Axel Schultze

Axel Schultze

XeeMe Corp.
CEO of XeeMe, Chairman Social Media Academy, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, published author of Channel Excellence, frequent speaker at industry events, and winner of the 2008 SF Entrepreneur award. Former CEO of BlueRoads, Infinigate, Computer2000. My social presence: XeeMe.com/AxelS
  • 0 comments 576 reads
    Posted on 2012-05-12

    How can you build a trusted network  without spending hours and hours each day? How is it possible that some high ranking executives from Billion Dollar companies spend time in the social web while somebody working in the trenches cannot? Why chose other executives with equally big organizations to not participate at all – still wondering why they are just not as successful? How can people out of the blue just raise up the trust ladder and grow an enormous follower-ship all of a sudden? Today it looks like this is just a random pattern with no structure and all coincidental. But it is absolutely not. In this PART 1 I will talk about some fundamentals of Social Media Time Management.

    Unlike many who just don’t know much about Social Media find it confusing to be on all those sites wasting their time. It seems complicated to understand the difference between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Xing, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, Connect.me, Twylah, Favo.rs, Scoop.IT, XeeMe,...

  • 0 comments 948 reads
    Posted on 2012-05-01

    We talked to several people, business owner, marketing manager, social media practitioner what they would really love to see down the social media road. We then tried to draw a trajectory from where we are, what people dream of, and where it may go. This post is the beginning of a story that we plan to continue. Where are we going? This is the beginning of a new Social Media Academy Research Project and you are invited to add to it.

    All in all, here is the single biggest change Social Media is bringing to our society: We no longer can say “I have no influence”. It’s no longer true that you as an individual can’t make a change. It evolves to the opposite situation:

    Change will only be possible if most of us wants it.

    Is this really positive? I don’t know yet to be honest. But that is the most probable development.

    ...

  • 0 comments 749 reads
    Posted on 2012-04-27

    If you are listening to 1,000 social media practitioner you get 1,000 different ways and ideas how to deal with social media. Typically just tactical ideas, most of them start with how you can use certain tools and a variety of other inputs.

    Once you get in touch with more experienced consultants they will tell you stop the experimentation and think strategically. Most will tell you to start with a well defined goal or objective.

    Starting with your Goal or Objective is a great idea but it’s wrong. Even though this is what 80% of social media consultants will recommend to you – and it sounds absolutely plausible – yet it is the mother of all mistakes !!!

    I developed...

  • 1 comments 820 reads
    Posted on 2012-04-12

    My friend Bob Thompson wrote an intriguing post about the status of Social Media, which in turn sparked this post. Basically those companies who have a brilliant social media strategy don’t brag about it. And the reason is simple: Why should you share some of your most significant competitive advantages. As many of you know, I’m involved in several of those major strategy developments and can’t and won’t talk about it other than teaching how it is done.

    New technology was always introduced with big announcements. We were proud of installing this or that, whether it was CRM, ERP, CAD or XYZ. Social Media however is different. We put our toes in the water, then we do more, hire an agency and the agency does a big splash about our social media initiative which is nothing more than a tactical and often less successful marketing campaign. Again – social media is like sex – we won’t talk about it –...

  • 0 comments 746 reads
    Posted on 2012-03-23

    I began tweeting being an executive of my former company – I remember what it was like when I started ;)

    If you google “how to use twitter” you’ll receive over 10 Million results.  Brilliant tips and tricks how to set it up, how to follow etc. but how should I actually make use out of Twitter was not really to find – obviously I did not have the time to grind through 13 Million results.

    I searched for “why should I use Twitter” and the results were still 85,000 – but most were an epic explanation what Twitter is.

    Michael Campbell writes: “Twitter is a way to get your message out”, uhh really? Blogul says “It is a cross between blogging,...

  • 0 comments 417 reads
    Posted on 2012-03-22

    Thought I’d share this video showing what market leader Intel thinks about Social Media and how they help their team to adopt and successfully use Social Media.

    I only hope it is encouraging their team not scaring it off. Unfortunately it is loaded of things not to do rather than leveraging the opportunity. But hey – it’s a beginning.

  • 5 comments 3,447 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-28

    SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps businesses and obviously also individuals or any other group to be found in the Internet. And as long as people search for a product not knowing their name or a technology, not knowing its source or a solution not knowing who is a potential supplier SEO is an important part of the marketing mix. 

    However, this is slowly and steadily changing. Today 60 – 80% of the so called educated purchase decision is based on recommendations.

    Recommendations in turn are made by trusted individuals or groups that have no or no significant interest in the sale but helpful and experienced people using or knowing the product or service in need. And the number of recommendation based purchases is steadily growing. I'm sure it will hit the 80 – 90% range in the next 5 to 10 years. Already today people are searching for experience, do their background checks, seek for user reports and more. The website with the actual offer or e-commerce shop is the...

  • 0 comments 562 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-08

    Pinterest is popping up all over the place. Is it just noise of some early adopter freaks? No it is not.

    Pinterest is a super fast growing content sharing platform that competes with Flickr, Picasa and the likes. Now recently Pinterest is coming very close to the traffic rank level of Flickr and as Pinterest was growing Flickr's traffic is declining. 


    1) Pinterest is social from the get go

    Flickr is simply a photo sharing platform that never developed any further. You can't even like a photo. Comments is the best you can do. In contrast on Pinterest you have a decent vanity URL see a persons profile, and you can follow...

  • 0 comments 1,432 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-25

    Social media spans the whole gamut from marketing, PR, support, product management and sales through the entire organization. Social Media became the new way for higher integration with the market. It offers marketing departments a whole new opportunity to interact with the entire organization.

    CIO or CMO?

    In many of the larger organizations the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is busy taking care of network infrastructure, computing power, security, ERP systems and much more. And so it is actually the CMO who is weaving the network for the market interaction model that has just expanded like the big bang over the universe of a business. In other words the new CMO will gain significantly more influence and watch the business as a whole – no longer just from a promotional perspective.

    What is the new CMO up to?

    She or he is re-engineering their respective marketing organization. While in the past it was mainly about advertising, events, collateral...

  • 0 comments 615 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-04

    Yesterday I had to search for some of my friends and for some I had the hardest time to find them and add them to a list I developed. What was the issue?

    1) Your Names
    If your name is Roger Brown, you may be Roger Brown on one network R Brown on another, RBrown jun and so forth. And thousands of Roger Browns have that exact same issue. But the issue is not so much about your user name but your real name. Since we all learned that the user name maybe different on each network, people search for you by your real name.
    What Can You Do?
    Bite the bullet and start all over. Give yourself a new name – and share it across all networks. Call yourself "Roger Brown (Roggy)" or "Roger Brown (sailer)" or something else creative and unique. Make it part of your name in your business and personal life. Tell your friends what you did and why you did it. Names were created several...