Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Orlando: Twitter Editorial Director Karen Wickre On Effective Communication In 140 Characters Or Less

Karen Wickre is Editorial Director at Twitter, where she shapes the way the company communicates publicly. She has worked the editorial side of publishing for 20+ years as an editor, author, columnist and content strategist. Previously, Karen worked at Google, for which she developed the company’s corporate content strategy, and built its blog and Twitter platforms into global channels.

Karen Wickre, currently the editorial director for Twitter, has been on the vanguard of digital and social media communications for over a decade.

During her nine-year stint at Google, she helped found the Google Corporate Blog, which paved the way for Google’s more aggressive embrace of blogging for not only corporate communications, but also knowledge sharing and Google product enablement.

More recently, she’s served as the editorial director for Twitter, helping Twitter employees and customers communicate as widely and engagingly as is possible in 140 characters or less.

During our interview at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Orlando last week, Karen and I chatted about the early days of social media, then worked our way forward to more cutting-edge concerns, including Twitter celebrity, Twitter’s key role in helping share the zeitgeist of live events, Twitter’s increasing international reach, and yes, even the ever-feared “DM Fail.”

Karen’s insights into both the philosophy and reality of effective social media communications can impact organizations everywhere looking to build their own smarter commerce strategies.

You can follow her on Twitter at @kvox.

Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Orlando: The CMO Club’s Pete Krainik On The CMO Agenda

Pete Krainik is the co-founder of The CMO Club, and brings over 30 years of experience in marketing, sales, IT, and product management within the consumer goods, high tech, digital and software industries.

Earlier this year, the Gartner Group informed us they were projecting that by the year 2017, chief marketing officers would be spending more on information technology than the CIO.

Yes, that turned a few heads, at IBM and elsewhere in the industry.

But Pete Krainik, the co-founder of the CMO Club, an organization which brings CMOs together in an environment “of openness and contribution that enables them to become better at what they do” explained during our interview in Orlando that CMOs face challenges bigger than simply better embracing IT.

Most CMOs are expected to lead the growth agendas of their organizations, Pete suggested, and yet many don’t feel they have the needed credibility or are not viewed with the same authority as other C-level execs.

Moreover, many are still wrestling with the rapid advent of social media, and the need to provide more aggressive outreach and enablement of their key advocates. As Pete explained, “Advocates have juice,” and yet so many organizations are struggling as to how to most effectively create and foster relationships with their brand advocates.

We discussed these issues, as well as the powerful narrative emerging around IBM’s Smarter Commerce play, in a fun and engaging discussion.

Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Orlando: Social Thought Leader Ted Rubin Talks “Return On Relationships”

Ted is a leading social marketing strategist and in 2009 started using the term “ROR: Return on Relationship,” a concept he believes is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database, many of whom are vocal advocates for the brand.

“Just be nice.”

Those are just some of the words of wisdom that Collective Bias’ chief social marketing officer Ted Rubin offered up in our interview last week at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Orlando, Florida, as Ted discussed the opportunities and challenges of social media marketing.

Ted is a leading social marketing strategist who, in 2009, began using and evangelizing the term “ROR,” or “return on relationship,” a concept he believes is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database, many of whom have the potential to become vocal advocates for brands.

In our interview, Ted also addressed some key emerging themes in the social media, including the massive opportunity that social media presents to organizations looking to interact at scale with their customers, and how social platforms are increasingly helping to facilitate those interactions.

His book, Return on Relationship, is due to be released in October of this year.

BMW Tees Up A New Winner

Okay, golf fans, how about that BMW Championship and the continuing race to the PGA Tour’s new great prize, the FedEx Cup??

When the Tour first introduced the points-based playoffs in 2007, there was a lot of hemming and hawing. Who needs it, what about the majors, etc.

Well, here were are five short years later, and PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and his team are laughing all the way to the 19th hole.

Just look at the top of the leaderboard over this past weekend’s BMW Championship, the final stop before the denouement that will occur next week at the Tour Championship: Rory McIlroy (the winner of the last two playoff events), Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Lee Westwood, Adam Scott…I could go on.

But the point is this: The best golfers in the world were playing Pete Dye’s Crooked Stick and chasing that Cup!

As for the play itself, it was of the highest caliber. Lee Westwood’s irons were magnificent, Rory McIlroy’s drives were massive, and yes, had Tiger been putting like the Tiger of old, he likely would have surpassed McIlroy and taken the BMW.

But the drama was real and the stakes were high, and if the performances were any indication of the coming Ryder Cup competition in Medinah, well, hold on to your driver, boys and girls, this is going to be one nerve-wracking Ryder Cup.

Going into Eastlake in Atlanta for the Tour Championship, the top 5 are as follows: Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Nick Watney, Phil Mickelson, and Brandt Snedeker.

If any one of those top five win in Atlanta, they win the FedExCup AND a $10 million bonus.

My money’s on Rory, but this is the FedExCup, and I wouldn’t rule out any of those top 5 walking away with the big check.

As for my own game, I’m about three weeks post-golf school, my newly-discovered under-rib muscle has mostly heeled, and I’m hitting the ball straighter and more accurately than ever.

Yesterday, I scored 82 on a local course here in Austin, and that was with a couple of nasty double bogeys I incurred with some sloppy sand and short chip shots.  Last weekend, I shot a career-low round of 79 on a links course in some heavy wind, so my shot-making and course management skills are improving, as is my consistency.

I think the real test will come after another couple of months, and though I won’t be playing with the likes of Rory and Tiger anytime soon, I’m enjoying the game more than ever!

Faster Media

I indicated in a post recently that I had gotten rid of my HBO bundle through AT&T U-Verse’s system, with all due apologies to Bill Maher and the new show about news, “The Newsroom.”

But my underlying futility was really about the inability to buy or rent specific content “a la carte” (i.e., be able to buy specific channels of content without having to provide the financial overhead underwriting others) than it was about the quality of the content itself.

New models are of digital content development and management are emerging that can help challenge these legacy financial constructs. Today, at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), IBM announced it has helped Canal+ Group deliver and archive digital comment.

Canal+ Group is the leading pay-TV broadcaster in France, and now will be able to more easily launch and manage new channels and services such as on-demand, web-TV, and even mobile-TV.

Prior to its process and archiving overhaul, Canal+ often used separate and isolated systems to manage its services, often making the production process cumbersome, manually intensive and costly.

Today, the staff has access to an interactive portal that collates and manages over 170 hours of content per day or 8,000 programs per year, whether from tape, external files or post-production video.

The intuitive portal allows multimedia content to flow back and forth in real-time across business units such as programming, advertising, editorial, archiving, production, and distribution.

“This project has helped Canal+ undergo a major transformation, not just in terms of how we operate internally, but how we service our customers,” said Jo Guegan, executive vice president, Technology and Information Systems, Canal+ Group. “

“This new intelligent system ensures we have the tools to produce and process programs in a time frame that keeps us ahead of our competitors in France and globally. As a result, Canal+ has become one of the first organizations in the world to dynamically monitor its workflow processes.”