Submitted by AxelS on Mon, 2012-04-23 23:29

I'm proposing to develop a Social Media Strategy for the European Union. And as such I suggest the following process:

1) PRE CONFERENCE:
We build groups with all social media group attendees of the #DA12 event and create a European Social Media Assessment using the Four Quadrant Assessment model. That model allows us to do that in an efficient and structured form. I will share the details of that process later on. The outcome contains:
* A good idea what the European population is expecting from the EU and its organizations
* A good understanding what the EU partner organizations are able to contribute to our long term success
* A good understanding how the European Commission is currently engaged and represented in the social web
* A good understanding of Europeans global competition

2) AT THE CONFERENCE:
The team will present the assessment at the Conference in June as a base for the strategy development. The primary objective for the two days is developing the foundation for an EU Social Media Strategy with three goals in mind:
- Making European Businesses globally respected and preferred supplier in their respective industry by Dec 2016 based on their ability to not only produce quality products but being able to communicate their existence and offerings on a global scale through the use of social media. Success is measured by relative increase in GDP.

- Creating a significantly improved seeding ground for innovative entrepreneurs, building new companies and creating sustainable growth in the job sphere through growing businesses. Providing extensive support and education to leverage social media to allow businesses to grow faster across the European Union and the globe. Success is measured by the growth in numbers of new startups and the growth and success of those startups by mentioning and popularity in the social web.

- Making the public sector of European countries an interwoven part of our rapidly evolving society. As such public services are more efficiently supported by private initiatives and democratic engagement is more appreciated in a way that leads to a more cost efficient public sector across Europe by 2016. Success is measured by a more appreciated service and a reduction in relative overall cost.

3) POST CONFERENCE:
We create programs that constitute the EU wide social media initiative and execute the defined social media strategy.

LARGE SCALE PUBLIC SUPPORT
We conduct the above with maximum transparency and invite the European population to contribute in a constructive way. The rapidly growing democratic engagement of the population may not only provide significant contribution but equally important a major increase in ownership and mindshare to be able to execute that strategy.

Axel Schultze
http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

P.S.
We are educating the largest corporations in the world and build campaigns for leading political parties. The above methodology is proven over more than 6 years. :)

Group audience:

Social Media

Comments

Great suggestions Axel!

Submitted by Rolf_Lindstrom on Mon, 2012-04-23 23:58

Great suggestions Axel!

Good approach. Count me in.

Submitted by eprenen on Tue, 2012-04-24 06:14

Good approach. Count me in. Maybe we should involve Aurelie Valtat (@avaltat on twitter) in this as well?

Thanks Eric and yes,

Submitted by AxelS on Tue, 2012-04-24 14:58

Thanks Eric and yes, absolutely, Aurelie looks like a good addition to the engagement :) Every smart person is very welcome :) Thanks for your engagement. Look forward to work with you. Would you mind to create a XeeMe http://XeeMe.com/register - makes it so much easier to connect in the social web. Here is mine: http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

Her you go: http://xeeme.com

Submitted by eprenen on Thu, 2012-04-26 15:12

Her you go: http://xeeme.com/eprenen

One of the key areas that

Submitted by garyc on Tue, 2012-04-24 10:15

One of the key areas that social media can support is bridging communites and creating a greater sense of europeon identity. Social media allows communties have a voice share there concenrns and develop cross border innovation. Is it possible to add this strand into the conference

Absolutely great thought Gary

Submitted by AxelS on Tue, 2012-04-24 14:59

Absolutely great thought Gary and one of the foundations of social media.

This sounds convincing and I

Submitted by OlafKracht on Wed, 2012-04-25 09:44

This sounds convincing and I'd like to offer my help as well. We shouldn't forget the power of video...
Happy to connect with everyone here via XeeMe: http://XeeMe.com/olafkracht

An established methodology is

Submitted by Opus50 on Wed, 2012-04-25 10:11

An established methodology is a great place to start any push forward, so count me in. See you over on xeemee - once I've checked out the data privacyon the site :)

Four Quadrant Assessment

Submitted by Opus50 on Wed, 2012-04-25 11:25

Four Quadrant Assessment Model - SlideShare here
<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_3385927"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/qrckirk/creating-communiocation-strategies-gui... title="Creating Communication Strategies Guided by 4-Quadrant Models" target="_blank">Creating Communication Strategies Guided by 4-Quadrant Models</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/3385927" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint" target="_blank">PowerPoint</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/qrckirk" target="_blank">Kirk Bridgman, MBA</a> </div> </div>

<water cooling>

Submitted by nabeth.thierry on Wed, 2012-04-25 17:12

<water cooling>
Hum, ...
Sorry I am getting confused here.
</water cooling>

What are we trying to achieve here:
- Are we trying to build a social media communication strategy (cf. the four Quadrants)
- or helping the European Commission to shape a strategy for helping the development of social media in Europe (in a way that generate the maximum value) ?

I believe this should be the latest.

I am not saying by that that AxelS proposition is about communication, but what is proposed here now looks (only) very business oriented only (i.e. consultants).
I would like to see other categories of participants bringing their perspective and pushing some ideas and content rather than describing processes.

For instance the Commission has already "sponsored" a number of research projects that explored social media and that are aimed at "inventing the future", and not only looking at what already exist now (and that is going to change anyway).
Could we find some way to take more into account innovation, and for instance to encourage that what happens in the labs is better put in application in the society?
Do academics & politics, has well as end users have something to say here?

To finish, it looks as if we have the same discourse that we can observe before different bubbles. Remember 2000?
I would suggest that we reflect a little bit about the difficulties and challenges, with the objective of better overcoming them. And maybe actually we will find that social media is not the solution for everything!
Could we find some way of taking into account people & organizations that have a less rosy picture of the situation? Could we have some room for some devil advocate and start to introduce some critical thinking?

Thierry

Hi Thierry

Submitted by AxelS on Wed, 2012-04-25 18:57

Hi Thierry
thanks much for your question and perspective. You are right the proposal could be both but it is really and 100% what you like to see "Helping the European Commission to shape a strategy for helping the development of social media in Europe".

I think there are approximately 150 Million of the 330 Million Europeans playing the devils advocate - not sure if we need more - ha ha ha - I'm sure you know what I mean ;)
Clearly we need to work with common sense and have our eyes and ears open - but we rather need people who participate with constructive contribution, combined with real world experience and the motive to help the European economy to stabilize, grow and become an important anchor for the global economy.

If we can help developing a social media strategy for the EU that helps 5 Million mid market companies to leverage the potential and grow their business which means growing jobs, we all won.

sorry, but wuy should the

Submitted by socialbusinesseurope on Sat, 2012-04-28 22:05

sorry, but wuy should the european comission built a social strategy with an US companie?
i think the only interest here is to sell education - social media a ademy!

thats not the right approach!

i am workig on different strategies for social business with the government in austria.
europe is not america...ohter rules, other mentality, other way to do their business..focussed on the personal relationships, which could be stronger in combination with social networks.

Why should the project

Submitted by RogerAT on Mon, 2012-04-30 18:07

Why should the project leadership not be at an US company? They have more experience in social media than we Europeans have. And, as long as Europeans participate in the project lead by them, I can see no problem.

For me it's about the right solutions for the profit and non-profit sector in the EU as well. As an Austrian doing business on international level, I have to mention, that there is no European mentality - we have many different mentalities in Europe. The second point is that we Europeans are doing business worldwide - so we already have to deal with US, Chinese, African, ... mentalities.

Why do you think that the American approach in not focused on personal relationships? I have many relationships to US citizens.

Good point! However, I'm a

Submitted by AxelS on Tue, 2012-05-01 16:19

Good point! However, I'm a European (German) and learned all about Social Media in the past 10 years in Silicon Valley - that's why I was invited by the EU Commission.

There is no training to sell to do this project. But there is a ton of social media consulting to sell while executing the strategy.

Hi Axel,

Submitted by RogerAT on Mon, 2012-04-30 17:49

Hi Axel,

Great proposal. Please let me know how I can contribute to this project.

Regards
Roger (from Austria)

Thanks Roger! Pls join the

Submitted by AxelS on Tue, 2012-05-01 16:22

Thanks Roger! Pls join the online conference https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/343876466
This will be an interactive meeting to jointly develop the project.

Ambitious? yes! Feasible?

Submitted by kgapo on Tue, 2012-05-01 23:39

Ambitious? yes! Feasible? will see...
sounds interesting though. I am interested in social media in healthcare, entrepreneurship and innovation... But no mention of social media in healthcare.. are they on board?

we are talking about Social

Submitted by AxelS on Wed, 2012-05-02 19:34

we are talking about Social Media for all kinds of businesses, including health care, transportation, technology, any kind of startups etc. Any industry specific experience is very welcome!!!

I'm looking at your criteria

Submitted by Hoover on Wed, 2012-05-02 10:52

I'm looking at your criteria for success. They're as follows:

1) Success is measured by relative increase in GDP.

2) growth in numbers of new startups and the growth and success of those startups by mentioning and popularity in the social web.

3) Success is measured by a more appreciated [public] service and a reduction in relative overall cost.

I have no idea how anybody can prove these. For example, let's say the strategy is implemented and after two years GDP rises by 0.5%. How on earth will one be able to say "GDP rose because of the strategy we implemented"?

The same criticism applies to the other two criteria for success.

Very good point David.

Submitted by AxelS on Wed, 2012-05-02 19:45

Very good point David.

We all know that an economy is a complex beast where pretty much everything is interrelated. So what we will really measure and monitor will be social media related facts like mentions in the social web, we then drill down in job related mentions, we can monitor increase in business through an increasing number of happy customer. In order to find export growth we can measure if there are more mentioned from customers in other European countries than today. A very important correlation is between brand related sentiments and business growth. We have done that over the past four years in the US with stunning results. I.e. Virgin more profitable than United, now see the sentiment analysis and it completely shows the actual difference. Take Comcast versus Cox Cable. Take Ford versus GM.... And you find the same pattern in the small business arena. You find hyper engaged barbershops and look at their business growth versus those who just continue with business as usual. All those results eventually drive the GDP.

Just a quick update:

Submitted by AxelS on Thu, 2012-05-03 12:40

Just a quick update:
We will have an online introductory meeting today Thursday May 3 at 15:00 CEST / 14:00 GMT https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/343876466

Will introduce the overall concept of the Social Media Strategy development and how it will help the EU to fulfill its objectives for this group. Please see my update here: http://daeurope.tumblr.com/post/22314051703/digital-agenda-2012-review

Thanks again for the

Submitted by AxelS on Thu, 2012-05-03 17:04

Thanks again for the participation and engagement in today's meeting. I'd like to ask you to put all open questions here into the group so we can answer them for all. Also want to thank Isidro Laso officer of Digital Agenda Social Media for his participation and support.

You all really rock !!!! I got a note from Malta to be on the list as well. How about that: Malta organizes our first Face To Face meeting in Fall this year? :)))

We will post next actions, survey etc. later tonight - Thanks again!!!!

Thanks Axel - great

Submitted by michelledh on Fri, 2012-05-04 02:25

Thanks Axel - great suggestions http://xeeme.com/Michelledh

Thanks Axel, looking forward

Submitted by Anjlee on Fri, 2012-05-04 03:30

Thanks Axel, I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.
http://www.xeeme.com/anjlee

Good work Axel, looks very

Submitted by BerriePelser on Fri, 2012-05-04 15:39

Good work Axel, looks very nice!

Thanks so much everybody for

Submitted by AxelS on Fri, 2012-05-04 18:07

Thanks so much everybody for your support and interest as well as your contribution. I really appreciate it.

Per our discussion in the meeting yesterday, we just put the survey together for those interested in joining the project:
http://de.surveymonkey.com/s/da12social-t1

If i can help with anything,

Submitted by BogdiP on Tue, 2012-05-08 12:00

If i can help with anything, let me know. :D

Hi Bogdan - I guess I shared

Submitted by AxelS on Thu, 2012-05-10 17:54

Hi Bogdan - I guess I shared a few links with you. We mostly use the Facebook group to collaborate with others as it is the easiest and fastest way to do so. http://fb.com/groups/daeurope/ We just finished our first assessment meeting and I will post an update here too.
Look forward working with you :)

Strategy Update

Submitted by AxelS on Wed, 2012-06-13 02:00

Strategy Update
------------------
Based on very interesting findings from the research we distilled a few key aspects that were not quite apparent before.

1) We will initially focus on European businesses that have a great export potential to sell their wares within Europe and the rest of the world to grow and hire. There is a short term opportunity and a long term effect in conquering digitally savvy non-European competition.

2) We help start-ups in a pre-launch phase to get known all over Europe so that European start-ups can tap into a 500 Million market instead of only in their home market and providing similar conditions like US start-ups who can tap into a 320 Million US market.

3) We will closely collaborate with the local governments and public sector units to help in the engagement and at the same time get to experience the advantages of social media

4) We will seek collaboration with the largest enterprises in Europe to support especially the awareness campaign. Large forms like the telcos, computer manufacturer, insurance forms and others are on their way to invest in entering the mid market. Our initiative is a perfect door opener for them as well. And we look for financial aid from the EU Commission to help mid market companies with their initial investments to turn into digitally savvy businesses able to play in a globally interconnected world.

5) The overarching objective is to empower business to geographically grow their business and create 2 Million additional jobs.