Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Cisco Likes Facebook's Like Button

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?

Friday, May 14, 2010

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

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:


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Avoiding Social Media TMI

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.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Pulse on the Blogosphere

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.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Same ol' Voice Brand New Megaphone

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?

Friday, June 6, 2008

Building an Online Brand in 3-Steps

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.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Cisco Marketing Has Got Game

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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

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:

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

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.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Inside Scoop to Creating a Facebook Group

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!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Cisco got Facebooked!

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!

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Pulse on the Blogosphere

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.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Social Networking Gets a Suit and Tie

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?

Friday, December 7, 2007

Marketing with Facebook

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.





Thursday, December 6, 2007

Round up

  • 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.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Facebook Ruins Christmas

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.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Pulse on the Blogosphere

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.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Social Networking - Web 1.0 or Web 2.0?

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?"

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Facebook's $10 Billion Dollar Decision

Who would have guessed that Facebook's decision to open their APIs would increase their valuation by 1000% in just one year. That's the valuation Microsoft would be giving them by taking up to a 5% stake for $300-500 million.

If you can't buy them join them...it's a smart move for Microsoft since at least this way they lock out the competition, Yahoo and Google of course. But why would they be interested in Facebook in the first place? Facebook is more than just a social networking site - it's a communication platform that offers many options like social networking and community building. I actually think Facebook is more like Second Life in this way.

But what's in it for Facebook? Charlene Li nails it in her post:

Two thoughts about why Facebook would want an investment with Microsoft.
First, they already are working together. Microsoft sells the display ads that
are targeted against profile information, and will make up about half of the
$150 million in revenues Facebook will generate this year. This is part of a
multi-year agreement that will extend until 2011. And Facebook's unique
marketing value is that not only can the display ads be highly targeted at
actual profile elements, but marketers can also develop a deeper relationship
with Facebook members -- marketer relationships that Microsoft has in spades.

Second, Facebook needs to scale up a business that's both
consumer-oriented and also developer friendly. Microsoft has excellent developer
relationships and also knows a thing or two about how to build successful
consumer (and business -- watch this space carefully)
applications.
I would add one important point – BUZZ! Facebook may just hold out to see if Yahoo or Google dig a little deeper into their pockets. Do I hear a bidding war? As long as Facebook keeps the investment at 5% they have nothing to lose!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Conversational Marketing Summit – Day Two

Day two was four days ago now but it took a little longer than expected to catch up from being out of the office for a couple of days. Anyhow, here's my highlights from the summit - day two:

Case Studies: Virgin America & Dove

These were presented at different times of the day but I had an epiphany after the second case study. Although these are clearly B2C case studies I realized the rules of Social Marketing for B2B companies are essentially the same. Here’s how Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly put it:
  1. Leaning into the Frame – you need to insert yourself into conversations, no room for wallflowers.
  2. Branding Utility – make brands useful in peoples lives, if there’s no point in remember your company name, they won’t.
  3. Fundamental Goodness – products you deliver need to be good, people have more reach than ever. They won’t tell 7 people if they’re unhappy, they’ll tell 700.

This is all starting to sound like a broken record. However I was particularly moved by the second point ‘Branding Utility.’ The power of an emotional connection and the ability to make a brand useful in people’s lives is strongly tied to its ability to be social.

Dove in particular has done this very well –it’s not just soap, it’s about real women and real beauty. I was particularly moved by their pro-age (as opposed to anti-age) and self-esteem videos shown below:







The ability to make an emotional connection is no easy feat. Luckily for me Cisco’s Human Network campaign took care of the hard part, now I just need to ensure that connection is communicated in everything we do. Hmmm, can you see me thinking between the lines…

Can Big Brands Change their Approach?

This sessions started with a strong statement from Tina Sharkey of BabyCenter, “Change is about re-staffing the organization.” I’m not sure I think it needs to be this dramatic - I think change within the organization can happen if the right leadership and support exists. Although there will always be nay-sayers, I think “re-staffing the organization” may be a bit dramatic.

Richard Tobaccowala of Denou nails the biggest challenge when he said ‘you need to make today’s numbers but be relevant tomorrow.’

Tina then talks about how Johnson & Johnson acquired the talent they were missing when they purchased BabyCenter. Although they own the site they manage it as a separate un-biased community where they own no more than 15% of voice.

The CMO is being replaced by the CFO

Richard says we need to start self marketing. Marketing as we know (knew) it has become outsourced to customers and the role of the CMO is no longer needed – we need to shift to the CFO ‘Chief Facilitator Officer’ role. When it comes to budget allocation spend more on making what you make better and integrate search into everything you do.

Marketing in Social Networks

I was particularly inspired by JP Morgan Chase and how they leveraged Facebook as the platform to initiate a conversation with its customers. In fact, they created a special credit card to promote solely on Facebook and they gave people a reason to talk to each other by allowing people in the group to come together and pool award points and buy things together. But Own Van Natta warns us that some of these conversations have no end so we need to be prepared to commit for a very long time.