Thank you for being with us for the third month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from April in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including lean startups, cultures of risk, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
Thanks to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for inspiring the title of this post; much to the chagrin of my colleagues, I was quite excited about the wedding, hence the title. In all seriousness, when this last week’s many news events – the royal wedding, Osama bin Laden’s demise, and the Canadian election – were taking place, social media took centre stage, eclipsing traditional media as the place that consumers turn towards for news as it happens. As Brian Solis said earlier this week, news no longer breaks, it Tweets.
As Twitter continues to make inroads into the mainstream, especially as a channel for breaking news, I thought it pertinent to check on the status of Twitter and the rest of the popular social media tools in the business world.
Based on my findings, I can say with confidence, the honeymoon is definitely over.
Earlier this week, we explained that so many startups fail because they adopt a “build it and they will come” mentality and neglect to define the market opportunity for their products. In an even earlier post, we looked at the findings of two studies into the factors that contributed to the demise of 50 startups. In both studies, issues related to market research and customer engagement ranked high among the reasons for startup failure.
As a community manager, I can’t help but draw parallels between these reasons for startup failure and the reasons they also fail at social media. I’ve seen and read about many startups that build social media accounts and then sit back and wait for their communities to build themselves. Sure, this method may work for well-established brands like Coca Cola and Disney that have developed loyal communities outside their online accounts. But for developing startups, waiting for a community to build itself is, quite frankly, wishful thinking and a waste of valuable time and opportunity.
Dave Fleet, Vice President of Digital at Edelman’s Toronto office, and I sat down after his Social Media Breakfast Ottawa presentation to discuss some of the top social media trends that business can expect to come to fruition in 2011. Among the top trends discussed in this video are influence, content curation, search engine optimization, privacy and the importance of having a crisis communications plan. The discussion also offers important information for government workers and communicators who are working with their organizations to implement social media strategies.
Thank you for being with us for the second month of our new blog. In case you missed any posts, here is a recap, beginning with, in chronological order, the lastest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which explored startup incubation, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
Thank you for being with us for the third month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from April in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including lean startups, cultures of risk, the right stuff entrepreneurs need to succeed and other pearls of wisdom.
