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Hi, 

Here is your latest issue of Social Business Bites. 3 items this week.

Social Media And Branding: A One On One With A Harvard Business Professor

Short link: http://onforb.es/1eeGXtU

This article reports on an interview with Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, Harvard Business School professor and author of A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media.

I found the article stimulating and refreshingly disruptive.

For starters, Piskorski prefers the term "social platforms" to the term "social media". He argues that the secret of the successful companies (in using what we call social media) is in allowing people to fulfil social needs they can't fulfil offline, or only at a much greater cost.

A corollary he spells out is that - in my paraphrase - companies which use social media mainly or exclusively as broadcast platform are missing the point. He argues that "Companies need to help people interact with each other before they will promote products to their friends or help companies in other ways." That's what he calls a "social strategy".

But read the whole piece. It's not long, but it's nutritious.

I'd seriously love to hear what you think of it, whether it "speaks" to you, whether it challenges your thinking (as it did mine).

LinkedIn Drives the Majority of B2B Leads and Conversions [Infographic]

Short link: http://bit.ly/1d8XUI3

I'm a bit wary of the infographic craze. Sometimes there is a disproportionate amount of graphic relative to the info.

But this is an exception. There are some fascinating statistics in this post on Social Media Today, displayed graphically and to good effect in the embedded infographic. And the figures show that those in business who are pitching to business (B2B and who use social networks but ignore LinkedIn are making life harder for themselves than it needs to be.

The research results are from Oktopost, which specializes in "socially-driven B2B content marketing".

Consider:  over 80% of leads and conversions from social networks are coming from LinkedIn; most of those leads come from LinkedIn Groups discussions; 10% of the LinkedIn leads come from company pages - although less than 1% of posts are on company pages.

Five things brands should be doing with Pinterest

Short link: http://bit.ly/1iXLVPM

"Pinterest, the tool for collecting and organising things you love, enables users to share and pin photos and short videos."

This post attracted me because I feel I should know more about Pinterest, although until now I have just dabbled with it, and not even dabbled very much. My excuse was that it was mainly for business-to-consumer (B2C), and mainly product-image oriented. The arguments I've read for a B2B use seem a bit stretched, although my mind is not closed on that.

In the meantime, I figure that Pinterest is important enough in the general sphere of social business to warrant my learning more, preferably from using it, not just reading about it. And this post lists five things I can to do, so that looks like a good start.

In fact, I'm thinking right now about some videos I could probably use on Pinterest!

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By the way, a couple of times I've wondered about that tag line for Social Business Bites, "fresh, tasty, nutritious" (so corny!) but I have to tell you it is helping to keep me honest in what I select for these bites and what I leave out of consideration. I hope over time you will feel that I'm keeping to that description fairly well. 

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Till next time

Be well, be social :)

Des

PS: If you are not on the list yet to receive Social Business Bites in your email inbox, and would like to try it, you can register for that at this link (there is an easy unsubscribe link in every update).

PPS: I'm a co-presenter for an intensive workshop on personal branding, Brand Slam!, here on my home turf of the Gold Coast, Australia. If you know anyone who could be interested, I'd be grateful if you would share the following link with them for all the info and a special offer I've negotiated for my friends: http://deswalsh.com/brand-slam

My contact details

Phone: International +61 413 089 355    Australia 0413 089 355

Skype: deswalsh (if you want to connect with me there, just type in "Social Business Bites" - or email me and we can set it up).

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