Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

Cisco Likes Facebook's Like Button

2010-12-15T07:26:00.001-08:00

Cisco has gone live with Facebook’s Like button throughout its Data Center product pages and select Small Business product pages. Cisco continues the trend of staying ahead of the curve in utilizing social media technology to better communicate with its customers and partners. The Like button will give Cisco customers and partners an intuitive and elegant way to share content they find valuable.

Cisco has developed a strategy on how to integrate social media into Cisco.com, leveraging Jeremiah Owyang’s framework, which outlines the evolution of social corporate websites. Today Cisco is proud to announce the rollout of Facebook Like buttons on over 180 product pages on Cisco.com. You will notice them when browsing Cisco’s Data Center or small business product areas.

Why Facebook? Cisco has over 685K fans on Facebook across it’s various Facebook pages and it has seen referral traffic from Facebook increase over 50% in the last year. So Cisco’s customers are on Facebook and they are using Facebook to share information – why not make it easier for them to do that? In fact on other Cisco sites where this feature is deployed – Cisco Blogs, News@Cisco and the Cisco Umi site – Facebook quickly became the third biggest traffic referral behind Google and Cisco.com. Similarly other companies are seeing huge traffic gains, The Washington Post has seen its Facebook referral traffic climb 290%, ABC News saw an increase of over 250 percent in Facebook referrals and Levi’s, who was an early adopter of this feature saw more than 4,000 likes on it’s website in the first week!

For now this is still just a pilot program at Cisco but if things go well as Cisco suspects, you can expect to see Facebook Like buttons appearing on product pages throughout the site and who knows where next!

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank the Marketing IT team, the Web and User Experience Team, as well as the Data Center and Small Business website strategists, for working with Social Media Marketing to make this happen!

So what do you think…do you “like” it?

It's All About Video at Cisco - Rap Video

2010-06-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is a response video to The Coolest Intern at Cisco - Greg, check it out:

Lyric credits to @ShanaDanekari for spending 3-hours on Friday night getting it just right! =)

Soundtrack: Puff Daddy - It's All About The Benjamins (Instrumental)

Uh, oh huh, yeah
It's all about Video baby
uh
It's all about Video baby

Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be ballers, shot-callers
Speakers -- who be beamin on stage wit the hologram
Or on the TP spitin’ my jam

Cisco intern, your rap is cool
But don’t forget, you gotta finish school
I be working that 8 to 5 but without the drive
using WebEx, to teleconference live
President of Russia, I haven’t seen
But for me it’s all about Guy Kawasaki…that’s right Guy Kawasaki

Yeah you know you wanna be like me

Forget the ThinkPad, move to a Mac
And get an intern that’s got your back
Keep bloggin’ and tweetin’ and you will see
You’ll fit right in, to the Cisco family
Social Media Marketing is where it’s at
Yeah, you know, we got it like that
Like your ergonomic desk chair, well make it yours
Stay with Cisco and there’s nothing but doors
Doors of opportunity
social network wizardry
tons of creativity
Get a fatty paycheck, stocks and all
So come on...step up to the plate and take the ball

Yeah…You down with the Cisco crew?

It's all about Video baby
It's all about Video baby

Ghetto Technographics

2010-06-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Sure, you can get your Technographics Marketing Research from some firm like Forrester, or you can take that budget and bring a bunch of non-techy friends to the beach like Nicholas Carlson in this hilarious piece from SAI. My favorite of his invaluable market research from this focus group of “normals”:

Groupon is absolutely the greatest thing ever. Normals ask each other all the time if others have heard about Groupon and the amazing deals it provides – at restaurants, at gyms, and golf courses. Living Social is great too, and even a perhaps a little bit more upscale.
Twitter, which used to be just a weird thing, is now recognized as having some value for people obsessed with the news, narcissists, and the overly-plugged-in, but no, it's still not for me, thank you.

Although most marketers know the cardinal rule of not mistaking the market’s impression for yours, most marketers are still expected to have a “nose” for sniffing out what their demographic is looking for. The danger comes from being trapped in the “echo chamber” of a social network that both affirms and perpetuates one’s own perspective. For example, now that I can build virtual social networks in several domains that quite literally care about all the things I care about, it’s reducing any exposure I have to people who don’t think the same way I do. For a marketer whose demographic is literally everybody in the world, this is less than optimal. I’ve found close friends and family to be a refreshing exception, but that’s not nearly enough. I’m interested to hear how other marketers are dealing with this or even whether its considered a problem. Are you concerned at all that your reliance on “birds of a feather” social networks are insulating you from broader market perspectives?

Don't Listen to Seth Godin - Keep Talking!

2010-05-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin is one of the most influential marketers of our time. He’s also one of the most prolific bloggers and is known for writing posts that become critically acclaimed marketing books. Today’s post is a bold proclamation of “marketers should do this or they’ll die.” I don’t know about you, but I love stuff like that.

Here’s what he has to say about it:

Good at talking vs. good at doing. This is the chasm of the new marketing. The marketing department used to be in charge of talking. Ads are talking. Flyers are talking. Billboards are talking. Trade shows are talking. Now, of course, marketing can't talk so much, because people can't be easily forced to listen. So the only option is to be in charge of doing. Which means the product, the service, the interaction, the effluent and other detritus left behind when you're done. If you're in marketing and you're not in charge of the doing, you're not going to be able to do your job.

I have an issue with this, mainly because it seems to fly in the face of A LOT of conventional, (and contemporary), wisdom. We live in an age where there is, literally, more information available on anything we want to learn about than we could ever consume, and marketers who’ve published that information measure it not only by its effect on the listener, but by its effect on the listener’s social network. Seth’s argument seems to be that because traditional marketing output; static, corporate marketing messaging; is no longer as relevant, then marketing messaging is no longer effective.

I agree with the first part, not with the second.

Yes, static, corporate marketing messaging is no longer as effective as it once was. The conversation is moving too fast and the customers have too many choices for a business to rely on “one message fits all”. But that doesn’t mean that messaging or branding, on its own merit, isn’t critical. It’s now even more critical. Marketers can no longer be satisfied with building one message and seeing how it plays. We have to build 10x more information assets, consumable in every way that it can be built up or broken down into parts depending on what’s needed to satisfy each individual customer. Marketing can no longer survive on producing sculpted, iconic, messaging vehicles that are designed to last for 6-18 months. We need building blocks of infographics and 300 word narrative and case studies and business analysis reports, videos and tweets that we can repackage and deploy depending on the appetite and education level of the consumer. Its no longer good enough for marketers to be content producers, we all have to be content strategists.

“Saying stuff” isn’t less effective in the information age where every beautiful graphic or insightful remark by a satisfied (or dissatisfied) customer has the chance to go viral; rather it’s more important than ever before. Different? Definitely. Less relevant? Absolutely not. As Seth has said previously, marketing is the conversation. Your new marketing department won’t be made up of billboard artists, but experts in the practice of steering and adding to the conversation that moves your product.

There’s a conversation happening out there. We need to be part of it. Can’t do that by not talking.

Which Companies Are The Most Social?

2010-05-19T22:05:00.001-07:00

Cisco, Comcast & Virgin America Share How Facebook And Twitter Are Changing Business Models

2010-05-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

While at SMASH Summit, Evelyn Rusli from TechCrunch did a interview with, Frank Eliason from Comcast and Bowen Payson, Virgin America about how Facebook And Twitter Are Changing Business Models, Shaping Brand Identity. Check it out:

Avoiding Social Media TMI

2010-04-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

It’s a strange thing to tell people that my job literally requires me to check and update Facebook. At a time when Facebook updating is becoming a workforce interruption on par with the NCAA tournament, how are marketers supposed to draw the line between what we should be doing on our social networks and what’s personal use?

Or maybe a better question is: do marketers who use their social media networks for their job still have a “personal use” option? For all intents and purposes, the answer to this is probably no. Authenticity is fast becoming a requirement for having influence in social networking. That means that They get to know who you are. In some cases, that means they also get to see the pictures of you passed out on someone’s lawn at Mardi Gras. c'est la vie.,.

What that doesn’t mean is that we have to lose all perspective of professionalism. There are lots of ways to express yourself through your network without compromising the carefully cultivated image you’ve sunk years of blood sweat and tears into. More than anything else, this seems to require some understanding of why you publish on Facebook, your blog, twitter, whatever – and who your audience is. What’s the point of what you’re saying? Are you adding value to a business conversation that never ends with a new perspective? What does your social media network expect of you? What are they willing to accept from your opinion? Are they expecting you to give them a play by play of your day? Do they need to know about your relationship status?

Most of the people I’m connected to share valuable insights about what they’re working on or ideas on how to make our work a little better. Sometimes I’ll connect to somebody who has a fresh or witty perspective. This is basically what I expect of them, and in turn probably what they expect of me. The danger seems to come from overstepping those boundaries.

The best rule of thumb I’ve heard in respect to social media publishing guidelines is the company party rule. If you were at a business mixer, what would you bring to the conversation? What wouldn’t you bring?

Most importantly, what would be considered “oversharing” or uncomfortable? If you answered with, “not a damn thing”, then you might just be John Mayer.

Cool Social Media Survey

2010-04-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

The Social Media Examiner just released a new report: 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report that covers how marketers are using social media to grow their business. Here are some of the highlights that stuck out for me:

The top benefits of social media marketing: The number-one advantage of social media marketing (by a long shot) is generating exposure for the business, indicated by 85% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic (63%) and building new business partnerships (56%).
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, respectively. (for Cisco I would move Blogs after Twitter)
Only 14% of businesses are outsourcing any aspect of their social media marketing. (I’d say about 14% of groups within Cisco are outsourcing some component of their social media marketing so that’s consistent with what I’m seeing)
56% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week and 30% for 11 or more hours weekly
Those who've been using social media for years picked Video/YouTube as the top area in which they will be increasing their efforts, with 81%

The Backstory of the B2B Magazine Integrated Social Media Award Winner

2010-04-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

Cisco was awarded the Integrated Social Media Marketing Award by B2B Magazine for the creative development and marketing of the Cisco myPlanNet game. Cisco is now in the running for the people’s choice award so please vote for us.

Case Study: Birth of and Key Takeaways from the Development of Cisco MyPlanNet

View more presentations from Petra Neiger.

I am fortunate enough to work with the mastermind behind this great work – Petra Neiger and was able to interview her for some behind-the-scenes info on what was involved to pull this off. Here’s the transcript:

First tell us a little bit about what myPlanNet is and what you were trying to do?

Cisco myPlanNet is a simulation “edugame” that puts the player in the shoes of a service provider president. You can experience life as a wireline carrier, cable or mobile operator, and pick a level of difficulty and the Internet era you want to start in. From there, your challenge is to manage your business, transform your community, and guide residential and business customers into the medianet era. As you go through the game, you will need to make decisions every step of the way and every decision you make will impact your balance sheet, operations, and customer satisfaction.

What was the objective you were trying to solve that led you to creating the MyPlanNet game?

The key words here are engaging, educational and fun. The idea was to connect with our customers and network aficionados in an interactive and fun way, and allow them to experience the effects that Cisco's broad portfolio has on people’s lives. This game helps people explore how the different pieces fit together and the role Cisco has played in the evolution of the Internet over the past 25 years.

I’ve taken a look at the game and played it, the engineering behind it looks pretty complex. What was the process to develop it?

It took us 13 months to develop. We were a small team who did this project on top of our day jobs. On a high level, the process included project scoping, game architecture design, content design and creation, graphics and UE design and creation, testing, legal clearances, database creation and integration, testing, web page development, testing, marketing asset development…and did I mention testing? We tested the game many times and at every juncture to make sure all the pieces work well together and I can’t emphasize how important testing is. The other thing I want to stress is the importance of project scoping. Do spend the time to make sure you have all the details and information outlined and how one thing will lead into another. The more planning you do upfront, the easier it will be to go through the project and it will also help you stay focused. Not to mention, it will help monitor how you’re doing on budget.

If you’re interested in the detailed steps of game development, please see the embedded slides embedded above or check out the presentation here.

Focusing on the social media aspects, what did you do to promote the game and what worked or didn’t work?

When we first introduced this game in October 2009, we coupled social media with traditional media, such as banners, emails, Cisco newsletters and trade show demos. Our social media efforts were additive. After about 6 or so weeks, we pulled back on traditional media and social media moved into the driver seat. From day one, social media marketing has been used to increase awareness, and drive game downloads and interaction. Our social media strategy follows a continuous learning model based on these pillars: listen, share, engage, integrate, measure/analyze, improve.

We used a variety of different tools:

1. The landing page contains web 2.0 components such as the bookmark and share widget and live feeds from the JIVE support page.
2. We are using JIVE for online game support.
3. We shared news, tidbits, assets, etc via blogs, tweets, Facebook cross links, ads, Facebook fan page, social bookmarking, video syndication, RSS and discussion forums
4. We have promoted myPlanNet either as a standalone item or as part of a bigger initiative, such as Cisco Learning Network/Network Academy, the US broadband stimulus program, Consumer Electronics (CES) trade show, or Cisco’s 25th anniversary.
5. We are engaging with users via feedback solicitation, offering discussion forums for people to interact with other players as well Cisco technology experts, and are actively updating our fan page with socially competitive mini-games and other information.
6. In addition to the Cisco accounts, our small team also used our own personal accounts and personal relationships to help get the word out.

What worked well, top of my head…:
1. The campaign was fully integrated between traditional and social media as well within social media. This means that we had “one voice” in all of our communication channels and our messages were consistent. We had a clear call to action and made our content available in a variety of different ways. This helped increase our chances of getting noticed.
2. Our efforts caught the press’ attention and generated several articles and blog posts. Not only did these articles help raise awareness of the game, but we were also able to leverage these third-party postings (e.g., retweet, social bookmark, etc) to further promote Cisco myPlanNet.
3. Our Facebook ad drove a lot of people to our Facebook fan page.
4. The reaction to the “socially competitive mini games” on Facebook has been very positive.
Where we were challenged:
1. The team that developed this game was small. The team who were responsible for promoting this game was much smaller. Resources were definitely a challenge. It’s not just about getting the message out but it’s also about monitoring the responses or posts that come in, and then addressing them as needed on an on-going basis.
2. The question of JIVE platform vs. Facebook fan page. We monitored both of them for the first few weeks to see how people were using each and what type of audiences went where. What we found was that JIVE was more suited for online technical help. Even today, people tend to read more on this page than post. On the other hand, our Facebook fans use the “Like” and “Comment” functions quite generously but do so on more casual, light-hearted topics. We also faced some platform challenges in the beginning but we worked around them.

If you’d like, take a look at some public slides from our detailed go-to-market communication plan.

What were the results of this campaign?

As of 04/13, we had over 115,000 hits to the game landing page, about 33,000 downloads, about 130 countries and over 2,500 institutions participating, and now have over 48,000 Facebook fans. While these numbers look good, it is also important to note the additional exposure Cisco myPlanNet has received in the form of blog and press mentions by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Broadband Census, Network World, and Computer World to name a few. Tom Grant, Ph.D., a Senior Analyst at Forrester did a podcast on Cisco myPlanNet with Stephen Liu, Chief Architect and me.

What lessons did you learn from this experience? Is there anything you would do different?

I would categorize my answers in 2 buckets: development-related and marketing-related learnings. My presentation on the “Birth and Key Takeaways from the Development of Cisco myPlanNet” highlights some things we’d like to do differently next time.
From a social media marketing perspective, I think these were the key takeaways:

1. Experiment, listen and choose your action: don’t be afraid to experiment with a post, mini game, etc., watch people’s reaction and address as or if needed.
2. Balance between engineered and organic content: have some seed content ready to go but at the same time, let the conversation naturally unfold. Monitor what people say but give them the freedom to comment. If your engineered topic doesn’t catch on, don’t force it.
3. Don’t take things personally: there will be people who may not like what you do and that’s ok. Don’t get on the defensive.
4. Social media doesn’t go away: once you’re in social media, you are in social media. So make sure that people on your team continue to monitor and stay engaged with your fans, discussion forum participants, etc. I think many organizations don’t quite realize how much time and effort it really takes to nurture your social media engagements. It’s more than writing a blog or sending a tweet. Often times, we are required to move from one thing to the next very quickly and get too busy to keep the “old” things moving along as we start working on the “new” ones. If social media is specific to a campaign and is not intended for on-going use, plan for an exit strategy at the beginning of your program.
5. Align your marketing objectives to the requirements, limitations and opportunities presented by the tool you’re looking to market: wow, this is a mouthful. But basically, what it means is that everything needs to be connected and make sense. In our case, we would have loved to do a big contest with lots of prizes et al. But, we had certain requirements and limitations that prevented us from being able to do so. It certainly would have helped with word-of-mouth advertising much sooner and faster but it was not a possibility. So we tried other avenues to achieve the same goals.
6. Be patient: social media doesn’t happen overnight. You need to put the time and effort into it to get results.

If you are interested in seeing some more ideas about how to use social media in support of your overall marketing campaign, feel free to visit my presentation “Framework: Social Media As Part of Your Overall Communication Strategy”.

If you think this case study is as awesome as I do, please cast your vote so Cisco can win the people’s choice award!

Friday Fun: My Collection of Social Media Infographics

2010-04-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

Storytelling is becoming increasingly important as I continue to evangelize social media at Cisco. And like most corporations we use PowerPoint to tell that story. I’ve been working on some fancy PowerPoint’s lately and have been searching for the right graphics to help tell that story. Which has lead me to this collection of great social media infographics:

Collection of Social Media Infographics

View more presentations from LaSandra Brill.

Sources:

If you have any cool, new infographics to share, by all means – share!

Social Media Cross Training

2010-04-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about social media is that it’s allowing marketers to take
on more of a role traditionally held by salespeople: communicating directly with customers and partners, creating dynamic and timely content, and speaking in a much less formal voice.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what all marketers signed up for. It’s one thing to sit comfortably behind a PowerPoint deck that will be used by a professional salesperson whose had a lifetime to cultivate presentation skills, its another thing to walk in their shoes.

It would be a mistake to overstate the differences between salespeople and marketers. After all, we’re focused on many of the same things and our books are right next to each other at Borders. But its also a mistake to ignore the fact that as social media is bringing both groups much closer together, its also presenting challenges in the way of forcing people to use skill sets that are, to say the least, a little rough around the edges.

For every salesperson who is very comfortable blogging a couple times a week and building virtual communities in Facebook, there are others who’ve made a career out of networking and presentation skills and find the idea of constant, structured publishing daunting.

On the other side of the table there are marketers that have spent their whole careers building adcopy from the abstract and are now being asked to communicate directly and, in some cases persuasively, with customers and partners using a language they might not be familiar with.

The answer here of course is a new kind of cross-training. We’ll find that it won’t be sufficient to teach blogging to sales people or witty tweeting to marketers, but rather necessary to encourage bi-directional training from the two groups of people who make their living on different sides of the same coin. Sales and marketing departments will need to build a Freaky Friday curriculum that leaves both groups more prepared for tackling Go To Market 2.0.

Image Credit: Josh Janssen

Funny Friday: Politician Canned Over Terrible Tweets

2010-04-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what politicians are like when nobody’s looking? Thanks to Stuart MacLennan, former Labour parliamentary candidate in the UK, we have an idea. I’m sure not all politicians are this entertaining once the cameras are off, but a girl can dream. Let’s hope those of us responsible for advocating social media adoption at our own companies remember to cite this as a great example of “insufficient filtering”.

(Tweets are NSFW, follow link here at your own risk =) )

The Evolution of Crowdsourcing (and how my husband roped me into watching a basketball game last night between two teams I’m not even remotely familiar with)

2010-04-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, an interesting thing happened on the internet. As reported today by Trey Kerby from Yahoo (courtesy of previously mentioned husband):

“. . . going in to the Phoenix Suns' matchup with Ginobili and the Spurs, Jared Dudley knew he had to do something. Somehow, he needed to shut down this scoring machine. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so Dudley did what we all do when we need answers — he took to Twitter.”

Jared Dudley crowdsourced his strategy against another player for a professional basketball game? That has to be a first, right? Check out the tweets and the following results (again from Kerby):

“Amazingly, it worked. Ginobili scored only 10 points on 5-14 shooting, made no three-pointers, and had two turnovers in the Spurs loss. It was his worst game in a month and third lowest scoring output since the All-Star break.”

Amazingly is definitely the right word - even I know enough to say that's good! Kerby goes on to share his hopes for the future of crowdsourcing in his domain:

“Hopefully, crowdsourcing game plans is the next big Twitter craze. I don't know about you, but I anxiously await the day when you can look at Twitter's top trending topics and see "#howtostopLeBron" and "#thisishowyoubeattheNuggets" alongside "#JustinBieberRocks." It's a pipe dream for now, but this is a good first step.

Since crowdsourcing’s introduction to the social media lexicon, of all the promising Web 2.0 technologies, it has made the least amount of headway into the way humans interact. Social networking sites like Facebook have fundamentally changed the way we socialize with each other. Twitter and blogs have changed the way we get our news and information. Why hasn’t crowdsourcing changed the way we get knowledge and work on collaborative projects? Why does it still feel experimental and not familiar?

Sure, there have been any number of successful crowdsourcing projects, one notably where I work. But why are they still projects and not just the way stuff is done?

In the interest of crowdsourcing, I’d love to hear from the crowd on this one.

The State of Social Media

2010-04-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we endured the Hypiest of Big Hype release with the launch of the Apple iPad. A few days in and there’s some talk of drastically overoptimistic first day sales estimates, some genuine buyer’s remorse, and of course the inevitable backlash from trendsetters looking for the New Shiny Object.

The official host of the iPad Honeymoon turned Hangover party is Hewlett Packard, which seems to have a lead on gaining the sought after “iPad killer ” moniker for it’s offering in the space, the iSlate.

What’s interesting for social media marketers is the anatomy of HP’s campaign to win back some mindshare from the savviest consumer electronics company in history: pure social media. Leaked photographs through Engadget and Gizmodo, and a blog launch you can find on industry blogs but not from HP’s homepage (at the time of this writing), etc.

This isn’t a huge surprise considering the demographic and technographic HP is targeting but it is somewhat of a milestone. This is the most important product launch HP has had in years and the cornerstone is a video blog? Although we would expect there to be a big budget Old Media campaign to debut later in the year once the iSlate is closer to release, it’s notable that the medium HP chose to highlight its New New Thing is a blog that’s not even two years old.

One way to spin this is that HP is making a clear case for what they think is most effective at this stage of their campaign. The other is that they’re making a clear case for what they think is not effective. HP didn’t integrate social media elements into an old media campaign. They just went all in.

Everybody's doing it, so why don't we?

2010-02-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

This is a video (courtesy of justin.tv) of the Social Media Club panel I was on titled, "Everybody's doing it, so why don't we? The event was moderated by Jennifer Lindsay and joining me on the panel was Violet Blue, Janet Fouts and Erin Robbins.

One of the more interesting topics was around personal vs. business brand where we talk about the recent Forrester announcement that prohibits employees from blogging about business outside of their corporate blog. The video clip of this conversation was caught on video by Michael Brito here!

Watch live video from richreader on Justin.tv

Awesome Video on Measuring Social Media ROI

2009-11-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Evolution of a Social Media Marketing in a Product Launch

2009-10-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a presentation that Melissa Mines, Marketing Manager at Cisco and I did with BrighTalk showing how we evolved our social media marketing tactics from the Cisco ASR 1000 launch to the the Cisco ASR 9000 launch.

Who has time for Twitter when there's Flutter?

2009-04-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

Web 2.0 Expo- Ford Motor Company Case Study

2009-04-05T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Ford case study was one of the best presentations at the conference. I wish there were more companies sharing their success stories (or failures) of how to actually implement these techniques in an integrated campaign.

The presentation was led by Scott Monty who manages the social media efforts at Ford and Maggie Fox from Social Media Group who is their social media agency of record. I captured my notes and also embedded the slides from the presentation below.

Getting Started

Before jumping into any social conversations they began by doing a SWOT analysis.What they found is not too much different that what I think most people will find. People are talking about them but they weren't leveraging and integrating these people into their communications efforts.

The Revolution

So they decided to change that. They revolutionized the way they interacted with bloggers. It started by inviting bloggers, the people who were already talking to them to a traditional media event. The bloggers were integrated into the process and invited to see and test drive new vehicles.

They continued that relationship online and as Scott puts it, "we wanted to make storytelling easy." They created web-ready content and distributed it through social media press releases.

What's important to note is that this does not replace their traditional media efforts nor is it packaged and distributed in the same way. Their social media releases are not pushed across the wire. Instead it's a pull method of obtaining content, the releases are optimized for search results, uploaded to the Ford website and RSS enabled so that people can subscribe to the content.

Challenges

Scott said that overall there weren't really any challenges. I don't think this will be the same case for every company. What's different at Ford? Alan Mulally, Ford's CEO. The shift to change their communication style was accepted from the top down. There was a little bit of a legal hurdle to get over since they were opening the access to their content including images and videos to anyone. They agreed to put a creative commons restriction meaning people are free to use the content, but they must link back to Ford and they cannot use the content for profit. Also all images and files are for web use only and can't be reprinted.

Results

More people are talking about Ford, they have received 500 posts since September 2007 and the content of the stories is richer and more inline with the corporate positioning. Some enthusiasts are even embedding the social media releases into their sites as a credible source of Ford news. There are 120 videos posted to YouTube which have received over 1.2 million hits.

Lessons Learned

Ford realized that in today's world, 'everyone is a publisher' not just the journalists and that digital content needs to be an integrated way of thinking, not just an afterthought. Also when it came to making this happen what really helped them get this approved and accepted internally was to sit down and explain this big scary thing called 'social media.' After education and understanding people's fears about it, it became a non-issue. People are only afraid of what they don't know so if you explain the mystery it becomes less scary.

What's Next

The Ford Story is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what's next. The initial creation of this site was done in 4-days (over the Thanksgiving Holiday). The future plans for this site are to pull in 3rd party content and become the centralized hub for all Ford content. They also plan to expand beyond auto bloggers to parent blogs, green, tech and finance blogs.

The Deck
Setting Content Free At Ford - Web 2.0 Expo
View more presentations from Scott Monty.

So, have you driven a Ford lately? Admittedly I haven't but all of this social media outreach gave me some warm and fuzzies so I think I may have to take a test drive this weekend

Web 2.0 Expo: Content Strategy

2009-04-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

What is your online content strategy?If it involves hiring a copywriter 10-days before the launch of your web page it's time to rethink your (non) strategy. As Kristina Halvorson would say, don't let your content be the forgotten elephant in the room. Here are my key take always from Kristina's session, "Content Strategy: What's Real, What's Relevant ."

Too often content is an after thought with the notion ("lies") that:

It's not that big of a deal
You think you already know what you want to say
You think you already have most of the content
You put it off as something you can fix post launch

What people don't consider is that your customers decided whether to do business with you based on your content. Ideally you should identify a single person in your company or organization that is responsible for your content, a Content Strategist. This person would be responsible for building your strategy to include:

Creation:

The creation of your content should start with your customer in mind. A good example of this is REI, they don't hammer you over the head with their products. Instead they want to be your partner in outdoor activities. Or Room and Board who sells through stories of real people who use their products. Ford Models builds a connection by providing everyday beauty tips on their YouTube channel. Content as to work for the user - an example of what NOT to do is Quicken, box shots don't help the customer decide which product to buy. They don't talk to the customer, they just want you to add products to your cart. When you create your content make sure it's useful, usable and enjoyable.

Publication:

There are many forms to publish content including: text, graphics, video, animation and audio. You should plan for a specific goal or result regardless of how and where you publish your content. Create a list to understand the business objectives and the user goals.

Governance:

Think of your content from a lifecycle perspective. Have a plan to update or remove. Do NOT do what Swiffer did and create a YouTube contest then abandon the site after the promotion is done (they haven't logged-in in over 10 months!). Have a plan to take it down if you're not going to maintain it.

Web 2.0 Expo: Designing Social Websites

2009-03-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

I attended two workshops at today's Web 2.0 Expo: Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Best Practices and Patterns for Designing the Social Web and Designing Social Websites.

The first presentation was more of an read out on the analysis of different social features popular on sites like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Flickr and others. I wish they would have done more of an analysis of which ones actually work, what makes them work and who they work on. Anyhow, the slides are still interesting and can be viewed here.

For me the more interesting presentation was from Christina Wodtke. I've embedded her slides below and here are some of my key takeaways:

"Behavior is a function of a person and his/her environment," this is Christina's theory to social sites. Environment is half the equation and something we can control. Christina shared an interesting analogy that you can follow the same process to designing the architecture of a building as you would a website. For example when you build a wide and open staircase it becomes a natural place for people to take a seat and socialize (for more on this check out A Pattern Language).

Christina identifies 4 motivations for contribution:

Reciprocity - an example is LinkedIn endorsements, people who ask for endorsements are likely to give an endorsement back. Another example is when fund raising groups send you mailing labels as a gift, by doing so people are more likely to return the favor by opening their wallets.
Reputation - Cisco's NetPro discussion forum do a good job of this by through a point system.
Increased Need of Efficacy - The reason people use sites like Digg is because it's an effective way to obtain information they have something to gain.
Attachment to and Need of a Group - This goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people want to have a sense of belonging. Then when they build their reputation it increases their self esteem.

Anyone who's building a social website should learn more about the Ross Mayfield's Power Law of Participation where a ' low threshold participation amounts to high engagement'. Then follow the AOF method:

Define your activity (ie. what are your users doing? what do they have to do for you to be successful)
Identify social objects (ie. videos for Netflix, photos for Flickr)
Choose your features (ie. sharing, tagging, advice)

(Note: this is an older version of the deck she shared at the Web 2.0 Expo, the slides are almost identical, when/if she updates SlideShare, I'll update the embed.)

Design for Product Managers

View more presentations from cwodtke.

The Launch that Keeps on Giving

2009-03-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Readers of my blog have already heard me talk about the Cisco ASR case study and how we used social media and web 2.0 to build community. I have also presented this many times in person and my most recent appearance for a CIO/IT Executive MeetUp was recorded and can be viewed here:

Trace Your Marketing Reach

2009-03-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

If Web 2.0 is the engine behind the next generation of uber marketing programs, content is still the fuel it uses. In most cases, Web 2.0 is still largely content driven. But now content has evolved past “prepared marketing messaging” and moved into “ability to have an intelligent, relevant conversation”. Either way, content is still king. Whether its blogging, twittering, or creating viral videos – marketing programs are still made up of people who “create message” and people who “distribute message”. The one question that’s difficult to answer however is which parts of our message are resonating. Thanks to a new company called Tynt, there may be a way to find out.

Tynt allows you to track which parts of your web copy is well, copied. Here’s the write up from Leeana Rao at TechCrunch:

Tynt’s product, Tracer, lets website publishers see what content is being copied and pasted off their sites. Each time a user copies content from a website and pastes it into an email, blog or website, Tracer automatically adds a URL link back to the original site’s content, helping to drive traffic back to the original site. Publishers can easily add the Tracer technology to the code of their site by inserting Tracer’s one line of java script in any site template.

As Leaano notes later in her post, there are other solutions for copy protection and tracking – but Tynt’s focus seems to more on marketing than intellectual property protection. As a marketer, I absolutely want people stealing what I write. Copy it and paste it everywhere! Just tell me what parts you liked.

The Corporate Blog Manifesto Update

2009-03-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post from one of the great Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketers on my team, Don Nelson. He often has insightful emails and this time I asked if I can post it on my blog.

Quick background - this email was actually a response to someone who sent a link out to Robert Scoble's post from 2003, "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto" and I thought it was worth sharing so here you go:

Just in case you jump right into the content and not see the date of this posting.....Scoble wrote this in 2003 which pretty much makes it a dinosaur in Internet time. However, there are still good points to be made here in 2009.

My take is this....

Tell the truth: always always always. If you're not sure, best to leave it out of your writing all together.
Post fast on good news or bad: it is after all about communicating with our customers and the influencers in the many markets and industries we now play in.
Use a human voice: we're all on the honor system of sticking to corporate and ethics, so hopefully you know which lines not to cross.
Make sure you support the latest sw/web/human standards: technically, not so much these days with our Blog platform. we already have RSS and try to instill the proper use of keywords for search engine optimization.
Have a thick skin: opinions and elbows - everyone has them and they will use them so be prepared for all manner of responses to your writing
Don't ignore Slashdot: there is much more beyond just Slashdot these days. we do keep social media monitoring in our pockets and try to do as much as we can with what we've got to help guide you in the conversations out there.
Talk to the grassroots first: base your writings on established concepts and leadership and you should be fine. It doesn't hurt to know or build relations with a broad range of sources that you can read and interact with via your blog but know that PR is also handling relation building here too.
If you screw up, acknowledge it: as clear as it can be word for word
Underpromise and over deliver: excellent strategy and should be used at every opportunity
If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it: I had to look him up so I'm thinking so did you there are many "experts" so I'd extend this to those you know based on level of influence you think they have in any particular market.
Know the information gatekeepers:
Never change the URL of your weblog
If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write: true. unless you can turn the turmoil/unhappy experience into something that relates to your company fixing it for you!
If you don't have the answers, say so: same as #1 and #8, true to the last word
Never lie: see #1, #8 and #14
Never hide information: disclose disclose disclose where appropriate or just don't write about it
If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast: similar to #1, #8, #14 and #15, when in doubt leave it out of your writing or pursue our legal contacts if unavoidable.
Link to your competitors and say nice things about them: true to an extent. now partners and ecosystem partners, they should be acknowledged/credited when it directly impacts your writing.
BOGU (Bend Over and Grease Up): true also to an extent. more simply stated, if someone comments on your writing, treat them all as if they are VIPs
Be the authority on your product/company: you are all experts, but do pay proper respects to whom you know and/or reference in your writing.

Enterprise Social Media

2009-03-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to share a growing list of Enterprise Social Media bloggers - make sure your company is on this list!

Skittles Twitters The Rainbow

2009-03-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

What if a real company decided to turn their whole site into a twitter conversation?

That’s what skittles did in what can only be described as a bold move to embrace Web2.0.

What a unique approach. In a traditional viral campaign, you launch a viral concept and it takes on a life of its own, living in media largely beyond your control. Skittles did one better. They launched a viral campaign and turned their website into an incubator for the virus. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is! An argument could be made that the skittles website isn’t core to their product sales, so replacing it with a twitter results page isn’t as big of a risk as if a B2B company were to do it. But still, you have to respect the moxie of Skittles’ Web 2.0 marketing team. What a great campaign!

The Good, The Bad and The Yelp

2009-02-12T21:56:00.000-08:00

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water . . .

You open a business. You market it aggressively. You do your best to serve your customers. You have a few “learning experiences”, but over all everything goes well. Then tragedy strikes. You get “yelped”. Some customer who you barely remember posts a scathing review of your product or service on the consumer feedback site Yelp.

Think it couldn’t happen to you? If you’ve got customers in the local retail sector, you’re most likely on yelp. For those of us working for companies that sell to the enterprise, we have our own demons. Our disgruntled customers are as likely to buy domains of “ourcompanysucks.com” and make a career out of vilifying us. But we have infrastructure for that. We have huge multi-touch marketing teams and great PR departments and legal representation if needed and about a million ways to engage our customers directly using a number of different channels, some of which we’ve covered here.

But what do you do if you’re a small corner shop? Your options are much more limited. Much of your revenue base is dependent on new customers, meaning you’re not able to preempt negative reviews with your own information. But even if that weren’t the case, you don’t likely have a very large marketing budget. And if you were going to use it for anything, it would be to get new customers, not lose old ones. Unfortunately, many business owners are facing this situation now.

Could this mean the end of business as they know it? Maybe for the bad ones. If you remember, authors found themselves in a similar dilemma as Amazon’s user reviews system became more relied upon than the publisher’s canned marketing pitch. Today however, more books than ever are being sold through Amazon and with rare exceptions do authors have trouble with allowing every single customer to have an open public forum with anonymity and almost no barrier to entry to posting their review. Its just become part of the paradigm in publishing – if you want good reviews produce a good product.

I’ve spoken to some local business owners about their reaction to yelp and its effect on their business and without exception all were driven to improve some aspect of their service because of it. How is this a bad thing again? It’s certainly not a bad thing for the folks at yelp, who’ve seen the unique visitors triple over the last year. As a business owner, I’d be terrified of yelp to the point where I’d go out of my way to satisfy each and every customer as if they were the Internet Yelp’r from hell. As a customer, I really digg that.

Cisco Ends the Search for the Perfect Valentine's Day Gift

2009-02-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

This is a great B2B example of a viral video. This video was posted to YouTube, blogged about and Twittered about and in 5 days has over 8,400 views!

Cisco's Newest Social Media App

2009-02-03T15:23:00.000-08:00

Cisco is breaking social media ground yet again with it's new VNI PC Pulse application. I happen to work with one of the masterminds (Thomas Barnett) behind this application so I was able to talk him into an interview to give other social media enthusiasts a back stage view of what went it's creation.

Can you give me a brief description of the new Cisco VNI PC Pulse application?

>> Thomas: Cisco has created a free application to show users how much network bandwidth they consume and the types of applications they use. This application shows users the amount and types of traffic that flow to and from their computer and provides aggregated network usage proof points of all global users of this application for comparison purposes.

This is a great idea, how did you come up with it? What is the benefit to the end user?

>> Thomas: As part of our Visual Networking Index (VNI) initiative, we are interested in activities that can help provide qualitative views of network-based consumer video usage patterns and trends. Cisco has sponsored and will continue to explore consumer preferences and perspectives through surveys/questionnaires (see Cisco VNI Pulse political survey and Initial Cisco VNI Pulse consumer survey). A natural extension of our direct engagement with consumers was to offer a free utility application to develop a deeper understanding of consumer video behaviors and attitudes on a global scale. End users can gain a better understanding of their personal PC use and compare their bandwidth consumption with the aggregate average of others worldwide. They can compare their personal historical bandwidth usage stats (i.e., personal high, personal average, personal low) against WW stats (world high, world average, world low). The application measures LAN and Wi-Fi connections.

What have you learned since the application has been available?

>> Thomas: Data retrieved through the Cisco VNI Pulse application showed that on January 20, 2009 (the day of the U.S. inaugural festivities)individual users downloaded more than twice the amount of data they do during a normal day, at 322 MB vs. a typical average of 159 MB. Doug Webster, a marketing executive with Cisco, speculates that many people had the inaugural festivities streaming in the background while they did other things
Are there any social elements of the application? Thomas' Response: At this point, the ability to compare personal bandwidth usage against world stats is the primary social feature. Users could also compare their usage directly with family, friends and colleagues that choose to use the application. Cisco plans to develop a interactive web page in later in 2009 that will provide additional social networking elements.

What is the main objective of the application and how are you measuring your success?

>> Thomas: By using the Cisco VNI PC Pulse application, consumers will gain a better understanding of their online preferences and needs. The aggregate data will help Cisco build a better understanding of what we all demand from our networks. Data from this application will be shared publicly on a quarterly basis. We will measure our success the number of global users we are able to attract and the quality of new and insightful findings that we are able to share with the telecommunications industry and others interested in IP networking consumer trends.

What future apps can we expect from Cisco?

>> Thomas: We have developed a new mobile application that is currently available for iPhone users and will soon be available for Blackberry users as well. The Cisco Global Internet Speed Test (GIST) for iPhone application is publicly available via the Apple iPhone App Store in iTunes (http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/).

To learn more about the app check out Doug's post 'Are you a Super User?' or of course go directly to the download site and check it out for yourself.

Pulse on the Blogosphere

2009-01-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

The Military Counter Attack Plan for Bloggers
Who knows how to protect and defend better than the Air Force? Well they are not only protecting our country but they are also protecting their blog and they have a detailed flow chart to determine their every move.

Friends for Burgers?
That's Burger King's new message with their Facebook app that promotes giving away a Whopper when you delete 10 of your friends. Now that is an expensive burger if you ask me! Check out other anti-social Facebook apps here.

Intel's Show & Tell
Intel's published their Social Media Guidelines for everyone to see. If you're trying to figure out what your guidelines are this may be a good place to shortcut your process.

Media on Twitter
This isn't acutally a blog post but a great reasource. If you're using Twitter as a communication channel to reach the media this Wiki page lists all the top dogs! A must for your PR department.

Social Media is the End of Tradeshows

2008-12-19T12:48:00.000-08:00

Just about every company is using the current economic crisis as an excuse to re-evaluate its event strategy. More than just a few companies have decided to forgo their booth presence, something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Scobleizer puts the blame of the dying tradeshow industry on bloggers and social networks but I think tradeshows have been struggling to show tangible return on ROI for quite some time and social media offers the first successful alternative.

Whatever the reason, social media and web 2.0 are being utilized more than ever to connect with customers. Here are just a few ideas I had when it comes to leveraging these tools to maximize your involvement at a tradeshow:

Blogging - okay this is an obvious one but make sure you have one or two people covering the show. Summarize keynotes, write about what's hot and what's not - and not only traditional blog posts but microblogging with Twitter is a great way to make people who aren't at the show feel like they know the major happenings and video can really bring things alive!
SMS - if you have a keynote session you can use SMS as a way to poll the audience or take questions.
Widgets - Maybe you can create a widget that ties everything together, your blog posts, event schedule, collateral - you can even create a countdown to the show or any other major announcements.
Virtual Presence - In lieu of a booth promote and send your customers to an online environment where they can not only attend a virtual event but they can ask questions, network and be part of a community you can grow over time. Check out what ON24, Unisfair and InXpo are doing in this space...
PowerPoint - Post your webcast and keynote presentations on your community (ie. Facebook), on your blog and on SlideShare to extend the reach of the content.
Mobility - Leverage the fact that everyone has a cell phone these days. Allow people to see the event schedule from their phones and offer to provide reminders to your events. Provide mobile promotions where you can send links to content or videos to those who request them. You an even enable your sales folks to send mobile business cards to people they meet.

If you have other ideas I'd love to hear about them...

Running a Blog Like a Newspaper

2008-12-18T16:22:00.000-08:00

When it comes to running a corporate blog I think we can all learn from Molly Mulally, Marketing Manager at Abrevity. They didn’t just jump into the blogosphere blindly; they had clear, achievable objectives in mind: increase web traffic, demonstrate industry leadership and build a following of readers who are interested in learning about the industry (not just Abrevity).

The Abrevity blog provides a platform for Molly and her team to quickly and easily generate new content used for educating customers and partners. For an emerging industry like data classification, this allows Abrevity to demonstrate both domain expertise and legitimacy in the market.

However the “why” is not what sets them apart from most blogging companies – it’s the “how”. Molly manages her blog team like a newspaper editor. There are deadlines, word counts, editorial meetings, and assignments. The team of six bloggers meets weekly to discuss upcoming story possibilities and each blogger is expected to write one post a week on a topic in which they are considered a subject matter expert. This does not only ensure that the Abrevity blog has a constant flow of fresh content but that the different facets of the market are covered by an ‘expert’.

Molly also considered how they would participate and have a voice on other industry blogs. To keep a pulse on the market, each of the bloggers has a list of blogs they follow as well as Google alerts set up based on their subject matter expertise and they are encouraged to comment on other blogs as appropriate. To make things fun there is an incentive to participate in other blogs – each week, the blogger with the most comments gets a free lunch. Oh and Molly thought of everything, “Hey great post” does not count – comments must have ‘substance’ and add value to the conversation. To keep track of the conversations they have across the team there is a tracking sheet created which is updated and managed weekly.

It’s been just two months since the launch of the Abrevity blog and the ROI is already apparent. Molly has been able to track and identify the blog as a source doubling Abrevity's web traffic and collateral downloads and a noticeable uptake in sales leads since starting the program.

Molly’s recommendation to those looking to start a blog is, “Do your research, and don’t start too ambitiously. Start with realistic posting deadlines and how many posts a day (ie. one a day vs. one a week).” However my advice is to seriously consider following her process and run your blog like a newspaper!

5 Things You Can do in Less Than an Hour to Fight Poverty

2008-10-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

"One Issue, Thousands of Voices." That is the purpose of Blog Action Day and this year's focus is Poverty. As I think about this topic I can't help but reflect on a trip I took to Tanzania a couple of years ago. During that trip I got to see first hand what poverty really is. Driving through towns and seeing houses made of dung and cardboard, passing by children who were obviously malnourished and starving. That experience really made me feel guilty for ever complaining about anything in my life when I really am so fortunate. But there are things that YOU and I can do NOW to fight against poverty and help those in need. Here are just a few things I was able to do TODAY (in less than an hour):

Cleaned out my closet and donated my clothes
Commented on this blog where $1 will be donated to a food bank to feed the poor
Clicked a link on The Hunger Site to give 1.1 cups of food to the hungry
Donated to the United Nations World Food Programme
Wrote a blog post to increase awareness about poverty

For more ideas on what you can do check out this list for 88 ideas and see how you can make a difference!

To Blog or Not to Blog?

2008-10-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

With only 54 of the Fortune 500 companies blogging, this is a question still being pondered by many. Cisco, HP and Intel are in that blogging minority and Reem Abeidoh of Problogger interviewed me, Tac Anderson of HP and Michael Brito of Intel to come up with A Guide to Corporate Blogging.

Ryan McLean commented on the post stating, "I don't think I will ever be in a fortune 500 company. But if I ever am then this post will come in handy." I agree with Reem's response that despite the company size "ultimately the process is very similar." And although I represented the Cisco blog in this interview I have helped build blogging strategies for many small companies and have followed the same process successfully. So whether you're coming from a big or small company this guide is a must read!

Tac, Michael and myself are also contributors to the Conversations Matter blog.

CORRECTION: Reem is not a Problogger staff member, she is a Social Media Strategist for Outrider.

Mac, PC & Linux - Parody Commercial

2008-10-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

A parody of the Apple Mac vs. PC commercial with a guest appearance of the cutest Linux you've ever seen!

Cisco Social Media Case Study - Free Webcast

2008-10-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

In addition to all of the conferences I'm speaking at (as noted in my previous post) I just finished a live webcast that is now available on demand here. Enjoy and feel free to submit questions here on my blog and I will respond to you. I am also welcome to feedback and suggestions for improvement. Thanks!

Social Media Marketing Summit - Recap

2008-10-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

I presented the Cisco ASR Case Study example at today's Social Media Marketing Summit. I was a little rusty since I've been on LOA for 2 months now (for those who may not know I had a baby girl on 8.8.08). I stumbled on a few words then to top it off the computer prompted me to restart now or later for an update and of course I accidentally pressed now. The crowd responded with a "oooh noooo" and it still took me a minute to realized what I had done. I tried to keep my cool and keep on going and according to this post from Trisha Lyn it sounded like I didn't do that bad (I swear I didn't pay her).

Uunfortunately didn't catch much of the other sessions with the exception of of a presentation, by Tara Hunt. Her presentation, "Increasing the Social Capital of your Brand" was largely based off her book "The Whuffie Factor" which she is expecting to be released in April. Her delivery was awesome and although the presentation was high level it sounds like it'll be a good read to reinforce the basics.

As for my presentation, if you missed this conference you'll have two more opportunities to catch me. I'll be speaking at the Social Media Strategies Conference and the SIPA Mid-Year Marketing Conference.

If anyone who has seen my slides or better yet who has seen me present has comments or suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

UPDATE: If you're going to the WebGuild Social Media Strategies Conference use this discount code to save $150 "community56"

3M Goes Viral for All the Wrong Reasons

2008-09-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Rather than paying a $2,000 licensing fee for an already viral photo, 3M decided to recreate a fake watered downed version and call it their own. Now, they are going viral but for all the wrong reasons. This is just one of many posts that have and will be written about their faux-pas rather than their savvy marketing. What they should have done is taken notes from Motorola's marketing folks. When Motorola saw the fame and viral effect of the "Backdorm Boys" they didn't try to steal their idea with their own recreation. Instead, they approached them with an offer that resulted in their participation in what ended up being the "most effective use of interactive marketing - new media" at the 2006 Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

Next time someone should make sure 3M gets the memo...

Social Media Conversation with 1to1 Media - Part II

2008-08-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the second half of the podcast from the interview with 1to1 Media. This session focuses on measuring and monetizing social media. From a Cisco perspective one of the things we look at is increasing the overall 'share of voice' we have online. Tac from HP shares some of his successes with search engine optimization through the use of social media with their AR / PR initiatives. Michael at Intel looks at trying to apply a quantitative value to the different results they receive. We then share our perspective of 'what's next' and end with advice for other marketers looking to 'take the red pill':

"Start with a few small wins that you can get under your belt and
expand your efforts from there" ~ LaSandra Brill, Cisco

"Set your expectations appropriately." ~ Tac Anderson, HP

"Take your time and don't rush into it." ~ Michael Brito,
Intel

For more 'words of wisdom' check out the 'Conversations Matter' blog which we all contribute to.

Social Media Conversation with 1to1 Media - Part I

2008-08-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

July was social media month at 1to1 Media and I was asked to participate in an interview along with Tac Anderson of HP and Michael Brito of Intel. Why us? Well we all have jobs at Fortune 500 companies and our roles are focused on internal and external social media initiatives (and we all blog at Conversations Matter). The interview which is also available as a podcast (sorry, buzzing due to technical difficulties) was broken into two parts. The first part focuses on the challenges we faced when it comes to implementing social media.

Because the three of us have been practicing social media for sometime now and because we are all in positions where social media is valued in the organization, the challenges lie in the execution. How do you match the right strategy and tools to the people you are trying to reach and how do you ensure that your team is choosing to go down the social media path for the right reasons. For that Cisco has adopted Forrester's People-Objective-Strategy-Tools (POST) methodology (perhaps with an extra look at the Strategy).

However for the folks who aren't lucky enough to be at the next phase of adoption, I am commonly asked how I was able to get management on board to execute social media campaigns (like the ASR launch). And although that wasn't addressed in this podcast, I thought I'd address it here. For me the journey began with education to my team on social media and how it can benefit us to participate in 'conversation marketing.' The next phase involved testing the waters with small projects, successes of those projects led to the support of social media as a standard marketing practice with a team to support it. It's been almost a year since my team has been chartered with finding the right opportunities to engage in 'conversational marketing' through social media with our customers and we constantly live this cycle of adoption as we get deeper into social media.

Stay tuned for part two next week...

Same ol' Voice Brand New Megaphone

2008-08-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

There’s a new facebook group trying to influence Barack Obama’s choice of Vice President. The story here is that in the old days, there really wasn’t any way for Barack Obama to get real time polling information outside of a few hundred poll calls and there certainly wasn't an effective way for a community to quickly ban together to influence such a decision.

But now there’s an outside chance 100k people might directly influence his VP pick – in real time. That’s awesome – that’s the power of Web 2.0. Other than physically assembling thousands of people for a riot or march or standing in front of Lucky's collecting signatures – how else can this number of people collectively have a voice in such a short time frame? This isn’t a petition – it’s a near real time shout. These aren’t just signatures, they’re virtual profiles that carry all the weight of an individual’s identity.

It makes you wonder if we’re still not seeing the real potential of Web 2.0 technology. Imagine if at Apple they wee thinking of a new color scheme for the iPhone. Why risk screwing that up? Just ask your 100k strong iPhone facebook group what they think. This is not a random poll. These are real people who’ve proactively built connections and who have confirmed identities. In fact, with some analytics, you could dissect the demographics of your group to get a better feel for the result.

At no other time has it been easier to assemble a few hundred thousand like minded individuals and get heard. The question for us marketers (and in this case, Barack Obama) is: are we ready to listen?

Wrap-up Interview from Forrester Social Media Bootcamp

2008-08-05T22:38:00.001-07:00

Today we had Jeremiah Owyang and Laura Ramos of Forrester co-host a Social Media Bootcamp at Cisco. After the event I was able to catch Laura for a quick interview (unfortunately Jeremiah had to run off to another meeting). Check it out:

I wanted to address that last question again - should it be People-Objective-Strategy-Technology (POST) or People-Objective-Technology-Strategy (POTS)? Laura's response sounds logical and seems to be what everyone who responded to my Tweet agrees with but I'm still not convinced. In talking with Jeremiah about it one thing he said was that “strategy” and “technology” actually go hand-in-hand with some overlap. For example if your planning process led you to creating a blog the strategy that you put together would be very different than if you were creating a Facebook group. Perhaps the right methodology is POSTS so you can revisit the strategy after you've chosen the technology?

UPDATE: For more on the bootcamp read this post from my collegue at Cisco, Brian Ellefritz - "My first Social Media bootcamp, and it didn't even hurt"

Marketing 2.0 with Visual Networking

2008-07-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Visual Networking is yet another web 2.0 marketing tool I’ve added to my virtual briefcase. Visual Networking is a mash-up of digital video and social networking capabilities. The video aspect offers an interactive and engaging way to tell my story while the social networking capabilities allow the viewers to collaborate, comment and share ideas on what they've seen. Here are a few B2B examples I'm aware of, all of which involve creating a persona to demonstrate a point:

Cisco's Disconnected Life Webisode Series - Don and Rhoda Delay's network and communication problems have led them to marriage counseling as they illustrate the 'disconnected life' that I know I couldn't bare. Where's the social networking? Well thanks to YouTube it's in the ability to comment on each of the videos (and keep delivery costs low).

Blue Coat's Bob Kent Stories - Bob Kent represents the bad employee in every company who misuses the Internet at everyone else's expense. The exaggerated stories are ones that anyone in an office environment can relate to. Looking for a way to collaborate? Participate in the monthly contest by submitting your story and you may just get a Nintendo Wii out of it!

Tibco's Greg the Architect - Greg represents the hero that every techy wants to be and no challenge is too small. There's no social networking aspect that I can see so maybe this is just straight video but it's still pretty creative and adding the social component would be easy to do.

Any other examples you think should be added to this list? Feel free to share.

Building an All-Star Social Media / Web 2.0 Team

2008-06-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

If you could only bring 6 Social Media Pros to an island to start a Web 2.0 Marketing Department, who would they be?

Making it on Jeremiah's list of 'Social Computing Stategists' got me thinking about my team, what we do, what we want to do and what's next. My team is fairly new and we've been at it for about 9-months now and the various disciplines and skill sets of our team was built trial and error over the past few months. As we plan for the next fiscal year I can't help but think big so I started creating a list of all of the things a 'Social Media and Web 2.0' team should focus on (leaving out the boundaries of resources). Here's what I've come up with:

Social Media Strategist - In 'Alice in Wonderland', Lewis Carroll wrote "if you don't know where you want to be, it hardly matters which direction you take". At the core of every good team there’s a good plan. This is the person who pulls everything together. They build the Social Media Marketing plan and determine what the objective of the campaign is and therefore what tools should be utilized and how.

Community Manager – There are currently two communities that we have an active presence on - Facebook and NetPro having someone actively facilitate conversations in these communities would really take things to the next level.

Social Site Management – The great thing about engaging your customers in social media is that you can tweak your message depending on the audience. The tough thing about engaging your customers in social media is that your message could end up looking different for every audience. At the core of any marketing strategy lies a common message. We now have a presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Depending on the campaign we may leverage one or more of these channels and having someone to manage the communications and having it centrally executed is critical.

Blogging (including Micro-blogging) – Blogging is made up of two basic parts: content creation and content distribution. You could be channeling Shakespeare in your daily journal but if nobody knows about it, it won’t ever matter. Offering assistance to our bloggers to help optimize their posts for the search engines helping with suggestions on key or hot topics or sending out Twitters when new posts are live can make all the difference in the world.

Monitoring – If a tree falls in your community and you didn’t hear about it; WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU DOING THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT?!? Whether it's with Google Alerts, Nielson BuzzMetrics or TruCast, it's important to have an ear on what conversations are happening about our solutions so that we can actively participate in those conversations.

Web Innovations – This involves looking at the technolgoy our web pages use and determining if there are new capabilities available to better communicate or present something on our website. For example behavioral targetting, implementing widgets, or something as simple as adding Lightbox treatments can give your entire website a 'web 2.0' feel.

What do you think? What additional superpowers should a Social Media / Web 2.0 all-star team stock up on?

Diet Coke's PR Hell

2008-06-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

Good thing I drink Pepsi because according to Dr. Ralph Walton as pointed out by John McManamy, "Don't Drink the Diet Coke," there may be a correlation to depression and bipolar disorder to aspartame - the sweetener used in Diet Coke. What does this have to do with marketing? Well, as Brian Morrissey points out in Dell's Hearing Test, try typing 'Diet Coke' in Google and see what comes up. Two of the top 5 search results are pointing to articles about how Diet Coke is associated to depression. I would hate to be in their PR department right now.

This claim is based off of a single research study that was done 15 years ago and now because a blogger picked up on it it's resurfaced and is a top search result. It been up there since June 5th and there's no response from Diet Coke. Are they even listening to the conversations happening on the social web? Do they even know that post is out there and spreading further each day? Maybe they overdosed on Mentos...

My colleague Brian Ellefritz points out that this is great example of why corporations need to be monitoring (and participating) in conversations about their brand. Consumer generated media is not something that can/should be ignored. I think Mark Jarvis, CMO at Dell says it best, "Your home page is Google." From a B2B perspective we can all learn from Sun's blogging strategy in how to jump in and join the conversation and ultimately improve the sentiment of what gets communicated online. You can bet that Sun keeps a close eye on what new conversations about their brand emerge from the social web and if this happened to them I can't imagine they’d go this long without noticing.

Building an Online Brand in 3-Steps

2008-06-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

More and more people are starting to realize the power of having a 'personal' online presence and building a personal brand. I have been asked a lot about how I built my brand so I thought I would repeat that conversation here on my blog. However in the context of marketing, I think we also need to spend more time with our executives and helping them to build their online brand which will only further the business relationships that they already have. There are a lot of things you can do to build an online brand but it doesn't need to be a cumbersome activity and ultimately I think there are three main steps that will make the biggest impact:

1. LinkedIn: I've been a LinkedIn user since 2000. But it wasn't until 2004 that I saw the the biggest benefit on how to leverage the site. Coming from the very fluid start-up environment and having changed bosses 3 times in one year and co-workers constantly I needed a way to capture recommendations from the people I worked with. I now manage this very closely; if I change positions or if someone I work closely with changes positions I will ask them to write a brief recommendation on my profile while their memory of working with me is still fresh. This helps build my brand with credible third party resources. It's also a great way to build and manage your professional network.

Another way to use LinkedIn to build a brand - although I haven't taken advantage of this - is to participate in the Answers forum. This allows you to provide your input on topics you have an expertise in and your 'answers' are tied back to your profile so you build on the credibility of your expertise overtime.

2. Blog: The biggest brand builder for me has come from my blogging efforts - but this is also the most time consuming. I started blogging just over a year ago in May 2007 and started seeing the benefits after just a few posts. Since I enjoy blogging and the topic I cover I don't consider it 'work' but that is how others view it. So, if you know you can't commit to writing and maintaining a blog don't bother, there are other options for you...

Blogging is about joining the conversation by having my own blog that just means at times I'm also starting a conversation but a lot of the time I am still reading and commenting on other blogs. You can still build a brand and expertise in your area by finding the appropriate blogs and joining the conversation by commenting. Usually when you comment on a blog you have the ability to add a cross link, if you have a blog yourself you obviously want to link to that but if you don't, your LinkedIn profile is a good place to link to so that people can learn about who you are and get a sense of your authority/expertise level.

3. Facebook: I haven't been on Facebook as long - I think it's just under a year now and to be honest I don't use FaceBook to it's full potential either. I do have my profile developed and I do use it to connect with my professional network and the nature of Facebook allows me to interact with my network at a more personal level. However there are many groups within Facebook that would allow me to build my brand further if I was an active participant in these communities - I choose not to participate because of lack of time and instead participate in the blogosphere conversations but again if you don't want to commit to blogging this is a less cumbersome way of joining the conversation and ultimately building your online brand.

Executing Social Media with Jeanette Gibson

2008-05-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Chris Heuer for recording and posting this presentation on Cisco's Social Media efforts that Jeanette Gibson presented last week at John Gerstner's workshop:

Also thanks to Michael Brito for bringing this to my attention!

Coffee's for Closers

2008-05-26T23:31:00.000-07:00

Go viral or go home
Since 1996 Tim Draper of Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson has claimed he invented “viral” marketing when his portfolio company, Hotmail, included a line on the bottom of each email that said "Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com/."

Although viral marketing as we now know it was used by companies much earlier, the Hotmail example perfectly illustrates why marketers chase “viral” as if it were the cure to stopping spam. After getting the right message, the biggest challenges facing marketers are message distribution and authentication. If someone doesn’t see your message, you lose. If they don’t think it’s legitimate or don’t trust its source, you lose. Viral campaigns solve both those problems; accelerating propagation faster than we could ever do ourselves and authenticating the message by having it delivered by a trusted source. It’s marketing Nirvana. Forget visions of sugar plums dancing through my head - when I sleep I see social networks acting as Force Multipliers; delivering my carefully packaged message to receptive and qualified customers.

Easier said than done
But hey if it were that easy everybody would be doing it. There are many perils on the long winding road up the peak to Marketer’s Paradise not the least of which is crafting the perfect message. But let’s say you get through that, how on earth do you build a messaging vehicle that has the potential to go viral? And even after you do that what’s really the benefit of doing so? Is there any way to measure the effectiveness of viral effectiveness on buying decisions? I mean, even if the message is right and its delivered by a trusted source in a reasonable time frame is it more effective than a billboard in Times Square?

We’re still very early in our understanding of how effective social media and other 2.0ish technologies will be in helping plain Jane campaigns achieve “viral” status, but the returns so far are encouraging.

One thing that’s much harder to measure however is the effect of networks on individual behavioral (buying) decisions. We know that message reception and retention will be higher when coming from “the network”, but how influential is “the network” on decisions overall?

Viral messaging or networked buying?
New research out of Harvard Medical School indicates that social networks may have more to do with individual buying decisions than we thought. When coupled with Social Media Marketing campaigns this can be much more powerful than just a more effective message delivery campaign. Instead of just permeating an effective message, a “tuned” network could theoretically process a message and if followed up with positive product purchase experiences, directly influence the purchasing decisions of others in the network. This makes the “message spreading” potential of viral marketing seem downright anemic. Traditional viral marketing still relies on the effectiveness of my message to be effective. But if this research holds true for Social Media networks, then there might be a more compelling and cost effective way to harness “the network” in marketing campaigns that transcend traditional message delivery.

When thinking strategically, its easy to get caught up in thinking that marketing is about messaging and message delivery. But its not. Its about selling product. Too often I think we’re content with getting qualified buyers to the table. What if we could more directly influence actual buying?

Certain markets are already operating in this paradigm and as I consider new campaigns in the future I will certainly be looking closer at “network influence on buying behavior” campaigns rather than the traditional “network influence on message delivery” projects that have worked for us in the past.

Cisco Marketing Has Got Game

2008-05-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Some call it social media excellence some just say we've gone crazy...whatever you call it, it seems to be working.

As an extension to the social media efforts that we're leveraged for Cisco's ASR launch, Cisco announced a tournament around the EDGE QUEST game where they are offering $10,000 cash plus a Cisco ASR 1002 router to the sole winner. Not a bad deal for playing a game but the competition is stiff with a top score currently at 204,540.

I haven't exactly kept it a secret that I'm one of the marketers behind this campaign so of course I think it's cool but here are a few specific reasons why I think it’s working for us:

We're reaching our target audience in a new, fun, and engaging way. Last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people -- and according to CIMS, 24% of those were IT professionals! Us marketers are always trying to fish in a big pond but it helps when they’re all swimming in the same place.
Low cost, high ROI. This program was an extension of an existing program. The EDGE QUEST game was created at launch so the cost of the tournament includes just the "carrot" of $10K plus the router. We also invested a small amount in changing the game a bit for the "money round" of the tournament but no budget went into promotion we focused solely on social media outlets. In return we've had an influx in PR and Blog pick-ups and a substatial increase in traffic to the game and product page. All of this activity of course is being measured and considered as part of the ROI of the campaign.
It was just a blast to work on. Hey there's nothing wrong with that - it's fun for the people engaging with Cisco in a new way and it was fun to be part of the marketing team to develop and creatively promote the game and tournament leveraging social media tactics which included a social media release, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Digg and Flickr.

This particular campaign won't work for everyone but creating a social marketing campaign can get your customers engaged and extend your message far beyond traditional marketing.

Overcoming Social Media Objections

2008-05-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” – Howard Aiken

As Dr. Aiken discovered, knowing which direction to go doesn’t mean much if you can’t get your team to follow. Thankfully, unlike Dr. Aiken we don’t have to convince people to buy in on an idea as crazy as building a computer at a time when phones were considered state of the art. But knowing that doesn’t make our job any easier.

All marketing campaigns come down to getting time, money, or resources and to be done properly, your Social Media Marketing campaign will likely need a little of all three. For many of us, this means approval from one or more decision makers on a marketing campaign that may be fundamentally different from anything they’ve done before.

The people considering your idea are going to have a running list going of positives and negatives. If they’re like most humans, this list won’t be entirely rational and will likely end up coming down to one major factor either way. Whether choosing new cars, new houses, or even new presidential candidates – people can usually narrow down their decision making criteria to one or two factors, positive or negative.

There’s no way to know which factors will be most critical to the people in your audience but if they’re anything like the folks I’ve been working with, here’s a few that come up almost every time.

“The devil we know IS NOT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING”. This is where many good ideas have gone to die. While it’s true that building a social media project likely won’t be as predictable as a more traditional campaign, there is a healthy amount of data out there already. Besides this blog, success stories and ROI can be found on sites such as Conversations Matter, WebGuild, Groundswell, The Social Organization, and Marshall Kirkpatrick.
“We’re already doing social media marketing. We have a website, and it has a “talk to a sales rep” button – what else is there?” There is a common misconception amongst the uninitiated that if a company is online, it’s “connected”. As much hype as Web 2.0 receives, there are still many people who don’t get what it is, what it’s for, and more importantly where it might help. The only way to correct this is with education. In addition to collaborating on Web 2.0 projects enterprise-wide, I drive adoption through educational blog posts, workshops and webinars. I’ve found that most people, especially in marketing, have a remarkable capacity to learn about the bleeding edge but if they’re making a go/no go decision on your new project, it might be too late. The way to beat this one is early and often.
“OK, even if we do it with social media, how would we know if it worked?” Unlike “direct response” or “click through” marketing, social media campaigns aren’t as easily measured. Oftentimes we’re counting things like “engagement” and “connections” that don’t have a correlation to existing marketing metrics programs. At first blush, this seems like a minor point that will get fixed in time. But if your team is compensated on traditional marketing MBO’s, they might not be as motivated to kick off a social media endeavor. Marketing runs on metrics, but somehow TV and print ads get approved every year – stick to your guns, metrics are important but there are other factors to consider.

These certainly are not the only objections that you’ll run up against in trying to get your social media campaign off the ground, but they seem to be pretty common. Feel free to share objections you’ve come up against and any ideas on how to work through them.

Conversations Matter - Field Guide to Social Media Marketing

2008-04-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

At some point in the lifecycle of every new idea, somebody actually has to try it out. Soon after that, so the cliché goes, some brave, soot-covered soul emerges from a smoke filled lab with a beaker in one hand and charred lab results in the other. That brave soul is where the rubber hits the road. In the world of Social Media Marketing, there are a lot of these brave souls, and a few of us have decided to get together and report back on our findings in this blog, Conversations Matter.

Michael Brito and Kelly Feller from Intel, Tac Anderson from HP, Tom Diederich from Cadence Design Systems, and Marc Levin who is an independent marketing consultant - formerly at Yahoo!, and I will be participating.

It’s been said that when you get to a certain point in any discipline, the only way to learn more is by trying to share your experience with someone else. It’s our hope that by sharing our experiences in this blog, we’ll benefit by leveraging the same principles that make Social Media Marketing so effective in letting us connect with our customers. In other words, we’ll be eating our own dog food.

So check it out, let us know what you think and mention any topics you’d like us to cover. If things work out we may take this crazy idea to the next level and consider organizing workshops, webinars and networking events. Ok, one step at a time - check it out and if you like it add it to your feeds.

Web 2.0 Expo - Friday Session Wrap-Up

2008-04-30T22:22:00.000-07:00

I wasn't able to make it the Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday but I was there all day Friday and attended a few good sessions. But it was Friday after a long week so I apologize for the delay in getting this post up but here are my key takeaways:

Keynote: Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs
This guy is hilarious and he authors an entertaining blog from the perspective of Steve Jobs (on crack). He talked about how and why he started the blog and why he thinks it works. In the end it boils down to boredom, fear, an idea, and an engaged audience.

Boredom because it started as a prank that happened to take on a life of its own. Fear because as a traditional Forbes tech writer he saw print publications coming to an end due to the emergence of blogs. An idea - "what would Steve Jobs write if he really did go nuts?" And an engaged audience that included 90K monthly readers after just 6 months and 25-50 emails a day with suggestions on what to write next.

Games 2.0: Why the Future of Games Looks More Like Zombies and Scrabulous and Less Like Halo 3
This session ended up being a little different than what I expected but what was interesting is that while social networking sites are trying to deploy game dynamics in their communities as discussed in the 'Children of Flickr' session, game sites are trying to embed social relationships and social context into games.

The Audience is the Medium: Video 2.0 & Online Communities
I was a little late to this session but joined in on the debate of Live vs. On-Demand video. Live events have a higher interaction and allow viewers to be part of the conversation. BUT...the web is not equip to handle live video distribution and advertisers look at the big numbers as oppose to engagement. Ultimately there's a place for both and the decision needs to be made based on the objective.

The Power of Online Communities: Lessons from the Best of the Consumer & Business Community Managers
This session included community managers from SFDC, Dell, Yahoo!, Kiva and Flickr. Here are a few things worth passing on:

SFDC put the responsibility of their community into the hands of their product managers by making it part of their job to create, encourage and maintain conversations for their product.
Kiva lucked out and avoided formal marketing all together. They grow 100% organically through word of mouth - but a big part of this was knowing and connecting with the right people.
Flickr suggests being 'elastic' and don't just try to make your audience do what you want them to do.
When building a community create a feedback mechanism. Don't just listen - engage.
When hiring a community manager look for someone with relationship building and communication skills - PR background a plus. Also someone who authors their own blog or possibly someone in your community.

Best-kept Secrets to Search Engine Optimization Success: the Art and the Science
This was a session on Wednesday that I attended but didn't have good notes for. This guy - Stephan Spencer - really knows his stuff but it was hard to keep up. Luckily he made his slides available and you can view them here:

View Upload your own

Children of Flickr: Making the Massively Multiplayer Social Web

2008-04-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

This was the last morning session and ended up being my favorite. This session was moderated by Justin Hall from GameLayers with three panelists: Rajat Paharia from Bunchball, Christopher Chapman from Areae and Gabe Zichermann from rmbr.

The theme of this session - Everything can be a Game.

This session focused on game dynamics and how game psychology can drive engagement, interaction and loyalty on your website, traditionally a non-gaming environment.

Gabe was clearly passionate about the gaming concept and explains it as "the only force that exists without the threat of violence that makes people do irrational things."

Here's a few key takeaways I walked away with:

The definition of a game is changing and what people really want is to do something they like, something they consider fun, and/or something that makes them feel like they accomplished something.
There are three basic things to make something fun: Challenges, Leaderboards and Points - when added to any experience it changes peoples behavior.
Advice is to think about how to make an experience fun from day 1. If you’re not in a situation to do that you can still go through the experience and layer in gaming mechanics to et more engagement and interaction from your existing community.
Game mechanics involve rewarding people along their journey. You can have different metrics for success to make them feel like they are 'winning'; for example slice and dice the data - different activities can have different leaderboards and that data can be grouped by network or time.
Gaming Essentials from Gabe: It needs to be overly simple (no instructions required); you need to be able to play with one hand; you need to be able to start/stop playing at any time; and it needs to be infinitely playable.
Interesting stats - woman who are 35+ are not thought to be traditional 'gamers' however they are the demographic that drives a big portion of the gaming industry including Yahoo Games.
Gabe dropped an interesting bomb about how women don’t respond as well to 3D environments and the fact that they are not well liked by a lot of people because they are confrontational. He recommends sticking to a 2D environment like the world we live itn. He says 2D environments are easier to navigate and ultimately more flexible.

Bringing Web 2.0 to your Enterprise

2008-04-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

This was a vendor driven session presented by David Carter, CTO of Awareness. Awareness helps companies build web 2.0 communities for internal or external use.

David started off the session stating that the challenges we faced in 1988 haven't changed within an enterprise. I thought this was interesting because as much as things changed they also stay the same. We are still trying to improve collaboration, trying to connect the right people and trying to make information easier to find (that's always fun). And these challenges only get harder as the organization grows.

David continued to talk about why this is a problem internally and that "the" collaboration tool within the enterprise is still EMAIL. Why is that a problem? Well, when people leave the organization so does all of that intellectual property. Common sense for most of my readers but it's still a problem most enterprises haven't solved. There's still a need to figure out what content to pull out of email and into collaboration tools like blogs, wiki's and discussion forums.

In the case of McDonald’s, Awareness was looking for creative ways to engage people and get them to share ideas. They did this during an event registration process which simultaneously built a person's online profile and with an optional question at the end. Hundreds of people were contributing content that was then made public and shared with the rest of the organization. By doing this they removed the barrier of entry and made it very easy and convenient for people to contribute. This was one of my favorite examples and I think it can be leveraged in multiple ways to kick start a new community.

Community Building: Good, Bad, and Ugly

2008-04-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

I am at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today surrounded by hundreds of other web geeks like myself.

I started off the day at the "Community Building: Good, Bad, and Ugly" session which was moderated by Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research and included three panelists: Dawn Foster from Jive Software, Bob Duffy from Intel, and Kellie Parker from PC World and Macworld.

Here's a summary of the panel discussion:

What is the opportunity when it comes to building a community?
Communities provide the platform for your evangelists to shine and talk about your products. This builds brand loyalty and allows you to engage with this audience and also learn and get feedback from them on your company/products.

Should you build or join a community?
Both. When people come to your side you want to give them the ability to interact and engage when they are there but you also want to interact in communities where you are the subject.

What skills are needed to manage a community?
Kellie explains her role as a community manager as the host of a party. Her role is to add value by introducing people and encourage conversation with the different people who show up.
Need to be diplomatic and let negative people know that they were heard. You need to have a customer mindset and remember that you are there to serve them - not the other way around.

You need to balance being an advocate of your company to your community while being the community advocate back to your company.

What are the challenges around community building?
Intel's biggest challenge was the organization and the resources available. To get around this Bob spent a lot of time getting data and building a strong strategy - then spent a few weeks evangelizing the plan to get buy-in and support.

Dawn's challenge was getting people to come after it was built. In this situation they reached out to their influencers and evangelist and they helped spread the word. By brining them in early and giving them beta access to the site they embraced the opportunity.

Dealing with trolls or negative people, don't be quick on the trigger. Be patient and allow the community to jump in . If your evangelists jump in it is seen as much more credible.
Getting people to engage can be a challenge. In this case Kellie recommends starting with something simple that everyone has an answer to.

What's the ROI, how do you measure success?
The common answer - it's based on the objective. Intel looked at organic traffic and how much their blogs and forums are driving that traffic as well as the increased number of logins and registration. Their goal is to build a stronger, loyal customer base. Jive is looking at participation and the number of messages posted. They don't try to tie it to sales and look at the community as an awareness tool. PC World/Macworld looks at both page views and interaction with number of messages posted.

Rising Tide of Web Apps Should Lift Marketing 2.0 Boat

2008-04-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

One thing worth keeping an eye on from a Marketing 2.0 perspective is new technology that could improve or augment the technology we use. There’s no disputing that although Marketing 2.0 represents a significant change of philosophy and core marketing strategy, new technology enabling faster and more efficient communication and collaboration is at least an enabler, if not the inspiration.

It’s because of this that I’m always excited to hear about further adoption of web-based anything; whether it be a bigger piece of the pie for web-based advertising; more funding to support Web 2.0 apps; or further adoption of web-based office apps.

This week’s news that Google’s web-based applications suite will integrate with Salesforce.com’s app is nothing but good news for those of us who live and die with web-tech. Is this going to change the world over night? Of course not. But it will give a certain class of customers a much desired alternative to the Microsoft hegemony in the office apps market. More exciting than that though, it will drive adoption of the web-based office, more reliable web connections, and indirectly, adoption for the technology that makes Marketing 2.0 possible.

Pulse on the Blogosphere

2008-04-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

Here are a few recent posts that I think are worth sharing:

Matt Dickerson tells you everything you need to know about personas in his post "Developing Personas for Marketing Strategy" - Cisco's Martin Hardee's gives a inside look at Cisco's approach to personas in this post "How we Design for Cisco.com"
Charlene Li has an awesome post that every company should read about how to transition your traditional marketing group to a social media marketing group in her post "Turning radicals into revolutionaries: the key to kick-starting your social strategy"
Tamar Weinberg has a collection of upcoming web 2.0 events on a single post - very useful - "Mashable’s Guide to Upcoming Web 2.0 Conferences and Events" (BTW - I plan on attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco April 22-25)
Greg Verdino has a nice post "An Orgy of Infographics" which great visuals and interesting stats worth checking out.
Jeremiah Owyang tells outlines his 'Essential Twitter Tools" - a must read for any Twitterer.

Will Amazon's TextBuyIt be the Tipping Point for Mobile Marketing?

2008-04-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've talked about the mobile web and in my last post, I came to the conclusion that there were more questions than answers (like many things web 2.0). However I thought it made sense at the time to start building a strategy and having a web presence. And I have done just that, Cisco's mobile web has been updated to include Service Provider content and we have just started testing SMS campaigns particularly at events. The big question that we've had as we started venturing into SMS is the adoption and use given the 'mature' audience we're targeting. A recent study by ABI Research believes we may be at a tipping point with the creation of a "perfect storm of subscriber adoption" to drive mobile messaging.

Well I believe that storm just got better with Amazon's recent 'TextBuyIt' annoucement which will tip that scale even further by accelerating the adoption and comfort level with texting as a mode of communication. What's interesting about Amazon's TextBuyIt solution is that it's not 100% text based. After you text the product number or name to Amazon they call you back to confirm your order (it doesn't always have to be a purchase) however if you're just doing a price check they can send you this info via SMS. Check out the FAQs for a run down of the service.

I just tested the price check and feature and I have to admit it's pretty easy even for an amateur texter like me. Unfortunately when I tested the buy feature it didn't go as smoothly. I sent the ISDN number for the book I wanted and Amazon was able to find the title and I received a text back with the pricing info. I then sent back the code to complete the purchase followed by a message with my email address and zip code related to my Amazon account. I then received a message back from Amazon that said "We were unable to find an item matching your keywords. Place your order online at www.amazon.com." but they had just sent me the item info that I wanted. So they obviously have a few kinks to iron out but the concept is solid. I'll give them a few weeks and try it again. Either way the scale has been tipped and for that I thank Amazon because they will make my job easier.

Essentials to Web Design & Coding

2008-04-03T08:01:00.001-07:00

This is a must watch - happy Thursday!

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

2008-03-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I co-presented with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association's (SVAMA) networking breakfast. We shared the strategy, tactics and lessons learned from the recent Cisco ASR 1000 product launch where we leveraged interactive and social tools as well as social media outlets including Facebook, Second Life, blogs and discussion forums to spread its marketing message.

Here are the slides from our presentation:

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Apple Ad - Cool or Disruptive - or Both?

2008-03-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

Apple has a new Mac vs. PC ad on NYTimes.com doing a comparison of operating systems (Vista and Leopard).

From a technology stand point it's very cool and innovative - that shouldn't be surprising coming from Apple. The skyscraper on the right automatically plays a video when you land on the NY Times homepage. The "PC Guy" realizes that there's bad press on the Vista OS in the top banner so he does an "Emergency Banner Refresh" to update the ad (this is the cool and innovative part - the top banner and the side skyscraper banner are tied together and the top banner actually refreshes on queue to show a new ad).

Although it's a cool ad I think it's a little annoying and it's not inline with the whole "Web 2.0" movement of being integrated versus interruptive. I actually don't like when the ads play automatically. When I visit the NY Times website I'm there to get a news update. If the ad were related to what was on the page it wouldn't be as annoying - for example if I were reading an article about operating systems I would likely value what Mr. PC and Mr. Mac had to say but if I'm going to the site for an update about the elections its just distracting.

Now this is Apple and the cool factor lets them get away with more but I'm interested to find out how the general public reacts to this type of advertising.

Game On

2008-03-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I'm an advocate of using online games to create an engaging and fun environment for people to learn and interact with your brand. I've even questioned whether online gaming was web 2.0's killer app. Cisco's latest EDGE QUEST game was a result of my persistence on this topic and has proven to be a good investment so far. But if you're still looking for more ammo to sell this concept to your organization, iMedia Connection posted a useful article: 11 Reasons to Extend your Brand with Games. Here are the highlights:

The bottom line is we just want to have fun: According to the National Institute on Media and the Family, 35% of Americans rated video and computer games as "the most fun entertainment activity."
Online games can be viral and ubiquitous: They are portable and can be emailed, hosted on websites, syndicated, distributed to mobile phones, etc.
They deliver results: Some say that advergaming offers retention rates 10 times higher than broadcast commercials; 15-45 percent of consumers who receive an advergame actually play it, and for an impressive average of 25 minutes. (Source: YaYa LLC.)
Games and simulations are a great way to educate your prospects and customers: They also added sales to that list in the story. Cisco's EDGE QUEST game is a great example of how we made it educational but still fun and engaging.
Online games create an impetus to interact with your brand: If you're looking to build a relationship with your customer this is a good way to get to know each other in a way that "appeals to our emotions."
Online games deliver greater brand recall: It's memorable. Why? Because it's visual, interactive and engaging.
Provide greater customer insights: Customers are more willing to share personal/preference information in exchange for the ability to play a game.
Games engage the emotion to reach the intellect: You're not only drawing them in for the fun but able to deliver key info and brand messages. "It's a one-two punch."
Provide your prospect with an active (not passive) experience: Participation is required.
Multiplayer games can be the glue to build community around your brand: This is something that is probably best done with Second Life. Simulating real life environments are no longer abstract thoughts when you can illustrate it in a virtual setting.

Synchronize your brand vision across all touchpoints: Because of the portability you can "span far and wide" hence fully leveraging your investment for a large, global audience.

Why Everyone Should be on LinkedIn

2008-03-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

I am participating in the WOMEN Unlimited leadership program and have found myself becoming a LinkedIn advocate. I think that everyone should have a profile on LinkedIn. People have asked me what the value is if they are not looking for a job. To that I simply tell them how I use LinkedIn:

It's a convenient place to store my most current resume. I update it as my career changes so when I am ready for the next opportunity I don't have to go hunting in my folder list for the last doc I created.
It's a great way to collect, track, and present referrals. When you are ready to make a move, your new position will typically ask for three references. Now I can also provide a link to my LinkedIn profile which includes a number of endorsements that I've collected throughout my career. I maintain this vigilantly - every time someone I work closely with moves out of my group or if I move to a new position I will ask for endorsements to keep my profile fresh.
Networking is a key benefit. Just about everyone is on LinkedIn and when you live in the valley people are moving to new positions all the time. LinkedIn offers a convenient way to build and stay in touch with your professional network.
If you're at all interested in building an online presence, LinkedIn is a good start since your information can be searchable. Plus you'll get a vanity link (ie. www.linkedin.com/in/lasandrabrill) that you can reference in bios or in your resume which also makes your personal brand that much more 2.0.

For more uses and benefits of LinkedIn check out Maureen Caplan Gray's post which also provides examples of how she leverages LinkedIn to build her business.

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

2008-03-04T22:19:00.000-08:00

Part of the reason I've been a lazy blogger lately is that I have been consumed with launching "the most powerful compact router every created" - the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers. It's been a fun launch and we pulled out all of the web 2.0 stops creating a Virual. Viral. Visual. launch. Here's a laundry list of how we leveraged Web 2.0:

Pre-Launch Uber User Site - We leveraged light hearted videos on this site and posted them on YouTube to maximize visibility.
Facebook Group - This was part of the pre-launch so I was able write about this one in an earlier post and even shared our process and tips here.
Interactive 3-D Game - I would like to give kudos to the vendor - Somnio - who helped us create this very cool online game. "EDGE QUEST" offers our audience a fun and engaging way to learn about the product and interact with the Cisco brand - a no-brainer given the playing statistics of online games.
Social Media Web Widget - Again kudos to Somnio here for the development of Cisco's first web widget that 'lets our content free' by allowing users to embed it on their site (as shown below).

Social Media Release (SMR) - It's been nearly a year since I stumbled across and wrote about SMRs. What make them different from a traditional release? It's the approach and the fact that a SMR leverages and highlights all of the social aspects of the announcement.
Second Life Presence - We were able to leverage Second Life pre-launch by hosting a countdown party and post launch by walking through a product demo.
Other Stuff - We also leveraged sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Reddit and StumbleUpon - we also have a focused blogger outreach program and a pretty cool looking launch page.

Want to know more about this launch? I'll be presenting on March 26 with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silcon Valley American Marketing Association to share processes, best practices and results.

New Study Reports 96% Success Rate of Web 2.0 Technologies

2008-02-27T21:52:00.000-08:00

Awareness Networks released study, "Trends in Adopting Web 2.0 for the Enterprise in 2007," based on 112 participants and here are the highlights:

More than half of enterprise-size organizations utilize Web 2.0 technologies (54 percent), as do 74 percent of companies with less than 500 employees.
The majority of respondents using Web 2.0 technologies employ a combination of internal- and external-facing tools (64 percent).
Blogs are the most used Web 2.0 technology (selected by 87 percent of respondents), followed by communities, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking.
Of companies that use Web 2.0 technology 37 percent are allowed to use social networking sites for business purposes at work.
The most successful uses of Web 2.0 technologies in their organizations are blogs (44 percent), communities (42 percent) and wikis (39 percent).
Ninety-six percent report that all Web 2.0 technologies they’ve used have been successful, with 83 percent reporting no clear failures.
Two-thirds of respondents say limited internal resources to deploy the technology is the biggest obstacle in adopting Web 2.0 technologies. 53 percent say they don't know what social media can do for their company including 73 percent of senior executives - and 23 percent (or nearly one in four) of HR decision makers are unfamiliar with Web 2.0 technologies.
Looking for proof of success? 91 percent of respondents report that internal-facing online social media will improve communication and collaboration and 47 percent of respondents plan to deploy an internal-facing community in 2008 or 2009.

The Inside Scoop to Creating a Facebook Group

2008-02-20T22:41:00.000-08:00

Richie Fitz commented in my earlier post Cisco got Facebooked asking about the set-up process and tips - here's what I can offer:

Set-up was easy. What we did was we set the group to 'private' initially so we could get it ready before the initial public launch (kinda like working in a staging environment). Everything but the title can be edited so make sure you choose your title carefully because it's final!
Grassroots start. Because we decided against using one of Facebook's sponsored groups, marketing and promotion was up to us. We started by having the core group of administrators invite their 'friends' to join - then the viral nature of Facebook kicked in as people joined and their networks were notified. We also referenced the Facebook group to people who register for the March 4th event on the uber user site.
Have a plan. We have a plan to update the group every week for at least the next 3-months. In week one we introduced Cupid along with a number of discussion topics, week two we introduced a new character, the Stork - complete with pictures and videos and we have more planned in the coming weeks (stay tuned).
Be social and be open. If you're going to create a group on a social media site you have to be willing to open Pandora's box and allow users to participate. We created a top 20 "Internet Addicts" list that encourages users to generate ideas and get recognized if their idea is selected. Also be ready to respond back to users when appropriate - don't be a deaf ear.

Join the group to see for yourself!

Cisco got Facebooked!

2008-02-15T08:06:00.001-08:00

I'm excited to announce that I was part of a team that launched a new Facebook group for Cisco Systems: Cisco Support Group for Internet Addicts. It's a fun group playing off the recent Über User campaign to promote - well - that's sort of a secret until March 4th so for now it's to promote the big event that announce how "life on the network will be better for everyone."

I know there are other marketers who occasionally read this blog - I'd be interested in any feedback (or suggestions) good or bad on the campaign and the set-up of the Facebook group. Also I hope that you'll join the group and participate in some of the discussions.

Lastly, in the light of the Valentine's Day (even though I'm a day late), I'd like to introduce Cupid, the Infatuation Specialist - enjoy!

Life in Real Time

2008-02-12T20:43:00.001-08:00

Ryan Kuder twittered his last day at Yahoo! as they gave him the boot. You get a play-by-play update of this day from getting the news to backing up his files to getting his phone confiscated.

What's interesting about this is how real-time every aspect of our lives can be. Every meeting, every event, every conversation could be documented in seconds with the quick movement of one's thumbs across the keyboard on their phones. A private conversation with a customer or a meeting with an analyst can be 'Twittered' at anytime and posted for the world to see. This illustrates yet another way Web 2.0 is changing the way we communicate.

For marketing professionals the only thing scarier than someone twittering something negative about one of our campaigns is no one twittering anything at all.

Yahoo & Microsoft Deal is a Non Starter

2008-02-10T23:53:00.000-08:00

Think Yahoo is worth more than 44B? Well, they think so which is why they will be officially rejecting Microsoft's offer tomorrow. I think this is a blessing in disguise for Microsoft because I don't see how two struggling companies equal a stronger one and Yahoo comes with a lot of baggage. As for Yahoo I think this may be the best offer they get as their downward spiral is not going to increase their market share with time.

The Dog & Pony Show is Over

2008-02-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

Cluetrain Rule #16: Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Unfortunately, at least in my experience this is a rule that many marketers often break. It goes against everything we've learned in school - we've been trained to spin, position and drop plenty of buzzwords. Now it's time to unlearn these skills. I know it's easier said than done but if you're looking for ways to hint to your marketers that this no longer works and you think little humor will work try sending them this IBM video:

Pulse on the Blogosphere

2008-02-06T22:18:00.000-08:00

StumbleUpon Takes the Social Bookmarking Lead
I can't say I'm surprised but StumbleUpon wins the ProBlogger popularity contest with 40% of the vote, del.icio.us had 21% and Digg had 19%. Are you still trying to figure out how to get 'stumbled'? Read The Guide.

Blogger Tips - How to Get Noticed
Whether your a new blogger or an old timer this quick post with three main tips is worth a read. If you looking for more ideas to gain popularity check out this top 50 list. Once you start putting these tips to work you'll want to measure your success right? Well check out this post for a good framework for for success.

Adobe Wants You to Share
Sharing, collaborating and doing it online is the trend of the decade and Adobe surely can't be left out in the cold. Their new web service - Adobe Share - allows you to share docs online. Check out this post for a product review and product comparison.

MySpace Follows in Facebook's Footprints
On Tuesday MySpace launched it's own developer site allowing anyone to build apps onto their platform. Is it too little too late? I don't think so but we'll just have to wait and see...

Reputation Marketing
What a great post by Paul Dunay - this one liner sums it up "A reputation that took decades to build can be threatened by a single event." Read his post for a three-step approach to that could save your reputation.

Can You Handle the Truth?
Matt Dickman doesn't think so and I have to agree - the biggest challenge corporations have with Social Media is letting go because they are afraid this "truth" will surface. What they fail to realize is that they are already surfaced. Ok, let me stop before I get on a rant - check out Matt's post for suggestions on how to get your social media feet wet.

Web 2.0 Expo - Session Summaries Part 2

2008-02-03T22:07:00.000-08:00

In my last post I only gave a summary for 2 of the 5 sessions I attended. Here I will provide key takeaways from the following sessions: Social Advertising and Social Media, Widgetizing the Web and Designing the Mobile Web.

Social Advertising and Social Media

Moderated by Barbara Coll, Founder and Search Specialist at WebMama with the following panelists: Cam Balzer, Vice President of Emerging Media at Doubleclick Performics, Rajiv Parikh, CEO of Position2 and Kent Lindstrom, President of Friendster.

Cam was a big promoter of advertising on social media sites where 20% of the internet visits reside. He specifically used Facebook as an example where he touted the ability to target your ads based on demographics and geography as well as keywords based on profile content. You can run target counts from the Facebook site without having to pay any ad costs here.

Rajiv promoted TubeMogul where from one site you can have your videos posted to multiple sites including YouTube, MySpace, Google, Yahoo!, MetaCafe, and Revver. Rajiv also provided some obvious and useful tips when it comes to advertising:

Know your target audience
Develop content and apps that appeal to the audience
Reward helpful and valuable users (ie. those who contribute)
Be consistent
Continually optimize

Kent talked about Friendsters popularity with 10B page views/month with an average engagement of 220 minutes/month however he took the opposing view of Cam and questioned the ability to effectively advertise to this audience for the following reasons:

The state that users are in - the are not there to buy
Ability to create inventory
Quality of targeting - "we know a lot but it's not always valuable"

Widgetizing the Web

Named moderator was Neil Patel, Internet Marketing Consultant and PronetAdvertising however he didn't play that role and instead just took up a seat on stage. Panel speakers included Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring, Pradeep Javangula, CTO of Tumri and Gary Baker, CEO of ClipBlast!.

Unfortunately this session was a waste of time. It had no structure and even the panelists bored and uninterested - at one point is looked like the moderator was dozing off. I ended up taking this time to catch up on a few emails...

Designing the Mobile Web

Moderated by Julie Ask, Vice President & Research Director of Jupiter Research. The panelists included Barbara Ballard, Founder & President of Little Springs Design, Ain Indermitte, Senior Developer Relations Manager of Forum Nokia and Brand Lassey of Mozilla.

I thought Julie did a great job moderating this session although I heard others say she was a bit combative towards the panelists. I found it entertaining and she kept the session on topic and didn't let the panelists dance around a question.

> Why go mobile?

Brad shares the growth of mobile access by telling us know that more first time internet connections came from a phone as opposed to a PC and argued that since this is their first experience with the internet it's worth the investment to ensure it's a good one. He also mentioned that Barnes & Nobel and Amazon have been mobile since 1999 (I thought that was interesting). Although on the flip side he pointed out that less than 5% of phones in the US offer a browser experience.

Barbara says it only makes sense for the "head" (not the long tail) and it just depends on who and where your users are. She also made the point that if your targeting India the answer is a definite 'yes.'

Ain talked about Nokia's mobile offering and says that there are now phones that retail for under $100 that offer internet browsing. This will surely effect that 5% number that Brad mentions within the next few years. He also talked about the enhanced web experience that can come from a mobile phone based on location services and the fact that users are voice and camera enabled.

> How many mobile users are looking for specific information vs.. surfing the web?

Brad - Users want to get information and they want to get it fast.

Barbara agreed which is why it's important to optimize the site upfront for mobile users but at the same time, she warns not to lock users out of the full site and to offer links for more information.

> How much should people allocate to building a mobile web?

This ended up being a repeat to the first question and the answer boils down to 'it depends' - if your users are mobile that you should definitely have a mobile site but if they are not then it probably doesn't make sense. There is also some degree of strategy and how having a mobile site will effect your brand.

> What does a 'smaller' mobile site need?

Here are a few tips from the panelists: Less is better and make sure to put your key messages at the top. Design for 'blind users.' Barbara recommended Little Springs Design. There was a small debate on the use of apps but my conclusion is that most phones aren't ready for them yet so don't waste your time/money but it's a space worth following especially if your users are mobile.

The most important point - don't just shrink your site, you need to build from scratch.

> What does Mozilla's mobile browser and roadmap look like?

The engineering effort has been launched
There will be a new look and user interface
Integrate with desktop Firefox with added ' send to phone' options
Fully support AJAX and trying to work with Adobe for Flash support

That pretty much sums up this event. Although I am a big fan of WebGuild I have to admit I wasn't impressed by the overall schedule and organization. Next time I hope they'll take things a little deeper rather than trying to pack the day with 45-minute sessions that just scratched the surface.

Web 2.0 Expo - Session Summaries Part 1

2008-01-30T22:13:00.000-08:00

Although the WebGuild Web 2.0 conference started out strong I can't say it stayed that way the rest of the day. With each session being only 45-minutes it was hard to get past the basics that I think most people in the room are already comfortable with. Also the quality of moderators ranged from - 'why are you even here' to 'stop badgering the panelists' to 'great way to keep the conversation going.'

I attended 5 sessions, here are my key takeaways for the first two: Community Building and Social Media Apps in the Enterprise (I'll get to the others in my next post).

Community Building

Moderated by Tom Corthrel, Vice President of Lithium with the following panelists: Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Socializr, Scott Wilder, General Manager of Small Business Online Communities at Intuit and Sylvia Marino, Executive Director of Community Operations at Edmonds.com.

The session started off asking what platform the panelists had used to build their communities. Both Intuit and Edmonds.com had parts of their communities built with Web Crossing. Edmonds.com also uses MovableType 4 for their blogs - everything else was homegrown and in Socializr's case open source.

When asked the open ended question of how they define success it came back to the customer. The ultimate goal in each case was to enhance the customers experience and give them the information they are looking for. Here are a few specifics of what that broke down to:

Resolution Rates - the ability for users to solve user problems

User Engagement - how well the content was consumed

Community Enablement - allowing customers to build their own community and share resources with them

Then there was the question anyone who has tried to create a community has struggled with - how do you get people engaged and how do you motivate your thought leaders (particularly within the corporation)? Sylvia brought up the fact that Microsoft product managers are actually rated against the online product ratings. I personally like this approach and think it's the best way to get everyone thinking about the customer first - all of the time. Other softer approaches are to give people 'points for participation' and hope that the self gratification is enough to keep them engaged. Although I agree with Scott that a little hand holding can go a long way and of course Jonathan's point that you need to make it easy is a must.

Social Media Apps in the Enterprise

Moderated by Sylvia Marino, Executive Director of Community Operations at Edmonds.com with the following panelists: Anshu Sharma, Senior Director of Platform Strategy at Salesforce.com, Robert Rueckert, Senior Investment Manager at Intel Capital and Ajay Gandhi, Senior Director of Enterprise Social Computing at BEA Systems.

This session was focused around how enterprises use social media apps internally to communicate with each other. BEA Systems seems to have what many people talk about - a Facebook/LinkedIn-like platform that allows employees to find experts related to a specific topic. They do this primarily with tag clouds and ranking functionality. Although he admits it was a bit of a challenge to change people's behavior to do some of the "work" by tagging the content - the reputation-effect ended up being the motivator that got people on the bandwagon. With the "Semantic Web" some of this can be done automatically with search terms that were used to find the content (that would be cool).

An interesting point that Ajay brought up is the organizational complex that an app like this can create. When the new grad joins and is active in the internal communities and looking like the expert how is his/her boss going to feel about that? Maybe you don't need such a structured hierarchy anymore - one idea that Ajay brought up was the ability to capture knowledge and use semantics to recommend the right mix of people for a project team. Hmmm...do I hear enterprise 3.0? I wonder how long it will take us to get there.

I really like one key point that Anabu made around 'security' - it sometimes seems like IT has taken security precautions so far that it has handicapped some corporations. When challenged about security, Anabu asked his IT group what their security policy was on email and phone calls. These are two modes of communication that employees within the enterprise have the ability to freely communicate with each other with "no control" of the content that gets out. His point: don't over think social media apps.

Break Blogging at the Web 2.0 Conference & Expo

2008-01-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm attending the WebGuild Web 2.0 Expo and it's been an entertaining start. My favorite keynote speaker was Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. Although their site is anything but 2.0 - in fact Newmark said they were given too much credit by even calling it 1.0 and said it was more 0.1 (funny and true). Yet they haven't needed the fancy web design and features to build their 10B page views per month. The secret - "build a culture of trust" - "people need simple starting forward fast stuff that doesn't waste time" according to Newmark. Users of Craigslist can confirm that's the experience they expect and get from the site. What I really liked most about Newmark is that he's not going to sell out - he could be making way more money selling ads or even selling the company to the hungry eBay (who has managed to gain a small stake in the company) but Craigslist has been able to stay true to themselves and their mission.

The other keynote speaker was Gil Penchina of Wikia. Although I had seen wikia pages come up in my search results I was unaware of their mission - to extend the concept of Wikipeidia, an online encyclopedia to an online library. I was particularly interested in their initiative take search opensource. They have made progress Grub.org and their goal is to make the tools and algorithms open. Since Yahoo couldn't hold their ground maybe Wikia is the right company to give Google a run for their money?

New Media - Same ol' Mistakes

2008-01-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

Marketers are still trying to apply old rules to the new game. Thinking online video ads can be approached like TV ads is a mistake. In fact, a recent study noted that half of all respondents stopped watching online videos once they encountered in-stream advertisements (I know I would have done the same). Expecting viewers to sit through a 15-30 second commercial before getting to the actual content is not realistic in the online world. Heck, people don't even like watching commercials on TV and thanks to DVRs 53% of people don’t have to.

As with everything 2.0 there are some marketers that do this better than others -- those who are experimenting with using just a corner of the screen or placing the ads in separate screens all together are headed in the right direction. I think that there is a place for online video advertisements but we need stop thinking it's just a new kind of TV and come to the boardroom with a fresh new approach. The focus needs to be about making the ads relevant and non-disruptive.

Web 2.0 Predictions for 2008

2008-01-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

As I wake up from my holiday hibernation I've been thinking about what the web 2.0 market is going to look like over the next year. So here are my predictions for 2008:

Take it to Go. The iPhone was just the tip of the iceberg. Mobility is going to be increasingly popular and I think we'll see new and innovative ways to mobilize information.
Consolidation - Mergers & Acquisitions. Already this year Plaxo put up their For Sale sign - I'll be particularly interested in how this one turns out since they are one of the few players with a business focus. However I think this is just one of many sales and/or merges we'll see in 2008 - along with a few IPOs.
Social Networking Off to the Niches. MySpace and Facebook made their point with millions of users actively sharing, discussing and connecting with each other. With success comes followers - I think we're going to see a lot of 'social networks' popping up and that by the end of 2008 there will be a network for everyone (including everyone in business).
Corporations Learn to Exhale - a Little. I still think we have a ways to go before most companies can be as open as Sun but this year we'll move from 'innovators' to 'early adopters' as F500 companies get closer to crossing the 'marketing 2.0' chasm.
Widgets go Corporate. Widgets and web apps have entered the mainstream B2C market - what commercial company doesn't have one? In 2008 widgets will start to enter the corporate world - I think we'll see some business apps on Facebook too.
Advertising Business Model Experimentation. Publishing companies are still trying to figure out how to best monetize the proliferation of user generated content. I think we'll see a few business models introduced and tested before we get it right. Which of course the market will change again.
Second Life gets Competition. Despite the buzz and hype of Second Life I don't think they've moved fast enough to simplify the experience of virtual worlds for the masses leaving the door open for entry. I think we'll see a another major player in this space who will give Linden Labs a run for their money.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

Marketing with Widgets

2007-12-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

It’s raining widgets! But we knew that already. They have taken over Facebook, are being adopted by Facebook’s competitors, and now media companies are catching on and starting to use them as ads known as Google Gadgets. A few months ago I posted some ideas and examples and even in just a few months the widgets have advanced and are being used in even more creative ways so I'd like to add to that original list with by expanding on the idea of a microsite widget.

Like the Google Gadget examples this type of implementation can go a long way beyond just advertising. I see this particularly useful for large websites where you can cross promote sections of your website. For example you can create a microsite of your products area and place it on the solutions area of your site. A product widget may include product shots, product datasheets, customer testimonial videos and news or reviews about the product. Mash it! You can also mashup the idea of a widget with an online game and include a game in the widget. This enhances the experience of your user who will not have to toggle back and forth between different sections of your site while at the same time making your site more interactive. Partner or office locators are other examples where this would be valuable.

Assuming you include an embed code in your creation, you can then leverage this same widget in your Social Media Release. Publishers and bloggers are then equipped with an easy way to enhance their story with an interactive widget. Partners and resellers who also promote your products can easily use the embed code to include the widget on your site.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you track it? Yes, it is hosted on your site so you can track impressions, interactions and embeds.
Can you update it? Again since it's hosted on your site when you update the content it is broadcasted to all of the sites that have picked up the widget.
Is it proven? No, it's new - there is little data to say the people prefer widget over traditional approaches but there's certainly a lot of buzz around widgets and there are always bigger returns for first movers. Go out on a limb in 2008 and see what happens!

Social Networking Gets a Suit and Tie

2007-12-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that Social Networking is growing. In 2006 over half of B2B technology buyers visited social networking sites (2006 comScore World Metrix). The top business players in the space are LinkedIn and Plaxo and they are driving demand by delivering consistent product enhancements:

LinkedIn's Half Open Platform
LinkedIn will be opening their nework to "allow developers to build applications that run inside your LinkedIn account (via OpenSocial) and the far more useful and interesting part — ways to pull your LinkedIn data out and use it elsewhere."

What I like about their approach is that they are sticking to their roots. They are a 'professional network' so rather than taking the Facebook 'apps gone wild' approach, LinkedIn will be keeping tabs on the applications it allows on its network. What does this mean? You won't have to worry about hamburger fights and karate-chops.

Plaxo vs. Flock
I wrote about Flock in an earlier post - you know, the Social Media Web Browser. Well Plaxo (with it's Plaxo Pulse feed aggregator feature) has a different approach to keep you connected to all of your social networks. They've announced a new Outlook connector - being that Outlook is primarily a business application you can guess who this is built for (yet more proof point that Social Networking is not just for friends and teenagers). What's cool is that it's embedded into the what is still the primary communication tool in business - email. Enabling you to 'get a pulse' on your contact before sending them an email will make your message more meaningful therefore deepening your relationship with that contact. Are you ready to give your Outlook a pulse?

Marketing with Facebook

2007-12-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

Still not convinced about the uptake of social networking? According to Alexa metrics, half of the top 10 sites in the world are social networking sites including YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5 and Orkut.

I think Facebook offers a huge potential when it come to marketing. One out of 7 web visitors went to Facebook in the month of August. Some companies already see the value of Facebook and use it as a way to communicate to customers (like a new kind of email). However this seems to make the most sense for B2C customers - this is what I'm told. Although I agree that B2C companies have the most to gain I don't think it's a channel that B2B customers want to rule out.

First off, let's get over the myth that Facebook is for college kids. Not anymore! Over half (56%) of Facebook users are over 25 and 45% of those are over 35! They are likely to be college educated and employed with mid-level management positions. They may not be your decision makers but they certainly are influencers. Therefore shouldn't you be talking to these people? With such a low barrier to entry (free account set-up) - what do you have to lose, besides a little time being social?

Okay, so if you're ready to take the red pill, this presentation from Charlene Li of Forrester provides additional demographics, case studies and best practices for marketers.

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Round up

2007-12-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

Fast Company does a nice job of covering the history and future of blogging from a revenue generating, not traffic generating, perspective. They also provide a list of the most popular blogs as determined by Technorati’s link counting system. Definitely some interesting bloggers out there.
Latest update on OpenID. Bringing pretty robust identity management features to the social web. I’d suggest reading the article and the comments as some really great questions that were not in the article are addressed. Until now, the benefits of “single sign on” have been confined to proprietary domains.
More affirmation that browser-based, casual gaming is gaining steam. For those thinking of out-of-the-box ways to use Web 2.0, gaming is a great option as I discussed previously here.
Farhad Manjoo reports on the ongoing Facebook/Beacon debacle that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has finally given in and will allow users to turn Beacon completely off – as opposed to the partial concession made last week.

Facebook Ruins Christmas

2007-11-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month Facebook announced their new social ad program called Beacon that sends and receives your personal information to and from advertisers that will allow them to make money in several different ways. It allows them to use your endorsement (without you actually giving it) to your Facebook network. It also allows them to send you more targeted ads, increasing your worth to their advertisers. It’s different from other services that try to do the same thing because it doesn’t obfuscate your information. It actually sends your purchase history and clicking history to advertisers in the Beacon program.

An unfortunate example of how this can backfire surfaced when Sean Lane' purchase of his wife’s Christmas gift was broadcasted to over 700 people – including his wife.

Thankfully, organizations like MoveOn have pushed Facebook so hard, they got them to fall over and add an opt-in option giving the user more control over what gets published. So now your purchase information might not be sent to your friends and a bunch of ad-buyers, but they’re still collecting it! This doesn’t make me comfortable at all. It didn’t leave some other people comfortable either, so they built a plug-in to Firefox that blocks Beacon from sending/receiving.

I’m a Facebook fan and although I’ll continue my membership, I have to say this had made me reluctant to click through Facebook ads and will make more more aware of my privacy options when it comes to online purchases. I think they’ve crossed a line here and although they’re now back-pedaling, their willingness to sell me out by violating privacy in such a way is not at all encouraging.

Virtual Marketing is a Reality!

2007-11-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

First it was virtual worlds, then virtual shopping now it's virtual workspaces! Qwaq, a company that creates 3D collaborative environments for meetings just grew their piggy bank by $7M to grow the company. Similar to Second Life it uses avatars so that each person has a virtual self - but with the focus on an actual 'workspace' there is a focus on sharing and collaborating office apps including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and others. Their initial customer list which includes BP, Intel and HP, is impressive and it validates the growing interest in virtual 3D worlds.

Virtual Worlds and 3D animations is also a growing trend in marketing. Here are a few things that I'm aware of:

3D Product Demos
Already companies like Cisco, Intel and even smaller companies like Mirapoint offer 3D product views. The virtual products are also starting to replace those that get shipped out for roadshows and tradeshows with the help of companies like Kaon Interactive which bring the interaction on a large touch screen so your products can be there without really being there.

3D Holographic Presentations
Musion Systems takes that a step further with true Star Trek 'Beam me up, Scotty' type of functionality where you can have a 3D holographic image of a person appear next to you on a live stage - even if that person is thousands of miles away!

Virtual World Events
A number of companies are hosting events on Second Life - here's a machinima video of a Second Life event I was involved with when we announced Cisco's Connected Life Contest winners.

Virtual Websites
Brookstone's 3D store is a good example of this for B2C situations. The Second Life sites like the one Microsoft has can also be considered a virtual website (or "island").

Demonstration of Brookstone's 3D Store

2007-11-27T22:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a show-and-tell demonstration of Brookstone's 3D store.

Here are some related links for more information:

Brookstone Website

Brookstone 3D Store

Previous post mentioned in video

First Impressions of Flock – The Social Web Browser

2007-11-20T09:54:00.000-08:00

After reading about the Flock release in this blog post which nicely outlines the features, I downloaded the new ‘Social Web Browser’ to give it a test drive. Here are my first impressions:

The good: For a social media nut like myself this is pretty cool. Similar to Plaxo Pulse it aggregates all of my social networking profiles but they’ve done it in the browser – a tool that I use everyday. So I can stay connected to my social graph while doing my daily activities.

The bad: It feels busy. There’s a lot going and it’s a little distracting with all the buttons, options and links. I think it would appear less busy if they would have chosen muted colors for all of the buttons and links. Also they didn’t think about integrating other RSS readers, they only gave the option to use the browser as an aggregator. I’m pretty happy with Google Reader and would have liked to simply login and access all of my feeds through a widget or something.

Favorite Feature: The drag and drop web clipboard – this is a place to temporarily save images, links, and even text. Today I often use an email window to save things I want to go back to that day and this may serve as an interesting alternative.

The bottom line: I like it enough to keep using it –for now. I’m going to give it a week and see if I can make this an everyday browser or as Scott Gilbertson says, a ‘weekend browser’. It will all depend on if I actually use the ‘social’ features and if all of the options don’t distract me from doing my job.

If you find that you have a little extra time between holiday shopping this weekend I say give Flock a try and see what you think. If you’re already a user of Flock I’d love to hear about your experience with it.

Is Web 2.0 Killing the Killer App?

2007-11-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

Web 2.0 definitely has buzz, but has it become so prolific that it’s now becoming the preferred way to communicate electronically? Blasphemy you say? Not according to this article from this dude at Slate, who says the younger generation (under 25) already thinks of email as too slow and detached to be used for most communication. Facebook, text messages, and instant messaging seem faster, more efficient, and let’s face it, more interactive than traditional email.

When telephones achieved critical mass, letter writing quickly lost the mantle of most efficient means of communication. It was still better for delivering messages, but that’s a subset of communication. When trying to get in touch with someone quickly and efficiently, the phone was faster, cheaper, and more convenient. Letter writing didn’t die, but the US Postal Service definitely took Alexander Graham Bell off their Christmas card list.

It’s possible we could be seeing a similar, albeit less dramatic, transition today from email to a more efficient means of communicating. It would be impossible to list all the benefits email has had on the way we work and socialize so I won’t even try. I will say though that due to our fondness for it, we probably overlook a few of the more obvious drawbacks:

only about 10% of my email is relevant
asynchronous communication by definition is clunky and unsatisfying for most uses
I have multiple email accounts, and so does everybody else I know so getting someone a message is a bit of a guessing game

IMs and text messages can work for a lot of my basic daily communication without the drawbacks listed above. Is email still useful? Of course, but we’re coming to a point where it may be used more for message delivery versus actual communication, which in this case should be viewed as two different things.

What does that mean to marketers? It really depends on your audience and the nature of your campaign. Does your campaign rely on communicating with customers or delivering messages? Is your audience still relying on email for most of their communication or are they having conversations in social networks?

Whole Foods 'CYA' Blog Policy - Don't Do it Or Else...

2007-11-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

Back in July Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught making inflammatory comments about a potential acquisition target and arguing optimistically for his own company under a pseudonym on a financial message board. He later apologized for his actions and slipped quietly back into corporate obscurity, albeit with a lot of egg on his face.

This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen social networking like forums or blogging get someone in trouble, and you can bet it won’t be the last. The interesting thing to watch here is how these mistakes are handled afterwards. The Whole Foods example is such a good one because we’re able to see exactly what he did, exactly what the public consequences were, and now, exactly how his company is dealing with it.

Whereas most of the attention will continue to be paid to corporate blogging and it’s risks and rewards, not as much attention is given to the fact that the advent of social networking means that all of a company’s employees now have a public identity, and like it or not these people and their opinions will absolutely reflect on the company they work for.

In John Mackey’s case, Whole Foods is following what looks like a pretty vanilla “CYA” plan of protecting themselves from something like this happening again. According to Terrence Russell of Wired, a source close to the matter says, “company executives can no longer post on blogs, message boards, or chat rooms about company matters -- anonymous or otherwise.”

Unfortunately for Whole Foods and other companies following the head in the sand strategy, they’re not only fighting a losing battle but it’s a battle they shouldn’t be fighting anyway. In previous posts I’ve mentioned the wisdom of enabling and educating your employees rather than muzzling them but apparently one lesson in risk was enough to set the table at Whole Foods. As I see it there are two big problems with what they’re doing:

As customers continue to provide feedback and suggestions online in forums of their own choosing, employees should be empowered to respond and trained to represent the company responsibly.

As their employees continue to embrace social networking, Whole Foods has just forfeited the voice of their most passionate advocates in the most efficient and effective communications medium in history

These are not easily quantifiable risks, but potential opportunity costs. These problems wouldn’t result in Whole Foods being susceptible to embarrassment and an SEC investigation like Mackey’s faux pas did, but could very well result in them losing touch with their customers, losing market share to competitors and going out of business in a market where razor thin margins are par for the course. It seems like there ought to be some way to mitigate both sets of risks with a well thought out strategy that empowers employees while mitigating risk. Good thing for us companies like Sun are showing us how.

Wal-Mart's Social Media Marketing Transgressions

2007-11-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

When it comes to Social Media Marketing there are few failure examples to learn from. Mainly because it's so new but also because many failures get quietly swept under the rug. Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, their mistakes are in the limelight but that gives us the opportunity to learn from them. Here are some pitfalls they could have avoided:

False Transparency - They got caught red-handed for staging thier blog (Wal-Marting Across America) leaving their readers feeling cheated and lied to. The couple who was RVing across the US turned out to be a PR stunt.

Build it and They Will Come Mentality - Last summer Wal-Mart built their own social networking site for teens. Did they really think they could compete head-to-head with MySpace? With more than 3% of their traffic coming from MySpace at that time, why not optimize that relationship and go where the community already exists? Doh! After just 10-weeks the site was taken down...

Obsessed with Control

Their recent Facebook campaign is anything but open and genuine. If you're going to leverage a social media platform like Facebook you have to be willing to open the kimono. Instead they decided to keep a lock down on comments and disabled the forum feature leaving visitors irritated and upset.
They are now threatening their customers from posting Black Friday ad posts. Why would they go to such extremes - they should be rewarding people who want to talk about them - especially since it's not threatening to their business. Reward your customers for having a voice - don't reprimand them.

This realm of Marketing 2.0 is new for all of us and there will certainly be a trial-and-error period but I think these mistakes could have been avoided with a little research and education. I gotta give Wal-Mart credit for not giving up and at least one attempt has worked - reviews and ratings - let's just hope they can handle the negative reviews. It’s clear though that at this point, they’re not getting it. Marketing 2.0 is about enabling conversations and they don’t seem to be interested in that. Quite the opposite in fact. They’re still acting like it’s a different kind of radio.

Marketing 2.0 - More than Just the “New Radio”

2007-11-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

When Richard Nixon prepared for the first televised debate in history with up and comer John F Kennedy, he went in having advantages in experience, debating skill, and popularity among voters. Unfortunately, none of that could help save the Nixon camp from losing the debate to the young Kennedy who prepared much differently than Nixon. Whereas Nixon prepared for the televised debate like it was a different kind of radio, Kennedy knew it was a different medium altogether, and would require different rules and a new strategy. That recognition earned Kennedy a victory that turned out to be a tipping point in the course of his campaign, ultimately victorious over the more seasoned and savvy Nixon.

I believe that we’re now witnessing a similar Darwinian cycle among large marketing organizations when it comes to using Web 2.0. Much like television in the early days, a certain number of companies will engage Marketing 2.0 as if it were simply a new place for old marketing. But it’s clearly not. It’s a completely new medium, with new rules and new expectations that more often than not aren’t going to be a fit for traditional marketing activities.

The next year will be an exciting time for learning about how to build more effective marketing campaigns using Marketing 2.0. The healthy investment of capital into Web 2.0 technology and the breakneck adoption rates of high profile political campaigns, both real and not so real are going to force adoption in ways that many of us in the relatively conservative corporate realm wouldn’t be able to observe if not for watching them try it. As with the transition from radio to television, and then later from television to the internet, not all new ideas are going to be destined for glory.

Most of this blog is about highlighting the ways in which companies are finding success using Marketing 2.0 tactics, but I think we can learn just as much from studying the transgressions of our peers. I'll explore that further in my next post...

Pulse on the Blogosphere

2007-10-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 Puts the Interactive into Interactive Marketing
Great post from Paul Dunay provides a good layman's term definition of Web 2.0 that is right on - the title says it all.

Consumers Trust Online Reviews
It's no surprise that consumer reviews are valuable but knowing that they are considered Very/Somewhat credible 99% of the time stresses the importance of giving customers a voice.

StumbleUpon: The Antithesis of Google?
Although I would compare StumbleUpon with Digg or del.icio.us versus Google I do think this post gives a good definition of StumbleUpon and the value they provide.

8 Marketing Ideas from Facebook Groups
Wondering how you can use Facebook in your marketing plan? Maybe these ideas will get your creative juices flowing. The last idea - Event Related Groups - seems like an easy place to start...

Blogs are not Forums - Making them a Great Marketing Tool
Having had to give this pitch a few times I thought this post does a good job defining the difference between a blog and forum and how these two communication vehicles should be used. In a nutshell forums are a great tool to offset support costs and to get feedback on products while blogs are for conversation and relationship building.

Unity of the Web & the Desktop

2007-10-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

Mozilla and Adobe are fighting for the honors of hosting the unity of the web and the desktop.

Google Gears may have started the conversation with offline access but Mozilla & Adobe understand how users work. Whether it's an icon on your desktop, your quick launch toolbar or your start menu, that's where all of your most critical applications sit - just one click away.

Both Mozilla's Prism and Adobe's AIR claim to integrate the web platform into the desktop experience while also increasing the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware. Who can do it better - Adobe or Mozilla - we have yet to see but so far I think it's a draw.

Either way, this gets me one step deeper to leveraging webapps for richer conversations – offline and online with my customers.

IDC's Take on Social Networking

2007-10-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

In my efforts to learn more about Social Networking I also attended IDC's event, "The Hype and Reality of Social Networking" last week with analysts Karsten Weide, and Rachel Happe.

Karsten kicked off the event and had 3 main takeaways:

1. Lots of people are using Social Networks

37% of people use social networks (not including children)
Include blogs, social bookmarking and video sharing usage goes up to 77%
Add wiki's, reviews and classifieds and it increases to 87%
20% of business users actively contribute - which illustrates the importance of champions

2. Social Networks can make your business more successful

Product Research - being able to listen to what is and is not working.
eCommerce - Which products are good for me? User reviews allow for what?
Marketing - but Karsten warns 'be careful, don't overdue it'
Product Support - allow customers to help each other find work arounds and fix bugs
Product Development
Advertising - because there's a lot of inventory, there's a big revenue opportunity
PR - If you're willing to open the kimono you'll gain credibility but if you start censoring, it won't work

3. The Time to Act is Now - Here are six golden rules to get started:

There are first mover advantages - act now!
Target young demographics, grow from there (consumer demographic is 25 and younger)
Foster champions for viral content and marketing. Reward them publicly - even if you just give them a title.
Utility - enable user generated content, interaction, productivity. Give people something to do and focus on making their lives easier.
Leverage distribution, marketing, PR and brand
Leverage mobile technology - mobile access to enhance richness of social networks and the immediacy of information.

Here are the 3 takeaways from Rachel's presentation:

1. As content and information increases social networks become more valuable

Complexity drives adoption - 30-35% of business users are consuming content in Social Networks and 20% of business users are contributing content
Utility is Key - users need to get more out of it than they put in
Gathering implicit data to build a reputation over time by using explicit data through linking various profiles can increase value

2. Know and understand the type and objective of the Social Network

Enterprise - this is a directed network with a focus on collaboration. When starting an entrprise forum start with forums, then blogs - then add other communications like chat, wiki, and shared project plans. Allow the community to mature before introducing new collaborative features.
Self Service (ie. Ning) - marketing campaign and advertisement driven
Brand-Centric - conversation is specifically around the brand and sharing of content

3. There are inhibitors of Social Networks that enterprises need to address

Lack of Standards - no federated user access
Lack of Clear Member Value - do they get more out of it than they put in?
Enterprise Risk Aversion - perceived lack of control; legal concern
Unclear Information Policies - unclear guidelines for users; poor reaction from users to management decisions
Poor Understanding of Social Dynamics - low uptake due to lack of compelling value; poor or delayed reaction to community generated concerns

Overall it was a great event with good statistics to support the Social Networking rabbit hole.

The Future of Social Networking

2007-10-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

This months WebGuild meeting was focused on the Future of Social Networking. There were three panelists - Jai Shen, CTO of Rock You, Sundeep Ahuja, Founder Appfuel and Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Socialzr (or more notably the founder of Friendster).

For a pretty good play-by-play check out the Innovation Creators blog. Here I will capture my key take-aways:

According to Sundeep, Social Networking is going to become more implicit vs. explicit. This will allow us to take personalization to a new level with behavior adaptation. For example, you may have 100 friends but only 20 are 'real' friends who you interact with regularly - your network will be able to pick up on that behavior pattern and personalize your experience based on that data.

Jai makes a good point about how Social Networks need to evolve with people as they transition to different stages of their lives. He uses Friendster as an example where it was popular with high school and college students, then, everyone got married...

Sundeep's insights on monetizing things brings up the shift we're seeing throughout the web in that interaction and engagement is an increasingly important factor of measurement. Jonathan points out that while people are spending a lot of time in Social Networking sites, their intent is not to buy as it might be when they are searching for something on Google.

Forget about mobility - Jai bring us back to reality as he talks about how behind the US is when it comes to mobility. The fact that text messaging is just taking off is a sign and if that's not enough, the iPhone doesn't even support MMS

According to Jai, only 1% of Facebook apps succeed (measured by 1M users or more). Statistics like that one highlight legitimate questions about how attractive these types of applications are (or are not) as a marketing channel.

I'll be adding insights from the IDC Social Networking event that I attending this morning in my next post....

Blogging for the Environment

2007-10-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was reminded by Christian Renaud's blog post that today is Blog Action Day.

This is an initiative to get every blog to post on the environment today. The result is over 16,235 blog posts so far (and still people question the power of blogs).

Since I know I'm planning a trip for the holidays and couldn't take Christian up for his challenge. Instead, I did a little poking around and found this great site with simple actions we can all take to make a difference. It's a pretty basic list and I know I can commit to a few of these this week! Can you?

From a marketers perspective one way we can all help the environment is to stop printing collateral that ends up in the trash anyways. One creative way to do this that is in line with the web 2.0 theme is to create interactive PDFs.

On a side note, I can't help but think how a similar campaign can be run in a B2B world. It would definitely increase the buzz if you can get all your partners (maybe customers too) to blog on the same topic on the same day. Maybe a launch annoucement?

Redefining ROI

2007-10-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

According Paul Dunay, "I" no longer stands for investment. He coined a new term, "Return on Influence". When it comes to Marketing 2.0 this exactly the kind of ROI that should be measured. Influence refers to the ability to indirectly control or affect the actions of other people or things.

The time we dedicate to blogs, forums and social networks allow companies to build a more personal relationship with the the customer. These interactions have a direct impact in the tonality and overall feeling of a brand.

However the question still lingers - how do you measure it? For this I turn to Jeremiah Owyang, the web strategist guru. Jeremiah talks about 'measuring engagement' which can be defined by "the level of authentic involvement, intensity, contribution and ownership."

Now consider a mashup of these concepts. The time we invest in conversation needs to result in "authentic involvement" from our customers - they have to spend time interacting with the brand. This involvement we get the more likely we are influencing the customer and therefore improving our ROI.

Vote for Cool Software

2007-10-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

That's what Intel wants you to do with the launch of their new website called CoolSW. They are using collective intelligence to help sift through the millions of software companies to find the best one. They've created a social ranking system that allows them to find what's "Cool." I have to admit the software that currently has the most votes in the 'digital home' category is pretty cool. It's a web service that allows people to draw floor plans online, or upload images of floor plans which are converted automatically into 3D Google Earth. Would they have found this company and the many others listed with the 90K+ employees they have? Maybe eventually but they've decided to take the shorter route and rely on anyone who wants to participate in helping them identify and rate cool technology.

This isn't a new concept, people have always gathered together to share information but the internet and the advancements of Web 2.0 allow us to share this information more freely. And those who have taken advantage of this have illustrated the powerful result:

Google became the number one search engine by using 'PageRank' which uses the search behavior of millions of people to improve relevancy.
Wikipedia has become the world's largest and arguably the most accurate encyclopedia.
Innocentive opens up tough R&D problems for anyone to solve - since 2005, 58 of these tough problems have been solved by over 120,000 solvers.
Cisco's Connected Life Contest resulted in over 600 technology ideas in 3-months that will be used to drive product strategy.

It has been proven that collective intelligence works and those who have jumped on the bandwagon have the competitive advantage. How have you seen 'the power of many' used successfully?

B2B Blogging - Good Example to Learn From

2007-10-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

I talked about Sun's blogging policy in a post a couple of weeks ago and how blogging played a major role in increasing their popularity from 99th to 6th. Here I'd like to take a closer look at what they are doing.

Sun has 3614 blogs but this blog is their most popular. Why is this one so special? There are three particular things worth noting:

There's personality behind it - this is a guy you want to talk to and maybe one you'd like to meet someday.
His writing has a distinct conversational tone. Notice how he weaves in other people and links to them - this is how people talk through blogs.
Product mentions - notice how he talks about their products/solutions. It is a Sun blog after all and people aren't expecting them to ignore that fact. As long as it doesn't become a marketing brochure!

You can check out other Sun blogs here.

Social Networking - Web 1.0 or Web 2.0?

2007-10-04T08:23:00.000-07:00

I was talking with Richard Bennion, President CEO of Broadchoice about social networks and I was reminded of the USENET days. The ability to join groups and participate in discussion forums goes back to "Web 1.0" days. Users would subscribe to groups and when online their computer would upload articles to the servers they were subscribed to - of course this is back when everyone was on dial-up so there wasn't exactly instant gratification but it worked. People connected to people. Now, over 20 years later history repeats itself but this time we're calling it "Web 2.0" and it's enabled by Facebook. So can social networking really be considered "Web 2.0?"

The Power of Emotion

2007-10-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

When I see good examples of companies using social media marketing, my first inclination is typically to think about how I can apply that to my domain: corporate B2B marketing. This past weekend though I was fortunate enough to share a plane ride with a great bunch of kids who reminded me of the power of creating an emotional connection with the customer.

The kids of the Wild Orchard clan from Santa Cruz, CA were top five finalists in the Oreo Cookie Jingle contest. For Nabisco’s Oreo brand, this was a pretty straight forward play: get customers to put their own spin on Oreo’s famous jingle and if you’re in the top five – you get a free weekend trip to Fox Studios in New York. If you win, you get ten grand and more Oreo memorabilia than you can shake a stick at.

Well, the Wild Orchards came in second place, but that wasn’t really important to them. What was important was that from Santa Cruz, CA – they found a contest online, made a video, and had a blast doing it. It wasn’t just a contest to them, it was art and the exercise created an emotional connection to the Oreo brand. Their video entry on YouTube has 1300 hits, they got a trip to NY for the first time in their lives, got to meet Carson Daly, and are now the coolest kids in Santa Cruz. Happiness doesn’t begin to describe what these kids were feeling.

Much like the people who came up with the idea for the Oreo Cookie Jingle Contest, my job is to think of ways to promote my company and my company’s products in ways that connect to the customer. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a minute to appreciate the satisfaction someone gets in a well thought out contest entry. Hopefully, the creative folks who entered my contest felt the same way.

Blogging for Favorability

2007-09-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

Corporate blogs are powerful in so many ways - changing perceptions being one of them. Sun is famous for leveraging the blogosphere for goodness with their open blogging policy which encourages all employees to participate in the blogosphere. Direct communication with customers can be used as damage control if you can show customers the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when a product isn't perfect or thank them for an idea on a feature they hadn't considered. Responding to negative comments and posts offers an outlet to showcase customer service. This communication can convert a naysayer into an enthusiast and research shows that converted critics are the most enthusiastic fans (who doesn't want more fans). Here are two examples where Sun changed the tone of a customer: A Reponse from Sun and Kudos to Jonathan Schwartz - if that's not enough, take this into consideration - according to Jonathan Schwarz, president and CEO of Sun, "blogging has played a major role in the revitalization of Sun's reputation. Sun has gone from the 99th to the 6th most popular server company, largely because it has embraced authenticity and transparency in its communication initiatives”, according to the piece.

If you want tips on how to respond to negative comments and posts check out Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing blog post: A positive response to negative word of mouth.