As a ‘digital’ blogger (though rarely active nowadays) I almost feel that I have to write something about SoLoMo, since it is the buzzword of the year. Yet, tweeting to get some good examples, there response was there aren’t any. (please, prove me wrong)

SoLoMo – if you missed it stands for Social, Local & Mobile.

Nevertheless the concept has got me contemplating about something bigger than the marketing term that it is. Namely, the organizational structure we have to day and how we will have trouble with SoLoMo as long as we keep it.

Organizations today, or in this case the organization of the individual employee goals, might not be ready for SoLoMo. Take sales divisions as an example, most businesses have sales personnel with have some kind of commission. This is commission can be based on many things and levels, ranging from products sold from an individual to total sales of a store, it depends of a persons role in the company.

If you would integrate SoLoMo in a business with this structure, depending on the implementation, it might cause a conflict of interest. Lets say that we put a qr code next to a product, the qr code let to a mobile webpage, where you could read more about the product, or post to your friends on facebook to hear their opinion about it, or even compare the price with other stores. Or perhaps the product was out of stock in the store so you could place the order online instead. Then who would get the commission for that sale, the staff responsible for the webshop or the store personnel?

This is only an example, and there are tons of solutions on how to solve it. The point I’m trying to make is, who will initiate SoLoMo solutions when everyone has different personal goals?

For centuries mankind have struggled to make their work more effective and less costly. We have built machines which can handle the work of 10 to 100, 000 employees and then improved them to produce for less cost. We are so good at this that we sometimes forget the value of something that is handmade.

The same things goes for media. We have bought ad placements to spread the message of our brand instead of hiring staff out on the streets talking about it. Lately we have even begun moving our budgets from TV and print to online to reach larger audiences to less cost. Again like improving production.

But this time we are really failing.

We know that we scan webpages without seeing the ads. And most of us rarely or never click on an add, regardless of how interesting they seem. If we do actually see them and their message, fact is we are more likely to google the message than click on the banner.

Meanwhile – many of us seek information about your companies products. We want to read about how to set up a kitchen, or what is in style this fall. Information that your company have, but is not sharing. Because it is less expensive to make an ad about your product, providing no additional value at all, than it is to start a blog about your field. Pr, blogs, video, podcast and social media is often considered to time consuming and to risky of an investment. But, they could provide value which no ad will never come close to they might be both more cost efficient and productive in the long run.  Still, few are willing to take the risk, the risk to invest in something handmade.

If we would forget about cost and effiecency for once and focus on what will increase sales the most in a year. Do you honestly believe that ads are the solution?

I’ve stopped counting on the amount of time I’ve been asked to predict the future of Google Plus. The newspapers seem to do the same reviews. One day they are amazed with the amount of downloads, the next they are certain the time is over because visits has gone down.

The fact is that it is the fasted growing social network ever, however,  everything seems the be the fastest something nowadays so with the power behind google, I’m not surprised. However, I do not intend to predict the future of Google + here, I intend to give you my thoughts on the network so far.

Truth is, so far I love it. With that said – I do expect quite a few developments and improvements over the last few months.

Circles – both private and open

What I like so much is the combination of the social features with facebook/twitter – or at least my way of using them. With circles instead of friends or follow I can create groups of people I know better and groups with people I just find interesting.

Huddles – Great on mobile – necessary on web

As far as I can tell huddles are meant for mobile and chat for web. But I love the huddle because the conversation can keep going when I’m not around. I would love to have the same feature on the web. A bit like the new facebook groups were it sometimes is too much action.

Hangouts – Better in theory

Hangouts comes with a clear purpose, and they have a role to fill. I would know, I requested it a few month ago in another post. However, the necessity for the users to install a plugin and the fact that there is not a mobile version yet means that it has still a road to go. But it has potential. Real potential.

What do you think? Please share your first impressions as a comment :)

So here is my problem with social media and many of the channels out there such as facebook, twitter and blogging.

I constantly have my ideas trivialized (by myself) before I get them out when I’m trying to generate ideas which I only share over these platforms. Why? Well, when I talk to someone IRL the smallest idea can become genius because I get the instant feedback of that idea from the reaction of the person I’m talking to.

When I send out an idea in cyberspace, on the other hand, I do not know the reactions of my idea until seconds or minutes later. How can we change that?

I would like to see a portal where I could log on at any time of the day, turn on my webcamera and talk to all my friends that happen to be connected at that moment.
Like a videotwitter of anyone-tedtalks. I do not have to be friends with them in real life, just accept them as a friend in online.

If this existed I could wake up in the middle of the night and try an idea on someone who is at lunch break in another part of the world.

The issue is of course that most might not want to have their webcams on all the time and it could easily get spammed.

Maybe it should be a network of networks, so that I invite the people I want to connect with and the network can ping my computer anytime anyone has an idea they wanna share.

An ideal network would contain maybe 100 people from all over the world, making it not to big that I would be constantly interrupted by pings yet be able to secure that someone would be at their computer 24/7.

Perhaps one should have a widget allowing me to connect to different networks, all personal networks or an open channel for complete networking.

The idea is basically a combination of Ted, Twitter and random video chats.

What do you think? Do you know of anything like this that I might not?

Writing a pressrelease you might consider how should we write this to make it newsworthy. Writing a blog on the other hand should be done with a different approach. Yet, I’m surprised by how many times I stumble upon a person saying, we cannot start a company blog because we do not know what to write about. Asking me, what should we write about?

Having this approach to company blogging is to me a clear indicator that you are not ready yet. A company blog should not be about what to write. It should be a way to give people, customers and users information they are looking for.

If you are a clothing store you could write about fabric to one group of users and about the latest fashion to another.

So instead of asking, “what should we write about?” ask “who are our customers and or potential customers and what information are they interested in?”. By starting that way you can create a blog, which provides value to your customers, which from there will lead to loyalty, a relation and a purchase.

As simple as that. Looking for an idea, or an example? Comment below.

I just finished listening to a very interesting speech by Gary Vaynerchuk. Now, I’ve read Crush it his first book, but not the second the thank you economy because if it is just half as good as his speech I’m gonna love it.

In his speech on the Nordic E-commerce summit he covers something I’ve wondered about a while, and I’m sure you have too. Why do marketers spend millions on Tv commericals, billboards and banner ads, when almost all of us fast forward (if we own a tv), don’t pay attention to billboards and scan sites leaving out the banner space?

I think the reason is that marketers do not know what else to do, and they don’t have the courage to change the spending in their budget without knowing that it will work.

Vaynerchuk has figured out what works and put it as “don’t spend money on platforms, spend money on people.” While most marketers think it is a waste of time and effort to google one individual customer and figure out a special thanks to them, I think that we have much to learn here.

We are going into a time period were we have to look at one to one marketing and where money spent on staff might be more efficient than money spent on tv ads.

Do you dare to spend money on a customer to give some thing with out expecting anything in return? Do you dare too answer questions for hours without any promises? Do you dare to invest in the customers and you staff to build relations? Do you dare to take the leap?

Listen  & learn

Tonight I sat down with miss Sara Öhman and discussed a few social media topics as a preparation for tomorrow’s lecture. One of the things mentioned (ofcourse!) was transparency and eventhough we decided not to continue discussing it,  it got me thinking.

What does it really mean to be transparent? The first thing I think about is sharing and full-disclosure. But more than that you also have to think about the amount. Am I more transparent if I update everything I do during the day? Or am I more transparent if I occasionally share everything? Can I say that I am transparent if I don’t share everything all the time?

For me transparency is about not hiding things. If someone feeds me their every step it might even be more difficult to see who they really are, because of the information overload. Regardless of what some might say, there is something called too much information!

My conclusion is that if you are totally transparent: you allow yourself to share anything but you don’t share everything.

I cannot help but wonder sometimes how website administrators cannot spend more time on usability for the customers. I now that many bigger developments takes time, but how come I visited at least 5 different webstores selling curtains the other day without one sorting on length.

I started to think about this and how many websites there are that seems to over look things like this, they miss some of these functions that would make all the difference. I also though how seldom it is that you go in to the webstore you’re working with and actually try to make a purchase from the eyes of a customer and even more how you always know to much to be blank.

So how are you supposed to know what they will be looking for when it is obvious to you? There is one simple rule that has to be counted for.

Every feature that identifies a product should also be included in the way that you sort or search for products.

For clothes it can be size, fit, colour, gender, style, occation, lable, fabric and so on.
For  curtains, it should defiantly be type, length, colour, fabric and maybe lable.

If you will find these categorizations when you go in to the specific product, you also have to be able to find that product by sorting it out. If you want to benchmark to something look at technical specifications of a product such as a computer and a camera and to the same for what every product you are selling. I assure you it will help your customers find what they are looking for.

About a year ago I began doing the research to write a thesis on LBS (Location based services) which turned out to be a quite interesting choice as the services what just taking off in Sweden. This week it became mainstream as Facebook finally released Facebook Places in Sweden. Most my friend began using it immediately as Smartphones are extremely widespread in the country.

Both the fact that places is a part of facebook and the common use of iPhones have created a major boom on the use of smartphones in Sweden. A while a go I meant to write a post about H&Ms adds on Foursquare, as they have been one of the first companies to advertise on the LBS platform. So I would not be suprised if they are the first company in Sweden that we will see why advertise on Facebook places.

I find the release of Facebook places exiting as I will finally have people around me knowing what I talk about when I say LBS or Check-ins. Though I have got a few to many questions about how to “Check-out” from facebook places, people, it is not a hotell :) However, my concerns are that now when facebook places exists I wonder what will happen with foursquare and gowalla?

I have not read up about how Facebook places have affected their standpoint in the US. However, I doubt that the situation will be comparable here in Sweden. This because the services was far more used in the US before the entrence of Places, than they have been in Sweden.

Personally I might stop using Gowalla because of this, as I’ve mostly preferred Foursquare anyway. The reason why I kept using Gowalla has been that more of my friend have used the service as it has been more common in Sweden. And that argument will definitely fail from now on.

Eitherway, it will be interesting to see how the entrence affect the use of other location based services and how the secutiry debate will continue in Sweden. Will we get a swedish version of pleaserobme.com. The future will tell.

Do you remember all the comments, groups and pages that used to be when every Facebook made any significant changes? With the home feed o the profile? When they moved, added or removed things? Which made the users have the relearn what they knew. There have been quite a few of them.

This time, however, I have seen none. I’m talking about the introduction of the new profile. This could have been because people just got used to not having an impact on the development of the network, but I don’t think this is in. I thing it is because of the changed roll-out logistics. Instead of changing profiles in bulk (And let the swedes wait ;) they let the users decide on when they wanted to update their profile. Which have lead to people actually asking on how to make the change.

This is how twitter did it too a while back when they started rolling out the new layout. But as their changes have rarely (since I got on twitter at least) caused any big fuzz, this way of changing did not make as big of a difference on the reaction.

So what conclusion can we make from this? Quite a few, letting the users make the change have quite a few advantages:

• The geeks (me) that are not in the first bulk change does not feel left out.
• We do not risk any crash by rolling it out to everyone at the same time.
• And bet of all the users that is normally skeptical towards changes, feels like they are the one making the change.

Of course there is other time when this can be applied even when we are not talking about the bigger social networks. It could be a good thing when launching a website or a new product. – Add the new, but have the old one there for a while in the beginning.