Husbands in IT lingo

‎​INSTALLING HUSBAND !!!!
A woman writes to the IT Technical support.....

Dear Tech Support ,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and I noticed a distinct slowdown in the overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications , which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 , and then installed undesirable programs such as NEWS 5.0 , MONEY 3.0 and CRICKET 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Pls note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?
Signed,___

REPLY

DEAR Madam ,
First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Pls enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5... However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband1.0 to default to Silence 2.5 or Beer 6.1. Pls note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT in any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.) In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0 and Good Looks 7.7.
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

Outstanding Social Media Statistics That you cant Ignore - Are you Aware ?

Every month I read countless research reports and blog posts on interesting social media metrics. Instead of having them sit on my desk or in a bookmarks folder in my browser, I wanted to pass them along because social media continues to evolve at a rapid clip and it is very easy to lose sight of key metrics or research data that can help make more informed decisions.

Below are 30 of the top stats I have seen over the past few months that can help you either sell social media to the higher ups in your company or help you in securing additional resources for your company's social program.

• 5 percent of online shoppers note that social media influenced them to visit a retailer's website (Foresee)
• 82 percent of 18-29 year olds utilize a form of social networking (Pew)
• 42 percent of American internet users over 18 actively use Wikipedia (Pew)
• 40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage in some kind of customer service (Burson-Marsteller)
• In 2011 marketers will increase their social media usage by 75 percent (Brian Solis)
• 48 percent of consumers combine social media and search engines in their buying process (GroupM)
• 10.5 percent of CMOs say social marketing efforts are effectively integrated into their overall marketing strategy (MarketingProfs)
• 97 percent of the top US charities utilize Facebook in their marketing efforts (UMass Dartmouth)
• Of all social networks, YouTube has the highest Net Promoter Score with 50 percent of users saying they would recommend it to a friend (MarketingProfs)
• ~140 Million Tweets are sent each day (Twitter)
• 24 percent of adults have posted a review of a product they have purchased (HubSpot)
• 41 percent of the companies report that there is no staff dedicated to social media (Useful Social Media)
• 89 percent of companies note that social media will become a useful cog in their marketing mix moving forward (Useful Social Media)
• 35 percent of small businesses utilize social media in their marketing mix (eMarketer)
• Facebook expects to bring n $4.05 billion in ad revenues this year (eMarketer)
• Facebook is the leading social network for nine out of 13 Asia-Pacific countries (Edelman)
• One out of every six minutes spent online is on a social network (comScore)
• 73 percent of the US internet population visits Facebook each month (comScore)
• 62 percent of Facebook users between 35-54 years of age have liked a brand (eMarketer)
• 64 percent of Twitter users are female (Pew)
• 85 percent of LinkedIn users are Caucasian (Pew)
• 47 percent of journalists will use Twitter as a source for a story (Digital Journalism Study)
• Less than 3 percent of micro businesses utilize Twitter (Vistaprint)
• 61.2 percent of Facebooking females list themselves as married less than a year, compared to 44.3 percent of males (AdAge)
• The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300 percent increase in referral traffic (Search Engine Land)
• 61 percent of Facebook users who have liked a brand note that they are more likely to purchase from that brand (AllFacebook)
• 96 percent of Americans use Facebook (Business Insider)
• 80 percent of social media marketers are using the platforms to increase brand awareness (eMarketer)
• Only 8 percent of US internet users utilize Twitter despite having a 92 percent awareness level (Edison Research)
• 46 million Americans check their social media profiles daily (Edison Research)

• Original article
 

Sales, Service, Marketing? In the Social Era, They’re All The Same - Must Read

You don't need to be a user of social media to know that it's changed business as we knew it. Companies point customers to their Facebook page. Twitter has become mission control for customer complaints and praise as well as a place to cultivate brands. And engaging with customers has become an entirely different proposition from what it was even five years ago.

That's because social media has blurred the lines between sales, service and marketing. Consider, for example, the following tweet: "Thinking about adding 10 more tablets for sales team. What's the best way to share real-time data?"  That one tweet could go to sales to follow up a lead, to service for tech support or to marketing to offer incentives and reinforce branding. How does a company effectively handle this overlap? The answer has ramifications that affect customer-facing operations throughout a company: requiring a different blend of skills, greater levels of employee empowerment and shifting organizational structures as enterprises go social.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines CEO Peter Hartman confronted this challenge in April 2010, when a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland drifted across western Europe. The ash grounded flights for six days, and triggered a deluge of tweets and Facebook posts from stranded travelers asking for help. Like many companies, KLM had dabbled in social media, but hundreds of increasingly frustrated posts from stranded customers tested the company's nascent social strategy.

Shortly after the ash cloud, Hartman declared social media the center of KLM's customer service efforts, with the goal of cutting resolution time to one day at the most. Posts on social channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, would be responded to within one hour. Hartman told his social team to do what it thought necessary to resolve complaints.

In the year since the biggest disruption to European air traffic since World War II, KLM has defined new job roles, reorganized its marketing and service functions to support social media and launched a Social Media Hub to handle all incoming requests. The hub brings employees from across the company together, including e-commerce, customer care, in-flight services, IT and marketing. KLM places new emphasis on employees who can react quickly, solve problems independently, and know how to service customers – and do it in a way that plays well in a world where people instantly and publicly update complaints and praise.

When real-time technology demands real-time answers, old-style hierarchies no longer work. Customers want immediate results, and they waste zero time tweeting or posting their frustrations. And that means bureaucratic-fueled delays can hurt your brand and can cut into your company's top line. In his book The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss described how he authorized customer support workers for his nutritional supplement company to do whatever it took  to keep customers happy, as long as it cost no more than $100. The result? Quicker decisions, happier customers – and stronger customer loyalty.

And loyal customers are return customers. Dell is breaking down walls – literally – to get its key customer-facing employees working together over social media and ensure that customers stay loyal to the Dell brand.

The company filters conversations pouring into its new Social Media Listening Command Center to determine the nature of each comment, tweet, or post.  The dedicated Social Outreach Services team, working next to the command center, then does what it needs to do to keep customers happy.

So far, Dell's social media training has reached more than 13,000 attendees from all business units and functions within the company. Now, Dell's product managers can speak directly with customers, learning their needs and wants. In turn, those customers become advocates for the brand, helping to spread the network and engaging even more customers. The efforts are paying off.  Dell was recently declared the No. 1  social brand according to Headstream and became the No. 1  global brand on Renren.

KLM's and Dell's experiences illustrate the shift that has turned the traditional notion of sales, service and marketing on its head. To be successful, a company must transform itself into a more social organization that can nurture and defend its brands at the speed of Twitter. The days of separate silos are numbered.  Today your sales, service, and marketing departments need to be #onthesamepage.

atricle by Alex Dayon is the executive VP of CRM at Salesforce.com.

Social media marketing. Can you afford not to?

The rapid growth of social media has added another string to the bow of many marketing campaigns. Here we take a look at how social media can be beneficial to a B2B marketing campaign and the issues surrounding that all important return on investment (ROI).

Pretty much every survey you read on social media marketing cites the 'big three' as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so for the purposes of this article we'll focus on those three.

Many people use various social media sites for personal use – catching up with friends, sharing news and keeping up to date with happenings in our own areas of interest – but how does that translate in a business environment?

Many B2C companies use social media to increase sales, build brand awareness and launch new products and services (check out Kellogg's use of Facebook when it became the first cereal manufacturer to launch a product through social media). 

Using social media for marketing in a B2B environment is an entirely different ball game from either B2C marketing or personal use – so where do you start and, more importantly, what can you expect to gain? 

ROI is notoriously difficult to calculate where social media is concerned. According to a survey by BtoB Magazine (some excerpts from which are available here), 75 per cent of B2B marketers who conduct social marketing say they do not measure the ROI of their social media campaigns. When it comes to social media there is no 'one size fits all' measurement protocol. We wonder if the 75 per cent who do not measure ROI have actually sat down and asked themselves the question 'what do I hope to gain from this?' and then set themselves a series of KPIs by which they can measure success unique to their business and its needs.

In the foreword to Oliver Blanchard's recently publish book 'Social Media ROI', Brian Solis writes: "We must first design outcomes into the equation. What do we want to accomplish? What's the return we seek? Are we trying to sell, change, drive, cause, or inspire something specific? Are we reducing customer problems as measured by inbound volume, open tickets, public discourse? Are we trying to shift sentiment to a more positive state that increases referrals as a result?"

Until you know what you are trying to achieve it is impossible to know whether or not you are going in the right direction.

When integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy perhaps the question should not only be 'what do I want to gain?' but also "what can I gain?". There is little use in having unrealistic expectations. Know what is possible, then work out how you can gain from it. 

If you want to launch a new product, Facebook may not be the best platform. If you want to improve your customer service offering, however, Facebook and Twitter should be top of your list. For networking and business recommendations, an up to date, active LinkedIn profile should be your social media priority.

Whatever you decide to use social media for, make sure it aligns with goals across the business and integrates with your overall marketing strategy. Take, for example, new business. You want to generate leads and bring in new sales. Social media may not be your best bet for bringing in direct sales but it could just be the thing that clinches that new contract.

Think about your own personal use of the internet. In a world of consumerism it's all about reviews. If you're planning a holiday you turn to Trip Advisor for reviews of hotels. If you're buying a new car you read the relevant What? Car magazine article. Would you buy a new TV without typing the model number into Google first? Probably not. Now put your business hat on. You've seen an advert for a potential new supplier in an industry publication. What's the first thing you do? You Google them. The first hit you look for is the company's own website which is, of course, only going to have good things to say about it. What you need to know is what it's like to work with and whether it's as good as it claims to be. It may have the best tomatoes in the world but if the delivery is unreliable and the customer service is unhelpful, you'll wish you'd gone elsewhere.

A visit to a company's Facebook page could provide examples of how it deals with any issues. Has anyone posted a negative comment? If so, how has the company reacted? Maybe there's details of an offer which makes it a more attractive deal. Often the delay in publication of printed media versus the instantaneous nature of the internet means that short-run offers will appear on the internet rather than in print.

Next you turn to Twitter to scout out any interesting tweets. Maybe there's been an issue with a delivery and a customer is making their thoughts known on Twitter. Or, conversely, maybe a customer is thanking them for increasing the size of a delivery at short notice. Maybe they are thought leaders or are actively petitioning to change a rule or regulation and are calling for support.

Somewhere along the lines you consult LinkedIn. Who is in their network? Who has recommended them? What discussions are they involved in?

Now ask yourself – would numerous recommendations on LinkedIn or a positive Facebook profile or Twitter feed encourage you to get in contact with the company? Possibly. Would a negative online presence make you think twice? Probably.

If the company's Facebook page is out of date and the Twitter feed consists of weekly tweets of self-promotion it would do nothing to encourage you to get in touch. If it is being used to communicate with customers, to deal with any problems and ask for feedback (on which it appears to act), it would certainly spike your interest.

According to the BtoB Magazine survey, one of the top three obstacles to adopting social media marketing was management resistance. Chances are this is linked to the issue of ROI. In the example above, social media doesn't provide the initial interest in a company but it helps to keep the interest long enough for an enquiry to be made.

If you're looking into whether or not to invest time and money in social media marketing, maybe the question shouldn't be 'can we afford to'? but 'can we afford not to?'. What is the cost in lost sales of being invisible in the social media world?

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‎"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." 
- Mark Twain

Faith Trust Hope Confidence and more ....

1. Once, all villagers decided to pray for rain, on the day of prayer all the People gathered but only one boy came with an umbrella...THAT'S FAITH
2. When you throw a baby in the air, she laughs because she knows you will catch her...THAT'S TRUST
3.Every night we go to bed, without any assurance of being alive the next Morning but still we set the alarms in our watch to wake up...THAT'S HOPE
4. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future or having any certainty of uncertainties. ..THAT'S CONFIDENCE
5. We see the world suffering. We know there is every possibility of same or similar things happening to us. But still we get married...THAT'S OVER CONFIDENCE!‬

Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

It's Not Just for Facebook Anymore

Social networking gets a lot of attention, but the vast majority of that attention is focused on a small handful of very large social networks. Facebook and Twitter are great tools, but what if you could harness the power of social networking and bring it to your own site?

The value of social networking for a business--and the reason that it is important to establish a presence and learn to effectively use Facebook and Twitter--is that it engages customers on a different level. When you give customers a voice, and let them be a part of the dialog, it inspires a degree of loyalty, and gives those customers a reason to come back--to share their opinions, and provide feedback.

Leverage the power of social networking on a local level with your own community.More importantly, when you create a forum for customers to communicate with your organization, and with each other, you create a sense of community that takes on a life of its own. Customers will share with each other, and help each other. A social community can build word-of-mouth momentum for your organization, and provide free, self-sustaining customer support.

A survey released today from Ning puts some real world metrics behind the theory of the social Web. Ning provides a platform for creating custom social sites, and the Ning Point of View (POV) Report analyzes information gathered from nearly 100,000 such social communities globally with 67 million unique visitors per month.

According to the Ning POV, a new online community is born every 10 minutes as groups and organizations of all sizes around the world integrate the power of social networking into their own sites. Here are some of the key findings from the Ning POV:

• The Magic Number: It only takes 20 people to bring an online community to a significant level of activity and connectivity - when members spend an increasing amount of time on the site, and visit more regularly.

• Social Status: The Ning POV ranks the top 20 social categories online with Education making the highest grade. The ranking also shows that the Religion category (#6) has more fans than the Sports category (#16).

• Dialog Makes a Difference: The balance is shifting from broadcasting status updates to developing dialog. The most active sections of Ning community sites are those that foster a two-way conversation (the inbox and forum tools attract the highest engagement, outranking broadcast tools such as member profile, photos and video).

Most organizations have a website, and many are establishing a foothold on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But, it would be preferable to bring customers to the website and give them a reason to engage and keep coming back.

For example, look at Tony Hawk's website, shredordie.com. At face value, it just looks like a website about skateboarding, but at the upper right you will see links to log in or set up an account. Users who create an account can sign in to the site and join the shredordie.com community. They can set up a profile, upload photos and videos, write blog posts on the site, and invite friends.

There is still a very valid reason to set up shop on Facebook as well--no matter what your product, service, or cause, the ability to reach half a billion people is awesome. But, your social networking efforts don't need to be confined to Facebook. You can also create your own social Web on your own site, and you can use your efforts on Facebook to gain exposure and attract users to join your private community.

by Tony Bradley, PCWorld