Victoria Ransom is founder and CEO of Wildfire Interactive, the global leader in social media marketing software. Victoria is a sought-after expert on social marketing trends and was recently named a 2012 TechFellow by the Founders Fund, NEA and TechCrunch. Visit here for more information about Facebook mobile marketing.

Facebook recently revealed big plans for the mobile platform, for instance, that the new Timeline format for brands will be available on mobile. Facebook also revealed that more than 450 million people use Facebook Mobile on a monthly basis, and more importantly, that mobile is outgrowing desktop use on the social network 2:1.

For these reasons, Facebook has planned a variety of mobile-centric products, including last week’s announcement that brands will now be able to advertise in mobile news feeds through Sponsored Stories.

These game-changing trends mean that marketers need to get serious about mobile in 2012. Here are three new ways you can build mobile into your Facebook marketing plan.

1. Mobile-Optimize All Your Content.

Timeline for brands is coming to the mobile platform in 2012. When you consider that brand pages on Facebook Mobile have had almost no functionality — custom apps haven’t worked without a complicated hack-job, tabs haven’t translated, etc. — it seems possible that Timeline for brands was launched specifically to enable brands’ mobile Facebook capabilities.

And since users’ Timelines function on Facebook Mobile, Timeline for brands should be equally versatile, giving brands the ability to provide engaging mobile experiences for the first time.

Since nearly half of Facebook users access the site through a mobile device, your brand’s reach could effectively double if you mobile-optimize your social content. And because users will soon be able to experience the same workflow on their desktops as their smartphones, page managers will now be able to curate an identical experience for all users, regardless of viewing device.

Whether you’re building engagement applications in-house or with a social marketing software vendor, make sure the applications are seamlessly viewable across all platforms and devices. Ideally, you’ll be able to design once and deploy anywhere. That way, you’ll avoid messy synchronization issues, duplication of effort between creative teams, and working around multiple content channels.

Applications that use a “responsive design” framework are gaining popularity. The framework employs specific HTML5, CSS and Javascript technologies to ensure that the same content displays well on devices of any screen size. In the context of Facebook mobile pages, apps built within this framework can morph Facebook page tabs — for mobile, tablets and desktops — with one build.

2. Integrate Sponsored Stories Into Your Marketing.

To date, there has been no way to advertise to Facebook users on mobile devices. This has been an enormous lost opportunity for marketers — until now.

Now, Sponsored Stories premium ad units will not only appear in users’ news feeds (a huge announcement on its own), but also in mobile news feeds. Considering the many users who access Facebook from a mobile device, marketers now have a big opportunity to embed sponsored advertisements within mobile feeds. The challenge is how to make this work with your existing Facebook marketing program.

The most effective way to integrate Sponsored Stories into your marketing is to work them into an editorial calendar. Since Sponsored Stories stem from the activities of users on your brand’s Page, create a calendar of activities that translate well to the Sponsored Story format. For example, a local retail store could plan its weekly status updates, featuring in-store specials and colorful coupons as Sponsored Stories. Just make sure to use eye-catching images to help your promoted posts attract attention.

3. Use Facebook Mobile to Fuel Offline Campaigns.

Mobile-optimized social campaign marketing can also be used to enhance consumers’ in-store experiences. In fact, according to comScore, 36% of the U.S. smartphone population used their phones to perform retail research while inside a store in 2011. And Nielsen states that, by the end of 2011, nearly one in five smartphone users scanned product barcodes, and nearly one in eight compared prices while in a store.

There is a lot of room for creating social campaigns with seamless mobile components, such as unique codes for scanning, in addition to more traditional social campaign approaches like promotions and exclusive content.

When planning online and offline campaigns, include in-store signage. This is crucial to the success of a mobile campaign, and is a key driver of participation. Many brands will advertise promotions on their Pages, designed to drive activity in-store, but do not replicate this messaging in the store. Unfortunately, this misses the in-store consumers who haven’t interacted on your fan page beforehand. Capture their interest socially first, then reinforce your message in-store to create a deeper, longer-term connection with the consumer.

The next thing to keep in mind is simplicity, which is the key to a successful social-to-in-store campaign. That multi-step scavenger hunt, which extends from your Page all the way into the shelves of your store may sound like a creative idea, but it will most certainly narrow engagement. Keep the proposition simple so users can easily get involved.

For example, Sprinkles Cupcakes consistently posts messages to its Page, encouraging fans to check in daily for a “secret word.” Fans who discover the secret word on Sprinkles’ Facebook Timeline can whisper it, in-store, to get a free cupcake. Sprinkles’ approach yields continuous check-ins on its Page, where other marketing messages appear alongside the secret word.

Marketers cannot ignore the staggering growth of users who access the Internet and social networks via mobile. Get mobile right and you’ve effectively doubled your social network reach. Start by mobile-optimizing your content, testing mobile Sponsored Stories, and linking mobile to your in-store campaigns. And please share more mobile marketing strategies in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ymgerman

The insight that sparks innovation appears to occur randomly. After all, the iconic shorthand for innovation is a light bulb, implying that ideas come from sudden flashes of inspiration. While such flashes are surely good things, it is hard to depend on them, particularly if you are at a company that needs to introduce a steady stream of innovative ideas.

Steve Jobs once said, “It is not the customer’s job to know what they want.” That’s absolutely right. It is yours. And don’t think you don’t have a customer because you work in an internal support function or for a company that provides components or services. Everyone has a customer, whether it is a purchaser, user, or co-worker.

The quest to identify opportunities for innovation starts with pinpointing problems customers can’t adequately solve today. More than 50 years ago Peter Drucker wrote, “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a ‘product.’ What is paid for is satisfaction.” Companies think they are selling products and services, but in reality people hire those products and services to get jobs done in their lives. As marketing guru Ted Levitt quipped to his students a generation ago, “People don’t want quarter-inch drills--they want quarter-inch holes.” A problem arises, and the customer looks around and chooses the solution that gets the job done better than competing alternatives.

To discover your quarter-inch holes, obsessively search for the job that is important but poorly satisfied (for more on the underlying theory of jobs to be done, see The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Raynor). Innosight’s research and field work over the past decade suggests that following three specific activities can increase the odds of identifying innovation opportunities.

1. GET TO CONTEXT

In 2000, when A.G. Lafley became CEO of Procter & Gamble, he found a company that had lost its way. The stock had plunged almost 50% after a March 2000 warning that the company would miss earnings estimates. Lafley looked for simple ways to reenergize that company’s innovation energy. He came to the conclusion that P&G needed to fundamentally reorient itself. The company was world renowned for driving decisions based on deep customer understanding, but upon reflection, Lafley realized that the company had drifted away from that understanding.

Lafley is gifted at communicating complicated ideas in simple ways. He developed a simple mantra to refocus P&G: The consumer is boss. He would say something along these lines: “Fellow P&G-ers, I’d like you to meet your new boss. You may think that I, as your CEO, am boss. That’s not right. You might think that the board of directors to which I report is boss. That’s not right. You might think our shareholders are the bosses. That’s not right. You might think your line manager is boss. That’s not right. We have one and only one boss that matters. The consumer. The consumer is boss.”

Lafley urged P&G to understand their boss as never before. P&G had to hear what the consumer was saying and, much more importantly, tease out what the consumer wanted but couldn’t articulate.

To do this, Lafley worked to create a culture where everyone in P&G--from the chairman down--would spend time living with consumers, shopping with consumers, or working alongside consumers. He would describe invaluable insights he personally obtained in his career by spending time in the market. For example, while Lafley worked on Tide branded laundry detergent, P&G would regularly administer quantitative surveys to assess the quality of its product and packaging. Consumers reported that they loved Tide’s packaging (at the time, Tide was packaged in cardboard boxes). Yet, when Lafley was interacting with a consumer, he noticed that she almost always used a screwdriver or scissors to open the Tide box. Lafley realized that the woman didn’t want to risk breaking her nails opening the cardboard box. She said she loved the packaging because she didn’t know of any alternatives, but in reality, she had to find a creative way to open the box because of its design limitations.

Many P&G products trace their inspiration to these kinds of observations. For example, watching a woman grow frustrated when she spilled coffee grounds on her floor helped to inspire P&G’s Swiffer quick cleaning line, which today produces more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

One of the dirty little secrets of innovation is that even the most well-intentioned people lie. They say they will do things they won’t, and purport to have interest in things they don’t. Spend time in the market so that you can know the customer better than they know themselves.

How to get started: Detail the amount of time you spent with customers or key stakeholders in the last three months. Find a way to triple that time.

2. WATCH FOR WORKAROUNDS

Carefully studying current and potential customers often highlights workarounds that customers create to make up for the limitations of existing solutions. Drilling into these compensating behaviors can help to unearth innovation opportunities.

Consider jeans shopping. Research shows that women find it the second-most intimidating shopping experience, behind shopping for swimwear. In 2009, as part of an ambitious innovation program, VF Corporation, which makes Wranglers and Lee Jeans, began to spend more time with customers in order to understand specific points of frustration.

One trip to a local department store proved particularly illuminating. Executives watched as a prospective female customer shopped for a new pair of jeans. She wandered around the endless racks of clothes in the store, picking up pair of jeans after pair of jeans. The VF team was struck by two observations: First, the sheer volume of jeans the woman brought into the dressing room. Second, the fact that the woman had picked up multiple sizes of just about every pair she was trying on.

The executives assumed that she must have recently experienced a weight change, so she was unsure of her size. But in fact it turned out that her experience taught her that the sizes that appeared on the labels of jeans only loosely related to what would actually fit. Her workaround involved bringing in volumes of pairs of jeans in order to find one good fit.

These observations helped the company focus its innovation efforts on the jeans-buying process. VF changed the labeling on its jeans, developed innovative display mechanisms in retail stores, and launched an online campaign where noted style icon Stacey London helped women find jeans that would be most appropriate for their body type. In early 2011, VF reported that these and related innovation efforts had created $100 million in incremental revenue in its jeanswear division.

How to get started: Lead a round-table discussion to identify compensating behaviors that your company’s solution forces customers to follow.

3. FOCUS ON NONCOSUMERS

The natural tendency for would-be innovators is to study existing customers who participate in existing categories. By all means do that. But also look for people who face some kind of constraint that inhibits their ability to solve a pressing problem they are facing in their lives. Apple, Southwest, Ikea, Nintendo, and many more companies trace their success to unlocking demand that was pent up because existing solutions were too expensive or complicated. These companies found a market opportunity just sitting there, waiting for someone to develop a convenient, affordable solution.

Indian conglomerate called Godrej & Boyce used this approach when it developed its ChotuKool refrigerator, designed for 85% of the Indian population who didn’t purchase refrigerators. These consumers wanted some of the benefits of refrigeration, but needed something that was smaller, more portable, and less power hungry. The ChotuKool addressed these barriers to consumption. The size of a small cooler, it costs an affordable $70 and is battery powered, so it can run off the grid when electricity is down. The product exceeded sales expectations during a trial launch in 2010. In early 2011, Godrej won an award from the Indian prime minister for its efforts, with sales accelerating dramatically.

It takes some mental discipline to look to markets that don’t exist. But that discipline can pay off in the form of growth opportunities that are hidden in plain sight.

How to get started: Write down five things that a coworker or friend can only do by relying on an expert or going to a central location. Think about ideas that would let these people do it themselves.

- - -

Spending time with customers, watching for workarounds, and exploring nonconsumption helps to highlight exciting innovation opportunities. Of course, there’s more to innovation than the spark of an insight. Innovators have to translate that insight into an idea that gets the innovation job done and delivers against whatever metric matters (revenues, profits, process performance, employee satisfaction, and so on). But the right starting point makes the journey infinitely easily.

From Forbes.com by Aaron Shapiro January 4, 2012

Microsoft’s revenue from the once-unstoppable Windows franchise is declining. Research In Motion is struggling to hold onto market share despite inventing the “Crackberry.” Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Many companies, including producers of revolutionary tech products, are faltering because they don’t understand and aren’t built to respond to consumer behavior in the digital age. In short, these companies failed to prioritize their users.

What’s a user? You’re a user. So are your co-workers, employees, family, and friends. Users are job hunters, social-media commenters, brand fans, potential customers, and existing customers. Everyone who interacts with a business through its website, intranet, mobile app, Facebook page, or any element of its digital footprint is a user—and all together, users are more influential than those relative few who have bought a company’s products and services. Bloggers, “friends,” and user reviewers create a swarm of public opinion that shapes brands and drives sales. Employees, business partners, and job candidates all influence operational performance, and, by extension, brand and sales. 

Users come in many different forms, but they all want the same thing: for it to be easy. We all go online to accomplish a finite task, like check sport scores or buy new shoes—in fact, in 2012, 50% of consumer spending is going to be influenced by or transacted through the Internet, according to Forrester Research—and none of us want to spend a second wondering what to click on next. We just want it to be effortless. This expectation—and digital’s influence on consumer spending—will only grow. By the time young people who grew up with the Internet gain mainstream purchasing power, they’ll be even more reliant on digital and will have developed sky-high expectations of usability. If you’re not catering to their needs when they find you, they’ll move on to someone who does.

Microsoft Windows has been a victim of this type of scenario. Once Apple began championing breakthrough user experiences such as a more intuitive operating system, not to mention the iPod and iPhone, Windows became perceived as difficult and unpleasant to use. Members of IT and procurement departments, those who make the PC or Mac decision for thousands, they’re users too. Eventually they brought their preferences into their purchasing decisions, which is what helped Apple surpass Microsoft in market capitalization last year.

A more foundational aspect of being user first is letting users lead you to the next big thing, and then being nimble enough to follow. If the Windows team had put users first in all decision making, it surely would be playing a larger role in the mobile market. If RIM had put users first, it would have produced a phone that users loved, not had, to use. If Blockbuster did it, it wouldn’t have focused on the traditional rental model, but rather on making it easy for users to see the movies they want.

One decidedly user-centric company is Mint, the online personal-finance service. It was literally founded on the notion of being user-friendly. Aaron Patzer, the founder, had long relied on Intuit’s Quicken and Microsoft Money to manage his money. But he found the programs incredibly tedious. One day instead of spending hours filing gaps in entries, he started to conceptualize personal finance software that would be “so easy to use, people will actually use it,” he’s said. Today Mint.com is free to use, can accurately and reliably match up 85% of all transactions with their appropriate spending categories (a huge improvement over its competitors), and uses advertising in a way that benefits its users. Rather than sell space to flashy banner ads, Mint’s advertising messages are tailored to each user and provide information that saves them money. The startup has been so successful that two years after launch Intuit purchased Mint for $170 million, closed its Quicken Online service, and hired Patzer as vice president and general manager of the company’s personal-finance group.

The businesses, like Mint, that do digital right, enable a user-first strategy to penetrate all levels of strategy and operation. Leadership, at every crossroads, must ask, “Am I making user lives easier?” Admittedly, this is a large undertaking, but it boils down to this: Learn what would improve your users’ lives, then figure out how to give it to them in a way that complements your business goals, budget, and timeline. Then don’t ask for anything in return. When a company’s digital products and services satisfy real user needs, users fall in love, and they will often evangelize it to all of their friends. Become indispensible to your users and customers will follow.

Get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstrom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N' Out, and you'll get a taste of these brands’ vibrant cultures. 

Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation. 

Misunderstood and mismanaged

Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It's not intangible or fluffy, it's not a vibe or the office décor. It's one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success. It's not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death. 

Think about it like a nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured. It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty. 

If there's any doubt about the value of investing time in culture, there are significant benefits that come from a vibrant and alive culture: 

• Focus: Aligns the entire company towards achieving its vision, mission, and goals. 
• Motivation: Builds higher employee motivation and loyalty. 
• Connection: Builds team cohesiveness among the company’s various departments and divisions. 
• Cohesion: Builds consistency and encourages coordination and control within the company. 
• Spirit: Shapes employee behavior at work, enabling the organization to be more efficient and alive.

Mission accomplished

Think about the Marines: the few, the proud. They have a connected community that is second to none, and it comes from the early indoctrination of every member of the Corps and the clear communication of their purpose and value system. It is completely clear that they are privileged to be joining an elite community that is committed to improvising, adapting, and overcoming in the face of any adversity. The culture is so strong that it glues the community together and engenders a sense of pride that makes them unparalleled. The culture is what each Marine relies on in battle and in preparation. It is an amazing example of a living culture that drives pride and performance. It is important to step back and ask whether the purpose of your organization is clear and whether you have a compelling value system that is easy to understand. Mobilizing and energizing a culture is predicated on the organization clearly understanding the vision, mission, values, and goals. It's leadership’s responsibility to involve the entire organization, informing and inspiring them to live out the purpose the organization in the construct of the values.

Vibrant and healthy

Do you run into your culture every day? Does it inspire you, or smack you in the face and get in your way, slowing and wearing you down? Is it overpowering or does it inspire you to overcome challenges? It's important to understand what is driving your culture. Is it power and ego that people react to, and try to gain power, or a culture of encouragement and empowerment? Is it driven from top-down directives, or cross-department collaboration? To get a taste of your culture, all you have to do is sit in an executive meeting, the cafe or the lunch room, listen to the conversations, look at the way decisions are made and the way departments cooperate. Take time out and get a good read on the health of your culture.

Culture fuels brand

A vibrant culture provides a cooperative and collaborative environment for a brand to thrive in. Your brand is the single most important asset to differentiate you consistently over time, and it needs to be nurtured, evolved, and invigorated by the people entrusted to keep it true and alive. Without a functional and relevant culture, the money invested in research and development, product differentiation, marketing, and human resources is never maximized and often wasted because it's not fueled by a sustaining and functional culture. 

Look at Zappos, one of the fastest companies to reach $1 billion in recent years, fueled by an electric and eclectic culture, one that's inclusionary, encouraging, and empowering. It's well-documented, celebrated, and shared willingly with anyone who wants to learn from it. Compare that to American Apparel, the controversial and prolific fashion retailer with a well-documented and highly dysfunctional culture. Zappos is thriving and on its way to $2 billion, while American Apparel is mired in bankruptcy and controversy. Both companies are living out their missions--one is to create happiness, and the other is based on self-centered perversity. Authenticity and values always win.

Uncommon sense for a courageous and vibrant culture

It's easy to look at companies like Stonyfield Farms, Zappos, Google, Virgin, Whole Foods, or Southwest Airlines and admire them for their passionate, engaged, and active cultures that are on display for the world to see. Building a strong culture takes hard work and true commitment and, while not something you can tick off in boxes, here are some very basic building blocks to consider:

1. Dynamic and engaged leadership
   A vibrant culture is organic and evolving. It is fueled and inspired by leadership that is actively involved and informed about the realities of the business. They genuinely care about the company's role in the world and are passionately engaged. They are great communicators and motivators who set out a clearly communicated vision, mission, values, and goals and create an environment for them to come alive.

2. Living values
   It's one thing to have beliefs and values spelled out in a frame in the conference room. It's another thing to have genuine and memorable beliefs that are directional, alive and modeled throughout the organization daily. It's important that departments and individuals are motivated and measured against the way they model the values. And, if you want a values-driven culture, hire people using the values as a filter. If you want your company to embody the culture, empower people and ensure every department understands what's expected. Don't just list your company’s values in PowerPoints; bring them to life in people, products, spaces, at events, and in communication.

3. Responsibility and accountability
   Strong cultures empower their people, they recognize their talents, and give them a very clear role with responsibilities they're accountable for. It's amazing how basic this is, but how absent the principle is in many businesses.

4. Celebrate success and failure
   Most companies that run at speed often forget to celebrate their victories both big and small, and they rarely have time or the humility to acknowledge and learn from their failures. Celebrate both your victories and failures in your own unique way, but share them and share them often.

Social innovation is what the world needs now - and, as I have learned over the years, design is at the center of social innovation.

Whatever we don't like about the world we live in, whatever doesn't work the way we think it should, has, believe it or not, been designed to work pretty much exactly that way. Unproductive meetings, products that break, pollution, inequity, even war and poverty are the symptoms of poor design, design that is also usually devoid of social innovation.

We used to think that politicians, business executives, NGOs or even religious figures would save the world. The truth is that we have entered a new age, an age in which it will be designers that solve our toughest problems.

We are all, or can learn to be designers. If you organize a meeting, your design for the meeting affects the outcome. Designers create products, businesses, processes that attempt to bring peace to the Middle East and figure out how to get corn to grow with little or no water.

By building in positive social (and environmental) outcomes to the design process we learn to do everything we do in a way that helps make the world a better place. Seventh Generation, the company I co-founded two decades ago, was a pioneer in this process, designing products that attempted to solve or mitigate environmental problems. We practiced this in a hands-on, learn-as- you-go way but today, just as one can get an MBA, or an MD, one can now learn to become a social innovation designer.

The newest program out there is the Master's of Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation, which will launch next fall at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

It was developed by Cheryl Heller, who helped Seventh Generation with some of its toughest design challenges and convinced me that this new discipline at SVA was one I should lend a hand to as an advisor. In its inaugural class, a carefully select a group of 25 individuals will master this discipline in real life settings.

I can't wait to see what they dream up.

Having spent many days over the past two months with the newest generation of social entrepreneurs at Pop Tech, the Kauffman Foundation and the Social Innovation Boot Camp at NYU and Columbia, the excitement of hope and new possibilities provided a stark contrast to the news about Europe's impending disintegration, poverty statistics in America that are worse that we had previously calculated and worse that expected contamination from the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan.

From INC.com by Eric Schurenberg November 18, 2011

The entrepreneur turned VC warns that there is too much money chasing too few marketable ideas. The crash, he says, is coming next year.

Outspoken entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster last night put a date on a prediction he has been making for some time in his blog about a coming crash for angel investors: The end will come next year. “And if not 2012,” he said. “Then 2013.”

Suster’s  prediction, made at the VentureShift conference at Le Poisson Rouge in New York’s Greenwich Village, adds to a chorus of warnings that the current surge in angel money into the startup market is going to end badly. Sean Parker made a similar prediction, reported here on Inc.com, earlier this week.

There are a couple key market forces creating the froth in the market, Suster said. Chief among them is what he identifies as a 90% drop in the cost of starting a company over the past 10 years, thanks to the adoption of open source programming and cloud-based business services, among other things. A startup ante that was $5 million in 2000 is now down to $5 thousand.

With the barriers to entry lowered, new players have rushed in.  Founders have grown younger and more tech-focused. Mentorship-led investors, like Y-Combinator and Tech Stars have stepped in to serve their needs and get access to the next Zuckerberg. For fear of missing out—the emotion Suster abbreviates as “FOMO”—VCs that ordinarily would have focused on larger deals have joined the move to early stage investing. The result merits yet another acronym: ENIFA. Or, Everyone Now is an F—g Angel.

The effect on valuations has been predictable. “There is too much money chasing too few great ideas,” says Suster. “People are paying too much for early stage funding.” At some point, angels will realize that there is no way to get their money out at anything like what they paid, and the flow of money will shut down.

If you’re in the market for funding now, Suster says, grab what you can while the money is still flowing. He is making sure that all his portfolio companies at GRP partners have the funding to see themselves through a coming dry spell, and he advises startups to do the same.

Don’t wait until your product is fully featured before seeking funding. “Most startups over-optimize,” he warns. Instead, take the money while it’s available. “When the hors d’oeurve tray goes by, take two,” he says, “and stick one in your pocket. Don’t spend everything right away.”

And then brace yourself. No one will ring a bell when the angel investing is ready to collapse. “Have you ever read Nassim Taleb, author of Black Swan? We’re aren’t going to know until it happens.” But Suster has no doubt that we are near the end of the great angel investing surge.  “Are we in a bubble? Of course we are.”

From Brian Solis.com by Brian Solis October 26, 2011

Part 8 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this is not content from the book, but instead, this series serves as its prequel.

Social media says so much and so very little at the same time. First, social media implies that media is just that, social. But when you study many of the best practices or test the advice dispensed through popular “top 10″ posts, you find that at the heart of notable social media successes is simply brilliant creativity and desirable incentives, not necessary authentic or genuine value or engagement.  With every Tweet or Like to win campaign, hilarious viral video, and user-generated promotional series, businesses make social media more of an oxymoron than a movement to transform two-way conversations into improved customer relationships.

According to an annual IBM study, getting closer to customers is the overwhelming top priority for CEOs. And, social media is lauded as the great facilitator for engagement and renewed business relevance. What we tend to forget however, is that social networks are merely platforms for people to connect with friends, family and peers. Businesses are not the primary beneficiary of connections, but they can certainly benefit once they realize that a Like or follow does not equate to an opt-in for marketing communiqué.

If CEOs are placing increasing importance on customer relationships, why is it that we are less aligned with the “R” in social CRM and closer in alignment to the “M,” where M stands for marketing and not management. That’s because of where social media lives within the organization today.

In IBM’s recent “From Social Media to Social CRM” report, it was revealed that social media is already siloed within marketing, marketing communication, or public relations, accounting for 52%, 45%, and 42% ownership respectively. When we think about the primary function of each of those functions, it’s clear to see why the premise of many of today’s top social media best practices are marketing driven rather than market driven.

The difference between a social brand and a social business is internal connectedness, preparedness, and collaborative approach to customer and employee engagement.

A Social Media and Social CRM Strategy are Different

As good friend Paul Greenberg noted in his book CRM at the Speed of Light, “The underlying principle for Social CRM’s success is very different from its predecessor….traditional CRM is based on an internal operational approach to manage customer relationships effectively. But Social CRM is based on the ability of a company to meet the personal agendas of [its] customers while, at the same time, meeting the objectives of [its] own business plan. It is aimed at customer engagement rather than customer management.”

At stake here is relevance among the growing base of a more connected consumer landscape. Engaging consumers from a marketing-driven approach may work for the short term, but engagement requires a holistic approach. Consumers see one brand, one company, one experience and not a series of disconnected silos experimenting in social media without a common vision, mission, or process. While businesses are building an infrastructure to support social media, governance, policies, and strategies are only as strong as the experiences they’re designed to create, the problems they’re intended to solve, and the ability to adapt to and lead consumer experiences because you can see what others don’t.

IBM studied how businesses view their foundation for social media and found that many times, the prevailing corporate culture impeded innovation and collaboration, not just with consumers, but also within. And for any change agent, that will come as no surprise. Whether they know it or not, change agents are becoming hybrid cultural anthropologists and politicians learning how to adapt the culture while rallying internal champions to bring about real change.

Here you can see the number of businesses that have defined KPIs, flexible business models, established policies, adaptive approaches to incorporating social media into business strategies, and defined governance. The blue shades on the left equates to those that strongly agree while toward the right, companies start to show that they’re not where they would like to be. According to the IBM report, only 38% are confident in the support of their company in innovation and creativity. Just 30% can comfortably say that they have strong executive sponsorship for social media. And, a measly 27% say they share insights across functions.

Once you see these numbers, it’s clear that businesses are on the right path, but we’re really just at the beginning. More importantly, one could argue that the direction of the path is questionable. Even though the businesses on the far left are established and confident, they might be operating without a holistic strategy that spans across lines of business, products, functions or across the globe.

And what of a centralized or holistic approach, defined by a common goal and reinforced through not only governance, but compliance?The effects of connected consumerism require nothing less than internal transformation and in many ways, a new outlook.

The challenges that businesses face are still relatively immature as IBM discovered. ROI, employee use of social media, and negative brand exposure lead the top three challenges companies face today. In the number four and seven spots however, we see the true threat to progress, lack of strategy and lack of support. We can not march into new territory without a unified vision. We can not lead consumer experiences if those experiences are either undefined or unsupported by the leadership organization we’re to stand behind.

When’s the last time you looked at your mission and vision statement? Can you Tweet it? Does it speak to you? The truth is that in addition to processes, businesses must rethink who or what it is to a different breed of consumer. This consumer is not just social, they’re connected across networks, devices, and they influence and are influenced differently than traditional consumers.

Mo Data, Mo Problems

What we need to do, where we need to be, how, why and to what extent is available to us today. We won’t discover these answers in the form of brand or competitive monitoring using social tools. We must capture data, interpret it, and also act upon it, now and over time, to learn and pursue relevance without forgetting our core markets and competencies.

Companies are clearly capturing data as IBM found. But as you can see, how data is analyzed, interpreted, and in turn shared across the organization is scattered. And, what happens to information (or insights) once its distributed is unclear in this study, but we can assume that it isn’t embraced and acted upon across the board.

Businesses are experimenting. Businesses are learning and adapting. But this can’t just be about social media. This must be about using disruptive technology to improve customer experiences and relationships. We can’t find comfort until we’re clearly operating outside of our comfort zones. And even then, we can’t rest until we are meeting the needs of connected consumers, where they are, how they connect, and reinforce the values, products, and services that are important to them.

Times are a changing and as a result, the foundation of business must also change. It’s a new era of business and consumerism and you play a role in defining it.

Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next
Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows
Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure!
Part 4 – I think we need some time apart, it’s not me, it’s you
Part 5 – We are the 5th P: People
Part 6 – The State of Social Media 2011: Social is the new normal
Part 7 – I like you, but not in that way

Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be underestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.

Over the years, I've become a student of sorts of Jobs' career and life. Here's my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our "inner Steve Jobs."

1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.

2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.

3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.

4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?   

5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?

6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.

7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.

There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.