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Fast.Fwd.Innov@tion

Fast.Fwd.Innov@tion is focused on social media, strategies to leverage users & consumers communities to inspire, involve, and engage them with brand/ product/ community. To make it happens it requires communications planning, word of mouth strategies, marketing & community management skills, and platform efficiency knowledge. These matters would be treated along with some news regarding the digital world and influential people

Review of the Internet news of the DayOctober 16

From news on the market fall, technologies that can change the world (at least their market), why gamers matter, to an opinion about whether designers are or not Marketers, a discussion with Youtube co-founder, a post on why relationships are core to marketing, and 6 business books you should read. Here are the links:

Must Read Analysis: Why Markets Are Still Falling . . . The Shadow Financial Systems: I’m fortunate to be a member of the ACTA Open, which provides great analysis of today’s complex financial markets. Here is an excellent analysis by DK Matai, chairman of the ATCA Open. (I’m reprinting it because it is a member only organization - see description at end - but the information should be more widely distributed, imho.)… Read more on Silicon Valley Watcher.

5 Early Recommendation Technologies That Could Shake Up Their Niches: International recommendation technology provider Strands has announced the five finalists in the Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups. From music to video to pharmaceutical drug development recommendations, these plucky startups from all around the world will now present at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Recommender Systems 2008 conference in Switzerland and one will be offered a $100k investment from Strands… Read more on ReadW

Web 2.0 + Best Practices = Connecting and creating valueOctober 8

Since 2005 and the rise of the “Web 2.0″ term from O’Reilly, technology has been leading the Internet with new opportunities with companies charging into content streaming and download (Youtube, Joost, FFWD, iTunes, Vuze for example) and social networks (Bebo, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Second Life, Habbo Hotel, …). But for about 1 year another groundswell has started. Thanks to or due to, the fact is social media has kicked off a new way of thinking for the Internet, and more globally has set up a new way of working for companies. Stepping back a moment to get the big picture, here are some takeaways from the web 2.0 thing for marketing and communication.

1. Join the conversation: things said and done, companies don’t own the content creation on the Internet. They have then to join the conversation where they occur instead of trying to make people move into brand platform since those people won’t come. Companies should better sponsor the platforms supporting conversation they’re interested in to generate brand image.
2. Share: the Internet is about give and take; you need information, provide some before you ask. Consumers are using the Internet for that purpose, if you want them to find you, share.
3. Add value: sharing without adding value is pointless, you’d turn your efforts into

Word of Mouth + Strategy = engrave it in your delivery strategyOctober 7

Working on a social media strategy isn’t just a button you can push to add value to your communication and marketing plan after having done everything you can. It has to be core to your customer care strategy to perform fast and accurate word spreading. If not you’d have to face issues that can’t be solved because of the customer care way of working.

To set up a social media strategy, first thing to do is to check when the customers would interact with the company and think of what’s possible to do to add value to the interaction. Adding value means ways of facilitating information sharing and targeting relevant info according to context. For example when requesting people to create an account, think of these points:

1. It is useful for the consumer to go over a 3 or 4 step registration at that point of the relationship with the brand?
2. Can I add interesting information into the confirmation email to help the customer reach faster information he needs?
3. Would the consumer want to ask a question after registration? If so can he do it quickly?

The objective is to help the customer leave as fast as possible places he doesn’t care about, yet places you do really care about, so that they can spend more time on engaging with the brand and then your time to turn them into brand advocates.

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GM + Social Media = Creating a fan baseOctober 3

Gasoline price rising and loss of $15,5 billion in the second quarter have pushed GM to move forward and try new things. And the new thing is the relaunch of the social media strategy with the release of the new GMnext.com platform. Featuring executive blogs, consumer generated content, and social media tools (like Twitter and Youtube), the so-called social platform aims at targeting young car buyers. This is the context. But GM is missing the important part of the way it works with social media …

Creating a social platform isn’t just enough to get people notice of your brand and make them interested in the content you’re sharing. You have to consider their needs and interests and stick with them. You have to make the brand the “best friend to speak about your hobbies and points of interests”. That kind of statement turns any social media efforts into an opportunity.

What GM has released sounds more like a content aggregator, without any objective but to be a “landing page” as Natalie Johnson, GM’s Social media manager, says. Some basics have been forgotten in the process: li

Community Building + Social Media = Cisco product launch case studyOctober 2

Dell is the major actor in the social media marketing field these days. With a 42 people team over the web and leveraging web tools to raise their reputation and get more understanding from their consumers and customers, the computer company has become the best-in-class example of community management. But Cisco seems to be starting the same work, lead by Lasandra Brill. She’s sharing with us this case study about how they built a community for the launch of one of their product, using Web 2.0 tools:

Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0 - A Cisco Product Launch Case Study

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: forums discussion)

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