Monday, November 29, 2010

[The Insider] 15 Talents

When you want to be the leading market place bringing together talented students with interesting company projects of innovative companies, you need to be where the students are. When the 15 Talents SIBE GmbH was founded in early 2008 it was the leading rule for structuring the company. This simple but powerful rule was the reason why 15 Talents was created with Social Media at its core, making it a true social media company.

Two years later the responsible for Sales and the company site within Xing, Andreas Griesbach, is giving us insights of the company structure and how it works today through an interview.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Flip and think!

Recently I found an interview hosted by Mark Suster (@msuster) with the rapper and entrepreneur Chamillionaire. Firstly I was a little bit cautious about it because I knew Mark Suster from the side of an entrepreneur and active social media user. Chamillionaire was known to me as a musician and tech addicted. I thought it was a strange mixture but this interview really got me thinking about a lot of things regarding business and especially Social Media.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Should Business-to-Business-Companies care about Social Media?

When we talk about successful usage of Social Media one often talks about nice brands targeting end customers. Not only because there are many of good examples but also because they are more visible than others. But being a company doing business to business products or services one wonders what to do with social media. You barely establish your brand with it, only few try to do business to business over the social networks like Twitter and Facebook yet. Asking themselves: Should I care about Social Media?

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Becoming Social Network Marketing Manager

When I read this Dilbert a few days ago, I knew I had to share it with you:

Dilbert.com


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

An open letter to Marketing

Dear Marketing,

congratulations you are once again making a fool of yourself! I mean don't get me wrong, eventually you've understood that people care about the way the product gets produced, its quality and the service around it.Good for you! But there is one lesson you never learn: It's not about saying, it is about doing it. And with nowadays technology and world-wide networks and organisations like greenpeace there is no easy hiding anymore. So what is your answer, marketing? You do greenwashing and adverts showing the company friendly, supportive and offering the best and easiest service - while they do not. We normal people call this "lying": you help companies to pretend being better than they actually are.

Of course, you are doing it for the money, so no harm there, eh? But do you guys know the story of the boy who cried wolf? And in the end no one believed him, when there was a wolf? When I was a kid I was told the story every time I was caught lying. And it has point; if you lie people don't believe you, don't trust you any. So if anyone at all is believing the ads you are doing lately, they won't do it much longer. Leaving companies who actually care at a bad place: they can't advertise with these terms and those promises. Those got broken too often for anyone to believe them. So even if those companies grow bigger the only way to make people believe that they care is by actual action, by doing it. Advertising this is pointless, might even does harm as people question it. Got it?

Even when those companies grow there isn't much point in doing classic advertising as no one will believe them! This way of pretending without action you, dear Marketing, are supporting at big companies nowadays isn't only bad for the company it is bad for you! By doing this you are making yourself useless, destroying your own future. You should seriously consider being more picky about your clients: choose those with the good product over the one with the pile of money and ensure that what has been said gets done. But most important: don't Lie! Only if people can trust advertisments, they might consider believing you. And only if people believe and trust you, you stand a chance when the upcoming companies with good service and high quality products grow bigger and re-evaluate their communication strategies. Think about it!

With kind regards,
Benjamin Kampmann