums, wikis and blogs to help users discuss and refine ideas. Today's announcement adds social analytics capabilities to the platform, which, In essence, helps close the time-to-answer gap for questions like:
- who worked on that project?
- who is the expert in this field?
- what connections do we have to this reporter?
In addition to the software, IBM is launching a new Global Business Services initiative to help companies understand how social networking is being used and how it'll fit into their business.
Yesterday's launch of Facebook Deals is big news for business. If you haven't heard, Facebook Deals is tied to Places, the ability to check-in at a location like Starbucks for example.
Despite location-based services being popular among tech lovers and social media geeks, there continues to be two beefs: the first being that they intrude on privacy, especially with the ability to "tag" other users who might not want to be so public with their activity; two, the services haven't really proven much in the way for business outcomes, mostly because the location based services just aren't mainstream enough.
With a half a billion users, Facebook aims to change that second point. Deals is going to be a big winner for both consumers and businesses. The service makes absolute sense, has a low cost barrier for businesses and consumers are going to love it. This much we know.
One thing businesses might not know about Deals is that despite it being a simple yet effective way for business of all seizes to get tap into real time customer interactions, this sales tactic equals more work offline.