Top Six 2012 Strategic Technology Trends

We have highlighted six of the ten trends from Gartner’s report that could give your business a competitive advantage in 2012. The fundamental shift is towards a mobile driven environment. As consumers start to demand using their own devises in the workplace (BYO), businesses will need to look towards cross-platform technology such as HTML 5 that is compatible with browsers and mobile devises such as Android and iPhone. This will have a positive impact on business, reducing maintenance costs and increasing worker satisfaction.

1.	Internet of Things	By 2020, there will be 20 billion objects connected to the internet. Organizations need to prepare for internet intelligence being added to physical things, sensor technology, mobile ecommerce and recognition software.
2.	Contextual Content	Custom content can now be served up based on a users profile. Businesses can focus on developing programs and services that appeal to their buyers.
3.	Next-Generation Analytics	Analytics will increasingly focus on decisions and collaboration and provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics to empower organisations
4.	Mobile Tablets and Beyond	No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse BYO device environment.
5.	Mobile User Experience	Cross-platform user experience technology such as HTML 5 will dominate as devise centric technology (browser / mobile) becomes obsolete.
6.	Cloud Computing	Cloud computing will have a broad long term affect on most industries. Look for an increase in large enterprise providers providing a full range of options. Instant scalability, low cost.

“If change inside of your organisation is slower than the change outside, then the end is in sight.”

– Jack Welsh

With the release of Gartner’s digital trend forecast for 2012, it’s time to start considering the impact digital technology can have on the efficiencies within your business. Gartner believes the influence of new technology will have a number of effects, including:

• Will have a significant impact on the organisation in the next three years
• Has a high potential for disruptive innovation
• Organisations that are late to adopt will fall behind

The key to Twitter storytelling is:(a) use it to invite participation. Create scenarios and “exercises” that open the door to followers to contribute. Make it conversational. Allow followers to become advocates by facilitating the spread of the participation, not only the spread of the tweet. That is, it’s not simply a RT of the story tweet but an invitation from one follower to a non-follower to get involved – perhaps using some game mechanics with the storytelling to provoke and reward that.(b) recognize that Twitter is both a Discovery and an Exploration platform.

That is, current & recent story tweets and the participatory tweets are Discovery content – they’re luring audience into the world. At the same time the historical Tweets offer backstory and context – Exploration content – for those in the  audience that want to dig deeper. Hence you’re right that audience should be able to dip in at any time in the life of the story and become immediately engaged without having to read the premise/synopsis etc. The way to achieve this is to finely craft each Tweet so that it works like a Zen koan – it’s a 140 character meditation on the story that is revealing, intriguing and surprising. This is particularly important if the tweet is from the voice of a narrator rather than a character. I have always measured the strength of a short story by whether it leaves me thinking about the premise of the story for longer that it took to read. The same should be true for every Tweet.

Remember that twitter is a real-time news stream which means you’re only as good as your last tweet(c) use it to build & populate the world. As I hinted above, a story might have several Twitter streams from the perspective of different characters or entities. This means that while a “narrator” stream might tell *the* story, other streams might shed new light and different perspectives on the narrator’s voice. As with any transmedia experiences, these new streams should all add value to the core narrative yet at the same time be optionally consumed. One example I’ve been exploring with a storyteller is to have a twitter stream for a fictional Government bureau in much the same way as George Orwell has in 1984 – the  stream sends continual optimistic official news  ”production up by 120%”, “inflation static at 1%”, “crop yield the best since records began” – which is directly contradictory to the experience of the narrator! Such a stream builds out the world with a new richness but is timed to impact the through-narrative should someone choose to read both. I appreciate that this may contradict the “Zen koan rule” but then it’s not being used for Discovery, it’s Exploration so I’ll allow myself some latitude  In terms of commercializing the Twitter platform, it’s value is in the social spread of the story and the building of audiences. Revenue should be taken from other platforms.Calls to participate “case (a)” are much easier to provide examples for than the koan “case (b)” although you’ve listed some good places to research.Jay Bushman’s Twitter stories are always provoking and inspiring followers to create their own stories. He brings the fictional setup, let’s say the context or the world, but then it’s up to everyone else to bring their imaginations and participation.

more.

For more http://provoque.co.uk/2011/06/12/14-pr-tips-for-successful-facebook-campaign/

A global bank executive recently described to us a challenge for our times. It turns out that a customer who normally would qualify for the lowest level of service has an impressive 100,000 followers on Twitter. The bank isn’t doing much yet with social media and has no formula for adapting it to particular customers, but the executive still wondered whether the customer’s “influence” might merit special treatment.

It’s the kind of perplexing question many companies face as they formulate their thinking about social media. To understand how businesses are approaching the challenge, we analyzed strategies and practices at more than 1,100 companies across several industries and continents, and conducted in-depth interviews with 70 executives who were leading social media initiatives. Our research revealed four distinct social media strategies, which depend on a company’s tolerance for uncertain outcomes and the level of results sought.

For more http://hbr.org/2011/07/whats-your-social-media-strategy/ar/1

Uptake of social media marketing among small and medium-sized businesses has become widespread. Research has suggested it’s a cost-effective, easy-to-use marketing channel that can boost customer acquisition as well as fulfill other marketing goals. But most small businesses still don’t see social media as a necessity.

More than half of the small-business decision-makers surveyed in June by small-business insurance provider Hiscox said they used social media for business purposes, but a plurality also declared that it wasn’t necessary to their business. Just 12% considered it a “must.”

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Imagine your online community is a group of hungry people who walk up to a table where you have a spread of finger foods and appetizers. That’s your online content.

By watching which items disappear quickly, you learn what your audience truly wants. That’s the content that satisfies their hunger. And that’s what you need to give them.

In this article I’ll show you 8 ways to discover what topics satisfy the hunger in your online community.

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Advertisers drive paid media to their Facebook Pages because they want to be where their audience is, but there’s a major flaw in this strategy. Advertisers can’t track post-click engagement of non-Facebook ads driving to Facebook, and that’s a huge disadvantage in qualifying traffic and uncovering valuable user insights. Without such information, we can only guess whether media dollars are being well spent.

Read full article »

“They didn’t see any downtime. It’s amazing to think that it worked out fine,” he says. ”Our entire business is operated online and in the clouds. We have developers in all the major cities in New Zealand, Melbourne, Dublin, Bali, LA, and Buenos Aries; as long as they have internet access they can work remotely from anywhere in the world.”

“We could have been operating the day after [the quake] if we wanted to … If anything I feel it is a slightly positive thing because it made us aware of how important virtualisation is as a business model these days. Businesses need to be able to change quickly and adapt to market change.”

A report released this week showed nearly two-thirds of businesses nationwide had been affected to some degree by the Christchurch earthquakes. For Vizualise, that translated to business slowing down, though Deans says it’s starting to trickle back in.

“That’s one reason we’ve been pushed to focus more on our international clients as well in Canterbury.”

That led to the opening of the agency’s second office, in Melbourne, and Deans expects export revenue to double to $1 million on the back of high-value custom from Australia and the US.

Since its beginnings in 2006 the company has delivered IT and marketing solutions for brands including Canon, Monier, Kitchen Studios, PGG Wrightson, Yike Bike and more. But inquiries from Hollywood A-listers are the next big thing for Vizualise, according to Deans. While celebrities’ clout was once measured by how much they could command per project, today it’s about personal branding and loyalty-building. Just ask Lady Gaga.

“Now with social media, it’s about the presence you have around your fanbase and your personality. That’s becoming the new scorecard for celebrities,” he says. “We’re looking at their customer fan bases and how we can move those online and monetise them.”

However, Deans says the company isn’t leaving New Zealand behind. Far from it.

“That’s where we started and we’ve got a real loyalty to Christchurch and Canterbury customers. We really want to help them get back up and running and leveraging their brands online.”

That includes preaching the virtualisation gospel; Deans says that’s vital to help them continue operating effectively, from communications to accessing important data, despite the ongoing shakes.

“If you’re a major company there’s going to be a lot of infrastructure change needed. The business strategy needs to change, the organisational culture needs to change as well. But with most SMEs, there are a lot of small things they can do quite quickly. Using Google Apps—that’s what we use a lot of for project management as well as emails and day-to-day communications. Skype. File sharing and file sending. There’s a whole toolkit of different things you can use to get virtualised.”