Most of think of social media through our marketing lens eyes. As we should. That’s likely its greatest use. But the reality is that social media encompasses so much. Or more importantly, it will soon touch on most internal business operations.

That’s why I wrote that latest post. We seem, in our attempts to define it, to be actually inadvertently limiting it. Much of our call-to-change, if implemented, could result in ineffective disjointed efforts that lead to disappointment and even failure.

I just read a great report from Aberdeen Research, Customer 2.0: The Business Implications of Social Media. Aberdeen determined from its research that there were three levels of adoption, Best in Class (20%) are those organizations whose practices are significantly superior to the industry standard, resulting in more successful implementation. Industry Average (50%) are exactly that. Average adaptation, average performance. Laggards (30%) suffer from poor performance because of lower than average adaptation of social media. Both Industry Average and Laggards are divided between companies that are looking to improve their standing and those that are apparently satisfied with their status quo or lack the vision to improve.

From the report I’m garnering several trends that are impacting levels of success… Read more…

In response to Saul’s recent post, “Conversational Marketing and Language Barriers” and the subsequent discussion on internet culture, one of our readers, Mark Foreman, of aconnector.com asked if we here at Abraham Harrison LLC, are “typical Americans that expect the whole world to speak English”, the kind that “repeat the words much louder when the locals don’t understand you”. As I thought about how best to answer Mr. Foreman, it coalesced in my mind how amazingly international, cosmopolitan, and multi-lingual Abraham Harrison is, and thus, why it is so natural for us to communicate sensitively and effectively regardless of what internet subculture we find ourselves in conversation with.

We are a company of 15 people stretching across 14 time zones, and living in five countries on four continents. We are of four nationalities and six ethnicities.

Read more…

I had been using Caucus software since 1993 when I joined the gang at Meta Systems and their virtual online community, The Meta Network. I co-taught the first accredited online high school course in creative writing, called Education for the Arts, and then joined Caucus Systems, a startup comprised of all the people I admired: Frank Burns, Scott Burns, Lisa King, etc.

It was there I met Tom Mandel. I just discovered that, while I was at Caucus, Tom penned a white paper, entitled, How Companies Think: Creating Collaborative Intelligence Online. How did I know? I have been bumping into the white paper being sourced. Awesome. Maybe Caucus Systems and Tom Mandel invented Web2.0 and Enterprise2.0 and not all the other also-rans. Bloody small world, isn’t it?
Read more…