Greg’s Daily Thoughts

Greg’s Daily Thoughts

Greg Balanko-Dickson  //  Greg is the Small Business Sherpa. Accompanying Entrepreneurs On Their Magnificent Journey Experiencing The Courage To Dream, The Freedom To Change, The Power To Transform Yourself, Family & Community

Greg has coached, consulted, or facilitated seminars with more than 11,000 entrepreneurs in more than 30+ industries. He is the author of two business books, with clients throughout the Canada, the US, South Africa and the UK.

Oct 25 / 9:59am

Revenue Not Focus of Twitter Deal With Microsoft & Google

Analysts say Twitter may well find ways other than search to make money from the huge amounts of data that flow through its system.

But Twitter’s chief executive, Evan Williams, said revenue was “not the focus” of its agreements with Google and Microsoft.

What’s more, neither of those companies has immediate plans to put ads on its searches of Twitter, though they may do so later. And Facebook said last week that it received no money from a separate agreement to make some of its users’ updates available in real time to Microsoft.

<shaking head>

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Oct 24 / 9:25am

Status.net Could Point to the Future of Business Intelligence

Laconica, the Canadian company offering the most popular Open Source alternative to Twitter, announced plans today to begin selling subscriptions to hosted microblogging installations for businesses. The default address of these new sites will be yourname.status.net. We suspect that this could be a very big deal.
via readwriteweb.com

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Oct 24 / 9:15am

Social Search Requires a New Approach = Social Business Design

My friend, Steven Moore the SmallBizTwit has an awesome article on his blog it is titled "Social Search is here! This will change everything in your business. Are you ready?" Read the entire post at http://www.smallbiztwit.info/social-search-is-here-this-will-change-everyt here is an excerpt!

The companies that now see this clearly are redesigning their businesses for this future. It even has a name and it is called Social Business Design.

Where to start?

1. Listening Software and Dashboards for your business.
2.Marketing messages will not work the same, focus will shift to User generated content that is shared heavily and will show up in the search thru popularity.
3. Communities will be more important, businesses will have to build them.
4.RT, @ replies and influencer's will need to be taken into messaging strategy and Word of mouth and linking sharing strategies.
5.Think people centric and not page centric. Think custom search results pages based off the influence from their friends.
6.Think Smaller, relationship based marketing.
7.Think about Legacy Marketing methods are not only ineffective, they can be downright counterproductive.(cause your market to tune you out and with technology just not hear or see you- think TIVO for TV, new tools are being developed now for the web to do similar things.

Future Implications
1.Pay attention to companies that are going to build out a system that will score influencer's rankings.
2.Smaller specialized communities will have greater influencer.

So the big takeaway- it is not going to be all about the tools and tactics- they will change as fast as yesterday and something that will always be the competitive advantage to the best implementers. It is the big changes at the top level of redefining the whole of your business into this new world.

 

Greg Balanko-Dickson
1-866-281-8281

It's The Quality Questions That You Ask, That Give You The Quality of Life You Enjoy!
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Oct 8 / 5:24pm

Does the Term Strategic Social Networking Make You Feel Targeted?

here are still a lot of business people who suspect that social media is a waste of time or a distraction from doing real business. And there is something to be said for this suspicion - especially if social media is is pitched as a "magic pill" for all manner of business problems.

To help me better explain social networking (which is the human behavior rather than simply the technology of social media), I put together the flow chart below:

via google.ca

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Oct 8 / 4:54pm

Twitter Stretches Its Wings: International Versions Take Flight

Twitter has announced it will soon grow from its current offering of English and Japanese only to include versions in French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

However, as their translation team now comprises just five staffers, Twitter is asking users to suggest translations for the website. "We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first," wrote co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog. "As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster, and we'll have enough material to respond."

via readwriteweb.com

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Oct 4 / 1:35pm

Technology is Changing the Way We Build Social Capital

In 2009, to build valuable social capital, we all need to be fluent in new media communication and best practices. If you want to work at the top of the political world, this will be crucial to your success. So after you watch this amazing video, check out some of the links below. They are resources that have been a big help for me.

1. Mashable

2. FastCompany

3. The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet

4. Pew Internet and American Life Project

via politicsunder30.org

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Oct 4 / 12:10pm

A Case for Employee Social Media Training- Design for Users

There are only 3 months left in this year. If you do NOT have a training program in place, get it in place by 2010. You don’t have time to waste, and it doesn’t have to be hard. You can make improvements as you go along. Start with your managers and make them responsible for ensuring employees do the right thing when it comes to both playing online AND collecting a paycheck from your company.
via design-for-users.com

This is really a must read for every business owner with an online presence. No really.

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Sep 9 / 7:29am

Designing for Social Traction

 
This is a long deck to view but the nuggets are many. If you are anything like me, it will cause you to rethink your approach to getting people to signup.

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Aug 23 / 7:34am

Social Media From Fad to revolution?

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Aug 19 / 9:36pm

Finding Your Niche Can Be Counter Intuitive

From the founder of one of the worlds great businesses comes unconventional wisdom:

“Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everyone else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.” – Sam Walton of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club
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