Mega shifts in social business will significantly affect the way that business will run in the future.
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/the-six-biggest-trends-in-social-that-will-blow-your-mind/
1. Big Data
How it works: Businesses collect multiple data points, helping to create hyper-specific marketing for users, while making better predictions with more information from a larger data set.
Examples: You’ve already seen this when Target figured out a teen was pregnant before her dad did. Even though she didn’t buy diapers or formula, her purchasing habits correlated closely with other customers’ who were pregnant, and Target sent her coupons for her upcoming baby.
Factors: Big data is being powered by the reduction in costs of data storage, as well as an explosion in the ability of businesses to capture data points. Never before have retailers been able to capture as much data about purchases, never before has online tracking been so robust, nor have social platforms offered access to so much data about users.
How to Prepare: As a user, you can expect to see much more targeted marketing, and not necessarily what you may expect. By drawing conclusions from large sets of data, companies might be even a little creepy in being able to predict your life – like the Target pregnancy. For marketers, you can expect to find new ways to streamline your sales funnel and get more analytical data about customers through social networks, web analytics groups and at retail.
2. Social Tool Aggregation
How it works: More and more third-party tools are springing up to help marketers and social network users make sense of multiple networks. Furthermore, networks themselves are offering ways of connecting to other apps and networks.
Examples: Tools like IFTTT and Zapier use social network APIs to trigger responses, while others like HootSuite allow users to aggregate multiple network communication into one tool. At the same time, tools like About.me allow a combined view of an individual’s social activity. Furthermore, networks themselves are beginning to integrate. Facebook allows cross posts from Instagram, Foursquare, Yelp and a variety of others.
Factors: It’s already taking too much time for individuals and marketers alike to keep up with just a couple social networks, and both the social networks and third-party tools know this. By consolidating social network interaction into a single place, users may be able to spend less time trying to make sense of the chaos.
How to Prepare: Users and marketers alike should keep an eye out for how this data is being used. What happens if you like Eminem on Facebook, but check into a venue during a Taylor Swift concert on Foursquare? What happens if you listen to the Glee channel on Pandora? What says more about who you really are? Do these networks share that information? Is it part of the authorization you okayed? The future may tell.
3. Social Network Consolidation
How it works: Social networks and tool providers are consolidating to remain competitive, both in creating a better offering for users, as well as buying market share.
Examples: Facebook has had nearly 40 different acquisitions since 2005 including technologies that help import contacts, manage photos, create mobile apps, and more, with their largest acquisition being Instagram for one beelion dollars (Doctor Evil style, of course.) Not to be outdone, LinkedIn has scored about 10 of their own acquisitions including Slideshare. Twitter has acquired tools like TweetDeck, platforms like Posterous and has created Vine, but acquisitions aren’t limited to social networks, they extend into social tools as well. Salesforce just had their largest couple years so far acquiring Radian6, Buddy Media and most recently, their largest, Exact Target. Adobe purchased Omniture, and Google bought YouTube and Wildfire Apps, and Oracle took over Involver social apps. Everyone is finding some value in social.
Factors: Not only is social the big thing, but it’s the logical next step after Social Aggregation. People want to be able to easily publish across social networks and marketers want to have the ability to create one true set of data. Rather than having multiple tools these companies are attempting to offer consolidated suites for data creation, storage and analysis.
How to Prepare: Marketers need to be aware of evolving tools and networks. When Twitter bought TweetDeck, it dropped many of the supported features for Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and others. Be aware of these types of changes so you can make plans for uninterrupted service.
4. Crowdsourcing
How it works: Companies are offering bigger roles to consumers.
Examples: Small and medium business often resort to sites like DesignCrowd, who offers thousands of designers the opportunity to design a logo, print piece or something else. The customer picks the best designs, offers revisions and the winner gets about $200. Starbucks turned to crowdsourcing for coming up with new product ideas, with over 50,000 ideas coming through My Starbucks Idea. Doritos, Lincoln, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Toyota and others have even crowdsourced Super Bowl ads.
Factors: Customers want to have a stake in companies. As more businesses go to greater and greater lengths to spotlight influential users or creative user-generated work, consumers are expecting to interact more and more with companies in these ways. Furthermore, consumers are expecting more unique messaging rather than traditional corporate marketing speak.
How to Prepare: Find new ways that you can incorporate customer feedback and ideas into marketing campaigns, product updates or other areas of the business.
5. Sharing Economy
How it works: Online networks, “peer-to-peer marketplaces” are set up to pay to use people’s spare assets – rent a bedroom, or car from, or even eat a meal with complete strangers.
Examples: Perhaps some of the first companies in this space followed the crowdfunding model – with Kickstarter and Indiegogo being the top two. Airbnb offers to rent out unoccupied living space from a bedroom to an entire island including 250,000 listings in 192 countries. Taskrabbit allows users to outsource small jobs such as picking up dog food and dropping it off at your door. RelayRides even offers unused personal vehicles to rent.
Factors: It could be the downturn in the economy making some folks want to rent out their cars and rooms for extra cash, or causing others to avoid committing to a car payment. Furthermore, people are increasingly aware of the toll on natural resources in manufacturing and the high costs of parking in major urban areas. Sharing based businesses help to alleviate these problems and make use of otherwise idle resources.
How to Prepare: See if there may be a natural fit in working with one of these sharing services or offering your services through one. Jeremiah Owyang offers an example where Marriott could work with a shared lodging hosts to offer a “stamp of approval” of sorts, where hosts could agree to abide by certain standards or receive certain training to become certified. Marriott could even offer bedding, linens or other materials that could both help guests feel more confident in their accommodations while helping guests distinguish themselves from competitors.
6. Quantified Self
How it works: Individuals using devices or social networks to track information about themselves. This data can be cross referenced to identify some interesting trends about yourself.
Examples: FitBit tracks your physical activity, while foursquare tracks the types of businesses where you check in. It’s not too difficult to find out that when you go to movie theaters, you tend to eat poorly, and when you go to museums, you add an extra thousand steps to your routine. Apply that across other areas of life, music, work, love and you can some very interesting trends can turn out.
Factors: People are increasingly using technology to extrapolate information to work more efficiently. Furthermore, an increase in the scrutiny of the NSA and increased awareness of privacy have perhaps made people more interested in creating and storing their own information.
How to Prepare: Companies need to offer APIs and other ways for users to control and access their own information where possible. Connect to services like IFTTT and Zapier so users can import data and manipulate it, and make accommodations for people using personal technology like FitBits, Nike Fuelband, Jawbone Up, and others.
Overall, these mega shifts in social networking and social business can significantly affect the way that business will run in the future. Are you prepared? Have you seen these shifts or experienced them? Look for our future posts on the Micro-Trends within each of these larger trends and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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CES 2014: Four mega-trends for the professionals
Summary: Trends matter at CES. While there may not be major product announcements, trends will emerge to shape 2014. Here’s what to watch in business tech.
http://www.zdnet.com/ces-2014-four-mega-trends-for-the-professionals-7000024727/
1. Wearables
2. The Internet of Things
3. Contextual computing
4. Consumerization of business tech
blog under the articles holds good information
D2L Known Issues Reminder:
We are entering spring semester 2014 with D2L version 10.1 SP13. This is a reminder of some of the known issues that we are still experiencing.
These are by no means the only known issues we are dealing with, but they are particularly troublesome at the beginning of the semester when instructors are copying courses forward and editing their quizzes.
1. Attempting to delete questions in a quiz or question collection produces an error and/or does not delete all of the questions selected for deletion.
Workaround is to attempt to delete only a few questions at a time.
2. Cannot change the number of questions to be drawn from a random question set.
No workaround. Only option is to create a new random set and enter the correct number of questions to draw from the set.
3. Some surveys and checklists that are copied forward into a new course become un-editable or cannot be deleted. Typically this will happen when there are start or end dates for the surveys and checklists and those dates are set to display on the calendar.
Workaround/Fix: This issue requires a manual database fix by our SSA team.
Submit a ticket, including Course OU#, name of survey or checklist (and name of checklist items). Also, go to the specific survey or checklist, copy the URL and include it in the ticket–this will provide the item ID so it can be located and fixed in the database.
Further questions and inquiries? Please address to:
d2L@stcloudstate.edu
Follow us on Twitter: @scsutechinstruc #d2l
Spring Semester Start–D2L Performance
Our number one priority during spring semester start is system performance, which we will be monitoring closely. As always, we advise that faculty perform course copying and exporting/importing prior to the first week of classes. If any system wide performance issues occur, we may need to ask users to avoid certain activities during high usage periods.
If you or your users need to report slow performance issues, please gather all relevant information and include it in the ticket. It may be helpful to send this list of pertinent details to your faculty in advance, so they are aware of the information we need to replicate and diagnose issues to determine the source of the problem.
Please include this information when reporting D2L performance issues.
Name of person experiencing issue:
Date and time of issue:
Role: (student, teacher, admin)
Course: course OU#
Tool: (Discussion, Grades, etc.)
Steps Taken: (details so we can replicate, i.e., open discussion topic #2, click Post, get error, etc.)
Problem that occurs: (30 second wait, error, etc.)
Device: (Mac laptop, Windows desktop computer, iPad tablet, Android phone)
Operating system: (Windows 7, Mac OS 10.6, etc.)
Location: (Home, Campus, Public)
Hardwired or wireless:
Browser and version:
How many browser sessions and tabs were open?
How many other applications were open? (Word, Excel, etc.)
Any attempt to use a different browser, and if so, were the results the same?
Any attempt to try from a different computer, different location and/or different connection type, and if so, were the results the same?
Any attempt to close extra browser tabs, sessions and/or other applications that were running, and if so, were the results the same?
Thank you in advance for your attention to detail when reporting D2L issues.
Further questions and inquiries? Please address to:
d2L@stcloudstate.edu
Follow us on Twitter: @scsutechinstruc #d2l
Follow the IMS blog: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims
10 Fundamental Apps for Your New iPad
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/01/10-fundamental-apps-for-your-new-ipad.html?m=1
1- Dropbox
Besides Google Drive App, Dropbox is a great cloud storage platform that you can use for free. When you sign up you get 2GB of space for free and you can upgrade for more. Dropbox lets you save all your pictures, files, and documents into easily arranged folders and access them anywhere you are with internet connection and across different devices. its syncing capabilities are also great.
2- Evernote
This list would not be complete without Evernote. This app is definitely a must have. It allows you to take notes on the go and sync them across different devices and platforms. Evernote is also a wonderful bookmarking tool that you can use to save and curate web content.
3- Gmail
This is the official Gmail app for iPad. The new update brought to Gmail app some new useful functionalities including: multiple account support, real time notification, and search across the entire inbox.
4- Penultimate
This is a wonderful app for digital handwriting. It allows you to handwrite on your iPad, take notes, write on pictures, zoom in on a spot and illustrate it. When you are done you can store your note into your Evernote account and access it from anywhere with internet connection.
5- Paper
Wanna unleash your creativity on iPad, give Paper a try. This is an app that enables you to create drawings, illustrations, notes, sketches, diagrams and share them with your students and colleagues.
6- Chrome
Chrome is my favourite browser for iPad. Safari is also a good option but I like Chrome the most because I find it to be fast, loads quicker and is user friendly.
7- Flipboard
Flipboard is a great personal magazine. You can use it to catch up on the news you care abut. You can add popular publications like New York Times or add the feeds of your favourite websites and blogs. Flipboard also enables you to stay updated about the news and feeds coming from your social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Thumblr, and Instagram and all in a beautiful magazine style experience.
8- Skitch
This is the app I use to illustrate pictures I take with my iPad camera. Skitch allows you to capture a picture or use the ones you have in your camera roll and write or draw on them before sharing them with others.
9- Twitter
This is the official iPad app for Twitter. It is pretty basic because it’s free but if you want a sophisticated Twitter app then go for Tweetbot ($2,99). I personally use the free one.
10- Kindle
http://www.business2community.com/social-media/top-five-social-media-marketing-mistakes-fix-0681757
#1. Using the wrong metrics
When people are forced to deal with a subject that they don’t understand, they often try to gain some sense of control by applying the same rules to it that they’ve seen to work in their area of expertise. This kind of simplistic thinking can be the rot of many mistakes.
Many conventional marketers make this sort of mistake when they try to measure the success of their social media marketing efforts. They use the number of fans or followers that their efforts have gained for the company as the primary yardstick by which to measure their success. They tell themselves that if viewership numbers matter in the television business and circulation numbers matter in newspapers, follower numbers should matter in social media.
In truth, though, it doesn’t matter how large a social footprint you have. You could have thousands of Facebook fans without it making a difference to your business. In social media, what matters is how much people feel compelled to talk about your business by tweeting about it, bringing your business up on Facebook and sharing your videos among their friends. Businesses that truly understand social media marketing use metrics that make sense for social media. They measure brand sentiment, the number of times their customers share their experience with the company’s customer service department and so on.
#2. Setting up too many social network accounts
At one point, IBM discovered that hundreds of their managers had an IBM-branded Twitter presence, each one with his own handle. People who wished to follow IBM on Twitter had no idea which one of these was the real IBM. Top management had to intervene and shut down all but a few accounts.
Managing one social media business account properly can be a huge responsibility by itself. Even large companies often have trouble adequately staffing and running a lone Facebook account. Many small businesses, though, make the mistake of jumping headfirst into every social media platform, major and minor – Google+, Pinterest, Vine, Ning, Tumblr and FourSquare, among others. They only think of how they are stretched too thin after they’ve set up pages everywhere and got a handful of fans. They are then forced to abandon many networks and lose face. The lesson to learn here is that no small business has the resources to run more than one or two social networking accounts.
#3. Making your social presence all about you
Just as no one likes to be around a person who just likes to talk about himself, no one likes hanging around the Facebook page of a brand that can’t get enough of itself.
Brands that have no idea how social networking works jump in thinking that it’s a traditional advertising platform. All they ever give their followers are advertisements and unimpressive discounts to buy stuff with. While it isn’t wrong to get in a little advertising, it won’t do to plan your Facebook content around advertising. Even conventional TV advertising doesn’t work without offering humor, good music and visuals and an interesting plot. If you are going to get your business on a social network, you should concentrate on finding out what kind of content your customer base is interested in and invest in high quality content creation to meet the need.
If nothing else, you should try to make your Facebook presence customer-centric by promptly responding to every comment.
#4. No communication
Businesses run efficiently through division of labor. They create separate departments with specialized knowledge of HR, customer service, marketing and so on. Creating a separate, self-contained department for social networking, though, doesn’t work. Every business needs to involve multiple departments in its social media marketing effort.
The marketing, PR and customer service departments need to be in the loop.
#5. You don’t have a plan
In many companies, the decision to jump on the social bandwagon is an emotional one, not one that’s the result of thinking and planning. This results in a social presence that is always run on improvisation and seat-of-the-pants creativity. An unplanned approach can result in lost opportunities. For instance, if your business doesn’t have an editorial calendar for your social media presence, you may simply neglect to say something important and relevant when the Super Bowl comes around, when the back-to-school shopping season starts and so on.
Finally…
Sometimes, businesses manage to be unsuccessful without making any of these mistakes. This can come from unwillingness to try anything new. The most important thing with putting your business on a social network is to be engaged and to constantly try to find a way to reach out to your customer base and be relevant to them.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-media/top-five-social-media-marketing-mistakes-fix-0681757#RaYiqtuoQegjqsyf.99
