Good bye :-)

I've shut down this blog about social media and start-ups. The reason? I'm currently doing my master thesis on the impact of social media on leadership and have started bloging about this topic. You can find this blog here.

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON LEADERSHIP

The capabilities companies can obtain through using social media

Social media is costly as companies do it in addition to other activities in stead of using it as a replacement. But what about all the stuff a company can learn from using social media? What capabilities do they build?

Several people talk about what companies need to do to in order to succeed in adopting social media(Chris Brogan, the company Vignette,  John Jantsch and many others).  Firstly, they all mentions listening. Secondly, there is an element of producing content. Then there is a point on publishing it before interacting with the community around the company.

This is what companies can learn form this, the capabilities they build, Some of these capabilities are built without social media as well, but they are built differently when using social media. This is because the activities is performed differently. The thought here is that this "differently" can provide sustained competitive value to a start-up:

• Information gathering: using social media allows for listening to other people’s conversations in addition to what people (customers, competitors, vendors, etc.) are saying about your company
• Collaborating: information can more easily be shared between employees in the company using an internal social media  
• Informing: social media is changing this game with aspect to reach and targeting; a company can reach more people and chose to target specific individuals.
• Conversing social media allows a company to talk with its community in a better way
• Sourcing is used as a description for when an online community takes part in building the product or service the company is offering. BPO is being done to low-cost countries, this can now be done to online communities that have your product as a hobby (hobby does not apply for all products, but I think sourcing does)

Anything else we can learn from social media?

The perfect feed of news from social media

Problem: TLDR (too long didn't read)
For some time now I've been trying to get the perfect feed for my interests. By "feed" I mean an online stream of news, not real-world spare-time-killing activities. I started out using google reader. At fist I had a few of my friends, then I added some of the "great thinkers" on topics I like (social media and entrepreneruship). In no time I had tens and tens of articles shooting at me every day. TLDR! I started reading less of each article and landed in the familiar "I'm doing a lot of things, but I'm not getting any one thing done". The classical "stuck in the middle" as the strategic legend Michael Porter calls it.

Solution: paper.li
The solution for me has been the page paper.li. It scans your twitter and creates a newspaper out of what links and news people share. Now, I don't use twitter a lot, but now I'm using it for this purpose mostly. I've added some mashable channels I like, some of the thinkers on entrepreneurship and social media and The Economist and  HBR. It's great! I would recommend it to all.

The Rockmelt Browser for social interactions

I just started using the Rockmelt Browser after reading about it at mashable.com. I had to get an invite first, but now I have three invites to spare if anybody wants one (just comment bellow). My first impression was that this is not a browser for business use. Your present in social media all the time, it feels like a great tool for getting distracted. The browser have two edges, one one the left side and one on your right side of the browser. These allow you to constantly share stuff with your friends (to the left is facebook) and follow all sorts of feed (to the right is facebook, twitter and whatever else you want to add). I've added some screenshots bellow:

Regular

Feed expanded




















Friends expanded

Now this is all well and good when I'm having my morning coffee and reading what happened in the wide world web while I was away from my computer. Now I do this several times a day, but in between, I need to focus on other stuff (my project work, my basketball team, my courses, my wishlist for Christmas, daydreaming about playing Halo Reach, my plan to meet the perfect girl, Scott Pilgrim style, and other stuff guys do). Here is the output; you can hide the edges entirely and separate work-time from social time in a great way. I would recommend this browser for all. Other plus: it feels just as fast as chrome, it's like an interface to chrome that let's you keep your passwords, history, bookmarks and stuff.

Bottom line: loving the new Rockmelt Browser...

Hire Journalists to tackle Social media

I just saw a gret clip with David Meerman Scott on marketing in social media that got me thinking. He's giving a talk on how companies need to earn attention through creating interesting content. In order to do this, they must know who their customers are and what they want. In turn, it's important to create content that is  interesting enough that these people will share it with the world. The clip has a lot of great points, but it's at the very end it shows a piece of how the picture is changing. DM Scott is telling his audience to hire journalist to create this content. They have experience in creating what their followers want and they are familiar with broadcasting. This can be transfered to the entrepreneur if one thinks like this: what journalist activities does the entrepreneur need to be good at? He needs to understand his readers, to publish stuff they like and give the mthe right incentives them to share it with EVERYBODY. To you future entrepreneurs out there: do you have a little journalist in you?

The cost of investing in social media will decrease

There is a lot of talk in the blogosphere about measuring the ROI of social media, but what about the I? In order to find the return on your investment, you'll need to know how much you invest. Now this is far easier to meassure than the return that comes out of social media as on of numerous factors impacting your business. This is where I had a Flash Of Genius (a great movie about the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper just to fight Ford over it for decades). The investment in social media can be to hire two guys to do it, or it can be to hire a consultancy company. This investment is measurable in terms of dollars or euro or yen. Here what's wrong with this methodology:

Large companies are doing social media as an added business function to what they are already doing. There seems to be no down scaling as a result of other activities as a result of social media. The phenomena of social media is still too new for companies to trust it to do its job properly. It's not a one-to-one relationship between the amount of social media marketing and real life marketing a company is doing. The sum of social recruiting an real life recruiting is not constant. When these trust issues are overcome, social media will replace some activities currently done in real life, reducing the size of the investment adoption of social media demands. Like any ten year old in the back of your SUV on the way to your mountain cabin says; are we there yet?

Getting things done.

When in the US, at Boston University School of Management my professor, a VC asked the class "What kind of entrepreneurs do you think I like?" After some feeble attempts with "the ones that make you money" as the best, the answer came clear and loud; "Entrepreneurs who gets things done!"

Now, half a year later, I came across a video on Youtube from a presentation held at Google. The presenter is called David Allen and the concept is Getting Things Done (GTD). The movie is a mix between stand-up and great coaching, I would recommend it to everyone who does stuff, really;, any kind of stuff.

David actually started a company that coaches on this methodology, on their homepage, they have a ambitious vision:
The purpose of the David Allen Company is to improve the quality of life by providing the world's best information, education, and products that enhance personal and organizational productivity.

Watch this video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7vUdKTlhk&feature=player_embedded#!