Anyone who’s been to London, knows the phrase “Mind the Gap” which warns people riding the Underground to watch their step as they go from platform to train. As I watched The Gap’s logo “update” unfold last week, “mind the gap” seemed apropos as a caution for businesses: watch your step or you might get hurt. …
Originally posted at SimonMainwaring.com. Follow Simon on twitter As more brands embrace social media as a marketing strategy, many are racing to establish a sizable social footprint. For their marketers, that translates to creative briefs like, “How can you get me to a million Facebook fans fast?’ or “What bots can I use to fast-track…
We often talk about what we call the “1-9-90” rule. This is the basic rule of thumb for most online communities: 1% of your community are people who will become highly active in your online site – they will make new submissions, comment on a ton of others, vote and just generally be so active…
Originally posted at 15inno on August 9th, 2010. One thing that defines a strong, innovative company in the future is the interaction it has with its stakeholders and in particular with its customers. Not many companies do this as well as Lego as you can tell from the below impressive list of fan communities, market…
Originally posted at Convince & Convert on June 23rd, 2010 with some great discussion. While many businesses are excited about opportunities to reach their customers on the social web, few actually believe they have done so successfully. According to a recent Social Media and Online PR Report from Econsultancy, 86% of companies surveyed planned to spend…
Just over two months ago, Jeff Howe tweeted an idea out. What if everyone on Twitter read the same book? The idea immediately took off and One Book, One Twitter was born. Why is it that some crowdsourced ventures seem to take very little effort and end up being very sticky? Here are a few…
We had a great call this morning with some people working Mozilla’s Drumbeat project, including Matt Thompson and Mark Surman. We tried to share some insights from the Cambrian House community and hope they were helpful to the Drumbeat crew. Not everyone contributes in the same way -The Cambrian House community had a pretty complex system to award…
A broadly influential thought leader, Dr. Mark Drapeau’s ideas carry weight in numerous communities. He is a sought-after speaker for events whose topics encompass everything from local and state government operations, to science and technology advances, to public relations and marketing innovation, to federal government, international relations, and military issues. The captivating and witty Drapeau…
Business researchers remain baffled on the “not just yet” phenomena of enterprise declaring the desire to embrace social technology when surveyed, but making no progress a year later. For many the concern is being thrust into a conversation where the crowd will hurl insults about how their products or services or policies fall short. So…
The silence on David Rohde’s kidnapping has made a considerable amount of noise on the internet this week. The New York Times asked Wikipedia to keep news of Rohde’s kidnapping off the site. After printing an article explaining why, the rest of the blogosphere chimed in. Stan Schroder, from Mashable, weighed in with his thoughts,…