MBA Geek

A couple of weeks ago, I opened a talk for the Isle of Man Social Media Club entitled Enabling Social Media for Internal Communities. The speaker was Mr Chris Gledhill from PDMS who gave a talk about an off-the-self collaboration package called Microsoft Sharepoint and presented a case study around his organisation’s use of the product.

Here are the slides from the presentation:

• My opening slides with some example of different technologies.
• Social SharePoint – A Case Study

I hope you find them interesting.

A friend sent me a link to a great presentation about Social Media, particularly how Social meida sites today work and how this maps onto the real world. It contains some great advice for people working in this space, especially if you’re thinking about designing a service for people to use.

Check it out:

Excellent insight for marketers:

Robert Scoble, blogger and entrepreneur, discusses his thoughts on how ideas spread. The public session was part of the Stanford GSB marketing course, the Power of Social Technology (Dr. Jennifer Aaker). A panel of experts, including Robert Scoble, MC Hammer, and Loic LeMeur, discussed how social media can build successful brands.

Here’s an interesting set of videos I came across that talk about a variety of subjects related to Social Media and their impact and effect on business today.

It’s been interesting to watch this subject develop, from the early days of blogging all the way through to today. Blogging opened up self-publishing to the masses and coupled with a cheap camcorder one could even start to produce videos. Business has had to come to terms with User Generated Content, the ability for consumers to air feelings and opinions openly and the wide proliferation of information. It’s been a fun journey so far, and we’re still at the beginning. I’m just happy to be riding the wave!

There’s a lot that has been written on the web about the benefits of using Social Media to engage more closely with customers. There are many benefits to doing this, but it also presents a number of challenges in how to direct the conversation and how to avoid negative perceptions like lack of control or message dilution. It’s interesting to start seeing people address these issues to and here are a couple of articles that might help in this regard.

• The many challenges of Social network sites
• Appreciating the challenges of social networking sites

The great thing about these sites is that they offer easy access to companies to meet their target demographic. Regardless whether you’re a mainstream player like CocaCola or a niche market like a small company selling hgh spray, social networks put you in touch with the people who matter most to your business: your customers.

If you’re based in the Isle of Man, then you might be interested in a Social Media themed event next Thursday 13th September. It’s a meet-up of Social Media Club who meet every Third Thursday for a casual lunch. Everyone who comes is interested in some shape or form of Social Media, be it blogging, microblogging, social networks etc.

With social media entering every part of our lives, both personal and professional, it’s a great opportunity to meet and discuss ideas with people working in this space. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a company blog for a finance firm, or setting up a Twitter account for a disability appeal product or just interested in using Social Media to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, come and join us and learn more. You can read more about it here.