EMMA STORBACKA
Consultant, interested in all things new and social. Click below to see my LinkedIn / Twitter feed / recent blog posts. Please also check socialasusual.wordpress.com for more of my thoughts!
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- Social as usual - my blog about social business (click on content to get to the actual blog)
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Info
- Summary
Management consultant with social media and social business as my areas of expertise, and a general interest in all things digital. I am a doer, a thinker and a learner, and I am usually quite fun to be around. I am a project worker, a leader and a driver of change.
Author of the blog socialasusual.wordpress.com.
Tweeter of things related to social business and all things digital: @emmastorbackaI work for Avaus, a consultancy based in Helsinki and focused on digital transformation. This is what we say about ourselves on our webpage (www.avaus.fi): "We create business results in a digitally connected world, by combining strategy, design and analytics with technology and data. We understand the real opportunities, and together with our clients we turn understanding into results." Couldn't have said it better myself.
Experience- Oct 2012 - PresentConsultant / Avaus Consulting
- Nov 2010 - Oct 2012Consultant / Capgemini Consulting
- Feb 2010 - Apr 2010Researcher / Vectia
Conducting research for a future project.
- Jun 2009 - Oct 2009Intern / The Federation for Finnish Technology Industries
Customization of on-line statistics tool for use within the organization. Organizing of a 600 -person convention in October 2009.
- Jan 2008 - Feb 2008Project Assistant / Vectia Ltd
Conducting research and analyzing data for an academic paper. Writing cases and other various project and support tasks.
- Jan 2006 - Dec 2007Team Assistant / Chiquita Nordic
Various support tasks for marketing and sales.
- Jun 2007 - Jun 2007Project Assistant / Vectia Ltd
Various project support tasks.
Education-
2009 - 2010Helsingin kauppakorkeakouluMSc in Marketing
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2009 - 2009Arcada University of Applied Sciences30 ECTS in Digital Design
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2005 - 2009Helsingin kauppakorkeakouluBSc in Organization and Management
Activities: Jopo, Case Competitions -
2008 - 2008Yonsei UniversityBSc Minor in Economics, Marketing
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2004 - 2005Helsingin yliopisto
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Honors:Winner of the BCG Masters Case Competition, Espoo January 2008 Second runner-up at the Citi International Case Competition, Hong Kong October 2007 Winner of WELL Contest (case competition with CSR emphasis), Copenhagen 2007
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Interests:Scouting, Travel, Sports, Design
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Tweets
- Good stuff! Strategic Web Marketing on @slideshare http://t.co/7JqbNEfYMc
- RT @Econsultancy: Poor quality #data is the biggest barrier to effective #email marketing: report | http://t.co/nDCKLICIfI
- RT @SocialMedia411: How Instagram Will Sell Its Soul: http://t.co/IZv3Ld8mBD
- Enterprise Mobility Infographic by [x]cube LABS http://t.co/ns2xFeYGVD via @xcubelabs
- I have to say, flipboard for android is doing wonders for my reading of blogs, twitter and general news, highly recommend!
- @Urbanears my brand new earphones are not working properly :( What to do? (Bagis grape)Apr 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @adage: Don't Use Social to Generate Sales; Make Selling Social http://t.co/J30UHWQIaW
- RT @socialmedia2day: Salesforce's @triciagellman on the Evolutionary Role Social Plays in Customer Service [VIDEO] http://t.co/WwBtN0K2N ...
- RT @Kiteaton: But WhatsApp isn't a "social network"? RT @allthingsd: Koum: WhatsApp is bigger than Twitter, which has 200MM monthly acti ...
- RT @Econsultancy: App marketing: competitor and target audience analysis http://t.co/SPgGdSkb6m
- @IlonaHiila Sehän on paljon! 1/month more like it mun tapauksessa...
- My goodness - so many new followers and nothing to show in my sadly empty feed. Perhaps time to start tweeting again?Apr 16, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @mynewsdesk_fi moikka, toimiiko klout-scoraus mainosvideossa nähdyllä tavalla? trial-versiossa ei näy...Apr 16, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Viestintä – teoreettista välineurheilua http://t.co/pXIjZuM48x
- Have a look at what we're up to at Avaus in our videos from Avaus Open! http://t.co/FxGLKkrpxE
- A lean mean digital business machine http://t.co/ohnAzKp2BJ
- Creativity: Cultural revolution | The Economist http://t.co/96AF0JUy
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Posts
- Mar 05, 13
- Apr 26, 12
Finally – the infographic we released on Tuesday. We did a study on the use of social media in the largest Finnish companies, and this is the beautiful result!
What do you think, does it correspond with what you thought?The take-away is perhaps not so much that most companies are present in at least one channel – but the heavy emphasis on marketing and communications content. When you are trying to achieve results also in other areas you quickly realize that you need more resources and knowledge than just a Facebook community manager to create value. And if you are not able to collaborate within your company, across functions and units the outcome will be messy and not very value adding. Read more about my and Hannu Kauppinen’s (@hhkauppi) thoughts on the results in our press release.
The press release was picked up by e.g. Kauppalehti, Mainonta&Markkinointi (who has written about us before) and Tekniikka&Talous.
Feel free to share!
- Apr 23, 12
While looking closer into the social media presence of the largest Finnish companies, it struck me as quite interesting, that LinkedIn is a channel where most companies are present (something like 97%), but at the same time a channel where only a handful actually have created any other kind of presence than a short company description. Some of the companies that have done a bit more than that are Fortum, Kone, and Konecranes, who have added separate tabs/pages with content related to careers (employer branding, interviews with employees, videos etc), and their products and services.
LinkedIn has approximately the same amount of users as Twitter in Finland at the moment (Source: Socialbakers and an estimation based on google hits), but with quite different demographics, as anyone using both probably knows. Twitter can be used for a multitude of purposes with communication in the center, while LinkedIn is work-related and for many users, quite static (this has changed recently as more users are posting content from e.g. Twitter on their LinkedIn feeds).
What are the possibilities that aren’t being used, then? Well, for instance the following:
LinkedIn as a sales tool
Being able to find leads, and finding out more about them, their networks, interests and past experience is crucial. The more advanced and innovative CRM systems (Such as Nimble) can automatically import LinkedIn users into the sales management charts, and utilize all of the information available there. Although this sounds self evident for most of us who have stalk…sorry, checked up on old colleagues, friends, and random acquaintances using LinkedIn, this is not the case in most B2B sales organizations.
Screenshot from Nimble.com
LinkedIn as a customer service tool
Connecting with your network members and enabling your network members to connect with each other can add value to especially complex products and services (typically in a B2B setting). LinkedIn groups can be used for posting questions, facilitating crowdsourcing of wisdom and experiences, customer feedback and improvement suggestions. As a company, you can either invite your customers and/or stakeholders into a group that you are facilitating, or you can participate in the discussions in a group hosted by someone else. As you will notice when diving deeper into the groups on LinkedIn, they are very much focused on solving problems. Now you probably would like to be there solving some of the problems your clients or potential clients might be venting out in the public!
LinkedIn for recruiting
Simply utilizing the fact that members on LinkedIn in general are interested in developing their career, in one way or another. Getting the basics right includes making sure that it is easy to find your LinkedIn page, easy to find information about open positions and preferably making it easy to apply. Elisa manages to get the latter part right, by enabling Facebook users to submit their LinkedIn profile through their Facebook page. But on their Company-page on LinkedIn, this is not mentioned as an option. (They also have a LinkedIn user (read: Person, not company) called Elisa Recruitment on LinkedIn with some relevant information, mainly directing interested job seekers to their website.
Using LinkedIn for recruitment is one of the social media use areas with the most concrete and evident ROI – as you can decrease your use of headhunters and are able to contact passive job seekers by yourself. Some of LinkedIn’s own success stories of how they have been able to save money for their business clients can be found here .
Click to view slideshow.Are there any superb users of LinkedIn in Finland that you would like to share? Please leave a note in the comments!
- Apr 01, 12
Video killed the radio star… YouTube is the fourth most visited webpage in Finland, but Finnish brands are not utilizing it to it’s fullest. Although there is a whopping 60 hours of video content uploaded every minute globally (this figure seems to be growing fast!), the content that is being uploaded is surprisingly interactive – YouTube quotes that 50% of all content is favorited and/or commented on.
Video content is engaging, and good content spreads. How come so few big companies in Finland have realized the value of creating interaction with stakeholders in this channel? (And no, posting your funny TV-ad does not equal interaction)
- Tens of great videos – but no structure (recruitment advertisements, instructional videos, corporate branding, news clips all together in one)
- A great advertisement for a product – but no calls to action for buying it (bye bye thousands of potential customers)
- Comments and questions – but no-one answering them
- Usage instructions and tutorials – but not created by the company itself
- Product reviews – but no comments from the product owner
Two good example of how to structure the YouTube channel so that the content makes sense, stakeholders can find whatever content they are looking for and the whole experience feels managed and not totally random, is the channels of e.g. Nordea and UPM.Are you just posting your best TV-ads in your YouTube channel and then… nothing? Or are you actively thinking of ways to meet your stakeholders when they are looking for information about you or your products?
- Mar 26, 12
Many organizations are facing the challenge of finding the right place in the organization for the ownership of their social media presence. While I am not in favor of having a separate unit taking care of all social media presence, it is still very important to have someone who owns the overall presence and makes sure it is aligned. This unit needs to be cross-functional and take on a kind of support role, not much different to that of your IT-support organization of today (you don’t have an e-mail unit taking care of all the e-mails in your organization, do you?). This support function should be helping organizational units to get the most out of the world of digital dialogue and collaboration, while overlooking the result from afar and ensuring consistency, efficiency and measurability.
There are two unsuccessful versions of this model.
1. The we-own-everything-digital model
This usually means that the social media team (normally located under the marketing or communications unit in the org chart) are in charge of all things communicated in social media channels. The result? Marketing and communications content, and rarely anything else. For examples, have a look at e.g. the Twitter channels of @Nordea_FI or @Outokumpu or the Facebook pages of Fazer or NesteOil (with only campaigns on Facebook). The opportunities missed (employer branding, customer service integration, sales opportunities etc) are vast, but they are none of the social media team’s business as far as they are concerned.
2. The no-one-and-everyone-owns-everything-digital model
This usually results in very different content, visuals and tone-of voice across channels, and not a holistic experience for the stakeholders. A describing example is the Finnish energy provider Fortum. Apparently the HR unit has realized that their target group of applicants are on Facebook, but marketing have not, as Fortum’s brand page is virtually non-existent. A totally different story is that of Fortum Sverige (the swedish subsidiary) who have a holistic approach with recruiting, customer service and marketing / communications content under one page.
Click to view slideshow.Another example from Finland are the Twitter accounts of Sonera. Although many are directing questions, feedback and complaints to the operator on Twitter, there are only two channels, one concerning data security @sonera_security and one for B2B clients @sonera_B2B. Sonera’s marketing team seem to be focused on Facebook, where again none of the content for B2B or data security communications is visible. I’m just guessing here, but could it be that these people don’t really talk to each other?
- Mar 14, 12
Not only people interact – also products are becoming more social (or at least they seem more humane and sociable). Or what do you say about Toyota Friend, a smartphone application which allows you to communicate with your car in a twitter-kind-of-way?
Data is gathered from each digital interaction and touch point from everything we do. In a world that is defined by complexity and information overload, making the message easy to understand and to relate to is really important. Gamification is one way of doing it, a social dialogue is another. Reports and tables are the way of the past – consumers want to understand in a glance what is expected from them and connect with things that are important to them.
What other products / service could benefit from adapting social elements?
How about your crane or your paper mill, your printer, your computer (but please, spare me the Office Assistant from hell!), your microwave oven, your stove, your energy company, your coffee shop, your gym, your bank? Loads of opportunities for creating amazing customer experiences. Or what do you think?
- Mar 12, 12
This is probably what the social media team is feeling like if there is no integration or connection to other operations. Photo by JB London / Flickr
Presence is not nearly enough. While researching the presence and activity of the 50 largest Finnish publicly listed companies (more posts about the results coming up), it has become quite obvious that alarmingly many companies have no integration between social media and other operations. A clear tell-tale that an organization has simply appointed a social media team or person without thinking further about what good it can do for the business is that the company or brand doesn’t indicate on their website that they are present on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or the likes. With Facebook’s sub-standard search function it is no surprise that the pages and campaigns have followers in the hundreds, not thousands.
How easy is it to find your brand on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube?
- Mar 08, 12
Non-surprisingly, a lot of Finnish products are on Pinterest already, but not by them selves. A quick search for the most popular Finnish consumer brands shows that there is heaps of content (i.e. people have pinned the pictures of these products, and thus letting the world know that they like them, sharing their “wishlists” of products and influencing their peers with their preferences – all of this pretty darn interesting information for any marketer).
Marimekko has a Pinterest profile, but really no content. The same holds true for Nokia. Fiskars USA has an active Pinterest community, but nothing for the other global Fiskars brands such as Iittala (also very popular on Pinterest).
Of the Finnish companies Finnair really is taking the lead, with boards for themes such as “Helsinki the cool capital”, “Finnair destinations” and “This is Finland”. Finnair has during the last year been taking giant leaps and quickly become one of Finlands absolute most social media savvy companies with creative use of Facebook and a good-spirited and vibrant Twitter community @finnair.
As said in the previous post, Pinterest is any brands best chance at viral, earned marketing of products and services with a possibility for anyone around the globe to take action and click home a product. And you wouldn’t want the source of the image to be anything else than your own webshop, now would you?
Anyone looking for ideas for how to use Pinterest as a retailer should have a look at what Kate Spade New York is doing – mixing inspirational photos that aren’t related to their brand with products and campaigns from their online store .
- Mar 07, 12
2012 is supposed to be the year when social commerce (s-commerce) takes off. (Previously, 2011 was the year when this was supposed to happen, so we will see). The market is very small at the moment, but big expectations of growth lies ahead. According to Booz’s e-marketing report through FastCompany, the social commerce market should amount to $14bn USD in 2014. At only $1bn 2011, there is some way to go, especially in the light of recent withdrawals of Facebook stores.
Mashable reported of several retailers closing their Facebook stores because of poor profitability. Facebook seems to be good enough at driving traffic, but it truly isn’t in the DNA of the Facebook experience to do shopping there.
Simply importing an online shopping portal as it is into the (quite constrained) frames of the Facebook page does not seem to be working. It is simply not an enjoyable experience, and Facebook users are not expecting to be shopping while interacting with friends. That is why Pinterest’s business model makes so much more sense – while browsing magazines consumers are generally more receptive to making purchases. If Facebook can develop an interesting enough application where the user experience is based on another type of sharing than simply “I just bought this piece of equipment and you should too”, they might stand a chance. And as a matter of fact – the ones failing are not Facebook, but the early adopters of F-commerce who have developed their own platforms by copying their online shops. Recently launched Friendsheet app for Facebook brings a Pinterest-like user interface, and recently liked by Zuckerberg, this may be going towards the right direction.
Screenshot of Friendsheet user interface, lining up public Facebook images for an easy browsing experience
A lot of potential can be found in the vast amounts of customer data Facebook has about its potential shoppers. For driving traffic to online content Facebook is still overwhelmingly efficient, e.g. Burberry reports to Mashable that 29,1% of all their website traffic comes through Facebook. And driving traffic should perhaps be what consumer products companies should be focusing on for the moment, while optimizing online shops for social sharing on Pinterest and the likes (i.e. SEO, social sharing options, enchanting pictures and product information), while preparing for the global market that social commerce inevitably will bring retailers, big and small. Because fact is, that most Finnish online retailers are not yet prepared for shipping their products anywhere else than to the small market that is Finland, and may be throwing away invaluable growth opportunities.
- Feb 08, 12
Today at the Hiljainen Signaali seminar, the seminar paper “Trend report” was released, where I have been involved in writing one of the articles together with my father. English version coming up soon, but for those of you fluent in Finnish this might do the trick in the meanwhile!
You can download the report here, and view it on Issuu here.
