Adam Gray Social Media

10/10/2017

“Effective use of social motivates buyers to want to engage with us” – interview by John Smibert.   Have you noticed that there...

18/08/2015

Is Klout the best measure of who's paying the bill? http://bit.ly/1PhfOX0

17/08/2015

As my mother said...do as the teacher says, not as the teacher does! http://bit.ly/1TOkIkF

17/08/2015

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-organisations-challengesor-adam-gray?trk=mp-reader-card

Since starting work at Oracle (just over a year ago) I have had the most fantastic opportunity to work with some of the world’s biggest brands. Of all the organisations I’ve worked with, very few aren’t a household name…which is very exciting.It’s interesting to see how the challenges faced by sophi…

17/08/2015

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-annoying-your-linkedin-newsfeed-adam-gray?trk=mp-reader-card

I have just logged on to LinkedIn and felt compelled to have a bit of a rant!Don’t you just hate the way that people are adopting social media? I don’t mean that it’s bad that lots of people are adopting it, clearly THAT’s good, but the WAY they’re adopting it.Thought Leadership. That’s what I hate.…

30/07/2015

Is this Amazon "Top Gear" offering the first attack from Amazon against the established broadcast world I wonder? http://bit.ly/1h7UoRa

Amazon has announced that Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will be reuniting to create “an all-new car show” that will be exclusively on Amazon Prime.

03/06/2015

Hannah Fry - The Mathematics of Love. Well worth a watch, a simply brilliant TED talk http://bit.ly/1Jqbx2D

07/05/2015

If you're still undecided, read this before voting http://dailym.ai/1IQLDFg

Britain is a far more prosperous and well-run nation than when Labour was booted out of power. Here, we detail a list of achievements the Tories should be shouting from the rooftops.

15/04/2015

Since I joined Oracle as Client Social Engagement Lead I have had a great time working with some of the world’s best known brands, truly household names, and the output of some of the ideas and conversations I’ve had have been seen by literally millions of people.

Because, prior to joining Oracle, most of my interactions and experience had been with SME’s (with perhaps a maximum of 800 staff or so) working largely with enterprise level clients has given me a fantastic insight in to the challenges faced by large organisations…challenges which simply don’t apply to smaller businesses.

Talking to a wide range of the clients I work with there seem to be very clear patterns of the challenges which they face in implementing social within their businesses. Broadly, these fall in to three areas.

Structure: often the internal structure of the team doesn’t properly support the needs of an agile social presence. Also, social (which usually is considered a upset of “digital” which is itself a subset of marketing) touches many parts of a business. New product development, crisis management, research, human capital management, reputation management, recruitment - are all areas which can benefit from “the social touch” rather than just marketing & pr. In many organisations this causes problems because of the siloed structure and the lack of communication and sharing from one silo to the next, this means that the full benefit of social cannot be accessed by the business.

Process: Most organisations have a clear process for traditional marketing functions, whether that be mobilising external agencies for the design & print of a leaflet or the internal creation and curation of content for a conference. Whatever the function, it’s been done before and therefore people know what they need to do. In social, often it’s all new and the basic building blocks - workflow & approvals, staff training, governance, empowerment, response time, 24hr coverage, moderation - are all necessary for the successful (and safe) implementation of social.

Strategy: once organisations overcome the “fear of social” and recognise that it’s no longer an option but a necessity, they need to create a strategy. Often, this part of the puzzle is missing. Whilst they might mobilise resources they sometimes can’t clearly articulate “why” they are using social media…what they’re actually trying to achieve. Yes, they recognise that they “need to be there” because their competitors are, and perhaps they know that all of their customers are there too, but they haven;t really decided what “success looks like” for them. Only if this has been done can they start to identify what KPIs are for this journey to their goal.

The biggest challenge though is inertia. Large organisations, like ships, take a long time to change direction and in an environment where speed is everything this can be a major stumbling block.

09/01/2015

My son has just created his YouTube channel ToxicDyno (he's a keen gamer) if you could "like" his first video or subscribe it would be cool

17/07/2014

I've just been away for a couple of days with www.scredible.com and when this launches it will prove to be the greatest tool for social engagement that there is. You will need to watch this space!

When the arcs intersect new possibilities are born. Relationships grow into networks; adventures and opportunities are created. As our individual arcs merge, we each gain the means to impact positively the things we care about–one conversation at a time.

27/06/2014

On the LinkedIn profile of one of my connections I saw the InMap...which I realised I'd not run on myself for 3 years! And it's amazing. Since moving to Suffolk (just over 3 years ago) my map has developed another lump (of my Suffolk business network).

These InMaps don't really serve any practical purpose (unless you're trying to identify the most connected or central people within your network - perhaps more on that in another post) but they do help to illustrate just how your connections cluster together and how easily good (and bad) comment about you and your business could spread!