RIM Needs a Turnaround Now

The past week has seen investors in Research in Motion (RIM) heading for the door with a wild look in their eyes, breathing hard with their ears pinned back. 

The share price of RIM has plummeted over 50% since the beginning of 2011; a trend that has accelerated recently because of the brickbats thrown at the new BlackBerry tablet by reviewers, the fact that no new smartphone product/update has been announced, and, a drop in earnings. 

RIM is No. 3 in the smartphone market behind Apple and the Google-platform Android platform smartphones, but that spot is looking more and more tenuous everyday as RIM continues to lose market share. Comscore says RIM’s market share in the smartphone sector has taken a massive dive from 40% in 2010 to the current 26%. And, BlackBerry sales last quarter have experienced their first quarterly drop in sales since 2005. Lastly, the market cap of RIM now sits at $14 billion USD, down from $80 billion a scant 36 months ago. 

What is Your Social Media Content Strategy?

Yes, "Pick Any Two" generally applies to content as well

A common complaint from businesses, large and small, is that they have a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a website, a blog, they’re on LinkedIn and YouTube, etc. and they’re doing everything right in terms of being present in social media, but nothing is happening. 

Upon inspection of their customer source data and other metrics, it turns out that they called that pretty accurately; there is nothing happening as a result of their presence in the digital online world. 

Then you look at what is on their Facebook page, or their blog, or their Twitter feed, and it becomes obvious why nothing is happening. They have little or no content, and/or the content is awful and boring. 

As we mentioned in this piece titled, Business Blog Primer, having smart or funny or informative or engaging or thought-provoking content is key to making social media work for your company, whether that’s on a blog, or on YouTube, or on Facebook, or even if you’re simply participating in a discussion on LinkedIn. And it needs to be consistent, as we mentioned in that same piece from a few months ago. There is nothing more pathetic than a business blog that has three posts in the past 12 months.