INCISOR WPANEL 8: The value of social media to wireless marketeers
Welcome to this feature in which the Incisor WPANel speaks on a topic of interest to short-range wireless industry observers.
The members of the Incisor WPANeI are the senior executives from the organisations that manage the administration and development of Bluetooth, DECT/CAT-iq, EnOcean, NFC, Wi-Fi, UWB/Wireless USB and ZigBee technologies.
The ongoing WPANel members are Mike Foley, exec director of the Bluetooth SIG, Erich Kamperschroer, chairman of the DECT Forum, Graham Martin, chairman of the EnOcean Alliance, Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance and Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. Each of these is an expert in short-range wireless technology. Due to work pressures, Mr Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum has had to pull out. His place on the Incisor WPANel should be filled soon by another executive from the NFC sector.
Last month the WPANel group gave us their views on high energy WPAN technologies? These can be read in last month’s issue.
This month’s topic: The value of social media to wireless industry marketeers
In a conversation with a client recently, it became apparent that even to business people, social media, as represented by Twitter, Facebook and quasi-business/social networking sites such as LinkedIn, were becoming a vital if not dominant aspect of the marketing roadmap. This made me stop and think. It is undeniable that the worlds of marketing and media are changing. We all know that traditional publications are having a hard time, because the business world is no longer sure that printed media is the right channel to use to promote itself - thanks heavens that Incisor has always been an Internet publication!
This paradigm change in marketing tactics applies across the board, from phone companies, to car companies, to fertiliser manufacturers, banks, software companies and yes, even semiconductor companies. Everybody knows that the Internet is where they need to be, but very few know how to use it. And it just got more complicated because all of the attention now is on social networking – the likes of Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc, etc. I am on all of them, and most active on Twitter (www.twitter.com/vholton) where my ‘reach’ is now to more than 6.5 million people around the world (don’t believe me? Check out my score at independent Twitter analyser: http://twinfluence.com - score for @vholton - Reach=6,547,477, Rank=#13,066 – that is out of 23 million Twitter users, by the way), Facebook (www.facebook.com/vince.holton) and LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/vinceholton ). I welcome all of you to connect with me on any of these sites.
When my client contact told me that her company would be making a sea-change in the way that it marketed itself to the world, and that social networking would be an extremely important facet of the marketing and PR programme, my first thoughts were – how can this possibly be relevant to B2B marketing within the tech industry? Well, my client and several e-gurus whose views I know and trust all tell me that it is. And the industry is already Twittering – EnOcean for one, and even huge, traditional companies like Texas Instruments!
For me this is an extremely important topic and colours the way I will operate my own business from this point forwards. I asked the WPANel member to give me their thoughts on this increasingly important subject. Ideas for consideration included:
• Do you consider that social networking has a role for the short range wireless industry?
• Are you actively using social networking today to promote your technology or your company?
• How important do you consider this technique to be, now and in the next 10 years?
• Is it possible to successfully blend content that a wide audience will find interesting, with the need to distribute your company- or technology-specific messages to the key contacts that you want/need them to get to?
• Do we honestly believe that volume of contacts is important – “our viral video was viewed by 150,000 people on Facebook” or is it getting to the right contacts that is still the most important – “our message got to 1500 people, but we know that they were 1500 people that were really important to us, and we weren’t wasting money chasing tens of thousands of clicks that were of no use to us at all”?
The panel’s views are below. If you have views, or suggestions as to how we can develop the WPANel concept, or topics you would like to see covered, email me at vholton@incisor.tv.
Vince Holton
Publisher, Incisor & IncisorTV
The Incisor WPANel responds:
Will short range wireless technology really change our lives?
Mike Foley
Executive director, Bluetooth Special Interest Group
Twitter. Facebook. Social media in general seems to be all the rage these days, yet nobody seems to know what to do with it. These questions aren’t limited only to businesses or industry organizations. When I attended the D7 Conference earlier this year, Biz Stone and Evan Williams the co-founders of Twitter were the first speakers and even they didn’t have a clue regarding how to capitalize on social media in general and Twitter specifically. This was discouraging because they clearly have more to gain, or lose, than I do with the presumption being that they have spent significantly more time and energy trying to answer these questions.
Since the Twitter gang isn’t providing any insights, we are left to our own devices. Currently I find social media interesting, but am not yet convinced it is important. We are engaging. We are learning. We are experimenting. I’ve written a blog for years now. I tweet (@WirelessMike). I have a Facebook page. The Bluetooth SIG tweets (@BluetoothSIG) new products that are qualified. The Bluetooth SIG has a LinkedIn group for people interested in Bluetooth technology. We are exploring a Bluetooth SIG Facebook page, but haven’t implemented that yet.
The obvious question is: “Are these tools returning dividends for the Bluetooth SIG?” Unfortunately, the answer isn’t so obvious. My blog is well read and a great tool to deliver SIG news to a broad audience. However, I find it interesting that my annual pumpkin carving posts, with pictures, are some of the most viewed each year…
My hunch is these social media tools are all going to play a part of our online strategy, but not be our online strategy. One of the challenges we face is getting our messages to the proper audience. For example, when we start a new work group to create a specification enabling a new use case, we want to get related information to our members as well as to non-member companies that may be interested in that use case. This is a vastly different audience than consumers – a group we wish to educate about the enormous assortment of products they can obtain to simplify their lives. Social media can help us to reach these very different groups. We may evolve our Bluetooth.com web site to directly target the consumer while Bluetooth.org provides a portal into the Bluetooth SIG for members and businesses. A Bluetooth SIG Facebook page could be used to target consumers utilizing that service and guide them to the content on Bluetooth.com. Similarly, the LinkedIn group for members could be used to communicate with business professionals and drive them to content on Bluetooth.org.
I’m hoping that social media, utilized in this way, will prove to be a powerful communication tool for the Bluetooth SIG. Time will tell. I’m sure we won’t get it right the first time and will continually be tweaking our tactics while keeping true to our strategy.
Erich Kamperschroer,
Chairman, the DECT Forum
We strongly believe that social networks already play a major role in private and B2B communication today. There will be national elections at the end of September in Germany and at this time all of the political parties that are fighting for voters are intensively utilising Twitter & Co. for their election campaigns. Are we sure that Barack Obama would have succeeded in the November 2008 US elections without having focused on new media and social networking for his very “modern” campaign?
For almost 20 years, DECT as a short range wireless technology has ensured that people can connect, speak to each other and definitely do social networking privately and also for business reasons. With CAT-iq devices and the connection to the Internet the new technology provides not only voice but also text communication. There is definitely a major trend to connecting to friends and business partners from all over the world. It is quite exciting to see what kind of products or devices will be provided by the industry to meet these needs and to guarantee local and mobile access to these platforms.
It seems to be already a fact - if you watch the behaviour of young people - that they are quite familiar with Twitter & Co., and it looks that social networks are already replacing text messaging via SMS, which is quite costly if you use it extensively.
Marketing strategies can use social networks to interact with people or target groups. Not to make money but to use the social communities to spread and leverage your messages, products, and services. With social networking you can benefit from the advantages of the Internet: it is global, available 24/7, and it is interactive. Therefore social network marketing will replace classical advertising – in the same way as digital online media are replacing the long-term dominant print media and even TV.
Edgar Figueroa,
Wi-Fi Alliance Executive Director
With apologies to Incisor’s readership, Edgar Figueroa regrets that he was not able to submit his text in time for this issue. Normal service will be resumed next issue!
Bob Heile
Chairman, ZigBee Aliance
Social networking’s role varies depending on communication needs of both the sender and the receiver. If the people you are want to talk with prefer to do so via a social network, then you have your answer. There’s no doubt that social networking is transforming how many are communicating with stakeholders – from consumers, analysts, media, government, engineers, developers, etc. This seems quite similar to the way e-mail transformed our lives -- for better or worse. We’re definitely in a transition phase right now and I’m sure these new communication channels will stay around, and a few may even fall out of favor and die off.
We’re evaluating each social network platform to see what makes the most sense for the ZigBee Alliance. We’ve launched an official Twitter feed. Outside the Alliance, there are ZigBee forums on social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. As for its importance in a few years, I consider it less a technique and more of an evolution on how we are communicating. We will continue to evaluate what channels will bring the most ROI for us. It’s important for everyone to know that you can’t be everything to everyone. What’s important is to prioritize your key audiences and provide relevant information. Am I interested in reaching a graphic designer on Twitter? Probably not. Am I interested on reaching a potential member with questions about ZigBee? Absolutely.
For some groups, having a viral video viewed by millions of people may make sense. But what it comes down to is reaching the right audience with a message that informs and inspires action. The ZigBee Alliance works to engage with others on a B2B-level and that requires addressing topics that are meaningful to them. Our strategy is not chasing eyeballs on a mass scale, but generating dialogue about ZigBee with companies developing home automation products, and utilities expediting their smart grid development plans. We also want to talk with the engineer that wants to be part of the next ZigBee effort to provide new products and services to a new marketplace.
Graham Martin,
Chairman, EnOcean Alliance
When I first looked at some of the new social networking tools such as Twitter I quite honestly thought – what is the world coming to? Do we not have real lives? It is obvious that media and communication is shifting from print to on-line, but do we really want or need to know what somebody just had for lunch or what is the name of his new pet hamster? However, after hiring a top notch young and dynamic PR Manager, I was soon to see a more complete picture and drastically change my tune.
Social networking and media sites such as Linked-in, Xing, Twitter and You-Tube are becoming highly important and effective additional ways of providing messaging and information also amongst business communities. As opposed to thousands of e-newsletters and e-advertisements people receive and rarely have the time to read, social networking and media gives business professionals and companies the choice of informing themselves on a particular subject or company when they wish to. They can collect relevant information on specific topics, for examples in various forums or groups, and communicate directly with relevant partners in this field. There is also the snowball effect, where various individuals or companies forward interesting information to their contacts which can within a very short timeframe lead to your message spreading virally reaching thousands or even millions of relevant people with minimum cost and effort.
Social networking will not replace traditional PR methods, but is already becoming an innovative addition that will become an important part of any modern PR strategy. This is a very positive evolution and I am sure that we will see a huge growth of this media platform in the near future.
EnOcean was one of the first wireless companies to become active in social media with its own You Tube channel and Twitter account. Others such as Texas Instruments are also actively Twittering and I am sure many more will soon follow these innovative leading companies. If you don’t want to be left behind and are looking for more information on EnOcean or an example of social networks feel free to start at http://twitter.com/EnOcean_en. or www.youtube.com/enocean.
The members of the Incisor WPANeI are the senior executives from the organisations that manage the administration and development of Bluetooth, DECT/CAT-iq, EnOcean, NFC, Wi-Fi, UWB/Wireless USB and ZigBee technologies.
The ongoing WPANel members are Mike Foley, exec director of the Bluetooth SIG, Erich Kamperschroer, chairman of the DECT Forum, Graham Martin, chairman of the EnOcean Alliance, Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance and Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. Each of these is an expert in short-range wireless technology. Due to work pressures, Mr Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum has had to pull out. His place on the Incisor WPANel should be filled soon by another executive from the NFC sector.
Last month the WPANel group gave us their views on high energy WPAN technologies? These can be read in last month’s issue.
This month’s topic: The value of social media to wireless industry marketeers
In a conversation with a client recently, it became apparent that even to business people, social media, as represented by Twitter, Facebook and quasi-business/social networking sites such as LinkedIn, were becoming a vital if not dominant aspect of the marketing roadmap. This made me stop and think. It is undeniable that the worlds of marketing and media are changing. We all know that traditional publications are having a hard time, because the business world is no longer sure that printed media is the right channel to use to promote itself - thanks heavens that Incisor has always been an Internet publication!
This paradigm change in marketing tactics applies across the board, from phone companies, to car companies, to fertiliser manufacturers, banks, software companies and yes, even semiconductor companies. Everybody knows that the Internet is where they need to be, but very few know how to use it. And it just got more complicated because all of the attention now is on social networking – the likes of Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc, etc. I am on all of them, and most active on Twitter (www.twitter.com/vholton) where my ‘reach’ is now to more than 6.5 million people around the world (don’t believe me? Check out my score at independent Twitter analyser: http://twinfluence.com - score for @vholton - Reach=6,547,477, Rank=#13,066 – that is out of 23 million Twitter users, by the way), Facebook (www.facebook.com/vince.holton) and LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/vinceholton ). I welcome all of you to connect with me on any of these sites.
When my client contact told me that her company would be making a sea-change in the way that it marketed itself to the world, and that social networking would be an extremely important facet of the marketing and PR programme, my first thoughts were – how can this possibly be relevant to B2B marketing within the tech industry? Well, my client and several e-gurus whose views I know and trust all tell me that it is. And the industry is already Twittering – EnOcean for one, and even huge, traditional companies like Texas Instruments!
For me this is an extremely important topic and colours the way I will operate my own business from this point forwards. I asked the WPANel member to give me their thoughts on this increasingly important subject. Ideas for consideration included:
• Do you consider that social networking has a role for the short range wireless industry?
• Are you actively using social networking today to promote your technology or your company?
• How important do you consider this technique to be, now and in the next 10 years?
• Is it possible to successfully blend content that a wide audience will find interesting, with the need to distribute your company- or technology-specific messages to the key contacts that you want/need them to get to?
• Do we honestly believe that volume of contacts is important – “our viral video was viewed by 150,000 people on Facebook” or is it getting to the right contacts that is still the most important – “our message got to 1500 people, but we know that they were 1500 people that were really important to us, and we weren’t wasting money chasing tens of thousands of clicks that were of no use to us at all”?
The panel’s views are below. If you have views, or suggestions as to how we can develop the WPANel concept, or topics you would like to see covered, email me at vholton@incisor.tv.
Vince Holton
Publisher, Incisor & IncisorTV
The Incisor WPANel responds:
Will short range wireless technology really change our lives?
Mike Foley
Executive director, Bluetooth Special Interest Group
Twitter. Facebook. Social media in general seems to be all the rage these days, yet nobody seems to know what to do with it. These questions aren’t limited only to businesses or industry organizations. When I attended the D7 Conference earlier this year, Biz Stone and Evan Williams the co-founders of Twitter were the first speakers and even they didn’t have a clue regarding how to capitalize on social media in general and Twitter specifically. This was discouraging because they clearly have more to gain, or lose, than I do with the presumption being that they have spent significantly more time and energy trying to answer these questions.
Since the Twitter gang isn’t providing any insights, we are left to our own devices. Currently I find social media interesting, but am not yet convinced it is important. We are engaging. We are learning. We are experimenting. I’ve written a blog for years now. I tweet (@WirelessMike). I have a Facebook page. The Bluetooth SIG tweets (@BluetoothSIG) new products that are qualified. The Bluetooth SIG has a LinkedIn group for people interested in Bluetooth technology. We are exploring a Bluetooth SIG Facebook page, but haven’t implemented that yet.
The obvious question is: “Are these tools returning dividends for the Bluetooth SIG?” Unfortunately, the answer isn’t so obvious. My blog is well read and a great tool to deliver SIG news to a broad audience. However, I find it interesting that my annual pumpkin carving posts, with pictures, are some of the most viewed each year…
My hunch is these social media tools are all going to play a part of our online strategy, but not be our online strategy. One of the challenges we face is getting our messages to the proper audience. For example, when we start a new work group to create a specification enabling a new use case, we want to get related information to our members as well as to non-member companies that may be interested in that use case. This is a vastly different audience than consumers – a group we wish to educate about the enormous assortment of products they can obtain to simplify their lives. Social media can help us to reach these very different groups. We may evolve our Bluetooth.com web site to directly target the consumer while Bluetooth.org provides a portal into the Bluetooth SIG for members and businesses. A Bluetooth SIG Facebook page could be used to target consumers utilizing that service and guide them to the content on Bluetooth.com. Similarly, the LinkedIn group for members could be used to communicate with business professionals and drive them to content on Bluetooth.org.
I’m hoping that social media, utilized in this way, will prove to be a powerful communication tool for the Bluetooth SIG. Time will tell. I’m sure we won’t get it right the first time and will continually be tweaking our tactics while keeping true to our strategy.
Erich Kamperschroer,
Chairman, the DECT Forum
We strongly believe that social networks already play a major role in private and B2B communication today. There will be national elections at the end of September in Germany and at this time all of the political parties that are fighting for voters are intensively utilising Twitter & Co. for their election campaigns. Are we sure that Barack Obama would have succeeded in the November 2008 US elections without having focused on new media and social networking for his very “modern” campaign?
For almost 20 years, DECT as a short range wireless technology has ensured that people can connect, speak to each other and definitely do social networking privately and also for business reasons. With CAT-iq devices and the connection to the Internet the new technology provides not only voice but also text communication. There is definitely a major trend to connecting to friends and business partners from all over the world. It is quite exciting to see what kind of products or devices will be provided by the industry to meet these needs and to guarantee local and mobile access to these platforms.
It seems to be already a fact - if you watch the behaviour of young people - that they are quite familiar with Twitter & Co., and it looks that social networks are already replacing text messaging via SMS, which is quite costly if you use it extensively.
Marketing strategies can use social networks to interact with people or target groups. Not to make money but to use the social communities to spread and leverage your messages, products, and services. With social networking you can benefit from the advantages of the Internet: it is global, available 24/7, and it is interactive. Therefore social network marketing will replace classical advertising – in the same way as digital online media are replacing the long-term dominant print media and even TV.
Edgar Figueroa,
Wi-Fi Alliance Executive Director
With apologies to Incisor’s readership, Edgar Figueroa regrets that he was not able to submit his text in time for this issue. Normal service will be resumed next issue!
Bob Heile
Chairman, ZigBee Aliance
Social networking’s role varies depending on communication needs of both the sender and the receiver. If the people you are want to talk with prefer to do so via a social network, then you have your answer. There’s no doubt that social networking is transforming how many are communicating with stakeholders – from consumers, analysts, media, government, engineers, developers, etc. This seems quite similar to the way e-mail transformed our lives -- for better or worse. We’re definitely in a transition phase right now and I’m sure these new communication channels will stay around, and a few may even fall out of favor and die off.
We’re evaluating each social network platform to see what makes the most sense for the ZigBee Alliance. We’ve launched an official Twitter feed. Outside the Alliance, there are ZigBee forums on social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. As for its importance in a few years, I consider it less a technique and more of an evolution on how we are communicating. We will continue to evaluate what channels will bring the most ROI for us. It’s important for everyone to know that you can’t be everything to everyone. What’s important is to prioritize your key audiences and provide relevant information. Am I interested in reaching a graphic designer on Twitter? Probably not. Am I interested on reaching a potential member with questions about ZigBee? Absolutely.
For some groups, having a viral video viewed by millions of people may make sense. But what it comes down to is reaching the right audience with a message that informs and inspires action. The ZigBee Alliance works to engage with others on a B2B-level and that requires addressing topics that are meaningful to them. Our strategy is not chasing eyeballs on a mass scale, but generating dialogue about ZigBee with companies developing home automation products, and utilities expediting their smart grid development plans. We also want to talk with the engineer that wants to be part of the next ZigBee effort to provide new products and services to a new marketplace.
Graham Martin,
Chairman, EnOcean Alliance
When I first looked at some of the new social networking tools such as Twitter I quite honestly thought – what is the world coming to? Do we not have real lives? It is obvious that media and communication is shifting from print to on-line, but do we really want or need to know what somebody just had for lunch or what is the name of his new pet hamster? However, after hiring a top notch young and dynamic PR Manager, I was soon to see a more complete picture and drastically change my tune.
Social networking and media sites such as Linked-in, Xing, Twitter and You-Tube are becoming highly important and effective additional ways of providing messaging and information also amongst business communities. As opposed to thousands of e-newsletters and e-advertisements people receive and rarely have the time to read, social networking and media gives business professionals and companies the choice of informing themselves on a particular subject or company when they wish to. They can collect relevant information on specific topics, for examples in various forums or groups, and communicate directly with relevant partners in this field. There is also the snowball effect, where various individuals or companies forward interesting information to their contacts which can within a very short timeframe lead to your message spreading virally reaching thousands or even millions of relevant people with minimum cost and effort.
Social networking will not replace traditional PR methods, but is already becoming an innovative addition that will become an important part of any modern PR strategy. This is a very positive evolution and I am sure that we will see a huge growth of this media platform in the near future.
EnOcean was one of the first wireless companies to become active in social media with its own You Tube channel and Twitter account. Others such as Texas Instruments are also actively Twittering and I am sure many more will soon follow these innovative leading companies. If you don’t want to be left behind and are looking for more information on EnOcean or an example of social networks feel free to start at http://twitter.com/EnOcean_en. or www.youtube.com/enocean.
posted by Vince Holton at
4:16 AM
1 Comments:
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