Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking
In an increasingly social world, author Susan Cain argues that we undervalue the power of the introvert at our peril. How can organizations ensure that the best ideas dominate, rather than those of the most vocal and assertive people?
How Social Networks Changed in 2011 | Infographic
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The Power Of Circles
In the 19th century, artists including Degas, Monet, and Renoir got together periodically to discuss their commissions, their patrons, and their industry. This circle met consistently, and the artists credited these small gatherings with not only making their careers but the rise of the impressionist movement.
(via fastcompany)
The Complete Guide To Social Media Marketing For Startups | Infographic
(via socialcubix)
IBM Targets the Future of Social Media Analytics — GigaOM
IBM announced a new product dedicated to helping customers perform sentiment analysis of social media data on Thursday, as well as a new program with the Yale School of Management’s Center for Customer Insight to train students in advanced data analysis skills. With businesses increasingly getting hip to social media as a way of connecting with customers, and with an industry-wide need for analytics skills, both the product and project are well-timed.
The new product, called Cognos Consumer Insight, is built upon IBM’s Cognos business intelligence technology along with Hadoop to process the piles of unstructured social media data. According to Deepak Advani, IBM’s VP of predictive analytics, there’s a lot of value in performing text analytics on data derived from Twitter, Facebook and other social forums to determine how companies or their products are faring among consumers. Cognos lets customers view sentiment levels over time to determine how efforts are working, he added, and skilled analysts can augment their Cognos Consumer Insight usage with IBM’s SPSS product to bring predictive analytics into the mix.
The partnership with Yale is designed to address the current dearth of analytic skills among business leaders, Advani said. Although the program will involve training on analytics technologies, Advani explained that business people still need some grounding in analytic theory and thinking rather than just knowing how to use a particular piece of software. “I think the primary goal is for students to learn analytically,” he said, which will help know which technology to put to work on what data, and how.
(via emergentfutures)
Where The Wild Things Are (Networking With The “Right” People)
I think one of the most overlooked (under-taught) things in the general career space is how you can properly integrate yourself into the industry or field of your interest. People just don’t realize that to break into any space you need to go where the wild things are.
If you want to be a banker, go to where bankers hang out (strip joints and clubs, anyone?). If you want to work at startups, go to the hackathons, meetups, etc.
When you start attending the events, you begin to network with the “right” people. Networking for the sake of networking can only get you so far. Networking with the “right” people (ie The Wild Things) is really the only thing that matters.
IBM’s Social Business Predictions for 2012
For Social Business, 2011 was a year of exploration, experimentation and in some cases innovation. Both small and large organizations in a variety of verticals globally began to realize the power of bringing social behaviors, processes and platforms behind the firewall. According to a 2011 AIIM survey, over 50% of organizations now consider social business to be imperative or significant to their business goals.
As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time to look ahead to what’s next in social business for 2012. IBM’s Alistair Rennie, GM of Social Business, has three predictions for what we can expect to see in social in 2012:
1. Social Analytics
“In today’s highly connected global business environment, the way people communicate, find and share information and work together has changed dramatically. In 2012, social analytics tools will become the must have to gain insight and make better, faster business decisions and improve customer satisfaction. Whether it’s analytics of an internal social network, or gaining customer insight through analysis of external social networks, organizations will increasingly rely on social technologies to listen, examine, and connect to act.”
2. Gamification of social networking in the enterprise
“Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game systems to improve business outcomes, has the opportunity to transform how employees work inside the enterprise and will certainly be something social businesses explore in 2012.”
3. Community Managers Rule
“Just like the Internet opened up a world of new opportunities, the rise of social business is creating new jobs. With the adoption of these new internal and external social business tools comes the increasing need for staff to manage the new processes and communities, to measure their effectiveness, and to educate and enable the workforce to participate. Corporations are quickly realizing they must create new roles like the community manager to take on these new responsibilities. Watch for this role to take off in 2012, with organizations of all shapes and sizes, in a variety of industries calling on experts to help to build, maintain, and activate members in an online location around common interests and topics. Key skills required: Ability to be transparent, drive sharing among members, and listening and shaping conversations.”
How Social Media Is Changing The Stock Market
Social media opens up both conversation and creativity for stock traders. But most importantly, it creates community around niche interest topics.
The way stocks are discussed among investors is different than it was even five years ago. In 2008, Howard Lindzon launched StockTwits, the online community of investors, with the idea that people wanted to share ideas about trading. Lindzon was a huge fan of Twitter, and so StockTwits was built off of that.
“A guy in Kansas can be the expert on grains, rather than the guy who trades grain stocks in New York,” says StockTwits CEO and Founder Howard Lindzon. “The Kansas guy can look out his window and tweet what he sees.” StockTwits, says Lindzon, has turned everyone into a potential market maker and expert.
