Archive for January, 2009

Rate the Superbowl Ads: How To Participate

Categories: MicroMediaPosted on January 31st, 2009

Last year, I kicked off a twitter game that let folks rate superbowl ads, and we collected the results from the tweets and found that the popular favorites on twitter weren’t too different than what media analysts were predicting.

We found that many enjoyed making the game interactive, by watching and critiquing the ads (more fun that just consuming) and many non-football fans were able to get into the spirit of it, (some were dragged to the superbowl parties)

I’ll be on a plane flying from Maui to SF during the superbowl (not really a loss for me) so I won’t be there to enjoy the festivities, so this year, it’s going to be bit different, as it’s being kicked off by Brian Solis (who was with me last year), Louis Gray (his post here), Guy Kawasaki, Jesse Stay, Chris Heuer, and others.

Rate the Superbowl Ads: How To Participate

1) If you want to participate, you can discuss the ads on twitter, (feel free to say why you love/hate it) and be sure to tag it: #superbowlads. Dont’ have a twitter account? start here.

2) Then when you’re done, be sure to rate your favorite ad using this survey. (notice this page will show all the tweets tagged #superbowlads.

3) Throw back a few cold ones, clown on your friends, and talk some smack on twitter and in real life! Have fun!

The results will be published later, and I’ll link to it from this post.

Posted in MicroMedia | 7 Comments »

Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 2: Most Recent Hires Got Jobs in Less Than Three Months

Categories: Job SurveyPosted on January 30th, 2009

This is part 2 of an ongoing community project to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2008 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This sample set is smaller than one would expect out of a formal research project, after multiple promotions, it was capping out at 200 respondents, and I don’t have other resources to deploy against email lists, or affiliate programs. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.

Finding 2: Most Recent Hires Got Jobs in Less Than 3 Months
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession started).

39% of the respondents who recently got a job were able to get a job within one of actively looking

33% of the respondents that recently got a job were able to do so within 1-3 months

12% shows a quick drop of respondents that recently were hired got a job 4-6 months of actively looking

11% of the respondents that recently got a job took 7-9 months of actively looking

This means that 72% of respondents were able to get a job within 3 months of actively starting to look.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

Getting a job (for those who were hired from Sept 2008 to Jan 2009) haven’t had that much of a problem doing so

For those that are concerned about layoffs, should have some ‘irons in the fire’ and keep conversations going with prospective empoyers

Haven’t started a conversation? Be active by reaching out to your immediate network with your new skills, or projects, as shown by data from finding 1

Families and individuals should at least have 3 months (preferably 6 months, I’m told) of reserve capital for living expenses if someone gets laid off

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more. I forgot to thank some folks with their ideas for questions for the survey such as Peter Kim, Bryan Person, Chris Kenton, and Charlene Li.

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: top industries hired, compensation rates, and some other interesting data cuts.

Resources: See my Web Strategy Job Board

Posted in Job Survey | 5 Comments »

Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 1: Recent Hires Got Jobs Via Referral from Friends, Colleagues, Alumni, or Family

Categories: Job SurveyPosted on January 29th, 2009

This is part 1 of an ongoing community project to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

Finding 1: Most Recent Hires Got Jobs from Referrals from Friends, Colleagues, Alumni, or Family
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession started).

Most (43%) get their jobs through their immediate online network of friends, colleagues, alumni, or family.

Although a big gap the second (12%) most used method was through online job boards or websites.

Some suggested on Twitter that in Europe or Asia this is the primary method of job seeking –unlike the highly wired online job market in US, I did not ask location question to verify.

This could also be due to the fact that my network are people already using social media and are hyper-connected to each other.

I had no idea this method would have been so high, if it were, I would have asked separate questions to break that out into different referral methods.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

First of all, considering the massive layoffs, almost everyone should be exploring a backup plan

Job seekers should nurture their relationships with their peers first.

Job seekers should continually keep their network educated about their new projects, skills, and work they are taking on, consider using LinkedIn, Facebook, professional website or a blog

They should reach out and connect with their network before they need them.

Interact with them in email, social networks, phone and good ol fashioned lunch meetings

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more. Thanks to my wife who helped cut, cleansed, and graphed the data it in 1/10th the time it would take me. (and during our vacation in Hawaii!)

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: top industries hired, compensation rates, and duration spent looking for a job in a recession

Resources: See my Web Strategy Job Board

Posted in Job Survey | 27 Comments »

Community Managers Must Deliver ROI: Commandments For Surviving a Recession

Categories: Community Manager, Community Marketing, Social Media MeasurementPosted on January 28th, 2009

I’m a former community manager, and many of my friends are currently in this role, and I want to make sure they are armed with the right knowledge to succeed during hard times –I know some of them may get laid off.

Community Managers are at risk of being let go
During a recession, we know that marketing, sometimes new media and unknown expenses get cut. Unfortunately, to some, the Community Manager role may sit in all three of those areas of scrutiny. Although I’ve been tracking quite a few Community Managers working at enterprise class companies, they must quickly learn to measure, and demonstrate ROI or risk getting cut.

Community Managers must educate stakeholders and management.
Measurement depends on which objective they are trying to solve, so I’ll break it down into specific objectives and tasks. During incidents the community manager should report in real-time to key stakeholders. Secondly, they should provide weekly updates that can be quickly scanned in 30 seconds to community managers. Each month, they should provide a detailed report, and initiate a 30-60 minute meeting with key stakeholders to discuss changes.

Among these changes they should measure:

Improvement in marketing efficiency
Community Managers should measure increased speed from word of mouth or marketing awareness, the best way to measure this is time from awareness to close –or spread of WOM. This could also include increase understanding of customers (listening) for marketing research, or warning stakeholders about potential detractors before they become real issues. Unfortunately, these metrics aren’t valued as much as the next two, so focus accordingly.

Reduction in support costs
The bottom line is always important to business, so if you can measure a decrese in customers going to physical stores, emailing account reps, or calling the support center as they instead rely on community to help self-support themselves, you can start to put dollar costs on this actual community savings.

Actual improvement to sales
This matters most. Community Managers should start to measure how clicks from community directly impact ecommerce, go to product pages (perhaps if you’re B2B) or to affiliate marketing to demonstrate how community interaction increases revenue. If you can demonstrate this (like Dell’s million dollar sales in Twitter) tout this loudly to management.

Conduct additional research
If you’re like most companies, layoffs are coming, therefore Community Managers must educate the powers that be the value that they offer when it comes to customer service and support. Rather than focus purely on the role that they have, they should demonstrate the overall of the community –then discusss why a role is needed (like a physical store manager) in order to keep it running smoothly. Consider running quarterly surveys that measure Net Ratings or customer satisfaction, and don’t forget to quote qualitative responses from community members themselves, there’s nothing like a pure customer testimonial about why they are customers.

If you’ve other tips for Community Managers during a recession, leave a comment below.

Update: Bill Johnston has some additional tips you should read, he also left a comment below.

Posted in Community Manager, Community Marketing, Social Media Measurement | 22 Comments »

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Jan 27, 2009

Categories: Digest, Social NetworkingPosted on January 27th, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
More growth shown in Facebook’s worldwide unique visitors, Leverage Software launches upgrade, and more twists on social networking in our culture from crime, religion, and parenting.

Release: Leverage Software upgrades to version 6.5
Leverage has made some improvements with it’s geo social maps, groups, and calendar functions, and has provided some detailed release notes.

Data: Social Networks overtake adult websites
Hitwise has collected data on UK social networking activity, and has found that social networking sites has overtaken one of the greatest triggers of internet innovation, the adult industry.

Data: Adults bulk of social networkers, but still leans young
eMarketer gives data on how “But younger online adults were much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with three-quarters of those ages 18 to 24 using the sites, compared with just 7% of Internet users ages 65 and older”.

Culture: Woman killed for Facebook Status
This bizarre case shows how much social networking has infiltrated our culture. Obviously, this has little to do with social networks as this enraged husband rampages after wife turns her status to single on Facebook, and more about human psychology.

Usage: Facebook unique visitors twice as large as MySpace
More growth in Facebook’s arena as Techcrunch reports that unique worldwide visitors has overtaken MySpace.

Culture: Pope welcomes Facebook –yet cautions
Here’s a sign that social networks are bleeding into many areas of culture, when religion starts to comment on “gifts” such as these online tools.

Parenting: Friends of children’s friends
Linda Furrier poses some questions about parents monitoring the friends of friends (FoaF) within social networks, should advance parenting features be setup in social networks? Last time I checked, there was a minimum age required for some social networks.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Posted in Digest, Social Networking | 10 Comments »

Twitter’s Valuation, $73.52 an Active User?

Categories: MicroMediaPosted on January 25th, 2009

This is just an educated guess, as we don’t have confirmation from Twitter, nor has the funding closed.

Rumors are coming in that Twitter may raise another round of capital at valuation of $250mm, quick calculations from my archive of social networking stats show many sources indicate they range from 4-6mm registered users.

Last week, when I visited the smooth Twitter offices in SF, I asked them about official registered users and they commented “they don’t give out those numbers”, as it would benefit others more than them. So, I’ll average it around 5mm total registered users. I trust the HP labs research on Twitter (met with Bernardo two weeks ago) and their data from a significant sample size shows that only 68% of users return.

This would suggest that 3,400,000 actual users, which if you diveded into the supposed valuation of $250mm would result in the active (people who actually return) users actual worth $73.52. Scobleizer suggests it’s $42 but I think it’s near double that –as you have to take into account those that won’t participate.

Could a Twitter user generate this type of value for it’s users over it’s lifetime? Perhaps if they went the consumer route with eCommerce, advertising, or some type of location based marketing. Or, they could supplement this with revenues from the corporate side by supplying brands with services to ethically, delivering services to them that wouldn’t shy away consumers.

This isn’t even close to being correct, as if we truly wanted to be analysts over the valuation, we would have to factor in future growth, market conditions, and whichever monetization routes they intend to go, since we don’t have that data, we’ll leave it at current size of an estimated 3.5mm active users.

Posted in MicroMedia | 35 Comments »

Misjudgment or Transparency? How a Single Tweet Caused a Stir With a Client

Categories: MicroMedia, PRPosted on January 24th, 2009

It’s entertaining to watch how the PR industry self-spins, in this latest dust up regarding a tweet by James Andrews, an executive who works at Ketchum, a well known PR agency.

James is accused of bad form, and his company had to backtrack when he posted this tweet on the way to visit his client Fedex: “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I h ad to live here!” it caused angst with the ‘location sensitive’ client, and they issued this comment, apparently on this blog (update: this may have been an email from Fedex to Ketchum), after it was run up the Fedex flagpole. (via David, and Peter)

Mr. Andrews,

If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith.

Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.

Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, commercial decay, and a few potholes. But there is a major political, community, religious, and business effort underway, that includes FedEx, to transform that area. We’re hopeful that over time, our city will have a better “face” to present to visitors.

James, everyone participating in today’s event, including those in the auditorium with you this morning, just received their first paycheck of 2009 containing a 5% pay cut… which we wholeheartedly support because it continued the tradition established by Mr. Smith of doing whatever it takes to protect jobs.

Considering that we just entered the second year of a U.S. recession, and we are experiencing significant business loss due to the global economic downturn, many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce the video open for today’s event; work that could have been achieved by internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in television production.

Additionally Mr. Andrews, with all due respect, to continue the context of your post; true confession: many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications.

(Signed as a personal message by a member of the FedEx Corporate Communications team)

Apparently, some took offense, and tweeted and an interesting exchange started to happen, as the conversation ensued also on twitter. James then stood by his guns, explained his stance and apologized and helped explain what happened on this own blog (followed by a post by his own wife).

A few takeaways

While showing a bit of misjudgment, (there are many other ways he could have expressed his opinion) I’d rather hire someone who was honest and transparent first. Gawker agrees

Fedex employees need to have some fun with the online conversation, the reaction was a brutal and excessive, but it’s clear that this was a trigger for other axes to grind.

Personal opinions must be kept in check when it involves clients and customers.

Twitter is often taken out of context, it’s happened to me. Intent isn’t always clear.

The PR industry likes to spin it’s own top, and I’m adding to it right now.

James Andrews is better off for this, and I admire him for weathering this storm.

Rule of thumb: (fitting, if you tweet from a mobile device). When you tweet, you’re publishing, don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face, and assume that your current and future boss, wife, and mother are reading it.

Thanks to Jennifer Doctor (update: who calls for context of the situation) for spurring me along to comment on this topic.

UJpdate: I like Eric’s take on this, and suggests that James didn’t represent himself well as a PR professional, regardless of anyone who should have an opinion.

Posted in MicroMedia, PR | 63 Comments »

The Obama Generation

Categories: PoliticsPosted on January 22nd, 2009

Yesterday, Stephanie Agresta brought nine tech and business students from Iowa’s Luther College (blog) to meet me at our Foster City office for some Q&A about the business world they’re about to enter. This day, Jan 20th was the first day Obama has been in office, and he’s already made some significant changes within his first hours in the oval office.

We had an interesting conversation, we talked about creating career websites, starting blogs, and how to represent yourself in a professional way. We discussed how sharing online is likely permanent and you should assume your boss, your mother, and your future wife/husband will read whatever you say online. How they should start preparing for the job market, and some practical tips to use social networks to find jobs.

These juniors and seniors are about to enter the workforce, and they’ll have experienced this in a different way then any previous generation has. What’s so different? they’ll always have been in the workforce and known that:

Their President was always their Facebook friend.

Their President was always the top Twitter user as far as they can remember.

Their President has always addressed them on Saturday mornings on YouTube.

They’ll be connected to their friends to discuss topics and join causes in social networks.

The “Mall” won’t just be about shopping but also refer to the Washington Mall.

Blackberry’s are the new scepter of power, and a status symbol.

Soon, they’ll remember how they can voice their opinion on websites like the Whitehouse.gov isn’t just a destination site, but will become a place to have two-way conversations with peers and the administration.

Not all of these things are always cheery for them, as they graduate the impact of the recession may cause them to compete against others that are far more experienced and may be able to outbid them. They may understand what ‘change’ and ‘hope’ means but may not remember what the country is trying to escape.

Back to you, what are the other characteristics of this Obama Generation especially as it ties back to the internet?

Posted in Politics | 26 Comments »

Webinar: Social Media Across the Enterprise

Categories: Enterprise WebPosted on January 22nd, 2009

Hopefully you’ve noticed my journey lately, to understand how social computing impacts not just one aspect of a company, but how it’s going to be an ‘overlay’ across the entire organization, in fact, nearly two years ago, I created this graphic in 2007 which demonstrates how social computing can be applied across an entire customer lifecycle. Maybe you noticed that in 2009 your CIO will start to sniff out the different business departments deploying social technologies, and may want to consolidate.

Spiksource and Intel have made it possible by working with Forrester to sponsor this webinar on Leveraging Social Media into your Business Strategy, Feb 5th 10am PST where we won’t just talk about how social media impacts marketing –but thinking bigger to the whole enterprise. I’ll be joined by Six Apart’s Michael Sippey, and Jive’s CMO, Sam Lawrence. See you there!

Update: Joseph has taken some notes from the webinar, thanks! also, the recording is now available.

Posted in Enterprise Web | 9 Comments »

How Did You Participate In The Inauguration?

Categories: PoliticsPosted on January 21st, 2009

Are you old media or new? Progressive or traditional? Were you present in DC or were you participating using TV and being online?

President Barack Obama’s inauguration was an interesting event, why? It wasn’t during normal evening showtimes when people would watch on TV, as a result, people found other ways to consume the event –even using iPhone apps. Secondly, although an American event, it has implications to the rest of the globe, it’s not just a limited audience.

In my world, I watched it at 830am at home on HDTV, while streaming other pieces on Ustream.tv. I watched Current TV (got annoyed with the hip hop music and ridiculous tweets) and turned on CNN. I was on twitter (see charts), chatting and commenting about Aretha’s magic bow and how to be yellow mellow, and was reading the hundreds of tweets coming in every 30 seconds on Tweetscan, Summize (it couldn’t keep up) and Tweetdeck.

Over on Seesmic, there were discussions from those who were watching –and it cascaded to many other social sites, at the end of the ceremony, I changed my Facebook stats to read “Jeremiah is mellow yellow” and received several replies in a matter of minutes –one from my kid sister, who says I’m old for using email.

Tell me how you experienced the inauguration? Did you use mainstream media? Was it a social event for you? Did you create your own commentary and share with others?

Posted in Politics | 55 Comments »

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Jan 21, 2009

Categories: Digest, Social NetworkingPosted on January 21st, 2009

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Web Strategy Summary
It’s important you track LinkedIn’s movement as they truly become an enterprise web service, their announcement partnering with IBM is a key step in their opportunity to become the future intranet of any company. Various community vendors have had some partnership announcements such as Pluck and Lithium boasts a large revenue gain over this past year. Social Networks reflect life, and we’ve seen a bump in activity around Obama’s inauguration.

Partnership: Linkedin integrates with IBM’s Lotus
Perhaps the most important news of the week, but overshadowed by election news is LinkedIn’s partnership with IBM which extends it’s social graph info to Lotus collaboration and community suite. Why is this important? It means that workers can now connect with people outside of work to get jobs done –the network has expanded significantly.

Politics: Inauguration spurs social network activity
RWW reports how the live player at CNN connected to Facebook connect helps to spur social interaction online –no one is watching by themselves now, it’s all one connected community.

Feature: LinkedIn launches polls
In a way to better understand the community, LinkedIn’s polling feature will help brands and others understand what’s top of mind for it’s members.

Revenues: Lithium has 100% revenue growth
Always a good sign: Lithium boasts that their “100% percent growth in new monthly recurring revenue in less than one year” as a result of growth in the community space.

Privacy: Chinese gamers must reveal names
Online games in China have exploded, which has caused changes in culture, both good –and bad. As a result, a movement to force gamers to share their real names online has been put in place.

Partnership: KickApps Integrates Meebo And Yahoo! Maps
Media savvy KickApps launches some key partnerships with Meebo, Yahoo Maps, and combines video players to allow brands to extend the experience of Meebo and Yahoo, but to also make community sites more engaging.

Layoffs: Mzinga cuts 6%
As with many tech companies, startups are a reality, Mzinga cuts 6%, which could mean good news for long term sustainability, but could challenge their ability to execute against their goals. Interestingly, I didn’t see an announcement from Mzinga folks (although they left a comment last week)

Future: Social Networks of the future? the car
Thought leader David Berkowitz interviews Ford executive on how the car (using Sync technology) will soon become a social network hub and node.

Culture: 10 top social network annoyances
Thank god, someone finally made this list, #1? MySpace Kitsch. Someone needs to create a ‘de-bling’ app.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Posted in Digest, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Video: Marketing Through the Decades

Categories: Video, Web MarketingPosted on January 17th, 2009

Video by Scholz and Friends, a German marketing agency. Link via Leslie Carothers who’s also on Twitter, ask her opinion about furniture. Interesting that I often find out about new interesting content from friends in Twitter or email, people send me ideas and links, wom in action –even when I was on a Twitter hiatus.

Posted in Video, Web Marketing | 28 Comments »

Obama Crowdsources Daily Ideas with Citizen’s Briefing Book

Categories: Politics, Social MediaPosted on January 17th, 2009

I just learned from Leverage’s Mike Walsh that Obama will receive a briefing from the top voted ideas that were submitted by the American people each evening see Change.Force.com (a play off . This method of keeping in direct communication by ‘listening’ to the citizens leans on voting style technology similar to Dell’s Ideastorm. My colleague Josh Bernoff will be pleased, as he requested this feature a few months ago.

You’ll need to login and register (I suspect they can use IP addresses to determine point of origin within US) in order to confirm location but that’s not completely accurate. How can Obama extend this further? Make a similar site for all other nations to submit ideas for foreign policy. This doesn’t come without challenges of course, the system could be gamed, and there’s no promise he’ll make changes based on our feedback, we’ll see.

I talk to the executives of the world’s largest brands, after Obama won the election, I get a lot less push back –it’s rare I have to have discussions now about the validity of social technologies. Of course, social technologies still come with risk, but for some reason this feels really good, we’re all a bit more connected and the internet helps to bring us together.

Related Resources

You can see the top submitted ideas, the first one is “Ending Marijuana Prohibition” with 81080 Points, 2719 comments, and submitted on Jan 12th, which is the earliest submittal date I can find.

I just logged in and voted for ending of torture and request for bullet trains, each vote cast 10 points.

If you know who the vendor is who is doing this work (platform and development) please let me know, I checked source code but didn’t see anything real obvious (Updates: a few that I know have confirmed this is Sales Force, in the comments.)

Posted in Politics, Social Media | 41 Comments »

Body of Work: Community and Social Network Research

Categories: Analyst, Community Marketing, ForresterPosted on January 16th, 2009

Ill be up front, writing research is one of the hardest parts of the job for me, it’s an area I end up putting extra time in.

Despite the extra effort I have to put in, looking back I’m very proud of my body of work. You’ll notice that there’s a strong body of work on community and social networks, all designed to help a brand with their community strategy from soup-to-nuts. Here’s some highlights of what I’ve been working on in the last 16 months:

Body of Work: Community and Social Network Research

Strategy: Online Communities: Build Or Join? (Hint: the answer is ‘when’)

Resources: How to Staff for Social Computing (Like any business program, key people are needed, and here’s there two roles you’ll need to succeed)

Best Practices: Online Community Best Practices (I interviewed 19 brands that have done it right, and to find out how, remember: only 20% is technology)

Best Practices: Best And Worst Of Social Network Marketing, 2008 (we scored 16 brands who conducted marketing efforts on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo)

Best Practices: What works in Online Company Forums (lead by Cynthia Pflaum, we published this report to help brands understand what works)

Vendor Selection: Forrester Wave on Community Platforms (This recently launched report scrutinizes 9 of the 100 vendors in this crowded space)

Technology: I’ve done a piece on Facebook’s engagement ads and Google’s Opensocial, while I tend not to like to focus on technology as a driver, these were both innovative ways for marketers to reach communities.

Soon to be published: My upcoming publications include the social technographics of baby boomers, and our predictions for social computing for 2009, you can setup a ‘research alert’ on the right nav of my profile page to be alerted to upcoming reports.

I’m very proud of the hard work we’ve put in, and I’m thankful for my very tough editors, researchers, research associates, editing team, web team and management for supporting this process. Although the research is never done, the current body of work is designed to answer the most critical questions during key milestones for brands who want to understand community. In most cases, while these reports help brands get their strategy in order, I’m often asked to present the reports to their staff, conduct custom research, or make specific strategy and vendor suggestions, I’ve noticed an increase in demand and it’s keeping me very busy.

Upcoming Reports:
I’ve two reports that I’m working on, both I hope you’ll find interest in. The first, which is focused on how brands are changing their spending and behavior towards social media during a recession. We conducted a survey, and I found it interesting that most marketers certainly leaned one direction when we asked them “are you going to increase or decrease social media spend”. I am also seeking case examples of brands that have conducted social media efforts since sept 08 and have seen success during times of resource scrutiny. Secondly, I’m working on a report to outline the future of social networks, you may know about the roundtable I hosted in Oct, which is just the precursor to this vision piece. I’m seeking to speak with thought leaders that can see how technologies like, social networks, mobile, ecommerce and corporate websites will evolve to impact the marketing and purchasing process.

If you have research examples you want to submit, you can contact me at jowyang at forrester.com, lead in the subject line “Research Report Submittal: X”

Social + Research
In my opinion only, I’m well aware of the impacts of social technologies on research and analyst firms. Although it hasn’t been done correctly yet, the market could self-organize and provide community based research to each other, bypassing firms. We’ve not seen this happen yet, as then quality of community based research is still low and lacks a directional strategy it certainly is possible. Like I tell my marketing clients, the power is in the hands of the participants –so participate!

My employer has taken note of how I’ve used social technologies to improve research, increase thought leadership, and to share the findings with the market, I’ll be working with fellow analysts to help them understand what works and what doesn’t. Blazing trails is always risky and sometimes fun, but what really matters when it helps a company become more efficient.

Feedback needed
If you had your say in my 2009 research agenda, I’d love to hear what you think is missing. We’ve a pretty solid plan based on what we think the market is asking, but I’d love to hear your opinion as well.

Posted in Analyst, Community Marketing, Forrester | 18 Comments »

The Unrecognizable Taglines of the Community Platform Space

Categories: Social Media, Web Marketing, White Label Social NetworkPosted on January 15th, 2009

Over the last year I’ve been trained to make my points not just with opinion but with data, so I’ve done just that with this experiment. In a crowded market (esp if you’ve 100 competitors) having an at-par product isn’t enough. Strategic market will out position your competitors and make sure you’re considered and then preferred over others. Sure some strong brands like GM don’t need a tagline, but others that have ingrained “just do it.” are now part of culture.

In a few short days I created, fielded and collected data from a small survey set of folks that read my blog and are connected to me on twitter, the results are below.

Data: Tag Line Recognition, all respondents
Out of a base of 60 respondents, which is on the smaller side, we could quickly see a trend on which taglines were the most recognizable.

90.00% were able to recognize Twitter’s “What are you doing?”

30.00% were able to recognize Kickapps’s “Social Networking Software Platform and Soical Media Community Building Applications”

28.33% were able to recognize Lithium’s “Successful Communities On-Demand”

25.00% were able to recognize Liveworld’s “Your Brand Lives in the Voice of Your Customers”

25.00% were able to recognize Jive’s “The Business Social Software Leader”

21.67% were able to recognize Mzinga’s “On-Demand Social Software Solutions for Marketing, Support and Learning”

21.67% were able to recognize Awareness’s “The Leader in Social Media Marketing”

18.33% were able to recognize Leverage Software’s “People-Centric Social Networking Solutions for Business”

16.67% were able to recognize Telligent’s “Enterprise Online Community”

15.00% were able to recognize Pluck’s “Leaders in Social Media”

Considerations
First of all, this isn’t a completely scientific study, with a small sample base, this isn’t a formal market research project that I do on the day job, but it is fun and does help me to make a point about marketing in a crowded pond.

Despite it being a small sample size, the audience reading this blog and those connected to me are certainly in the space. Since this was launched on my blog and twitter account, it is targeted in the social software space, this wasn’t a survey that went to grandmas in the congo.

I wanted to do a larger sample of taglines that spanned other vendors like Blogtronix, Neighborhood America, OneSite, HiveLive, and on on, but I realized I didn’t have enough bandwidth for this project –nor easy to use tools.

Findings

Most of the respondents were influencers or decision makers. 10 of respondents worked for community platforms, but only a half of them were the vendors listed above. 12 of the respondents replied they were a decision maker, I can see the emails and some work for large corporations. 27 said they were influencers. 5 were unsure what this market is, or were not involved with this market. the rest had misc write ins.

11 of the respondents already had a community platform, 20 of them had no need for a community platform, but about half of them worked at the vendors themselves. 8 were unsure and needed to learn more if they needed a community platform, 17 of the were researching this market, and 1 said they were ready to buy.

Even the most recognizable tagline by Kickapps (I’m not sure how anyone could recognize that beast) has nothing to be proud of, at best, less than one-third of the market could recognize it.

Some responded they worked at community platform vendors, and while they got their own company right (I misread the data before) they didn’t recognize the taglines of others.

I threw twitter in as the first question just to get people feeling good, and it’s somewhat of a control sample, they are clearly in this space. It is interesting that 90% of them clearly could recognize this call to action.

In a market this crowded (100 vendors) creating a tagline or brand that makes you standapart may be key. On the other hand vendors like Six Apart and Social Text (both long time recognizable) brands don’t have a tagline at all.

Although Pluck’s “Leaders in Social Media” and Awareness’s “The Leader in Social Media Marketing” are nearly identical, Awareness has a 5 point gain, why is that? I’ve often thought Jive’s enterprise octopus was fairly unique and fun, and told a story that other serious minded enterprise vendors failed to get.

Conclusions
The vendors in this space, at least by tagline are for the most part, indistinguishable, I can back this up with my frequent client calls of brands asking for vendor recommendations and general confusion on who does what –good thing we published a Wave report helping with that. While some of the vendors had more of a descriptor than a tagline, they were for the most part, not different from each other.

Doug Haslam writes that he found this experiment interesting, and although he’s in PR and covers this space, could only identify one tagline in the space.

Voices from the community
I asked the respondents what would they do if they were the CMO of these vendors, because of the large amount of text, I’ve moved them to a seperate page, but you should read some of the cherry insights they provided.

Thanks everyone for this quick and interesting experiment.

Here’s Doug’s Podcast discussing the topic, listen in.

Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing, White Label Social Network | 28 Comments »

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Jan 15, 2009

Categories: Digest, Social NetworkingPosted on January 15th, 2009

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Web Strategy Summary
Usage of social media will continue to rise, the growth of China’s internet population bodes to growth off shores. Forrester has launched a Wave report over community platforms. “Diso” a technology that suggests social will be aggregated to one page will occur, and several make predictions for the upcoming year.

Usage: Surge in Chinese internet users.
Although the Chinese internet population is greater than the entire US citizenship, a sharp increase in usage is reported, primarily from mobile.

Research: Forrester “Waves” Community Platforms
I lead this research, where we’ve segmented the leaders in the community platform space. I know some folks are subscribed to this digest and not my blog, so excuse me if you’ve already heard.

Deals: Neighborhood American showcases wins
Community platform Neighborhood America showcases several client wins including Kodak, City of New Orleans, and Wharton Business school in their latest newsletter, you can subscribe on the website.

Tech: Future of Social Dashboards, Diso
Marc Canter has frequently been the guiding light for open data and suggests that the future dashboard of all things could be a technology called Diso, RWW has more info.

Data: Will Facebook US members overtake MySpace
Techncrunch highlights recent Comscore data and suggests that Facebook’s US members 54mm members will overtake MySpace in 2010, 76mm, one year from now.

Future: 8 Predictions for Enterprise 2.0
Dion writes like an analyst and breaks down his predictions for 2009 revolving around social computing within the enterprise. He highlights that community will be one of the priorities within the enterprise.

Predictions: Hivelive suggests what’s upcoming for communities
Hivelive, a Colorado community platform boasts a very flexible component based system so don’t be surprised about their predictions for the new year. Overall, I agree, specific use cases for community are going to be needed.

Launch: Cisco puts forth a community platform “Eos”
I’ve profiled this launch (and the Cisco team has responded) read this post for details. Surprisingly, other than a few press releases and blog posts, we’ve not seen much more from this highly secretive project.

Interview: Jive’s CMO on FastCompany TV
Thought leader and executive of 4 years, Sam Lawrence the CMO of Jive Software spends time with Scoble on Fast Company TV.

Contest: Sony community needs a name
An interesting way to drive community interaction and interest, Sony encourages it’s members to help name it’s own community. This community is run by Powered, who I had a briefing with yesterday, that specializes in content and editorial, in addition to just a platform. (edit: This is actually an Awareness community, but Powered does run these Sony communities backstage101, darkroom, and frontline)

Launch: Awareness launches Sony Blog
A different division of Sony has launched a community during CES that’s run by Awareness Networks, see the Sony Electronics Blog. Just goes to show that multiple vendors are often within one brand.

Vocab: Buzzword Leaderboard
The good folks at Royal Pingdom have helped to create this index of web buzzwords and terms, what’s really interesting is they’ve rated which terms are peaking –marketers responsible for messaging should take note.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Posted in Digest, Social Networking | 6 Comments »

The Fight on Google’s Results Pages: Community Platforms

Categories: Search Strategy, Web MarketingPosted on January 13th, 2009

Dell’s Bob Pearson was right, a company’s corporate homepage is really Google.com

As I was doing follow up research on some of the vendors in the community space, I was entering in some keyword searches on Google to find different product pages. Although a common practice, it’s interesting to see which vendors buy sponsored links on the right hand column of the search screen. It’s not easy to tell if they’ve purchased these keywords directly to display if someone enters a vendors name, or if they bought greater search terms like “community software”, either way it’s an indicator of what Google, or the vendors think their most relevant competitors are.

Search marketing is a pretty normal practice, but over the years I’ve seen and learned a few ethical, and not so ethical ways companies do battle for mindshare. A few examples:

Brands often forget to purchase the paid keywords for their specific product name during a launch, a well placed blog post from a competitor mentioning the specific product name can yield some pretty tremendous search engine juice. History tells us that many press release link to the company’s homepage, but not to specific product pages, forcing bloggers, press, media, and analysts to do Google searches to learn more, the result? A competitors blog can easily be visible above the fold.

While discussed and reprimanded by Google and other search engines, when I was in web marketing, I heard cases of competitors supposedly clicking on our paid search terms, and since we had a limited inventory of pay per click, they would use up our inventory. Now I’m sure Google has ways around this (by looking at IP address or other behaviors) but every technology has a workaround.

For even more nefarious uses, former colleague and internet expert John Cass gives a breakdown how one vendor was using trademarked product names in search marketing strategy, and the difficulties of enforcement. (link via LiveWorld’s Bryan Person)

So what’s right and what’s wrong? Time tends to average things out, and those that play above the table will eventually look victorious, those that kick under the table tend to get punished –or others see it and walk away. On the other hand, all’s fair in business, there are no rules, and this just is an indicator of who’s hungrier for your business.

Screenshots
Below are some screenshots of some vendors search engine results pages (SERP) and you can see the different sponsored links on the right. Here’s what I see when I search for Liveworld, Kickapps, and Telligent.

Update: Sam Decker, CMO of BazzarVoice created this interesting matrix was created that shows which vendors are buying keywords for other competitors SERP pages. link via LiveWorld’s Bryan Person.

Posted in Search Strategy, Web Marketing | 29 Comments »

How we filtered 9 vendors out of 100 for the Community Platform Wave

Categories: Analyst, ForresterPosted on January 13th, 2009

Research is always challenging, I’m required to stay objective, follow a consistent methodology, and inform the market who is strong and who’s not. Believe me, I’ve gotten my share of angry calls, emails, blogposts, comments, and conversations with brands and vendors as a result of my reports. I’ve found that one thing that really helps everyone to understand is to be open and transparent about the process.

In every Wave, like the Community Platform Wave I recently published, there are vendors that are elated and those that are disappointed, this is a normal outcome of reports that make the tough decisions to help brands make decisions. I’m empathetic to some of the vendors who were not in the Wave and want to make some clear explinations as they have to answer their colleagues, customers, and investors.

To start with, in a market of now 100 vendors, it’s very important that vendors take the onus to respond to the call for submission to the Vendor Product Catalog (free after registration). We used this information to filter out which vendors would be appropriate for the Wave report. I made a few public calls on my blog, twitter, indicating my intent as a result over 50 vendors submitted. We generally do not follow up unless we’ve heard client demand from inquiry calls, and I turned to 3 analyst peers for their inclusion of any additional vendors.

You can understand the challenges in filtering a large market to just a few vendors, given the amount of hours required to spend on each vendor, Forrester limits the number of candidates involved in the Wave, for this one, nine was a manageable size and we capped it at that number.

Next, we filtered vendors to meet the needs of external communities used for customers (I serve the Interactive Marketer) as well as vendors were primarily serving enterprise class companies.

Some vendors chose not to participate as being involved in a research report takes time of the vendors and perhaps precious time away from clients. Vendors have to participate in meetings, plan travel to meet me in lab, and be involved in several communications throughout the process. In fact, a multi billion dollar company who owns a community platform chose not to participate despite my offer.

I’m required to be objective, without this, I lose credibility and then everything else will fall apart. Several vendors who are in the community space who are Forrester clients were not included in the Wave, in fact, some were livid and gave me an loud earful and I actually suspect they may leave us as a client. Despite this, I’m supported by my management, and our CEO to stay objective.

Now for the good news, while there is no immediate plans, Forrester is known for updating Wave’s in the space after a few years. Secondly, if you’re in this space, you know I publish a weekly digest giving updates to buyers about what’s happening in the market. I know for a fact the digest is read by senior decision makers at large corporations. If you are a vendor in this space, you can schedule a briefing with me and we can discuss your situation, I speak to clients, press, and media frequently and will always match market needs with vendors as deemed appropriate.

I believe in the open conversation, and will support the right for every vendor and customer to voice an opinion. I hope this helps provide insight to why some vendors did –and did not make the Wave, we tried every effort to be fair in our first report in a very large market.

Posted in Analyst, Forrester | 9 Comments »

Walmart Turns the Corner with “Energizing”

Categories: Social MediaPosted on January 13th, 2009

A few months ago my colleague Josh Bernoff visited Walmart HQ and wrote how he believes the company is going to understand social –I was skeptical. Last night I had dinner with some of the Wal-Mart digital team invited by John Andrews, Emerging Media Sr. Manager at Wal-Mart Stores, along with other colleagues and some other vendors.

If you’re not aware of their checkered past, Walmart is a case study for doing social media wrong. They created the myspace clone community called “Hub” and shut it down after a mere 10 weeks, then they were caught “astroturfing” (fake blogging) along with their PR agency Edelman. They’ve launched the “Checkout Blog” which I give mixed ratings, while it’s certainly an authentic piece from Walmart buyers, there’s only a mere 6 comments on the 10 most recent posts. If conversation rate is a measure of success –they’re borderline.

[Rather than forcing the message with their own branded community, fake blogs, and corporate blogs, Walmart gets it right by creating a platform for customers and pundits to tell their story]

But what gets me thinking that Walmart may become a case study of success? They’re allowing for customer opinions by using Bazaarvoice for the last few years, this give customers the chance to rate –and rank the products they think are good. Secondly they’ve created a platform for the 11 moms bloggers (now beyond 20, with men too) that allow bloggers to discuss their opinions about products, Walmart and lifestyle. The difference between the Walmart blogging program and Kmart Izea deployment? The Walmart bloggers are not paid, and not-sponsored, and can write anything they want, with the caveat it’s non-disparaging (rather than saying “Walmart sucks” they should discuss what could be improved and why. I’ve spoken with a few of them, such as Lucretia Pruitt, (aka Geekmommy on twitter, follow her) who can share insight to why the program is working.

So why is this a change for Walmart? It’s pretty simple. Rather than Walmart trying to tell the story themselves with a community, and blogs. They’ve now figured out how to let their customers tell the story on their behalf –and that’s the difference. At Forrester, we call this ‘energizing’ which is commonly known as word of mouth, rather than “talking” which is the company speaking directly with the market, learn more about the five objectives. Given that corporate blogs aren’t trusted –and people that you know are –this is the way to go for Walmart.

Sometimes, the companies that have the roughest start (like Dell) with social end up being the case studies of success, I have a suspicion Walmart could fall into that category.

Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »