Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Will Overstreet, CEO of Voices Heard Media (Part 1)

“Voices Heard Media released new data results demonstrating that its suite of social engagement applications (the EventBox) has increased unique visitors to clients’ sites by as much as 49%. The increased traffic was the result of social sharing of events, such as contests, polls and Q&As, to social media sites by participating users. In sharing the events, the participating users lured their friends from Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarks and other social sites to client sites to participate in the events.” So goes the first paragraph of a press release from the Voices Heard Media website. Anyone who’s ever doubted the power of the Internet and social media for promoting a product, a service or a personal brand might be inclined to change his mind after reading a paragraph like that. But, as my interview with Will Overstreet reveals, Voices Heard Media helps its clients promote themselves in a truly unique way. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Abshire, Senior VP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement, Virgin HealthMiles (Part 5)

SM: Very good. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

TA: Yes. We have a new set of capabilities coming out in our spring ’12 release. What we’re doing there, and where we’re trying to go with that is focusing a lot more on personalization and segmentation, so, helping employers look more precisely at the different groups in their populations. And then there [will be] better tools in terms of programs that are offered, the way the incentives are designed, the way the game effects are designed, they all can be done in a much more personalized manner. We’re trying to move beyond see a population as a whole. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Abshire, Senior VP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement, Virgin HealthMiles (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What I see in this whole mobile world is – all of the things that you’ve said are true – is the notion of access and who delivers health care. In a way, with mobile phones and mobile devices, even in the most remote places in the world, given that mobile networks have made such incredible headway in penetrating those parts of the world, you can actually get the same information on reference material. You probably know a fellow technology called Epocrates, right?

Tom Abshire: Yes. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Abshire, Senior VP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement, Virgin HealthMiles (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you couple technology questions, since you’re talking about cloud computing. How is this happening architecturally? Are employees from different employers on the same system, or does each employer have its own private social network?

Tom Abshire: It’s a traditional SaaS model, so each employer has its own instance on the same platform. From a Connections and social standpoint, for us, it’s all about giving employers control first and then allowing individual employees to manage. Employers have a choice of using our Connections social networking tools, having a walled garden only for their employees, or opening up their social network to other clients who are interested in using Connections on a more open basis. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Abshire, Senior VP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement, Virgin HealthMiles (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this right. Is this a product for consumers, or is this a prevention-oriented health care product for the internal Virgin employee base?

Tom Abshire: This [comprises] technologies, tools and engagement programming that we sell to better enable employers, such as Sun Trust Bank or Coca-Cola to get better cost control of the health care expenses they incur by treating the health care issue as a consumer health problem. One of the big challenges these companies have is they have a lot of different programs they provide for their employees, but engagement is always an issue. Many times, in health and wellness, companies would see at best 15% of their employees taking advantage of these programs. What we’ve found it that it’s really a consumer problem. Instead of treating the person as being sick or as just an employee, you treat them as a consumer. They’re making decisions about where they spend their time and their focus, and we want to make it a win-win for the employer and employee, to find the program that has the most value and make sure they can complete those programs and better maintain their health. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Abshire, Senior VP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement, Virgin HealthMiles (Part 1)

Staying in shape can be tough, and getting into shape is even tougher. That’s why you see companies like Walgreens, with its Walk With Walgreens program, offering people incentives to get up and be more active. Virgin HealthMiles, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, does something similar by offering employee health programs that actually pay people to get moving. On average, about 50% of employees participate in the Virgin HealthMiles Pay-for-Prevention program that, according to the company’s website, helps reduce medical costs and improves employee productivity and satisfaction. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Dayon, Executive VP of Applications, Salesforce.com (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? Salesforce is an international company with widespread adoption. But there are some markets that have not adopted Salesforce.com yet. What are some of your thoughts about those large emerging markets?

Alex Dayton: I think there’s what I would recommend to Salesforce and what I would recommend to an entrepreneur to do. My recommendation to an entrepreneur is stay laser focused. Focus is key. You need to know what your sweet spot market is. Is it companies under 100 users, under 2,000 users, above 1,000 users? And then pick a region and be the leader in one region before you go to five. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Dayon, Executive VP of Applications, Salesforce.com (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Right now you’re talking to thousands of entrepreneurs. You have the ears of thousands of entrepreneurs. Many of them are working on cloud startups and social startups, things that are very much in your ecosystem. What guidance can you provide for them in terms of what you are looking for? Where do you think your other blind spots are? What areas are you looking at?

AD: It’s an excellent question. How do we measure success when we look at a startup? >>>