Monday, May 16, 2011

Microsoft Buys Skype: Worth It or Not? - 10 Minute Strategy

For $.85 Billion, what is Microsoft going to get out of its Skype acquisition? Shore Communications Inc.'s John Blossom and Peter Propp pick this deal apart, seeing opportunities both for Microsoft to develop an enhanced, cross-platform position in voice, video and chat while Google's more cloud-oriented approach may be positioned as an "Anything but Microsoft" alternative.

Also read our related post on ContentBlogger.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Ted Rubin -- Tools and Tips for Social Media Relevance

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseTed Rubin is a social media business pioneer who has been influential to many who are trying to leverage social media for business success.  And this week (May 10, 2011) Ted was announced as the Chief Social Media Officer for Collective Bias, a site "facilitates the creation of real shopper media by connecting groups of social media influencers to the brands and retailers they use in their daily lives."



Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

About Tools – Ted is addicted to TweetDeck.  He loves the way he can manage many twitter accounts, mentions, Direct Messages, Hashtags.  He can tweet out from multiple Twitter handles at once.  There are technical issues around TweetDeck

As a Blackberry user, Ted uses UberSocial and finds it very useful.  It is not as easy to use as 
Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase
TweetDeck, so he does limited tweeting from his phone.

Ted was Chief Marketing Officer for ELF (Eyes Lips Face) Cosmetics.  In 2008 when Facebook and Twitter and YouTube were just starting, Ted and his team invested in all of the social platforms. 

Elf has never had a traditional marketing budget.  They have always relied on word of mouth.  So social made a lot of sense to them.  They found YouTube to be the most useful way to let their customers “play” with the ELF product set.
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase

When  Ted joined ELF they thought there might be 10+ user videos about ELF.  It turned out that there were hundreds.  So ELF created a platform to aggregate all of the user content (earned media) from ELF consumers.  The Elf Beauty network is a remarkable example of social media execution.  Check it out.  

Ted loves Twitter because of the immediacy.  He responds to anyone who tweets to him or about him.  In 2008 – 0 followers.  By the end of 2009 he had 20,000 followers and today he has more than 50K followers.  Ted is very focused on growing followers based on who is influential in the topics that he is focused on.  He follows influencers and the people who follow them.  He feeds Twitter all the time with original thoughts and articles.  He responds to questions thoughts and concerns.

We wish Ted great success in his new gig.  Ted has agreed to come back to 10 Minute Strategy for another interview in a few weeks.  Maybe we’ll get an inside view of his plans for Collective Media!

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Monday, May 9, 2011

Ted Rubin - Social Media and Return on Relationship

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseTed Rubin is a highly regarded Social Media Strategist and Brand evangelist. You can follow his tweets at: @tedrubin.

Here are some of the topics we cover in part one of this very fast flowing interview:

Image representing Virgin America as depicted ...Image via CrunchBaseTwitter and Women
The power of Women in purchase decisions
How Return on Relationship leads to Return on Investment
The Do's and Don'ts of Ghost Tweeting
Twitter and Social media Escalation policy.
JetBlue Airways logo Category:Airline logosImage via WikipediaVirgin America and Jet Blue



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