SMACtalk

Live from #IBMPWLC 2015 is the Year of the Cloud w/ @Sandy_Carter #SMACtalk Ep 15

Enabling A Cloud Ecosystem Through Social Business and Customer Centrism!

Call it fate, call it Kismet, but as Brian and I sat and watched Sandy Carter deliver her keynote at IBM Partner World 2014, we found ourselves saying, “We need her on the Podcast.”

So we tried, but as one of the leaders of this conference it was apparent that Sandy’s schedule wasn’t going to have a lot of time for extra appearances so the real chance of this happening was slim at best. But as we have found out in the world, you can’t get a yes to a question you don’t ask.

Following a brief meeting, Brian and I stayed back and decided to wait as we planned our day and out of no where who came strolling by? It was Sandy, and as soon as we saw her we decided we had to bring her on to SMACtalk…and by some crazy circumstance, she obliged.

Once you nail down the guest, the next thing is figuring out what you are going to speak about. In her keynote Sandy had so many great sound bytes; if you haven’t seen her present, it is worthwhile! So as we planned the show we had to nail down a couple of key topics so we could make the most of the 30 minutes that we spent together. So we focused on 3 areas that are a passion for ourselves, Sandy, and our community:

Social Business: At the center of everything Sandy does, she focuses on how being social can move any business. Not so much about social media or the specific channels, but about being giving, caring, using tools to build community and educate your customers, partners and employees.

Cloud Evolution: "2015 is the year of Cloud” is a sound byte that came directly from her keynote. But cloud for the sake of technology isn’t the key; it is about cloud that drives better business outcomes.

Customer Centered Leadership: In a channel that often has several layers from top to bottom, Sandy did a terrific job of reiterating how focusing on the customer from top to bottom of the channel allows for strong partnerships and more robust ecosystems. But again, it is about customers and business outcomes, not about widgets and buzzwords. So True!

Brian shared after our podcast a little story about how Sandy Carter played an instrumental role in his growth in social business. His story goes back a few years, but his explanation of how she contributed to his success provided tremendous perspective to me as to just how meaningful it can be to have the influences in our lives and in our businesses.

Sandy’s perspective in this episode of SMACtalk brought together the insights of technology, business and leadership showing through example how a better product coupled with a better story can make for one truly compelling conversation.

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

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Brian Talked about Sandy’s dedication to Video and New Media. Visit her YouTube page to see some of the great videos and you must follow her on all the social channels! https://www.youtube.com/user/SOASandy/

More about Sandy Carter

“They can copy a best practice but they cannot copy your best people. Find & keep best people, then develop best practices” - Sandy Carter

Ms. Carter is the best selling author of two books, "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0", which won the Platinum MarCom Award in 2008, and "The New Language of Marketing 2.0: Social Media", which won the Silver MarketingSherpa award in 2009. She is an avid social media evangelist leading an award winning marketing team to over 24 awards, and is one of the top Bloggers and Twitter-ers in IBM. Ms. Carter received a MarCom award for her blogger and Twitter communities. 

MUST Follow on Twitter: @Sandy_Carter

http://socialbusinesssandy.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/sandyacarter

How Cloud Partnerships Drive Next Generation Business Solutions #IBMPWLC

In this most recent episode of SMACtalk Live, co-hosts Brian Fanzo and Daniel Newman welcomed in special co-host Jerry Champlin, Co-Founder and CTO of Absolute Performance a global Managed Service Provider (MSP).

When we first met Jerry, we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to craft a story for SMACtalk that would be exciting and engaging for our audience. Absolute Performance is a strong organization, but by in large they have a very specific focus in delivering cloud and managed services to companies that focus in the Collection Space.

At first blush we thought…”How do we make collections+cloud a sexy topic?”

Thankfully, in our conversation, some terrific storytelling, tweetables and insights came to light that turned the conversation into a fascinating journey into the evolving service provider and how they can change business outcomes for clients that don’t only meet expectations, but solve issues the clients didn’t know they had; or at very least didn’t realize technology could solve.

So let’s dive into two terrific insights that Jerry brought out in our conversation.

1. Data Drives Tomorrow’s Solutions: Jerry shared with us a story about how the raw data in collections often lacked the ability to pull the insights clients were looking for. While some questions may be answered, many couldn’t be from data alone. Instead, it took listening on the floor and hearing what made some agents, for instance, better than others. Through partnership, vision and data though, Jerry shared with us how a next generation solution can be built that uses data created to capture these less obvious sentiments.

2. Partnership Means We Know We Aren’t Alone: Perhaps the most poignant moment of the chat was when we asked Jerry about what real partnership means to him and he said…”Partnership means we know we aren’t alone.” He proceeded to describe how partnership is a necessity for him to build these solutions and to not only stay the course but evolve his business and more importantly his customers’ business.

For SMACtalk, this topic wound up being an amazing dive into the actual deployment of cloud in a company that wouldn’t be considered a “Tech” company. But much like we say all the time here, Jerry also believes it isn’t about technology, but business outcomes.

In the future, work will be more defined by data, cloud and how we use these technologies to run better businesses. Of course our partnerships and the ability to build solutions on the backs of a business ecosystem (Read: community) may be one of the most powerful, yet understated means to continued meaningful innovation.

Look out for more from us here on #SMACtalk from IBM Partnerworld 2015…Thanks as always for tuning in.

Http://www.MillennialCEO.com/SMACtalk

http://www.twitter.com/SMACtalkLive

Hosts on Twitter:

Http://www.twitter.com/isocialfanz

http://www.twitter.com/DanielNewmanUV

More Information about our Co Host

JERRY CHAMPLIN - CTO and President - Jerry founded Absolute Performance in 1997 with initial focus on solving core business application performance and availablity challenges.  He is responsible for strategic technology leadership of the company including guiding the continuous evolution of System Shepherd® APM as a Service Platform and defining strategic business services for the company.  Champlin serves as a trusted advisor to major clients on topics ranging from applying Application Lifecycle and Service Management best practices to SaaS application design.

"As an organization, we are committed to providing business solutions to our customers enabling them to deliver critical business applications at a lower cost and higher value to their end customers.  The System Shepherd Platform and associated services are key elements in our strategy to increase application management transparency and reducing our customers' operational costs."

Jerry has worked with customers from Conseco Insurance to MD-IT to Business Objects and many others to help align their business requirements with application delivery results.  He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Carleton College and Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrychamplin

Why Partnership Is Critical for Business and Technology Transformation

In this episode, live from IBM Partner World 2015 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Brian and I explore the role of partnership in the business and technology ecosystem.

The word partnership has a way of being used to describe many relationships; all of which are not partnerships. 

In order for a partnership in life, business or technology to truly be a partnership, the relationship has to have a reciprocity by which all parties put the mutual success ahead of the individual success of any of the individual pieces. 

Putting Business Objectives First

The first piece of the puzzle for successful partnerships is to recognize that putting business objectives first is the key. 

While every business on the planet has a need for technology, that doesn’t mean that every business is a technology company. So for most companies, they need a partnership or perhaps better yet partnerships to help them uncover the various aspects of their business such as their CRM, Project Management, Inventory or other critical business applications. 

To truly deliver “Partner” value it comes down to more than just knowing technology, but knowing the business objectives of your partners and helping them achieve it. 

Technology: A Ripe Environment For Partnerships

The one thing that is for certain is companies are overwhelmingly looking for ways to put social, mobile, big data, cloud and more to work to help them drive better outcomes. As I mentioned, most companies aren’t tech companies so this means they need help, they need expertise, but perhaps most importantly they need partners. 

As we move into the remainder of this week at Partner World, we look forward to understanding how companies can tie a neat bow around trust, business, partnership and leadership to help customers leverage technology to meet their most important goals whether an improved bottom line or greater customer satisfaction. 

Look out for more from us here on #SMACtalk from IBM Partner World 2015…Thanks as always for tuning in. 

Http://www.MillennialCEO.com/SMACtalk

http://www.twitter.com/SMACtalkLive 

Hosts:

Http://www.twitter.com/isocialfanz

http://www.twitter.com/DanielNewmanUV

Video Will Reimagine The Future of Communication #SMACtalk Live Ep 12

Notes: In this episode (#12) of SMACTalk, co-hosts Brian Fanzo and Daniel Newman explore the ways that video is changing the way businesses market, communicate and socialize.

Over the past 10+ years, the internet has redefined media. First social media (Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress) shifted print media from a lengthy creative process to an instant on-demand industry and then radio followed suit as Podcasts, Pandora and other mobile listening platforms saw sizable growth and began disrupting the way we consumed audio on the go.

The next big wave has been video. For media or businesses to produce video it used to be a highly planned studio event. There was no way a “Selfiesque” video taken on a mobile phone would ever be published on a company owned site.

That was then, and this is now.

With Twitter, Vine, Instagram and so many others launching instant video uploads and of course with YouTube acting as the worlds video playground, today video is being uploaded fast. In fact, the internet sees more than 48 hours worth of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. If you also consider that the human brain on average processes video 60,000 times faster than written content it becomes clear just how powerful it can be.

So raw and ad-hoc video is becoming an acceptable norm for media and business. So what are some ways that companies can leverage this new, easy to create platform?

Customer Service: Imagine responding to a negative tweet with a short video from a company executive right on Twitter assuring them that your company cares and will take care of the problem? Powerful stuff!

Employee Advocacy: While not entirely new, why can’t CEO’s and business leaders create on demand videos to educate and share news with employees. These short videos allow company employees to look into the digital eyeballs of executives they can’t often sit with face to face.

Brand Building: What about creating customers and relationships? People want to work with companies they like and real time video is a tremendous way for people to quickly get a real sense for the people of an organization. If the story is true that we buy from whom we like, then video may be a great way to shorten the sales cycle!

A powerful and rapidly proliferating technology, video puts people face to face while allowing better, more clear messaging. It’s the future and it will reimagine the way we communicate.

Resources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2014/12/23/why-visual-content-will-explode-in-2015/

On this episode of SMACtalk Live we talk Cloud Computing, focusing on how the concept of cloud computing has really changed over the last 4 years for good and bad thanks to pop culture.  So many of use apps and tools throughout our day that leverage the cloud but probably don’t even realize it.  At the same time the misconceptions and myths that surround the cloud still cause many people to look up at the sky when talking about where the cloud lives.

Show Notes:

We talk about cloud storage apps like Box, Dropbox and Google Drive while also discussing the impact of software like iCloud, Microsoft 365 and Facebook pictures has on cloud becoming a popular term with pop culture.

This conversation focused on cloud computing at the middle ground, not high level in the sky but also we tried to avoid the deep dive discussions that we usually have in on #CloudTalk, our weekly twitter hangout, Thursdays at Noon ET.

We discuss the consumer impact of cloud SaaS solutions like Nimble, Google Docs and other tools and how they’ve changed the way startups are leveraging technology and how these trends are influencing enterprise decisions.  Although startups have had some influence on the enterprise adoption of cloud computing, we focus the discussion on accessibility, bring your own device adoption and shadow IT, as the key drivers for many companies having no choice but to at least embrace a plan to leverage the cloud.

Startups today are able to sign up with a credit card on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and can be up and running for eCommerce without having to buy any physical hardware or worry about UPS power or where you will store the servers.  We also talk how security has impacted the rumors and myths surrounding the cloud while trying to breakdown what a cloud solution is, what you should think about when looking into the cloud and also remind the listeners that cloud is more than one service or tool and the key is understanding its risks vs rewards and making the best decision for your business.

After breaking down what cloud is, how cloud is being used by pop culture and the risk vs rewards of cloud we focused the discussion on debunking these 4 myths that Daniel wrote about recently.

We Debunk These 4 Myths on the Show:

Myth 1. Putting something in the cloud means anyone on the Internet can have an access to it. There’s a huge difference between storing something in the cloud and publishing it on the Internet.

Myth 2. Storing something, like photos for example, online is not the same thing as storing it in the cloud.

Myth 3. Leading cloud services are the best choices.

Myth 4. The storage and security provided by your cloud vendor is the maximum you can have, right?

Love it or hate it, but don’t ignore it: we’re talking about the cloud. While the business world has known about the technology for quite some time now, it has become familiar in pop culture only recently, and in a somewhat controversial manner. Following the mass notoriety of the iCloud hack last year, cloud technology is stuck in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, perhaps because the iCloud hack was not the only time cloud technology has been blamed for a breach of security. In the world of enterprise, social media, and digital business, the cloud has had its moments of gaffe – from minor hitches like Google going down for a brief period, or Facebook falling flat, to more nefarious acts of data violation like the data theft of nearly 40 million credit and debit card details from nationwide stores of the retail giant, Target. The cloud has definitely had some growing pains. (Read “The Rise of Cloud in Pop Culture” full post here!)

We will talk more about cloud in future episodes as it is truly impacting the future of work and allowing us to discover and create New Ways to Work.  As always thanks for joining us and we couldn’t be doing this without the support of our amazing community. If you found this episode valuable we would love for you to leave a review on itunes and don’t forget to use the hashtag #SMACtalk to engage and share feedback as we want to learn from you and include your input in what we discuss in future episodes of SMACtalk Live.

Millennials Want Flexible Work.. Is your Company Ready? #SMACtalk

On this episode Brian and Daniel discuss flexible work and really question what is holding business and leaders back from implementing this.  They also cover the role trust plays in companies implementing a flexible working environemnt and the impact millennials are making by factoring in if a business cares about their quality of life when it comes to where and who they want to work for.  

Show Notes;

Millennial Leadership

Working 9 to 5 ---  Who said 9 to 5 is the most productive and optimized times to work?  Is there reason or is it the status quo only because it’s the way it’s always been.   

Startups and innovative companies today are looking at the role or departments function to decide if flexible work hours is a good fit.  Brian shares his experience with software developers, heavy travelers and non customer facing employees.

Could we ever move away from 9-5 work week?  Why or Why Not? What technology would need to exist for flexible work hours to be the common theme rather than the benefit certain innovative startups offer.  

Millennial Mindset is discussed as Brian & Daniel discuss it’s more about the connected generation that wants to make a difference and there are plenty of people that they work with in their 40’s and 50’s that have more of a millennial mindset than most 25 year olds.

What impact does trust play in companies allowing employees to work from home or work with flexible work hours?  Because someone works in the office does that mean the brand or manager has more oversight on how productive an employee is?

What will happen when a majority of forturne 500 companies have millennial CEO’s?

Can today’s leaders TRUST the connected generation:

Do Social Media interruptions when working from home make you less productive than those who have to work with noisy employees, water cooler discussion office environment.

Notifications...

Are Millennials willing to work more hours a week if the company allowed them to work from anywhere?  

Basically if you trust the employee they’ll give you more value...

You no longer need to be an entrepreneur or work at a startup to work from home but what is required for a business to give this option to employees.

Does an employee's commute play into a managers decisions of letting someone work from home.

Do Businesses Care about Employees Quality of Life?

Wait did flexible work from home conversation just offend our listener base?

If our listeners took this podcast to their bosses and got them to embrace work from home would people not have wasted time to listen to our podcast?

When did technology become good enough that working from home was productive and realistic?

Shouldn’t leaders be asking themselves…

Daniel shares his great business idea:

We talk Yahoo's decisions to eliminate the option to work from after monitoring employees VPN’s.

If you trust and empower your employees to have option of how, when and where people work…

It’s about creating a culture for the BEST work environment which includes work from anywhere or everywhere!

Discuss the responsibility Millennails have in a business becomeing a social buiness and what that role looks like in making Trust & Work From Home work!

Something Brian reminds all who work from home: 

Don’t be Out of Sight & Out of Mind!

Conference Call in Real Life Video Daniel Mentions: http://youtu.be/DYu_bGbZiiQ

Odesk study Daniel References: https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/05/this-weeks-perspectives-on-the-future-of-work-week-of-may-17th/

In the end the question becomes...

If companies trust technology and trust employees then they must find ways to make flexible work an option for all employees as the focus shifts from, this is the way we've always done it, to what can we as a business do to increase our employees quality of life and make them more productive which in turn will provide more value to the business and allow the business to attract and retain those with a millennial mindset!

Why Digital Starts with Trust and Community! Co-Host Bilal Jaffery

Bilal Jaffery (@BilalJaffery) joins Brian Fanzo on #SMACtalk as a special co-host while Daniel Newman was out making things happen on the road.  Bilal and Brian have been long time social friends as they’ve engaged and built a relationship via twitter as both are passionate and have worked in the technology and b2b space.  As you’ll see throughout the conversation the focus is understanding digital and technology trends but the foundation of all the stories and examples are trust and community.  

Bilal share some of his early technology experiences and he explains how connecting dots with content and technology in the pre web 2.0 days was important especially before pay per click marketing was adopted.  Bilal shares how although the web, technology and digital have transformed, the focus is still on community, providing value and building trust with the customer.  

Bilal shares how sharing his story and insights on his own personal blog long before blogs were popular allowed him to stand out for his customers and relate with the customers pain points and create conversations in a market controlled by Microsoft.  As brands look to technology to help engage these digital consumers and the millennial generation, the importance of finding ways to connect and relate with the audience has to be the focus.  

Shouting and broadcasting wasn’t ok in the web 2.0 days and isn’t ok today but as Bilal stated connecting the data and having KPI’s with call to actions is important for an executives and leaders working in digital but not so much for the consumer.  Bilal shares what he believes is the biggest challenge as a digital leader..

“Biggest challenge in digital is monetization while adding value, but not interrupting the consumer!” - @BilalJaffery

Data and Social are Innovative Game Changers!

As the conversation shifts to social and data both Brian and Bilal not only share a passion for both but believe they are both vital for a company to continue to innovate, attract new talent and build relationships with the community.  Bilal explains that vanity metrics are important as it allows you to understand some actions and let’s you know that your community is paying attention.  Data is important as we can use this to better understand if our consumers are gaining value and are we being considered against competitors

Social data Is important as it can be leveraged to understand if your feedback is positive or negative, or which influencer is talking about you and connecting the community to the customers.  Providing social executives and influencers with social data and connecting it with community conversations empowers them to have stronger conversations and build trust with influencers.  This helps understand influencers connections to the community allowing for brands to weight influencers not on total number of followers, but the amount of followers that influencer has in the brands target customer community.  With this data executives can often impact a customer's journey and a prospects business decision with a single tweet or social conversation.  

Bilal explains why big data is often considered boring and although it’s valuable to many brands and leaders until the tools add context and allow leaders to simplify the data, the data won’t be leveraged to make better business decisions.  

Bilal and Brian talk about the value of social executives in brands today, Vala Afsfar CMO of Extreme Networks is not only a thought leader but a leading voice in the digital and technology space.  Bilal explains the importance of having CIO, CFO, CSO and CMO at the same table empowering conversations and ultimately that united front not only builds trust but also attracts talent.

Technology and Social’s Role in Culture.

Everyone is doing social right now, everyone is reading the same books and listening to the same people.  The brands that understand the importance of culture and hiring people with a digital mindset are the ones that will innovate faster and leverage these unique talents to become a social business.  Extreme Networks isn’t afraid to think outside the box as you’ll hear, as Bilal explains how they leverage tools and social media to attract talent that is a culture fit by only accepting resumes for a social media manager position that are submitted via twitter.

Bilal explains how Extreme took the opportunity of rebranding to find a way to leverage social.  Bilal and Vala felt the best way to do this was to crowdsource the new logo with a campaign that would incentivize their community as one person globally would win a Tesla.  

This campaign ended up being far more valuable that just a new logo, as marketing gained feedback and insights on font and how their customers want to be engaged also providing great word of mouth marketing and building name recognition in a fun way.  Because this campaign was global the data was also leveraged to gain insights and better understand the North America audience compared to the global market.  As you’ll hear the campaign also built leadership trust in social and trust between the new brand and the community as they didn’t want to guess what logo the community would like most, rather they built the campaign so the community got to make the ultimate decision.  

Brian explains that if thought leaders like Bilal & Vala feel crowdsourcing idea’s is the smartest way to get it right, there is no excuse for other brands and leaders to not do the same.

Importance of Building B2B Communities

Digital today is really about empowering and leveraging SMAC (Social Media Marketing, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) to connect and engage the community while linking these strategies to business needs and goals.  Sadly many technology focused companies and b2b brands aren’t leveraging these technologies as their culture and communities are still stuck in their ways.

“In B2B it’s less about fluff and more about substance!” - Bilal Jaffery

Bial referenced CXOtalk, hosted by Vala Afshar and Michael Krigsman as a great example of how talking with customers and sharing their stories ultimately allows them to become a trusted advisor with thier customers.  Brian explains how CXOtalk inspired #SbizHour twitter hangout  as it opened his eyes to the power in connecting with industry thought leaders and helping share their knowledge and insights without pushing brand message because the goal of great community events are about providing value, building relationships and helping, helping and helping more.  

Bilal explains that Extreme Networks is focused on being the easiest to work with and being focused on community first thier able to build trust, as they are focused on always being there when customers need them.  Not only does this community engagement build trust but it also provides value to everyone involved across the business and throughout the value chain.  

Business trust and leadership trust is required for brands to take full advantage of technology.  Technology accelerates the message, capture data and then leverages data to make better business decisions. This conversation was about technology, digital marketing and emerging trends yet the entire podcast was focused more on culture, building trust and establishing relationships with the community.  

Brand can’t continue to be innovative, leverage technology or ultimately become a social business, until they trust their employees, their customers and their community!

More about Bilal Jaffery: http://earnedweb.com/

An award-winning industry-recognized strategist with a 10 year strong track record in successful digital transformation of tier 1 brands. Extensive background in holistic integration of digital with traditional marketing programs driving positive business results. Led IBM’s strategic transformation of the overall Web experience, Search, e-Commerce and development of Social Media Programs (internal corporate and external media).

Some of the work has been featured & awarded in media publications like Fast Company, Mashable, Forrester, SocialMediaToday, Tim O’Reilly Web 2.0, CIO Forum and academia; University of Toronto, University of Sydney, City University of New York & others.

Regular speaker at industry events and a strong advocate for new and innovative approaches to marketing and sales.

Daniel and Brian are embracing the “M’ in the SMACtalk as Daniel is recording today’s episode on the go as we recorded this episode on the Martin Luther King day holiday.

On Episode 8 of SMACtalk Amber Armstrong joins as Co-host to help us answer the question “What does it mean to be a social business?”  On the show we discuss Employee Advocacy, Personal Branding and Thought Leadership strategy while also talking about influencers role in brands becoming a social business.

Social business is what many companies, brands and leaders are striving to become in 2015 but what does it truly mean to be a social business?  On the newest episode of the SMACtalk Live podcast we wanted to discuss in-depth this topic and there was no better leader to have join us as a cohost than the Program Director of Social Business Market Making at IBM, Amber Armstrong.

On previous episodes of SMACtalk, Daniel and I have discussed why we believe IBM is without question the leader in social business and after attending multiple IBM events including the #NewWayToWork futurist event in New York, they are also proving to be the leaders in influencer marketing and employee advocacy.

As you’ll hear Amber discuss, IBM’s social business strategy is focused around linking paid, owned and earned media while leveraging employee advocacy and influencers to build a true social business internally and externally.

Although many of the examples and use cases discussed were focused around IBM programs, the insights and lessons learned that Amber shared around building an employee advocacy program, identifying influencers as well as Amber's focus on building employees personal brands to become thought leaders, are strategies that can be leveraged and implemented by every small to enterprise sized business that wants to become a social business. 

This won’t be the last time we discuss social business on the show and it won’t be the last time we have Amber on the show as a cohost.  Also make sure to check the Millennial CEO calendar as the SMACtalk Live Podcast team will be taking the broadcast live to future IBM and technology industry events.  Also as mentioned on SMACtalk, CoHost and Broadsuite founder Daniel Newman has a new book that was just released called “Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it)” is Doomed.  Daniel teamed up with Digital Strategist and CEO at ArCompany Hessie Jones to discuss how Marketers must evolve, because marketing, as we know it, is doomed.  This book is a must read for the SMACtalk audience as embracing change is a consistent theme throughout every episode.

Want to say Thank You again to Amber for coming on SMACtalk as a our second Cohost!

Make sure to connect with Amber on Twitter & Linkedin and click here to find out more about what her and the IBM Social Business team is doing and don’t forget to put your name on the list to be one of the first to test drive IBM new email conversation engine IBMverse!

Employee Advocacy, Personal Branding & Thought Leadership

Extending conversations to digital audience and importance of engagement and then leveraging data and analytics!

“You can’t be a modern marketer, without being on social daily!” - Amber Armstrong

Amber shares:

Key Take Away:

Employee advocacy must encourage and promote engagement, including education of employees and empowering leadership to lead by example.  Without education and focus on engagement, employee advocacy can come across as spammy and automated that provides no value and alienates the community.

Social Business Influencer strategy

Amber shares her strategy on how IBM created influencer relationships that were targeted and focused on finding thought leaders that were connected with the community.  The debut of IBMverse was part of the influencer collaboration event which has allowed IBM to understand and gather feedback from their influencers while also including them in the entire release and go to market strategy of IBMverse to make sure the relationship is a two way street.

We discuss the importance of:

The Future of Work is something we love discussing here on SMACtalk as becoming a social business requires a change in philosophy that integrates these strategies we discussed on this episode along with the S.M.A.C. technologies to create new employee and customer experiences! 

CES2015 - It’s all about the Data!

Cloud, Mobile and Internet of Things success for the future of work is dependent on the understanding and use of Big Data!

This Episode will cover:

Insights and recap from the #CloudTalk “Big Data’s Role in the Future of Work” Hangout + Twitter Chat with special guest Theo Priestley.

Trends and Gadgets on display at CES 2015 and why they’re cool.  Diving into a discussion on why technology companies are showing off their innovative toys, internet of things and wearable technology!  http://www.cesweb.org/

Understanding the importance of Human to Human (#H2H)integration with technology

What Brian Fanzo learned from the IBM insight conference, which is leading the change with including big data and engagement alongside cloud and technology.

Daniel Newman quoted the study that stated we as consumers spend 24+ hours a week on devices and the internet.  Brands are working with technology and gadgets to find ways to understand the hours people aren’t actively on the devices or internet!

Power of Data to link business goals and solving business problems with gadgets and Internet of Things devices

Data that is actively or passively shared is what these devices and gadgets are attempting to extract from the users and customers.

Brian explained how he provides his doctor the Jawbone Up data so that he can better understand his sleeping patterns so that the doctor has more data to make decisions.

The importance of connecting devices and data to the mobile user and customer experience.

How can businesses benefit from Internet of Things, integrating sensors for computers and electronics for energy  

What is a Social Business and how does Data help and empower a Social Business?

No excuse for brands that don’t invest and understand social listening and no business can be a social business without listening.  If brands can’t leverage this public social data to make business decisions, is it reasonable to think these brands are going to implement these devices that provide more data!

Useful data and data collection a deciding factor between a good and bad social business.

How employees and leaders get buy-in on #IoT devices and gadgets by starting the conversation with what data you will be able to gather and what problems you will be able to solve.

Businesses must focus on the data that they understand and that when leveraged allows for strategic business decisions!

Daniel stated that coming out of CES 2015 the CEO, CIO, CMO, CTO will still be asking… What BUSINESS problem are these technologies, gadgets and devices solving for the business?

Technology when done well increases productivity, saves time and makes the users lives better!

How do companies better understand what customers, employees and community are doing when not online…

Understanding the true value of devices like Nest, not that I can see the temperature or it provides a digital display, rather that it gives me new data that would allow me to adjust and manage my temperature to save money and energy.  

How can the hyper-connected devices that consumers use like Brian and Daniel, such as Dropcam, WeMo, Wink, Pebble watches and others be leverage by businesses both small and enterprises.

iBeacon and how it should be used for brands and retail businesses to get new data that would allow companies to adjust things like layout of store or what products to feature.  Creating an improved customer experience by leveraging the passive data provided by the customers.

Brian and Daniel discuss their first impressions of  IBM Verse (Dynamic New Email program) and how streaming lining email, notifications and conversations and those same changes must happen with big data and mobile device integration.

Want to be successful with Big Data as a SMB? Start Small, Understand the data and the problem that you’re trying to solve. Then think about tools and devices that could provide you that data, then take strategic business actions.

Think about how data will be to dynamically adapt our lives and calendar with things like the smart cars connected to your traffic map which then updates your calendar and notifies your coworkers automatically.

We question if companies or brands are utilizing the data they already have

No matter the size of the company, from small business to enterprise, they can’t buy more time, therefore finding ways to leverage data to increase productivity, save money and create better employee and customer experiences.

The companies and brands that embrace data and apply it to projects that are linked to business goals will be the most successful in years to come!