Social media - time to implement like hell

Social media clearly remains a hot topic.

Not just among the evangelists - it crops up everywhere, in lots of conversations, presentations and meetings. Last week alone, I met with a guy doing his dissertation on social media, filled out a survey for social media for the marketing institute and fed into another survey trying to get an understanding of salaries for digital marketers.

Last September I outlined O2 Ireland's new social media strategy. Perhaps in another post, I'll explain in more detail what the strategy looks like - as we've some good stuff and an well-thought through structure (I think anyway).

From a practical perspective, the decisions we made included: (1) what activity we would do, (2) how we would do it, (3) who would do it (4) how much money we'd invest and (5) what success would look like.

I'm happy with it. It will evolve of course. And tactical mistakes will be made I'm sure. But the important thing for me is that we are clear on our strategy - thus no more lengthy discussions or time wasting debates on what we should or should not do. Rather, we're into execution.

In the words of Jack Welch "In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell".

Social media facts & figures, shown visually.

Click on image to see it properly. Might be a good one for presentations. Found this via insideview.com

Which companies are most social?

Found an interesting link showing which companies have the most social employees. They use social network profiles to figure it out. Microsoft lead the way.

(Funny when you consider there was a time where spending all your time on a computer was considered 'anti-social'.)

List of 500 social media marketing examples

Peter Kim has a list (a wiki actually) of 500 company examples of social media marketing. Nice place to see examples of good and bad practice from lots of brands. Very useful reference

Whispurr - a new Irish social network

I got an email about a new Irish social network called Whispurr. I haven't looked into it in any real detail but wanted to give it a small push (to all my 12 readers), given it is based out of Ireland. If you join, let me know your thoughts.

The social Media Guru

I'm sure there are some truths here. A bit long but funny at times. Found via Marc Sirkin