Category Archives: Thoughts

Are Social Networks Signing The End Of Paparazzi?

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photo johnny hallyday instagram laetitia hallyday 24 heures

photo of Johnny Hallyday taken from the instagram account of Laetitia Hallyday for the 24 heures (swiss magazine)

Many industries are being deeply impacted and revolutionized by social networks.

One of them will surely be the news industry living of “scoops” and stolen images.

As an illustration of this, have a look at he way Johnny Hallyday, one of the biggest French “stars”, with thousands of fans and certainly one of the most sought after by paparazzi, and her wife Laetita are communicating via Instagram (see Laetitia’s Instagram account..)

It is simply a genious “coup” of communication. Why?

They give the fans a direct connection  with their idol, they offer them pieces of intimacy, fans have a direct interaction, they can “talk” directly to the star, and they are rewarded by being directly adressed to, even thanked, given love. By seing Johnny communicating “intimately” (it’s a public account, so the notion of intimacy is relative) with his wife, people can dive directly into the couple’s privacy, a bit of what they are looking for with magazines like “Closer”, etc..

In this way, the couple takes back the control of their communication.

Recently, when rumors said that Johnny had to interrupt his holidays for health problems, people turned to Instagram to get news… but newspapers, too, as witnesses the above picture of a swiss magazine, showing the Instagram pictures of Laetitia’s account. Interesting to see that even the print media turns to social networks to find pictures, convokating a higher emotional power.

As an answer to the general anxiety and the thousands of love message received on their Instagram accounts, Laetitia answered with  this picture, thanking everybody and giving love:

news johnny ill l hallyday instagram merci thank you

On her feed, you can see pictures of her husband, of their daughters, their friends (many of whom are very famous), their holidays,  many backstage photos.
It’s free, it’s original, it’s intimate, it’s true!

Conclusion: Will magazines have to buy pictures directly from the people they want to feature?

Are the stars becoming the new paparazzi?

concert johnny photo intimate instagram

johnny hallyday before stage laeticia instagram intimate backstage

hallyday backstage instagram obispo kids intimate

lhallyday backstage concert stade de france instagram

Make the most out of #lift12. Musings of a veteran member

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claudia benassi faltys twitter profile for lift11
Every year, before going to Lift, I used to write some notes on this blog in anticipation to my forthcoming lift experience, sometimes sharing what makes it so special to me and sometimes what it had brought to me.This year, I won’t participate, even if I’ll try to follow as close as possible via Twitter, but as a “veteran” member of the Lift conference community, I thought that my previous experiences at Lift and other conferences could be of help for newbies, such as @taissacharlier. With a slight ironic look, having in mind that there’s no right way of doing it.
Nevertheless, here are a couple of suggestions:

  • set a couple of objectives before going: business objectives (e.g.meet x people with a specific purpose) as well as more personal objectives, more about new perspectives. This will help you focus your attention on the most important things for you, even if serendipity can bring along good surprises. 
  • take time to have a look at the participants, again with your objectives in mind, even if the presentation doesn’t facilitate this (participants are lisited by alphabetical order and with no keywords visible, for example)
  • in order to facilitate the networking and growing highly targeted contacts on Twitter, have a look at the participants on Twitter, here’s a list by B-M Switzerland
  • create a list on Twitter to follow the hashtag of the conference #lift12, and , of course, connect, connect, connect!
  • try to add your personal point of view/additions, when live-tweeting, always with the hashtag (#lift12), but don’t spam the timeline neither!
  • If you can, try to organize a workshop, it’s a good way of diving deeply into your subject and a unique opportunity to get experience and input from brilliant people, from diverse horizons.
  • be prepared with your personal “tagline”, matching your objectives: the way you’ll present yourself will play a big role in the success of your “networking” (seen in its broader meaning)
  • avoid facility, don’t stick too long with known friends, even if you’re happy to see them, but instead don’t hesitate to place yourself in uncomfortable situations, where you’ll have to do big efforts towards “strangers”!
  • if you can, take notes and wrap them up on a blog, it will help you “digest” the rich content and add another look or perspective to the Lift experience for others
  • use and abuse of the experience corner: arts mixed with all kinds of experimental projects, interaction design, among others, will truly help you think out of the box and infuse new perspectives into your life. Maybe. Surely. 

Enjoy!
And comment with your own advice!

Social Media in International context: what a challenge!

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Insights FB Languages

Your company is on many different markets, with people speaking several languages?
This is a highly challenging situation faced by social media/communication/marketing – name them as you want – strategists.
If you add to this that you are a small company , aka with limited ressources, I bet that you have to be very creative to overcome some obstacles!
Let’s assume that the objectives have already been set (and shared), some of the challenges will be:

  • What kind of information for what market on what social platform?
  • Content production:
  • think languages/translations before creating content
  • Share and (try to) avoid redundance (between languages, personal and company’s profiles, for instance)
  • Centralized/decentralized content creation? Both? How? by whom? How to allocate resulting costs?
  • Who’ll be responsible? With what margin of freedom? (to be outlined in the guidelines)
  • Guidelines: anticipate a maximum of mistakes, unpleasant, akward things that might happen. Clearly set the objectives. Translate them. Yes, it might seem anecdotic, but to translate 10-15 pages PPT into at least 2 languages, is a bit of a pain (and a hidden cost)! Plenty of things don’t need to be translated, but the guidelines are strategical and must be understood. (in my opinion). How to give directions, instructions, balancing autonomy and restrictive input? Where to set the limits? What kind of control to apply?
  • Training: even if the guidelines are the most thorough possible, training people before they get into social media is necessary. To give them confidence, to help them dive into “it” and to guarantee as much as possible consistency throughout the different media.
  • Keep a track record of results, aggregation, re-distribute for sharing insights-> organize, plan
  • Monitoring: train – with no pain (?)! Control.

I stop here, my purpose wasn’t to do a how to or “do’s and don’t’s”, but it was just to share a challenging situation I’m facing right now.
If you already went through that kind of problems, I would love to know how you handled them, if you found some tricks to make it smoother, maybe?
If you faced unforeseen difficulties, or, on the contrary, good suprises or unexpected positive results, it would be great if you could share them :-)
For the fun, I share with you an extract of our guidelines (still in process), for our Italian partners: it’s in Italian, and you’ll understand why ;-)

What Can The Future Do For [You] Me? #lift11

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As every year before the Lift Conference‘s kick off, I have a look back and a look forward, in order to assess where I hope and want Lift to lead me to.

Looking back from now on, I see lots of – personal – progress, human connections and new horizons made possible, as already largely evoked.
But at the same time, tools like Twitter and Facebook have become mainstream and play now a role of “talents discoverer”, trends detectors. You know the latest hype – product, platform, application, etc.., the latest success stories, case stories, and all other industry experts and reports. With good sources, you really are ahead of the wave. My favourite, as you surely already know, is Paper.li, a good curation tool. You can call yourself ” a trend watcher”, “trendhunter” or whatever trendexpert, following the maturing wave of “digital experts”.
In this context, answering to the question “What can the future do for you”, as promises the #lift11 theme is highly challenging. How to deliver a message different from what you can already find in your timeline? How to deliver added-value?

I see tracks of answers in the speakers, of course: not all of them are “mainstream” and they surely have specific angles for their presentations and outstanding qualities. Other tracks of possibilities could lie in the quantitiy and quality of “lifters” (yes, it has become an official term :-)), in the interactions arising during the workshops, in the Lift experience and other networking spaces, like the fondue.

In this context, what I expect from this promising Lift’s edition is: getting back in touch with people met at Lift, some becoming friends :-), catching up with them, getting true insights into future issues and opportunities – especially linked to marketing/social media/business model – being inspired, be it by people, Lift experience, speaches. I also set objectives for Sosoftware, having a couple of interesting meetings scheduled. I really hope to get means to cut down into the noise of some digital platforms and get true value.

Side considerations: some of friends met at Lift will be missing. I’ll regret them (you know who you are!).
I also have a special thought for a person met during my very first Lift, more precisely during the workshop where I opened this blog, with Stephanie Booth. That person was among the participants, we talked a bit and kept contact over the years. He very sadly passed away a couple of days ago, he was my age, I have a special thought for him, I know he was very respected.
Last but not least: I am looking forward to listening to @BrianSolis live tomorrow morning at a special presentation organized by Label.
I’m lifted! Follow me on Twitter with my brand new #lift11 avatar made by @nicktalop

Convergent Tracks in 2011: Marketing and Technology

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As we’ve seen it in the past couple of years, the acceleration of technological innovations has been impacting many sectors, marketing included. Some disciplines like communication, PR, marketing, customer service have partially blended, technology contributing to “dis-cluster” them, bringing along in the same time new challenges.

As stated in this excellent article, “Social technology is permeating everything in our lives. It seems that every medium of media has integrated social into the message. The Facebook craze has pulled over 500 million people into use of social technology for multiple purposes. Humanity is experiencing connectivity to the human network like never before in history.

The influence of technology on humanity is affecting all market sectors whether private or public, on-line and off line. The intersection of technology and the human network is disrupting old business models, organizational theories and beliefs systems founded in old knowledge. ”

In this disruption context, question is: How to bridge the gap? How to leverage those (r)evolutions to empower your organization’s global efficiency?
It has become essential to understand new technologies, how they can augment your marketing’s objectives, impact your business results.

New kinds of jobs are emerging: community manager, chief marketing technologist, digital strategist, etc, that all have in common to mix combined skills in technology and communication, marketing.

Paradoxically, the more fragmented the world becomes, the more “convergent tracks” we’ll see, with an emphasis on the convergence of: mobile (highly fragmented)-social-local.

Here are some of the -new- challenges marketers are facing:

  • keeping track of new trends
  • understanding the mechanisms underlying the power of technologies
  • understanding how they can impact your product/price/communication/distribution/customer experience
  • figuring out strategies optimizing a mix of media according to the objectives (acquisitoin, loyalty, brand awareness, ..)
  • understanding key data factors: analytics, performance, ROI, social CRM, …
  • diving into social media…
  • And enjoying this high-pace evolving environment!

And, at the converging point between marketing and technology, connections and emotions, the lattest being the central linchpin to valuable connections.

That’s why you see those 2 signs on the image: <3 is the symbol of love in the digital media and the other one, on the right, is the symbol of sharing/connecting (via 2.0 technologies).
It is my personal way of wishing you all a happy 2011, under the sign of love and connections, all real, no matter the media!

If you’re interested in decryptering the discussed trends, you can focus on these 2 information sources:
Adage Digital
The Marketing & Innovation Daily

And for the upcoming months:
10 digital predictions for 2011
Top 10 Stories on AdAge.com in 2010
Social Media in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make

PS: social media is implicitely included in the article, as being one of the most disrupting trends, mix of platforms, technologies, participation, interaction, crowdsourcing potential, etc, etc…
PS2: Focus. It’s getting more and more noisy out there.
PS3: Follow your own track

Image courtesy of a dear friend, Jacques-Antoine Besnard, quadruple airship world champion who’s leading the engine on the image. Official site of the last world championship. His official Fan Page (not regularly updated). A model of a focused mind. Merci Jacot :-)
Icons taken from The NounProject

The Dawn of the Social Consumer – Emotional Connection at its Heart #socialconsumer #digitalmarketing

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Original article via briansolis.com
Emotional connection is at the heart of what makes social media in its whole so powerful and empowering.
The long-time readers of my blog know it represents one of the central pillars of my work, so central that I even state those values as core values in my posterous profile (and many others). Here, the inaugural article.
Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent, has – brilliantly – dug the phenomenon and implications for business, marketing, social media in numerous articles.
In this article, Brian Solis places and develops the idea around the concept of social consumer, social currency and I definitely agree upon the vision putting emotional connection at the center of the social commerce.
As for a brand, what are the direct implications of “creating emotional connections” with its stakeholders? Not only customers, but also employees, investors, potential investors, potential customers, potential employees, “friends”, depending on the proximity’s ring of the person? (see Jeremiah Owyang’s “Rings of Influence).

Going back to the values.

Company’s values, brand’s values need to be (re-) identified, stated, declined, shared inside the company, at all levels.
It is the pre-supposed condition upon which to build a long-term value-adding relationship. Values can be occasionnally translated into different shapes, through different media, devices, places, by different people and in many different ways. Each of these occasions being the touching point for an emotional connection, potentially leading to a further step.

Values are the continuous thread leading to added value in the long run.
Why? Because values contribute to create an overall perceived consistent image, experience of a brand, company.
Inlaid in the consistency, lays trust. In trust roots long-term mutual beneficial relationships.
In other words, we could say that well-identified and built upon values create in fine an increased perceived value (of the product/brand/company).
What is your take? Do you think that you can build long-term profitable business through marketing and social media without assessing first the core values ?Here, the inspirational Brian Solis’ article.

Random Thoughts – #lift10-10h

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See this great image? It’s the work of @MAMK, a brillant -human- mind met during last Lift Conference, on which he mixes many elements not necesserally linked at the beginning.
It’s a story of addition, in addition of being a story of connections and people.

When I think of the 3 coming days, I stumble upon some random thoughts:

– How many iPads will there be among the roughly 1000 participants? (I want to see and touch one !) Remembering back to 2007’s conference, not everybody had a laptop! (me included)
– Will there be a “check-ins” war at the CICG? ?
– Connected people: some people met at Lift have become friends.
– Connected people: 3 years ago, I was looking around during “networking” breaks, wondering how the hell you “do network”?? Today, I fear not to meet all the people I am looking forward to seeing- again, or for the first time.
– connected people: a twitter list to help connecting people before and during the event
– Connected people: a question: what will change after these 3 intensely rich days? It is (a Lift Conference), every time a unique occasion of intense questioning. New ideas blossom. New vision takes shape.
– what would look like the addition of all the content produced during 3 days? What could it lead to?
– emotion-connection
But first, place to … the people! And to the inspiring program.

Ready for Lift – Ready for Transformation? #lift10

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This – beautiful – image embodies to me the Lift experience, taken in its broader meaning.
It was taken at Lift Marseilles, here’s the breathtaking slideshow by centralasian, whom I borrowed the image to. It was part of the “Atelier des Ondes Parallèles“, by Etienne Rey.

It is beautiful.

At Lift, beauty is omnipresent. Like in front of this image, you feel inspired, beauty opens out all of your censors, you are more receptive, open.
Lights shed on things make emerge unsuspected shapes, colors. You start seing things differently, under unusual angles.
A connection can be made through intellectual analysis as well as through emotional or human interaction.
Like this suspension, it is moving and you move along, you follow a movement, without knowing precisely where this will lead you to.
Under its light, the prism of colors will overlay over your skin, like a superficial metamorphosis, but, once back to normal daylight, its effects will dive deep into your roots. The roots of a slight transformation.

The link between beauty and connection is one convergent track I strongly believe in. And transformation takes birth at a converging point between beauty and connections, where sharing could be seen as one of the underlying links.
All the heart of the theme: Connected People.

Being more and more connected, not always only with positive aspects, I am very curious and open to what will come up during these 3 days.
For my 5th Lift Conference, I’m ready for letting the transformation go one step further.

And you? Will you be at #lift10? what are your main expectations? Hopes?

Image credit: taken on “Playing Futures”

3 years already. Puréééyye!

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It’s been 3 years that we arrived here, on the shore of Leman Lake.
New lake, new life?

Kind of. It was a volountary decision to move, to get closer to a kind of center: surrounded by more people, more businesses, closer to the Alps, more cities, countries.

It’s striking how environment shapes your way of embracing life, how it impacts language’s structure, mentality, openness, connections, intimacy, freedom.

My home is just bigger now than before: it integrates my previous life (past, friends, places, memories) to now and here, with a different look at things. It may be the years passing by, an accumulation of experiences, the mix of all those people, blending the notion of before/after, there and here to lead to what I call “my own augmented reality”.

An example of what has changed so dramatically?

Now, I start to slow down at the green trafficlight! You never know…

It’s the sign of integration, isn’t it?
(I still don’t drive on the left lane at 120 km/h! )

Talking about my personal augmented reality, I selected a couple of images, which should talk by themselves:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

To Be – What you Share – Or Not To Be

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Is our identity, mainly online, defined by what we share?

Technology has made the act of sharing (others content)- to your community-ies (friends, followers, readers…) so easy, a click on “share” on Facebook, a click on RT on Twitter, a blog post mentioning another post, that it has become very easy to shine through others’ content.

But am I really the reflection of what I republish? The “re-publish” notion can be extended to pictures taken at an event, where the people I capture are the value rebounded indirectly on me, the same with quick videos.

At some extent, I would answer in a positive way. Yes. Yes, what I share to my community gives them a good picture of what I like, what I find of interest. Even of my skills. I offer them the value created by someone else. In doing so, it would be hypocritical not to recognize that a slight part of it will be redirected on my own image.

But in my opinion, this can be done in a very transparent way, giving credit to whom deserves it, linking to the source, quoting the original article, quoting the person who published it. Otherwise, it would become “robbing”, as states it Valeria Maltoni in her recent, striking article. Shining through someone else’s content/opinion is easy.

These last weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot on that issue. For 2 main reasons:
First, there’s been a lot of noise around some big event recently, bringing along tons of pictures, videos, tweets, RT’s, etc.. but empty of real meaning. Or there were a thousand of people gathered for a major event that had nothing new to bring to the crowds, or the noise was too big on social networks and the efforts of “translation”, of value- addition too light. Or maybe both !
Secondly, I’ve been recently challenged by a question that sounded like: ok, you share Mashable or Techcrunch articles, great, but this is easy. Implied: what is your real “value-addition”?

So, sharing makes sense when you add your own opinion, colour, take.
Or, better, when you create your own content. Which opens other questions, deserving interest (and another post :-))
This will turn into long-lasting trust into what you think, you share. And, yes, you’ll be a little bit what you share.
But not only.
And you? Did you notice what are the favorite people you follow and why? Do they give a special meaning to the information they share?
I would love to have your opinion!

Image credit to Alex King