Social state of the union

Image from www.techclump.com.

Since President Obama gave his state of the union address yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to look at the social state of the union and reflect on how far we’ve come with the integration of social media into the business world and how far we still have to go.

Is Quora corporate America’s answer to customer questions?

Quora2

I’ve been told I’m an early adopter, but others are earlier. At adopting that is. In fact, when it comes to early adopters, I like to sleep in. Thus was the case with Quora, the new (or not so new depending on who you ask) social network based on questions. Quora’s been around for a few months, but I only heard about it two weeks ago. The amount of “I just answered this question on Quora” posts in my friends Facebook and Twitter feeds have been on the rise for those two weeks, yet I had only spent five minutes on Quora before this afternoon.

IMC evolution: Sales funnel to customer journey

Sales funnel and customer journey

I’m starting to see a change in marketing mentality. Are you seeing it? It’s happening slowly — change is never a quick thing — but it’s popping up here and there. Part of it is an increased adoption of the IMC mentality. And understanding that the consumer only sees one brand position from his/her perspective so the company needs to be united on all fronts internally. That’s an extremely important business culture change that is moving at glacier speed, but at least it’s moving and we’re starting to see more and more clients nod heads when we talk about an integrated approach.