Twitter saw an all-time high of more than 1.2 billion tweets in January.
As companies like @BestBuy and @MGMGrand have become smarter about social media, they stopped thinking about social media in the context of campaigns and have instead moved to ongoing engagement.
I think a lot of businesses will face a similar issue as they start considering how to grow their social media efforts: what’s the best roadmap to follow when moving from a single social media champion to a team, geographically disparate locations, or (gulp) an entire enterprise?
This wasn’t the first time I had looked at the challenges of ongoing engagement. While in college, I landed an internship with a Computer Technology Associates, a local defense contractor. CTA had contracts for Air Force AI projects and exposed me to something called command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I). Recent presentations by the Altimeter Group, Edelman and TRENDSSPOTTING echoed more C4I themes. As I explored more, I’m starting to think that C4I can help businesses, like the military, improve their ability to synchronize and integrate high-tempo operations anywhere in the world.
C4I provides a framework for helping organizations engage with third parties:
It sure sounds like social media to me. The strength of C4I is that you don’t need someone like me to tell you about it: there are literally tens of thousands of people that understand C4I, along with documented processes, tools and programs.
In the future, I’ll share what Answer Logistics is doing in the areas of command, control, communications, and intelligence…and hopefully provide some ideas on how to scale social media efforts.
[video]
Mashable: "5 Ways Airlines and Hotels Can Drive Revenue with Social Media" -
Author Shasham Nigank (follow him at @Simpliflying) details five suggestions:
It’s about a five minute read, tops.
How does Answer Logistics work? This chart describes how we work with organizations.
“The single biggest challenge marketers face in the next 10 years is attention scarcity. Bank on it.” — Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
Not many businesses deliver connected experiences, but when you visit a business that does it well, its a differentiating experience. When you know any employee can and will answer your questions, you’re more likely to do more things, have more fun, and spend more money. Just as importantly, you’re less likely to find things that bother you. Successful businesses know that a single bad experience causes people to look more critically and find fault at every other interaction.
For example, here’s how Wal-Mart did it:
We take a similar approach. We help businesses take a look at success stories elsewhere to give them ideas on how they can revisit how they interact with their customers, business partners, and employees.
Here’s how we adapt the same approach for a hotel:
If you are at a hotel, the concierge shouldn’t be the only one able to answer questions and make arrangements. Too often, the F&B manager managing a conference hosted at the hotel lacks information which could be used to help conference attendees find restaurants or arrange for transportation.
We love Steve Rubel’s AdAge article on this topic. While he addresses the problem from a different angle, he arrives at the same conclusion: companies must find ways to break down silos of information, and find ways to help employees engage with stakeholders around the clock.
Las Vegas casinos know the difference between “having hope” and “having a system”.
People hope to win in Vegas. Casinos have a system. They don’t hope to win. They plan to win.
Today, most customers go online to do due diligence on a retailer and its prices before setting foot in the store. From the moment the customer walks in the store, they have the advantage.
We want to change that.
When someone has a question, we help locate the best response in less than a minute. Today, most information is locked up in silos, inaccessible at the times it could be most useful.
In future posts, we’ll talk about linkifying information, and what it means. But for today, we invite you to visit our site or call us at 888/817-0210 to schedule a demo.
We hope you follow us at @connectme as we pursue our goal of linking employees, vendors and customers in a new kind of social network: one dedicated to delivering a consistently superior experience.