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…

Deloitte, along with Beeline Labs and the Society of New Communications Research, has come out with a study showing the current challenges and rewards of today’s online corporate created “communities”. It’s created a decent amount of chatter, which is not surprising considering that this industry is in its nascent stages and everyone is trying to figure it out.

The survey, entitled “2008 Tribalization Survey” gathered information from more than 140 responding organizations in the business to business, business to consumer, and non-profit sectors. Some of the corporate communities have more than 10,000 members; others have less than 100. Those numbers weren’t put into context from what I can see.

I’ve looked around at the commentary on this and have been able to glean a decent amount of info. Much of what I’ve found confirms conventional thought (or at least my thoughts) with the smattering of a few surprises. Read more…

I’ll be taking a look at Southwest’s overall response to the report that they had been flying “unairworthy” planes. This controversy relates to missed or overlooked inspections, small or tiny cracks, a thumbs up by a FAA inspector, and a short period of continued flying violations after the problem was identified.

As usual, in cases like this, the story is hard to follow. That always seems to create initial hysteria and then allows to potential offending party to spin the story to their benefit, often leaving out key concepts.

It seems that in 2004, the FAA issued a ruling that all 737 airplanes must be inspected every 4,500 flights. These inspections were primarily concerned about cracking, a condition which that can lead to very dangerous situations.

On March 15, 2007, Southwest let the FAA that it may have allowed 46 planes to exceed that number of flights as decided by the FAA. Southwest then did and internal investigation and found that, yes, those 46 planes did indeed exceed that limit by a total of 59.791 flights. They reported back this information to the FAA on March 19. However, after disclosing this information to the FAA, they continued to fly those planes for four more days to March 23 for an additional 1,451 flights.

At some point within that March 15-23 time period, an FAA official gave Southwest the thumbs up to continue to fly the planes as long as they were quickly inspected. That official, now being disciplined, is supposedly based out of Dallas, which coincidentally, is where Southwest Airlines is headquartered.

For this transgression, the FAA is proposing a $10.2 million fine.

That’s the story as I see it so far. I’ll be examinging their response as time goes on.

Next, I’ll be taking a look at the way they’re corresponding through their blog.

That’s the story as I see it so far.

Flugpo, an SNS that’s a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll — and one of our favorite clients, just launched its new blog, Flugpo.com, a blog on your favorite classifieds site!

Creating a corporate blog as a place to both inform your user base as well as to promote your brand is essential. Why? Well, because blogs are more textually-rich and topically-focused than social networks. Why? Well, because Social Networks are not about their own brand, they’re an agnostic platform dedicated to the glory of the users.

Flugpo.com has been too selfless and its nice to see them launch a blog that is all about them. Luckily, it is also all about us at AHLLC, too, because they blogged about us, Marketing Conversation Gives Rave Reviews!, in response to the article that Kevin Donlan wrote for us, Flugpo Brings Community to the Social Network.

This morning I read two important posts written by Greg Sterling on his blog Screenwerk. One is Nielsen - WebVisible Data on Local Search. The other is New Findings on SMBs and User Reviews. It left me more and more convinced how local businesses must view the internet as a marketing and business development source, and as a customer relations and reputation management tool.

Read more…