Posts Tagged 'social media'

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These companies ‘get’ social media. Does yours?

Published June 20, 2009 Uncategorized Closed
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Kerry Capell has written an interesting post over at businessweek.com providing an excellent case study for the usage of social media services in companies’ marketing strategy. In her post, Building European Brands through Social Media, Kerry is giving examples of some European brands – Cadbury, Vodafone, Unilever, Nestle and Volkswagen – and their innovative ideas of connecting the customers to the product and making conversation.

The concept of leveraging social (or new) media to reinvent the way companies engage with their customers isn’t new, but it’s always refreshing reading the new ideas and then looking in-house, at your company, and exploring what’s possible. In tough economical times, getting ad money isn’t easy (not to mention budget cuts), and social media campaigns are much cheaper, more effective (at times) and make a lot of noise.

Clay Shirky said in his recent TED lecture that twitter is making history and that the internet is changing the way people communicate and collaborate – “When a new consumer joins the conversation, a new producer joins as well”. The examples Kerry brings forth are a strong testimony to the power of social media and I hope Israeli companies will soon follow in those foot steps. I for one, will definitely do my best to make it a reality, soon.

Links:
Building European brands through social media – BusinessWeek.com
Clay Shirky: How twitter can make history
DellOutlet hits the $2M mark – Mashable
Vodafone LiveGuy
Cadbury Operation Goo
Volkswagen Twitter Analyzer
Nestle uses live tweets in ad campaign
Unilever – the rising star is social media?
The T-Mobile Dance – Youtube

Clay Shirky: How twitter can make history

Published June 18, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Clay Shirky is a known voice in the internet space, a Professor at NYU teaching ‘Social Weather’ at the Interactive Telecommunications Program. He’s also an excellent speaker and a frequent visitor at TED.com.

His latest lecture is worth watching twice, to fully understand the message. Clay goes over recent revolutions in the telco industry that enable all of us to collaborate and share. And according to him, twitter is already changing the world (iranelection, obamacampaign, china). I really liked what he said about conversation and groups (mid-way into the lecture):

Unlike past telco inventions (print, tv and radio), the internet (and twitter) is the first communication tool that enables us to make conversation and create groups – at the same time.

Enough of me, just watch the lecture (17:03):

My facebook identity

Published June 14, 2009 Uncategorized Closed
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At noon Saturday I picked my new facebook vanity url and from now on I’m facebook.com/dvirreznik. Simple and precise. According to facebook, 15min into the action, some 500,000 people registered their urls, at a staggering rate of 550 per second!

The question you need to ask is ‘what facebook has in store for us next?’ Having your own vanity url has been around for couple of years now, with LinkedIn, Flickr, SlideShare, Gmail, Twitter, Qik and many more. Being a number is so 1984, and facebook realized that. In my opinion (and others) facebook are working on something bigger, that would increase the loyalty of its friends – something like an email service.

And why the heck not? According to recent data facebook has some 200,000,000 loyal users and growing, built-in chat services, strong eco-system of developers – the only thing missing is messaging. And when you pick your vanity url you basically decide your email address: dvirreznik@facebook.com.

If you have other suggestions I’d love to hear them – drop a comment below.

The list: Israeli companies on twitter

Published June 8, 2009 Uncategorized Closed
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Since Ashton and CNN battled out over who’ll reach 1m followers first, Twitter has been gaining ground in Israel. And although the micro-blogging service is still no match to facebook in terms of # of users, the awareness is definitely growing, globally and locally alike.

According to twittercounter there are about 2324 Israeli twitter users, my guess is a bit higher, closer to 3,500-4,000, as opposed to over 600,000 facebook users – some even say 750,000. Twitter is still relatively un-known in Israel, and we’re waiting for it to make its leap, but already I’m seeing more and more businesses entering this space, opening accounts on twitter. The reason is simple: it’s easy to manage and update, and doesn’t require too much of your time. The question is what value (or ROI) you expect from such activities, and the answers here vary, a lot.

In an effort to make some order in all the cluter, I’ve created a list over at newsgeek, of Israeli companies on twitter: media and communication, government and retail, hi-tech and VCs, leasure and sport, food and beverages and others. The list is dynamic, and 3 hours after the initial posting I had some 15 comments (and 20-30 new followers) of new accounts that needed to be inserted into the list. My goal is to create a place where people can find the company and contact person, that would enable them to start a conversation faster, meeting the demand of the ever-changing-business-world (aka – Innovation). The only 2 rules are:
a) an updated account (less than 20 days since your last twit) and
b) full bio available for contact and details.

Although the entire post is in Hebrew, by hovering over the names you can get the feeling of ‘who’s who’ in the Israeli E2.0 arena. I’m sure the list will continue to grow (by at least 1 more) in the future.

Link:
The List: Israeli Companies on Twitter (Hebrew)

Meet my new employer – Isracard

Published June 7, 2009 Uncategorized 3 Comments
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After 40 something days of job searching (and beaching.. 😉 I’ll be starting my new job coming Monday, June 15 2009, at Isracard as Head of Social Media, part of the Marketing Division. I’m very excited as this position is a new one at Isracard, and as I’ll be doing the things I love and understand, at a large consumer company, internally and externally.

Isracard is Israel’s leading credit card company with some 2.5m card holders and over 100,000 clearing businesses via 3 products: Visa International, Mastercard International and Isracard. The company was founded in 1975 and employs some 1,300 people, HQ in Tel Aviv.

As my role is a new one, I’ll post a more elaborate entry about my responsibilities in couple of weeks, but basically my daily routine (as I see it) relates to every aspect of the company operations, split into 3 major routes:

  • Customers – almost every citizen in Israel (inclusing me) holds at least one Isracard card and with 2.5m customers, I’m guessing the online conversation will be interesting…
  • Clearing businesses – major aspect of any company operation is its eco-system, and in Isracard’s case those are the +100,000 businesses accepting Isracard cards, across the country.
  • Employees – the human capital is any company’s strength, and with 1,300 people (300-400 of them at various call-centers) – they are the best evangelists to Isracard’s work.

So, even before I officaily started I can see some challenges and opportunities. Not sure I’ll get Obama’s grace period, but nevertheless I intend to do my best, as always. If you have any suggestions/requests/tips for my first day at the job, leave a comment or drop me an email.
And finally, I want to thank those who helped me in those 40 something days – thank you!

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.