Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Social Era is Here to Lead!


This undoubtedly is the #SocialEra – ever increasing number of social media platforms are catering to unpredictable demands from social media users. With so many options to connect and communicate with communities and self-taught nature of social media, both social media users and companies that own social media platforms face numerous challenges.
I have been following Nilofar Merchant who is a regular contributor at Harvard Business Review Blogs. She is currently a corporate director at NASDAQ traded firm and a lecturer at Stanford. Nilofar has recently written a fantastic book 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era.
In her interview with Forbes she talks about large number of people still following traditional way of doing business. Coming to work every day, sending emails etc. She argues that in the modern SocialEra, people should be thinking more creatively and working more innovatively.
READ complete article- Click Here

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Social Media for Corporate Leaders


Key role of today’s corporate leaders is to build communities and engage them in building successful organizations.
Social Media Logos
Social Media Logos
Digital technology and Social media has completely changed the dynamics of societies we live in. Technological advancements have made it easier for leaders to build stronger communities.  In the past couple of years, instead of considering social media as a threat, leaders are discovering its very real opportunities.However, rapid change in technology and tools is creating an unusual challenge for corporate leaders. They not only need to keep up with the developments in the corporate world, but also required learning and practicing these constantly emerging social media tools. Acquiring knowledge and use it effectively not only requires time and energy, but a lot of commitment as well. Times have gone by when leaders could afford to let their secretaries check emails and draft responses. Promptness and direct communication is the norm now.

What to do When Social Media Bites - Check what McDonald's Did


In this era of Social Media, large brands are generally more enthusiastic and try to engage people in discussions around their brand. This could however backfire too – In case of McDonald’s which is one of the top global brands in fast food restaurant business, it really was extremely damaging! Company spends millions of Dollars in branding strategies and social media is one of the key components ofMcDonald’s Branding Strategy.
Despite all this careful psychological validation, earlier this year McDonalds got amassive reputational hit when it ran its Twitter Campaign. It was a simple effort to engage people in sharing their experiences at McDonald’s restaurants around the world. Hashtag for the campaign was #McStories.
For McDonald’s Social Media Team, this could be a simple campaign, but they never realized that #McStories is an excellent opportunity for promoting stories that are not in favor of the restaurant. The hashtag went viral soon with people sharing their worst experiences. Initially there were few negative tweets, but soon everyone started following the Twitter Trend and phenomenal tweets started pouring in from every corner, retrieval was impossible!