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38

Report: Companies Should Organize For Social Media in a “Hub and Spoke” model

Categories: Forrester, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on June 25th, 2009

I often get asked by brands: “How should we organize our company for social media?” or “Which roles do we need”, or “Which department is in charge”. So for our latest report (clients can access all the details) answers just that, it has data and graphs about spending, brand maturity in the social space, which department ‘owns’ the program, and how companies are organizing.

Companies organize in three distinct models
For this post, let’s focus in on how companies are organizing. There are three basic models that I’ve observed and surveyed brands:

  1. The Tire (Distributed): Where each business unit or group may create its own social media programs without a centralized approach. We call this approach the “tire,” as it originates at the edges of the company.
  2. The Tower (Centralized): We refer to this centralization as the “tower” — a standalone group within a company that’s responsible for social media programs, often within corporate marketing or corporate communicaitons.
  3. The Hub and Spoke (Cross Functional): Like the hub on a bicycle wheel, a cross-functional group that represents multiple stakeholders across the company assembles in the middle of the organization. The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the “tire”)


How companies organize for social media
The above graphic shows how brands we surveyed are organized

Which way should companies organize?
We believe the most sophisticated and effecient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralized resources that can support business units.  The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing.  Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint.

Remember: 80% is Strategy only 20% is Technology
On a related note, thanks to heavy collaboration with colleague Zach Hofer-Shall we’ve also published a report for clients on a community launch checklist. This checklist reminds brands that 80% of their success is dependent on understanding their customers, defining an objective, and assembling the right strategy that encompasses: plans, roles, process, budgets, measurement, and training –not a focus on technology.

The faster brands can realize that approaching social marketing and collaboration isn’t about technology, but about process and change management the better off they are. You’ll find simliar thoughts from David Armano –who’s scoping out different models within their framework of social business design.

Love to hear from you: Which way is your brand organized?  In a tire? tower? or hub and spoke. In my experience, I often ask stakeholders in companies to vote by raising their hands on which model they think they are –most often, not everyone agrees –but most want to evolve to hub and spoke. Try polling your internal teams to start a lively discussion.

Update: David Armano responds, and points out there can be multiple hubs and spokes in a single corporation. We’ve found this in large CPG and Tech titans, this model can work well.

Posted in Forrester, Social Media, Web Strategy | 38 Comments »

231

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

Categories: Forrester, Future of Social Web, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on April 27th, 2009

Expect the Groundswell to continue, in which people connect to each other –rather than institutions. Consumer adoption of social networks is increasing a rapid pace,  brands are adopting even during a recession,  so expect the space to rapidly innovate to match this trend.  Clients can access this report, but to summarize what we found, in the executive summary we state:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

We found that technologies trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will follow, resulting in five distinct waves, they consist of:

The Five Eras of the Social Web: 

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Update: CRM Magazine has more about the five eras, focus in on the graphic.

The Five Eras Of The Social Web   

Timing of the Five Overlapping Eras:
It’s important to note that these eras aren’t sequential, but instead are overlapping. We’ve already entered and have seen maturity for the era of social relationships, have entered social functionality but haven’t seen true utility, and are starting to see threads of social colonization with early technologies like Facebook connect. Soon these federated identities will empower people to enter the era of social context with personalized and social content. The following diagram demonstrates how we should expect to see the eras play out in the future –with social commerce the furthest out.

Timing Of The Five Overlapping Eras   

Interviews with 24 of the top Social Companies:
Research isn’t done in a vacuum, that’s why we conducted qualitative research to find out what we should come to expect. We came to these conclusions based on interviews with executives, product managers, and strategists at the following 24 companies: Appirio, Cisco Eos, Dell, Facebook, Federated Media Publishing, Flock, Gigya, Google (Open Social/stack team), Graphing Social Patterns (Dave McClure), IBM (SOA Team), Intel (social media marketing team), KickApps, LinkedIn, Meebo, Microsoft (Live team), MySpace, OpenID Foundation (Chris Messina), Plaxo, Pluck, Razorfish, ReadWriteWeb, salesforce.com, Six Apart, and Twitter.

How Brands Should Prepare
What’s interesting isn’t this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, as a result, companies should prepare by:

  • Don’t Hesitate: These changes are coming at a rapid pace, and we’re in three of these eras by end of year. Brands should prepare by factoring in these eras into their near term plans. Don’t be left behind and let competitors connect with your community before you do.
  • Prepare For Transparency:  People will be able to surf the web with their friends, as a result you must have a plan.  Prepare for every webpage and product to be reviewed by your customers and seen by prospects –even if you choose not to participate.  
  • Connect with Advocates: Focus on customer advocates, they will sway over prospects, and could defend against detractors. Their opinion is trusted more than yours, and when the power shifts to community, and they start to define what products should be, they become more important than ever.
  • Evolve your Enterprise Systems: Your enterprise systems will need to connect to the social web. Social networks and their partners are quickly becoming a source of customer information and lead generation beyond your CRM system.  CMS systems will need to inherit social features –pressure your vendors to offer this, or find a community platform.
  • Shatter your Corporate Website: In the most radical future, content will come to consumers –rather than them chasing it– prepare to fragment your corporate website and let it distribute to the social web. Let the most important information go and spread to communities where they exist; fish where the fish are.
Translations
If you translate this blog post, I’ll add your link here and credit you.

  • Dutch: Marketing Facts Team, Bas van de Haterd
  • Spanish: Estategia Digital by Pablo Melchor
  • Danish: Social Media Marketing by Peter Ulstrup Hansen
  • Danish: dSeneste by Søren Storm Hansen
  • Polish: Marketing Technologies by Dawid Pacha
  • Italian: Digital Ingrediants by Stefano Maggi
  • Russian: Shchepotin by Denis Shchepotin
  • Czech: Vlad Hrouda
  • French: We are Social by Sandrine Plasseraud
  • Korean: by Jamie Park
  • Hebrew: Blink by Israel Blechman
  • Indonesian: Wib’s Web World, by Wibisono Sastrodiwiryo
  • German: The Social Media Soapbox, by Stephen Rothman
  • Portuguese: Live from Sao Paulo, Brazil, by Dax
  • Swedish: JMW, by Brit Stakston
  • Norwegian: Cruena by Harald, Creuna
  • Arabic: Technoemedia, by Mohamed Hassan
  • Chinese: Seaberry, by Sylvia
  • Japanese: MinoriG Translation, by Minori Goto
  • Romanian: Blog de Comert Electronic by Adriana Iordan
  • Persian: Lameei, iclub.ir
  • Want to translate it into your language? I’ll be happy to add you, read these suggestions.
    • This project took a team effort, and I’d like to thank Josh Bernoff a guiding force in my career, Emily Bowen who kept the project going, Cynthia Pflaum for the quantitative data, Megan Chromik in our editing team for the polish, and Jon Symons in our PR team for the media outreach.

    This is also cross posted on the Forrester blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals. Thanks to Matt Savarino for catching a small typo.

    Tags: ,
    Posted in Forrester, Future of Social Web, Social Media, Web Strategy | 231 Comments »

    58

    8 Principles for the Modern Blog …at least for 2009

    Categories: Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on April 13th, 2009

    A few years ago, Julio Garcia suggested I redesigned my blog, I should have listened, he was right. Yesterday, I finally took his advice and launched a new blog design, in which I contracted Web Designer and Developer Mitch Canter to complete.

    We involved the community in the iterations of the design, and frequently asked for feedback. I even used controversial crowdSPRING to crowdsource my banner design, (thanks to Dragos Mirica, see his site)based on Mitch’s wireframe and logo creation. In the end, a majority of it came from my vision, a great deal from Mitch, and the rest from the community.

    Although this blog redesign process has taken a few months (I’ve been very busy, as has he) I’ve come to learn there’s a few principles that have changed since I started my blog back in 2005. (BTW: Here’s the old version, if you want to jog your memory) Here’s what I think are appropriate for 2009, yet I expect this list to change in just a few years as new technologies and the media landscape shifts.

    8 Principles for the Modern Blog …at least for 2009

    1) Baseline: Have Valuable Content
    This one isn’t anything new. You have to have relevant content that’s either helpful or interesting to your audience, or you can forget the rest of the principles. Content still rules the royal court, and without it, you can’t move forward. Ideas, insights, perspectives aligned with an appropriate publishing frequency to your market is baseline. Don’t read ahead ’till you do that.

    2) Know your Audience
    If you’re just writing for yourself, this principle doesn’t matter. A few years ago, blogging didn’t have a strong business objective, but now we see many companies involved in blogging, so it must impact company in a positive way. So, if you want your blog to grow and spread your ideas and knowledge, then you likely have an objective. In order to be successful for your ideas to be effective, you should first know what your readers want. I know through a formal survey that most of my readers are interactive marketers, so I’m attempting to give them what they want through content and website experience.

    3) Distribute the Content…
    In the end, I believe web destinations are irrelevant, as we should fish where the fish are. The goal of a thought leadership blog, is often to get your ideas to spread to other locations. In the most extreme example, take Jason Calcanis, who temporarily stopped blogging and shifted to a dedicated email newsletter, it worked, as people ended up blogging his content for him. I’ve highlighted email subscription, and a host of tools at the bottom of each post that enable you to share the content elsewhere.

    4) ..Yet Aggregate the Conversation
    If you’re successful because of the two principles above, your content will start to spread to other locations on the web. It’ll be discussed on Twitter, tagged in Delicious, rehashed in Friendfeed, talked about in Facebook, and maybe event submitted to Digg. As a response to content distributing (Principle 3) then as a response to help to re-centralize your thoughts, you’ll need to aggregate your social content. This builds a reef for the fish to centralize around. As a result this accomplishes three things: 1) Helps people to find opinions in a single place 2) Helps you to manage the conversation 3) Provides a social reward to those who spread the content.

    5) Highlight Community Conversation
    While I know that in Principle 1 it’s about the content, for some blogs, highlighting the community around you is key. For example, in this blog redesign, we’ve given nearly equal attention to the comments and conversation. We’ve aggregated Friendfeed conversation (and soon Facebook), as well as given each commenter the ability to show their icon. (sign up to Gravatar if you want your smiling picture to appear in the comments), you’ll even notice the prominent comment bubbles next to each blog title. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that the collective commenters say some really brilliant stuff –let’s focus on the collective voices.

    6) Reflect a Personal Brand
    Whether you like the concept or term, expect the desire and need for personal brands to increase during a global recession. As people become sensitive that they may be positioned against a dozen other candidates, demonstrating thought leadership to be found, a built in audience, or a living resume of their knowledge and how they interact with others is key. We’ve provided a variety of ways for people to connect with me via email, social networking sites, and even an embedded Twitter ticker tape below the header. This means that having a visually aligned personal brand with your goal is important, why? The way you represent yourself is an indicator of how you’ll represent your employer and clients.

    7) Get Serious, Hire a Pro
    This project was more ambitious than I could have taken on in my busy schedule or antiquated UI design background. Therefore it’s important to hire someone who knows what they’re doing, in fact read Mitch’s behind the scenes guest post, there’s only 7 images on the blog design, in an attempt to optimize the site. Mitch does this professionally, and it was worth the money to hire him to lead this project. I don’t have the time to learn it, nor do I want to risk messing up the blog.

    8] Got an Principle to Share? Leave a Comment
    I won’t profess to knowing all the principles, so I’m leaving this one open to the community. What principles for the modern web blog need to be factored in?

    By the way, I’ll be working on the popular posts section, making it a quick reference guide to those that quickly need the most helpful content. Stay tuned.

    Posted in Social Media, Web Strategy | 58 Comments »

    48

    Social CRM: When Registration Pages Go Extinct

    Categories: Social CRM, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on March 6th, 2009

    This post is a bit dense, I’m not writing for my general business audience, but for those that really are advanced social technology thinkers. If you’re seeking starter info, read my FAQs.

    I’m working on a report called the “Future of the Social Web” and I interviewed quite a few companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Lotus, RWW, Federated Media, Plaxo, Dell, Cisco EOS, Flock, Meebo, Gigya, Intel, Razorfish, Six Apart, and a bunch more to find out the trends in this industry. There’s probably less than 10 people in the world that have access to all these teams, executives and thought leaders, and I’m taking advantage of it. I just met with Appirio, which is a San Mateo company that birthed out of the SalesForce incubation process and I think they’re one of the first generation vendors that’s connecting social networks to CRM systems. They’re not alone, see the other apps in SalesForce AppXchange that connect with Facebook. Update: Rapleaf is in this space, I need to meet with them soon.

    [Marketers Use Registration Forms For Only Two Reasons: 1) To Be Able To Bug People 2) To Be Able Bug Them More Effectively]

    Most marketers don’t know why they want prospects to fill out registration pages, they’ve been doing it for so long, they’ve forgotten why. I’ll remind you, there’s only two reasons: 1) To get their contact information so they can bug them. 2) To get demographic and other data so they can bug them more effectively (target marketing). That’s it.

    One of the calls I’m making in my report is that registration pages go away. Why? CRM systems and Social Networks will start to connect, and share information in a two way manner. Of course, the trick is to make it all opt in so the user community can control what part of their information can be shared and with who. Appirio does just that, they have built a Facebook application that can be rebranded for a marketing campaign, it can then be used to share information, recommend information to peers, and used for other purposes such as recruiting, word of mouth, and other typical social network activities. As information gets shared, it can be passed to a landing page where users can submit information in a web form –then passed over to SalesForce.

    [The Future Of The Social Web Makes Registration Pages Extinct]

    While they haven’t built out a system that can remove registration pages all together, I know the second generation Social CRM systems will be able to do this. How? A technology will emerge that will allow users to pass only as much of their social networking profile information as they want over to a CRM system, how much? It’s up to the user. A new social contract will appear that will encourage users to give as much information as t hey want, and in return the brand will reciprocate. The more information the user gets gives, the more the brand will give back in return, I call this a “Social web contract”. Since the data will come from the profile information within a social network, there won’t be a need to have a collection web form, instead information will be passed through connective tissues.

    Obviously this flips a marketers world upside down as they are ultimately measured in most cases on generating leads and conversions, there’s a pretty radical mental shift that will need to take place, I’ll have to talk about this later. Oh, and I’ll have to tell you what this means to email marketing –that’s going to change too.

    That’s all I can explain right now, as I’m still putting together dozens of interviews and over 20 pages of notes, I gotta get a draft to Josh Bernoff, my rather tough editor. Just remember, the power has shifted to the community, so the tools, approach, and ideology has to meet the needs of the users.

    If you’re involved with connecting social networks and CRM systems, I want to talk. Also, Appirio needs marketing agencies to be truly successful, you may want to contact them, or just email me and I’ll connect you.

    Posted in Social CRM, Social Media, Web Strategy | 48 Comments »

    4

    Corporate Internet Executive Research Study by Internet Strategy Forum

    Categories: Web StrategyPosted on February 5th, 2009

    I’ll be a keynote speaker at the Internet Strategy Forum Summit in Portland in July 23rd, I attended this conference of corporate web decision makers two years ago –and have attended some local meetings here in the bay area.

    The ISF has conducted a survey and has made data available about corporate web decision makers, this brief (I’ve read the full version, which is available for purchase) gives information on how web strategists are organized, their concerns, and even compensation. The highlights of this research will be presented at the Summit, along with other informative speeches and case studies.

    A free four page summary of the brief is available below, or you can download on the site.

    2009 ISF Corporate Internet Executive Research 4-Page Sample Brief

    I will always promote and point to research that’s good, even if it’s not mine, thanks to Steve Gehlen (he’s on twitter) for making this possible, see you in July!

    Posted in Web Strategy | 4 Comments »

    85

    Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter

    Categories: MicroMedia, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on August 18th, 2008

    Last week, I listed out 9 reasons Why Brands Are Unsuccessful In Twitter, and other microblogging technologies. Companies are caught between the minutia of the discussions and their willingness to be human or add value to the conversations. Although a one-sided view of what’s going wrong, now let’s focus on what’s going right.

    I’m watching –and talking– to many brands that are choosing to engage with this seemingly endless stream of personal thoughts, updates, and conversations within Twitter.

    Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter

    Babysteps:

    First, identifying if this is the right marketplace
    Brands need to first evaluate if the community members within Twitter are the audience they’re trying to reach. Although we’ve yet to see any formal survey produced from Obvious corporation, most could identify these members are technology early adopters, media fiends, social media practitioners, and those interested in future communications.

    Next: Listening to glean insight
    Some brands are using the somewhat accurate search tools formerly known as Summize, or even Twitscoop to track graphing of potential terms, or to find influencers. Companies like Visible Technologies are mapping out the discussion in Twitter for tech giants like Dell –they’re likely going to provide a list of influencers and detractors in order to determine who’s the best way to approach them. In the case of the New York Times, Twitter is yet another opportunity to source stories, and potentially find out about breaking news or emergencies. Not only is this key for determining what’s being said by customers, prospects, and competitors, but to ensure rogue employees aren’t speaking on your behalf and potentially causing brand damage.

    Registering the namesake
    Once a company has figured out the conversation in their marketplace (assuming this is one for them) they should next secure the key domains related to their brand. There has been some impromptu indexes that show that many companies don’t have ownership over their individual brand on Twitter. Since registration is limited to one account per real email address, and companies will never be able to register every potential variant, the process is still limiting.

    Walking:

    Decide on persona: corporate and/or individual
    Brands will next need to decide on their online personas, and how they want to be perceived to the world. There are only a few variations and among them include: 1) A branded approach, void of personal interactions. In many cases, brands are unsure how to approach this conversation and most speak on behalf of the company, void of a personal reference of the publisher. Companies like Popeye’s chicken don’t readily indicate who’s behind the account, although they are very engaging conversing with others. 2) Some brands indicate who the user is, and go so far as to encourage individuals to represent the brand, RichardatDell takes this on with ease, as he both engages in personal interests as well as evangelizes and defends the Dell brand. See the NYT’s Communication department as they list out the personal contacts right on their twitter page. It’s assumed that brands that have engaged in option 2, also have corporate accounts listed in type 1.

    Decide on method of engagement
    Next comes the interesting part, how brands will actually publish, interact and communicate with others. There are three major options that brands can use: 1) Publish content in a ‘push’ style. Marketers, corp comm, PR folks and media companies can choose to use Twitter as a publishing system, as those who opt-in to follow can now receive updates from the latest story, press release or update. 2) Dialog: Some employees engage in relationship building with community members by responding, answering, and asking questions of those around them, see this large list of Oracle employees who are using these tools. or the ‘classic’ case example of Comcast Cares and Zappos shoes interacting and supporting customers 3) As we’ve indicate above, some may use these tools to glean insight –mainly listening rather than talking.

    Examine the digital communications policy
    Often known as ethics policies, blogging policies, or communications policies, the world of online publications continues to grow and brands must be prepared for these changes. Brands that have employees using social media (that would be just about all) must ratify their communications policy to: 1) Define what’s an official representation or have acceptance in the gray area of online communications 2) Define what the difference is between someone who is a company spokesperson and someone who’s acting and represents the company. Last week, at a client meeting, some employees at a enterprise IT networking company expressed concerns of employees who were on Twitter would talk about their personal beliefs around politics, culture, or preferences. Potentially some of these expressions would negatively impact other partners or customers in other regions or cultures, and didn’t know where the definitive line was between work and personal was.

    Running:

    Integration with other tools
    Seeminly rare, most brands don’t integrate these tools with their other social media or even traditional website. With the recent case of brands being brandjacked by twitter domain registrars a new need came up of brands wanting to validate their twitter accounts. In fact, some have sent me emails from their corporate account asking me to confirm they are ‘real’ accounts. Of course, the most effective way to overcome validation from third parties and to enhance other tools is to cross link from various web properties, which Tyson foods has recently done. Take for example Dell, which has listed out many of their twitter accounts on their corporate website, now segmented out by verticals, products and regions. Brands should cross link their twitter account from their corporate blogs, traditionally websites, and vice versa.

    Aggregation and joining conversations
    The next step in this evolution is to watch how the conversations will fragment, spread, and be aggregated on different websites. The conversation isn’t going to be limited to Twitter, it’s search clients, but will start to aggregate on other websites. Take for example Get Satisifaction a ‘universal’ support site that is aggregating twitter conversations on their page, in this instance, Comcast. The conversation about the brand has now spread off the site, and will sputter off new threads of discussions on other websites. Brands like Dell will aggregate those same conversations right on their mainstream site –bringing the engaged audience closer to their site.

    What’s next
    Although we’re still far from seeing this implement, I expect to see a tie with location aware devices that will integrate twitter with marketing, communication, and support. For example, as one approaches a product, or store where that product is, alerts, the ability to ask questions or receive special offers could automatically trigger to a customers account (most will be opt in, savvy marketers will figure around it). Expect savvy companies to further monitor discussions and respond to support or help questions using these micromedia tools.

    While there are many variations and some companies skip from step to step, these are the major evolutionary phases of how I see companies adopting micromedia tools like Twitter. I’d love to hear your feedback on what you’re seeing, and where it’s all headed.

    Update: Dawn Foster has a great actionable plan for brands on Twitter, as does Tara Hunt, read, and bookmark both.

    Posted in MicroMedia, Social Media, Web Strategy | 85 Comments »

    26

    Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies from Enterprise Corporations

    Categories: Industry Index, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on July 7th, 2008

    Ongoing List of Social Media Strategies
    A social media strategy is a long term plan utilizing all of the resources at hand using two way social tools. In the early days of 2005-2007, developing sophisticated strategies were limited to just a handful of tools such as blogs, forums, and online video. Now with so many resources being available from Twitter, Upcoming, Facebook, Widgets, and more, the opportunities –and level of coordination will vary. This post will be an ongoing list of enterprise size companies (over 1000 employees) that share their social media strategies, plans, online –hopefully in slideshare, as it’s easier to communicate.

    I expect contention
    What’s interesting is how the language of corporate folks describing these tools is often very different than the language purists use. I expect some contention from this, and this will make for healthy discussion below. I too understand the need to meet business needs, but at the same the needs of customers, do leave your opinions below, or on the blogs or slideshares.

    Why would a brand publish their social media strategy?
    Well, for a few reasons. These programs are designed to reach customers, partners, and colleagues in an open and transparent way, why not share with them in public? Secondly, by showing these companies are sophisticated in their approach, they demonstrate thought leadership. Lastly, by opening up for a public dialog, there’s so much to learn, gain, and grow from the larger community.

    Requirements for this list
    If you want to share (this could potentially be useful for Forrester reports) please leave a comment. Your blog post, slideshare, video or podcast should explain what your enterprise company is doing in the social media realm, thinking both long term, and considering the many resources and tools available to you.

    Sun Microsystems: Social Media is for Everyone
    Lou Ordorica and Linsa Skyrocki
    June 2008

    Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

    While I enjoy the holsitic view of the multi-departmental opportunities, it’s important to note that social media is not for everyone, as if you look at our technographic data, you’ll find inactive in nearly every demographic cut. I’m pretty sure they are suggesting that it’s for each department, so if that’s the case, then the statement is correct.

    Cisco: Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0
    LaSandra Brill, Manager, SP Web and Social Media
    July 2008
    Access the slideshare directly, use full screen mode

    I reviewed and provided feedback to LaSandra to this prior version, I enjoyed her lessons learned.

    Social Media at IBM - Beyond Blogging
    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: e20 e2)

    IBM’s Adam Christensen shares this slide deck of IBM’s approach on social media. I’ll be meeting with him to discuss it in early Oct 2008.

    Intel: Intel Forming “The Insiders” Social Media Advisory Team
    Ken Kaplan, Broadcast and New Media Manager, Global Communications Group at Intel Corporation
    June 2008

    In this blog post, Intel calls for a board of advisors to reach and assist to them for their social media efforts. If you’re not aware, Intel is already doing a lot in this space, much with success. I give them a tremendous amount of credit for taking risks, quickly learning, and then making iterative changes.


    EMC: Applying Personal Social Media Techniques to Corporate EMC
    Dan Schwabel, Social Media Specialist at EMC Corporation
    June 2008
    In this post, Dan Schwabel shares the many different tools that are used at EMC and how they related to the overall change in personal and corporate branding. He examines events, CEO activity, and the many different social technologies used in their approach.


    SAS: Online communities for SAS users and SAS professionals
    Alison Bolen, sascom magazine’s Editor-in-Chief
    July 2008
    In this post, Alison lists out the many ways that customers can communicate with each other.

    Your Company
    Leave a comment below with URL and description.

    Related Posts:

  • See this list of full time Social Media Strategists and Online Community Managers at enterprise companies
  • Applying a Social Computing strategy to your entire product lifecycle

    • Posted in Industry Index, Social Media, Web Strategy | 26 Comments »

    70

    How Brands Will Use FriendFeed

    Categories: MicroMeme, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on June 10th, 2008

    While I’m not a Friendfeed zealot like respected Steve Rubel, I’m seeing an opportunity for Friendfeed to help corporations further their social media efforts.

    If you’re not familiar with the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), it’s a process/document that helps press releases to not only carry the traditional content (who what when where why and how) of a company announcement, but it also provides links and assets to social media: blogs, images, videos, tags, etc.


    [Currently, Social Media is disparate and fragmented, making the conversation difficult to track, find, and use. Although too early for it's time, the Social Media Press Release, will reincarnate as Friendfeed]

    Alone, the social media press release isn’t an effective use of being in the spirit of social media, it’s somewhat devoid of the humanness and resulting conversation that many expect. However, full-blown announcements that contain quit a bit of images, blog posts, videos, and social networking campaigns require an ability to organize, and keep track of the disparate conversation.


    SMPR too early
    I’m the recipient of dozens of press releases every week, so I’m very familiar with what to expect, and frankly, haven’t seen a single SMPR since I’ve been an analyst since Oct, 07 submitted to me. You can however view Ford’s Social Media Press Release room called “Digital Snippets“, as one interpretation. Update: Inventor Todd has a small, but growing list on his site.

    The good news for the pioneers of the SMPR (smart folks like Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Chris Heuer) of the Social Media Press Release is that they were way ahead of the curve, they really had foresight to how corporate communications were going to change. The bad news is they were too early, and adoption hasn’t yet happened.


    [Brands will use Friendfeed like a Social Media Press Release, to aggregate their social assets, and then to spur on a conversation]


    How it could look
    Fortunately, there’s good news at hand, with social aggregation tools at hand, such as FriendFeed, a brand can create a Friendfeed account and easily consolidate all the assets from one location. What would this look like? A brand like Ford could create a Friendfeed account, submit to the various social services (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, Delicious, and over 30 others), then encourage fans of Ford to either follow that public Friendfeed page, or to become actual ‘friends’. The end result? All the social media assets will be viewed from one location, searchable, findable, with the ability to comment, without using a SMPR.

    Many brands will get it wrong, it’s not just publishing
    The one caveat is that brands will need to be part of the discussion that happens among these social tools, as what’s really important is the people that are talking, debating, and discussing what your company is announcing. For those that get it wrong, no one will subscribe, no one will talk about it, no one will ‘like’ it and spread it to their network. So be active in the comments, conversations, and an open manner.

    I’ve not seen a single brand do this, but it’s what I expect to see in the coming months, let’s see if my prediction will come true.

    Related Resources on Friendfeed:

  • You can find me on Friendfeed, “Jowyang”
  • Start Here: What Friendfeed’s “MicroMeme” Means For You, Brands, and The Web
  • TrendWatch: Comparing MicroMemes (Friendfeed), Network Feeds, and MacroMemes

    • Update: Todd has responded from his blog, although disagrees on adoption.

    Update 2: Ford has adopted Friendfeed as a form of the SMPR

    Posted in MicroMeme, Social Media, Web Strategy | 70 Comments »

    57

    The Five Questions Companies Ask About Social Media

    Categories: Web Strategy, Web TheoryPosted on June 6th, 2008

    I just visited a client who had several groups in their company doing quite a bit around social media (they are trying to answer the 4th and 5th question). They were what I call “walking” and were on the verge of “running”. Often, when I meet companies for the first time, I try to find out which of the following questions that they are answering, as it determines their level of sophistication.

    As one might expect, brands in tech, media, and some consumer goods are more advanced, and finance, insurance, and sometimes government are trying to answer the first questions.

    Five questions companies ask about social media:

    What is Social Media?
    For many folks, corporations, the question to answer was “What is a BloB”. Blogging was the primary tool that we saw in the marketplace, for some, it wasn’t taken seriously, for the savvy, they quickly adopted. We saw scare tactics from the threatened mainstream media, such as “Attack of the Blogs” and light of amateurisms, angry customers and crazies were painted. For many, we wanted to know what are these tools, how to they work, and what’s the impact. Early on, this impacted corporate communications, PR, and mainstream media.

    Why does it matter?
    As we’ve evolved, many were realizing the impact of exploding batteries, brand hijacking, and blog evangelism. Savvy companies were starting to adopt these tools, a few provided integrated communities that were scrapped together or built from existing platforms. For the majority, trying to understand why these tools matter to a business. In addition to corporate communications, PR, we started to see other marketing and business units being impacted by these tools, as well as adoption.

    What does it mean to my business?
    We’re here now. This is the year of ROI, measurement, and experimentation. Many corporations have deployed resources, headcounts and budgets. Corporations are afraid to make mistakes, so plans are created, and measurement is critical to help manage and prove the worth of new programs. ROI was proven, new social media measurement attributes were defined, and many new tools were deployed, I did what I could to further this industry (see all posts). In addition to Corporate Communications and PR, business units are starting to experiment with these tools, often out of the PR budget. A new role started to appear more frequently, the digital marketing manager, the community manager, the social media strategist.

    How do I do it right?
    Now that experimentation is done, and business units are starting to apply these tools, like advertising, PR, field marketing, and customer references, companies will want to do it right. Frameworks will be developed, consultants will offer packages, and a loosely developed process will be used. For companies that don’t have enough internal resources to listen, manage, and deploy, consultants will be a very sought after service. Nearly every brand will start to have an ongoing budget for social media, the new role to manage these tools will appear. IT departments will start to deploy enterprise 2.0 tools.

    How do I integrate across the Enterprise
    Normalization is happening, A checkbox for ’social media’ on every announcement, product launch, product development and support will be using these tools. Social media tools to listen, converse, collect knowledge, and build new products will integrate across the customer cycle. It’s not just external, intranets will start to deploy suites for collaboration, such as blog accounts issued to many internal and external employees. Product Teams, IT departments, HR, Finance, Executives, and of course Marketing will be using these tools.

    This post, for the most part is a rehash of what I’ve posted nearly a year ago, but I think it holds merit to discuss again

    Update: June 10th. I’ve scheduled 52 inquiry calls with clients since April 2008. Inquiry calls are 30 minute discussions with clients that want to pick our brains, and I tell them everything I know that will help them meet their business objective. While the range of questions wily varies, most are asking questions 3, 4, 5.

    What question is your company, or your clients trying to answer, this is often a good post to send to your internal teams and try to trigger a discussion.

    Posted in Web Strategy, Web Theory | 57 Comments »

    14

    What is a Web Strategist?

    Categories: Career, Web Industry, Web Strategy, Web TeamPosted on May 17th, 2008

    My long time friend Martin McKeay (Network Security A-Lister) asked a curious question when I tweeted about Len Devanna, EMC’s Web Strategist. Martin asks: “I saw your tweet about EMC, saw that Len’s role is Director of Web Strategy. Better question would be what does that really mean?”

    What is a Web Strategist?

    Definition:
    The web strategist is responsible for the long term planning and ongoing programs for a website, at least one exists at every corporation.

    Scope:
    A web strategist (this isn’t just a term I made up for my blog) is a REAL job title typically found in large corporations where the web is a necessary communication channel, or a title used by internet consultants who provide high level advice. Most often the web strategist is in marketing, but this role can appeal to the intranet or extranet. They are responsible for balancing the three spheres of web strategy (See graphic).

    They manage budget, and ultimately are key decision makers for which vendors are hired.

    Questions they have to answer:
    How do we align our website with our corporate objectives?
    How do we spend our resources?
    How do we measure our return on investment?
    How do our customers think of our website?
    How do I prioritize our projects?
    What future technologies do I need to be aware of?

    Rank:
    They are often at Director level, VP level, and on occasion, when the website is mission-critical, they are at C level (Chief Internet Officer, or some variation), at eCommerce companies this may be the web product manager. They often report to a senior rank in marketing, or sometimes engineering or IT.

    Background:
    Web Strategists are business people first, tech people second. They understand the direction and strategy of the company, and know how to use the web to meet those needs. They do have a background working in web, often from 5-10 years, and they know which of the many forms of web marketing they need to use to meet their business objective.

    Duties:
    A Web Strategist is actually a program manager, this means they manage ongoing projects, teams, and resources, to understand the difference between tasks, projects and programs, read this guide. They manage a profit and loss, and often responsible to other business units, manage budgets, and measure ROI.

    Team:
    Often, they act as a director to project managers, web managers. Those teams assemble the technical teams, as well as technical teams reporting directly to the Web Strategist.

    Who they interact with:
    Aside from managing their own team, they deal with the many internal business stakeholders, their management, and spend time managing relationships and deliveries from vendors. See this list of the many external constituents.

    Salary:
    They are paid as director or VP level. In the SF bay area, and experienced web strategist who’s responsible for the public website of a large corporation should be paid at director level or above. I would expect that to be 80-120k, and in the rare case be 120-300, esp if it’s a large web or eCommerce company. This varies greatly, so do not refer to that example as doctrine, as I’ve not done formal research to back it up.

    Notable Professionals
    Here’s a few people that are doing good work, many I’ve worked with in the past, do note the title isn’t as important as the responsibility and duties.

  • Michele Frost, Director, Web Marketing, Forrester Research (current colleague)
  • Peter S. Group Director, Enterprise Web Strategy (my former boss)
  • Lisa D. Director of Online Marketing at Joie de Vivre Hospitality (former colleague)
  • Olivier N. Director, Global Web Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems (briefly, my former manager)
  • James Spanfeller President, Chief Executive Officer, Forbes.com
  • Dave Churbuck, Vice-President of Global Web Marketing
  • Bryan Rhoads, Senior Internet strategist, social media and online community specialist, Intel

    • Where to find them:
    If you’re trying to hire a senior web strategist, they can be found already working at another company (you’ll likely have to poach) or they are members of my Facebook Web Strategy Group, or attend regional meetings at the Internet Strategy Forum, a group I’ve been involved with for years. In 2006 they published research based upon a member survey.

    If you’re a recruiter, you can advertise a job opening on the Web Strategy Job board, powered by Job-o-matic.

    I’ve video interviewed Len before, if you want to know him better. You can follow me on Twitter, my handle is jowyang.

    Posted in Career, Web Industry, Web Strategy, Web Team | 14 Comments »

    12

    How to Deal with Internal Stakeholders

    Categories: Web Strategy, Web TeamPosted on April 1st, 2008

    The Web Strategist deals with many internal customers
    A Web Strategist is an web decision maker, in context of this blog, they are often within large corporations. They have internal customers that range from marketing, product teams, product marketing, support, PR, advertising, IT, and a plethora of external vendors. For many web strategists’ much of your effort won’t be dealing with users or your web team of developers and designers but with internal stakeholders. I’ve seen a lot of this when I was corporate web manager, and I’d guess that over 50% of my time was spent dealing with requests, problems, prioritization of internal stakeholders. (I managed an enterprise intranet, extranet, and aligned a disparate enterprise intranet)

    Your internal customer: the stakeholder
    What’s a stakeholder? someone who stands to benefit or lose from your direct actions, as a result, they are your internal customers. Stakeholders can make your life heaven or hell, from their requests, or to they way they give feedback to your management chain.

    Think of yourself as a chaperone
    The way to manage stakeholders is to think of yourself as a chaperone, for your stakeholders, you oversee them, guide them, and direct them where they need to go. This is somewhat of a challenge, as if you’re overbearing and deny them their requests, they’ll escalate to their management (their parents), who will talk to your management (your parents), causing unnecessary headache. It can go the other way as well, if you bend to their will, they will dominate your time, and the user experience (your external customers) of the site could suffer if your put business needs first –rather than balancing the user with business needs.

    How to Deal with Internal Stakeholders:

    Develop great relations with your internal stakeholders
    Make yourself accessible to these teams, and build relationships to understand their business needs and drivers and try to get ahead of their requests, learn to ancipate their needs.

    Establish clear roles
    Sadly, stakeholders will often grab the first person in the web team they see to make a request, either a small web update or a project with scope creep. Assign someone on your team to facilitate requests, and a role to properly scope projects so you’re always setting expectations.

    Make the process very clear
    Tasks, Projects and Programs all have different life cycles, roles, processes and requirements, you’ll need to spell out very clearly to your stakeholders how each of those are different, and set expectations.

    Develop a ticketing and project system
    Deploy a system that will both accept incoming requests, this will help free up team resources, help see all the requests from one view, and help to keep track of many requests. This system will eventually be a great way to report to your management team of your fulfillment, and great for customer satisfaction reporting. Thanks to Adam for the submission in the comments.

    Lead the prioritization, but involve stakeholders
    You’re always going to have more requests than resources, unless of course your company is headed the wrong way. Make it clear what your current resource threshold is and prioritize projects. As new requests come in, you can have stakeholders work with you to move budgeted resources around –forcing them to prioritize their own requests. Of course, you’ve the final say, and should be empowered by your management to lead this forward with conviction

    Train stakeholders
    Depending on how your website is setup, some of your stakeholders may be encouraged to publish directly to the website, you’ll need to educate them on how to use tools, analytics, and other know hows to be successful. Train stakeholders on how to understand web analytics and web reports –empower them to take ownership over the content they have on their site. Teach them to fill out a requirements and scoping document, saving your team time and ensuring they’ve fully thought out the request.

    Make your schedule and reports available
    Let all stakeholders know of what your team is working on, establish an internal calendar with project definitions available, including web analytics reports so business stakeholders can work with them

    I could go on and on with other recommendations for success, but instead, I encourage you to leave nuggets in the comments. I’ll add great ones to this list and fully credit you.

    Related Resources

  • The many Web Strategy Constituents: The external forces that shape your website
  • The Three Web Activities: Task, Project, and Business Programs
  • A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008
  • Video: Alastair Duncan on Corporate Website Leadership (3:30)

    • Posted in Web Strategy, Web Team | 12 Comments »

    28

    An Initial Analysis of the Fast Company Community

    Categories: Community Marketing, Feedback, Social Networking, Web StrategyPosted on February 9th, 2008

    As an analyst, I watch the online community space very closely, and am always interested in seeing how traditional institutions and organizations approach, adapt, succeed or fail in adopting social tools.

    Fast Company, a forward thinking business publication has revamped it’s corporate website to now be an online community. Their initial three page announcement written by Edward Sussman: “The Media is Social”


    [Fast Company, a traditional publication, has featured community as it's primary focus. But success isn't guaranteed as: innovating without a clear objective is dangerous, the bottom-up approach must cascade to the whole organization, and they must rapidly make course corrections]

    Opportunity
    Fast Company is the first, but certainly not last, mainstream publication to integrate the majority of their site as a social community. The starting page of their website isn’t the magazine, or it’s articles, but is the community site. Traditional media is under fire from social media, the power has shifted to the participants, so in return Fast Company is participating: hiring bloggers and video bloggers (Robert Scoble and Shel Israel) and are integrating within their site. In many other cases, websites have bolted on social forums around content, this is clearly a full replacement of community over Fast Company content.

    Objectives
    Fast Company is attempting to involve readers and the market to be involved in creating content. We’ve listed out there are five major social computing objectives, (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) and this one could fall under embracing, where customers and employees collaborate to build next generation products and services.

    Challenges
    Once the initial buzz wears off, we’ll have to see who will remain leading the and joining in the conversations. Will the lines between professional created editorial and community continue to be blurred? How will high quality content be elevated so usefulness is found? Most importantly, with the many reports showing that advertising on social networks is ineffective, how will Fast Company monetize?

    What they deployed
    Fast Company deployed a community platform using Drupal, and hired experts to implement, it contains a variety of features from profile building, forums, user created blogs, media rooms, event calendars, and many other features. They have made this the primary experience from the homepage of Fast Company, and have a control navigation bar at the top of each page.

    Initial Analysis of the Community, Fast Company should:

    Determine a Goal
    Being creative for the sake of innovation isn’t enough. It’s great to see that they are trying something new, but what is the end goal? How will they measure results? Does the team know what success looks like?

    Quickly Squash Bugs
    I noticed a few hiccups that aren’t uncommon on a launch. 1) Site error: the site was not available for some time, Chris Brogan has screenshots 2) I tried to message Edward, but it got stuck in an endless loop of clicks to add him as a contact before messaging him, confusing. While all excusable the first week, this needs to quickly be resolved.

    Focus on fewer features
    The community site launched with too many features, as a result, the initial interface is overwhelming. I encourage clients to launch with only three major features, (such as a profile, forum, blog, media, q&a, etc), unfortunately, Fast Company launched without all of those

    Elevate Fast Company Editorial
    The professionally created content that we seek from Fast Company is hidden, which is too bad, as that’s why we come to them in the first place. There’s currently a saturation of online communities on every given subject on Ning, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Google groups. How is this different? I think the order is backwards: Lead with the editorial, attach the social features second, the social features should orbit (in context) the articles.

    Clean up the Interface
    The interface is crowded and unclear, resembling enterprise software, there are too many options and tools. I’m not the only one, I received feedback from some of my 3000 followers in twitter: “@jowyang I agree, the site was bewildering at first” The deployment looks like the features were determined by the developers and not a user experience designer. Let tools be hidden, and show more on a mouse over or let them cascade out. It’s confusing to understand what the top categories are compared to the control bar, then the many features on every page. Think Zen: articles first, social second, features and tools third.

    Start with a tour
    Develop a quick and dirty walk through video or animation that highlights how the website will serve the users, and how they can be involved and contribute. Highlight at the lead in video, and have your top bloggers post quickly.

    Make community a core ethos of company
    Being first has it’s advangtes, you get the buzz, but there’s also disadvantages: the path has not been cleared before, and innovators must quickly course correct when mistakes happen. Editors, writers, journalists, management and support must all be involved in the community, taking input, talking, and discussing. For success, Fast Company will need to involve a social way of thinking in everything they do, this can’t simply be a flash or wine thrown in the pan by management.

    The Big Picture:

    Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself? This is the ‘fast’ question posed in the community, and there were a myriad of responses, most positive. My response was the following:

    “Yes it can, and it can also learn more from it’s audience, fuel research, ideas, and stories. The successful business will learn how to get the community to be part of the content creation, and how to monetize on top of this.”

    The Future
    Expect this to be a success for Fast Company, but they’ll need to act on the previous recommendations. Expect other business publications to quickly launch similar communities, and soon the industry will be inundated with ‘me toos’. The savvy publications will still realize that the web is distributed and won’t limit their community efforts to their corporate domains, but will also spread to where the people are. The savvy fishermen, fish where the fish are.

    Conclusions: Being innovative doesn’t guarantee success
    Fast Company has launched an innovative community site, unseen by most mainstream publications. When the shinyness wears off, the company will need to involve community in every aspect of it’s strategy for it to thrive. This is certainly a website and community to watch, I’ll post additional analysis in a few months, and hope to get some numbers from the team.

    Posted in Community Marketing, Feedback, Social Networking, Web Strategy | 28 Comments »

    44

    Case Study: How Sony Leveraged A Popular “Vampire” Facebook Widget To Reach It’s Community

    Categories: Case Study, Facebook Strategy, Web Strategy, Widget StrategyPosted on January 29th, 2008

    Vampires Application was rebranded by Sony Pictures "30 Days Night" movie for successful Widget campaign

    A Widget Case Study
    Yesterday, I gave a teleconference on Facebook as a ready-made marketing program. I gave a few examples of success, and the audience was hungry for success metrics and numbers. One of the case examples was about rebranding an application/widget in this case, Rock You’s vampire application.

    Sony rebrands popular Vampires Widget with 30 Days Night, upcoming Vampire movie
    Vampires, which you may already know as the RPG where members bite each other to receive points (and duel) was already popular with over 3 million installs in Facebook.

    Sony pictures, the parent company of the very scary 30 Days Night vampire horror film rebranded the existing application, and launched a sweepstakes contest to generate registrations and glean intelligence. The grand prizes? 4 wheel ATVs and $1500.

    Specifically, they placed banner ads on the rebranded vampire applications which promoted the movie (one could assume that those who opt-in for the vampires application would also like a vampire movie) promoting the sweekstakes.

    The measurable results?
    The campaign was only live for 3 weeks, and there were 59,100 sweepstakes entries. (success was deemed at 10k, this clearly moved beyond that)
    The visits (I don’t know if they were unique or repeated) were 11,642,051 for the bite page, and 17,652,567 for the stats page (I believe these are part of the interactive experience of the game.
    Sony was happy, it exceeded expectations, and users of the application weren’t over branded.

    RockYou asked me to keep the price confidential, but based upon the results they told me, I suggested they double the rates, this is despite what Mashable reports on.

    What worked?

    Fishing where the fish are: Sony figured out where the already existing community was (remember to fish where the fish are) and rather than trying to rebuild something completely by scratch, they leveraged an existing successful application.

    Rely on specialists for new arenas:     In my many briefings with vendors and clients, specialized firms often provide something a general interactive firm or corporate web marketing team can’t. They have experience, know their area, and in this case, they knew to rely on someone that already knew Facebook.

    Compliment the existing user experience:     Sony didn’t beat the 3 million existing users with heavy advertising (and I’m sure RockYou wouldn’t have let them) over the head, instead offered value by giving away prizes, and tied in a movie that already existed.

    What could have been better?
    In my opinion, it would be great if:

  • The campaign lasted longer than 3 weeks.
  • Rather than simply embedded, Sony could sponsor elements from the movie and integrate within the game. (vampires could fight at different scenes from the movie, key characters from the movie could become non-player characters, etc). They already have a multi-player game that could have tied in.
  • A spin off game could have emerged just around the game, where members could give virtual gifts to each relating to the movie, then cross-selling other sony products and merchandise.
  • Also realize there are very few applications in Facebook that are this popular, don’t expect these type of results to occur every time.

    • Widget Network Developers
    Looking bigger, RockYou isn’t the only vendor doing this type of work, also see Slide, Clearspring, Gigya, and a bunch of others. If you’re in the space, feel free to leave a comment below adding to the conversation.

    For those Forrester clients who attended the webinar, I hope that clears up the question (as I promised to find the answer), and thanks to Ro Choy and team of Rock You for the details. If you need to know more, read this weekly digest of the social network industry, or see all posts tagged Facebook.

    Posted in Case Study, Facebook Strategy, Web Strategy, Widget Strategy | 44 Comments »

    22

    What Facebook’s Developer Announcement means: How Community can be Portable

    Categories: Facebook Strategy, Social Graph, Social Networking, Web Strategy, Web TheoryPosted on January 27th, 2008

    Update: Several have suggested that this announcement is nothing new, (See initial announcement in 2006) and upon further investigation (and a quick email exchange with the Facebook team) confirms this to be right. What’s new is that it’s now easier to do than before. Regardless, the awareness of this feature is low within the marketplace, and everything I write in the following still stands true. Consider this awareness raising, and more of these types of distributed web tactics to continue in 2008.

    My goal is to simply tech speak and boil it down to what it means for you, a web strategist. I’ll update this post as I learn more information.

    What Facebook wrote
    In their most recent announcement they gave a very technical explanation regarding the announcement:

    “This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported. The exceptions are:”

    Web Strategists’ Translation
    This means that web owners can now embed existing Facebook applications easier than before. Now, in addition to being able to create an application/widget that will sit on Facebook alone, you can now easily embed it on your own website (in addition to leveraging the social features that Facebook offers).

    [You can start to bring the Facebook community to your own corporate website, rather than directly developing on Facebook alone. This is a step towards the community now leaving the social network and moving to other locations]

    This is really making the social features and widgets of Facebook portable. This is important as your web strategy is now distributed in many locations. For corporate web strategists, you’ll need to expand the scope of your plan to include how some of these widgets and applications could be embedded on your own microsites and corporate websites. This also means this is a ‘bridge’ to get active Facebook users closer to your corporate website.

    Impacts to Google’s Open Social
    If you’re not familiar, I’ve outlined what Open Social Means to your executives, read this first. Essentially, Google and it’s many partners wants to make it easy for widgets to move from one social network to another with little re-coding: portable and re-usable widgets. Unfortuantly, this has yet to be seen, and Facebook’s announcement allows widgets to be more portable, somewhat creeping in on Open Social’s intentions. In the long run, expect all of these companies to be working together, sharing API data, as those that don’t will be left out.

    What you need to do:

    Action: Do nothing at this point, let’s wait to see some case studies of how this is being implemented.

    Plan: This doesn’t keep you from correctly planning, so continue to make your web strategy a distributed one, where content, applications, and people move from social network to social network, and to your own corporate website. Talk with your interactive agency, web developers, and social media gurus on what some of these possibilities could mean. Have weekly 30 minute brainstorming parties and see how this could be implemented and integrated within your current activities.

    How to think of this: Plan on adding social features to your own corporate website so that visitors will interact with your own content, re-sort it, edit it, and mash it however they want. The future of content is amorphous and ubiquitous. (I’ve been saying this since 2005 and now we’re finally starting to see it happen)

    Posted in Facebook Strategy, Social Graph, Social Networking, Web Strategy, Web Theory | 22 Comments »

    13

    What Growth In Widget Networks Means To The Web Strategist

    Categories: Web Marketing, Web Strategy, Web Theory, Widget StrategyPosted on January 24th, 2008

    Why Web Strategists should consider widgets
    Expect widgets to act like a network, the span over many different containers like social networks, websites, and blogs. Since widgets are opt-in by the publisher or social network member, it’s a great way to track who’s actually interested in the content. As a result, the opportunity for more sophisticated marketing and advertising moves from carpet bombing to opt-in nearly GPS radar-like accuracy.

    First, understand the distributed web strategy
    Need to get up to speed on this, start with my primer on web marketing is distributed, not on two domains alone, followed up by a former CMOs perspective on the distributed web. Getting users to come to your corporate website is not the only goal, savvy fisherman fish where the fish are.

    New players as widget networks emerge
    I’m closely watching the widget industry with colleague Charlene Li. This time last year, there were no widgets in Facebook, and now there are over 13,000. I recognize that this is a growth market Widget ad revenue was estimated at about $20 million in 2007, or about one-thousandth of Internet advertising as a whole. According to the new comScore data for November, Slide claimed almost 144 million unique viewers, for a 16% market share, and RockYou claimed a 11.7% share, with 104 million individual viewers. In July, Slide had 130 million individual users, or a 15% share, while RockYou boasted 96 million users, or 11.1% of the total. (stats via MSNBC)

    Spending low, but expect growth
    According to the data (from Comscore) that 6% of internet advertising dollars were being spent on social networks, and only a fraction currently is spent on widgets. Expect that to grow in both camps. Widget networks aren’t limited to social networks alone, in many cases, they can be repurposed for mobile devices as well as standalone embeds on websites and blogs.

    Measurement key as dollars shift
    The article states that some of the growth is capped due to lack of measurement (a good reason why I created this list of widget measurement companies). You’ll need to measure to show success, as well as make in-flight course corrections in near real time.

    Expectations in 2008
    So, expect widget networks like Slide, Rockyou, Widgetbox, Watercooler, and many many others, to become like syndicated networks, offer self-serve advertising, begin to offer metrics, and offer unique co-branded, and co-sponsored marketing campaigns to brands. Two of these networks will likely be acquired by large media or internet companies in the next 11 months.

    Case Study: Forbes Widgets
    Here’s a case of a company letting go to the distributed web, I just ran into the Forbes site, and saw they had a full page devoted to widgets, that let it’s content, and brand spread of it’s site. Interesting that it’s sponsor, in this case Visa, goes with it.

    What you should do
    First, determine if your community and marketplace is using widgets, do research. If so, seek one of those widget networks, and trail an advertising campaign that will match to your right community. Don’t try to recreate a widget, leave it to the experts, and likely, your interactive firm won’t do it well, these are very specialized products. Rather than have the widget network vendor recreate a new widget, leverage an existing one by sponsorship, rebranding, or integrating with a unique marketing campaign.

    Posted in Web Marketing, Web Strategy, Web Theory, Widget Strategy | 13 Comments »

    17

    10 Considerations for the Startup planning to offer to the Enterprise (and why many will fail)

    Categories: Enterprise Web, Web StrategyPosted on January 14th, 2008

    Lately, I’ve been hearing from more startups that they want to get into the enterprise space. These consumer focused web startups are the ones we know and love with the clever non-sensical names, rounded corners, and domains missing the “e”.

    For many startups, having enterprise customers is a great proposition, as it gives the opportunity for repeat revenue from a stable source, partnership opportunities, and maybe even chances for acquisition.


    [While many startups are interested to offer their services to Enterprise companies, they underestimate the complexity. There are many overlooked requirements from culture to support that startups just don't get]

    Sadly, while we love these tools on the free open web for our personal uses, many of them aren’t ready for a smooth transition into an enterprise web teams and by serious business folks and executives. A new set of rigorous feature requirements need to be met, including disposing of the ‘fun brand’ and getting ready to support demanding corporate clients.

    10 Considerations for the Startup planning to offer to the Enterprise

    1) Most importantly, find a business opportunity or pain that you plan on fixing.

    2) Re skinning: In many cases, offer a white label tool so it can be rebranded by the consumer.

    3) Offer an ASP version as business units will want to adopt without the IT department. (Update: ASP as in Application Service Provider, so a web-version hosted on your servers, so they customer doesn’t have to download any software, or have to rely on IT to do this. Typepad, SalesForce, and SurveyMonkey are examples of this)

    4) Later, evaluated offering a software version that IT and Engineering can download and use on internal or secured severs behind the firewall,

    5) Build a robust system that won’t fail from heavy enterprise use, sadly, Twitter would never make it.

    6) Develop login and permission systems that work with a variety of identity systems, ensure data can be easily transferred to clients, use industry standards.

    7) Provide a healthy dashboard and metrics for the clients administrative team

    8 ) Hire sales and account teams that have backgrounds in corporate. For initial sales with a business unit, expect to sail through, but expect rigorous testing, negotiations, and detailed contracts when dealing with corporate purchasing departments.

    9) On demand support: Dealing with enterprise clients requires a higher degree of support, expect to jump, leap, and spring into action at the request of your corporate clients.

    10) Get serious: consider rebranding and refocusing the tool. Refine or create a separate marketing effort to aim for the enterprise space, consider creating a sub-brand.

    While it’s sure attractive for startups to want to offer their products to corporations, many have not thought through the implications and requirements to be enterprise class. Quite frankly, many won’t have the aptitude, resources, or time to do this right.


    [Many startups will offer to the enterprise, but most will fail. Successful startups offering to the enterprise need to have maturity, and it's not something that can be masked]

    If I’ve missed any considerations, please extend the list, by leaving a comment or sharing from your own blog

    A special note about terms: While it would have been so easy for me to use the term Enterprise 2.0 I used every precaution to actually describe and explain the concepts rather than just using that term. I hope that you too become mindful before using that term, as well as Web 2.0. Show your mastery: focus on descriptions and outcomes rather than buzzwords.

    Posted in Enterprise Web, Web Strategy | 17 Comments »

    207

    A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008

    Categories: Web Marketing, Web StrategyPosted on January 1st, 2008

    This is an updated revision of the 2007 version, which was one of the top viewed posts for the entire year. I’ve added quite a few new forms as they’ve emerged or come to maturity over this last year.

    Translations
    If you’d like to translate this, feel free to do, then leave a comment below, I’ll add you to this list, as well as call you out in a separate post.

  • Indonesian Version of this post
  • Italian Version of this post
  • French version of this post
  • German version of this post
  • Russian version of this post
    • Summary and Audience
    This document catalogs the many tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy in 2008. Even if your strategy or resource limitations restrict you from entering all spaces, awareness of the changes in our digital landscape are critical. This document is intended for decision makers roles such as CMO/VP/Director of Web and Marketing.

    Changes in communication require corporations to adapt and evolve
    In North America the web medium in the number one medium in the workplace and second at home, a significant portion of your resources should be developed around your online programs, research indicates the web medium will continue to grow. We also know that prospects in a variety of stages in the buying stage use the web to make decisions, this is an arena no company can afford to ignore. Most importantly, future generations are native to the web, and this will only increase over time.

    Limitations
    This is not a substitute for a plan or strategy, this is simply an index of tools. This list is not prioritized, nor should it be considered formal analysis, A strategist should first identify objectives, develop a plan only then choosing tools, and in that order.

    For many corporations who’re not fully aware of all the tools available, deploying web marketing goes beyond your corporate website and google results.

    The Many Forms of Web Marketing:

    1) Corporate Domain
    This has been a standard since the late 90s, nearly every company, mom and pop boutique now has a web presence. The primary purpose of this is to provide the public with information about your company, it’s products, and anything else they may need. Corporate websites often compose of several features that are listed below.

    A) Corporate Site
    Large to small companies have established a websites around their brand, the content is around marketing products, support, and corporate information. Despite the massive efforts to perfect the corporate website, much of the content is irrelevant as prospects shy away from marketing content and start to use social media.

    B) Portal Strategy
    Widely popular in the late 90s this strategy was intended to serve up all user information on one page, and keep users on one’s domain. A few well known portals now exist such as MyYahoo which is a form of a feedreader. Most modern marketers realize that content is now distributed.

    C) Microsites for Segmentation
    Typically deployed around new product launches or campaign focuses, or specific market segments, these often short term websites are used for calling specific attraction. They typically have a unique URL and are tied to an integrate campaign. See Microsoft’s Origami microsite. Caution: some companies overly deploy these microsites and end up with a distributed and unfocused web strategy.

    D) Interactive Web Marketing
    The web is more than a ‘read only’ medium, unlike other mediums, companies can make the website interactive, encouraging a new dynamic of engagement. There’s a variety of technologies to use from uses of Javascript, AJAX and Flash based. Of course, one can only go far where the limitation is that it is still a ‘user to computer’ interaction. A few examples include Subservient Chicken experience, What kind of M&M are you, and Geico’s Caveman Crib.

    E) Intranet
    The web isn’t just for communicating to prospects and customers, similar strategies apply to your employees. You can get more information by joining the Intranet User Experience Group, or find other online resources to this specific field..

    F) Extranet
    Used for communications with partners, or customers, extranets are secured websites that companies grant access to. Features could include dashboards, updates, support information, and detailed product information.

    G) Regionalization
    In today’s global web, websites are translated, reformatted and segmented by region, culture, class. Be sure to focus on France, China, Japan as fast emerging languages. Also see report on internet usage in third world countries.

    2) Search Marketing
    Ever heard of Google? Many prospects use google in the ‘hunt’ phase for a product. By paying a third party or a search engine directly you can obtain a strategy to get your website listed in search results. I’ve heard a variety of stats demonstrating success of natural vs paid results, however the ROI is usually positive. It’s likely your competitor is also present on the Search results page. View my few posts on Search Strategy or contact Andy Beal, David Berkowitz or Brian Keith.

    A) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    Many web groups at large corporations have a document, a process, or even a dedicated resource who’s goal is to make sure web content is easily found, indexed, managed and correctly served in search results. There’s been some recent discussion the state of the SEO industry.

    B) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
    Frequently, companies will hire a specialized search company to purchase keywords that will help drive contextual links in search results. These ads are contextually displayed based upon the search query. There’s a growing and sometimes controversial industry focused on these techniques.

    3) Out Bound and Syndicated Web Marketing
    Used to help ideas spread off the corporate website, this list of tools extends reach by direct channels, and as well as ‘pull’ techniques where users opt-in. Be savvy when using these tools to respect the best interests of your customers, otherwise it’s one-click to unsubscribe or spam.

    A) Email Marketing
    While certainly not completely native to the web, they certainly are tied. Modern email campaigns (sometimes even direct marketing) involves barely personal emails blasted out to indviduals on a mailing list. These modern versions typically have the option to be HTML based, and have hyperlinks brining users back to the corporate site or Microsite. I hear the conversion rate for these are 2-5%, and typically deploy a positive ROI. Having spoken with many Web directors and Marketers, this is a task best suited for an outsourced vendor. Be sure to read the research on the growth for this industry in 2007.

    B) Invasive Marketing
    “Pop-ups”, and “Pop-Unders”, trojan and tracking software are both disruptive methods to obtain the attention and data of users. Research indicates this form of marketing is diminishing, use with caution, or not at all (ask your Ad Agency if they are doing this without your knowledge) remember the market can associate your brand with the way you reach them, and users are now in charge.

    C) Syndicated Content and RSS
    I lump Syndication into this category as I see it as being an evolution as marketing shifts from Push to Pull. RSS is quickly becoming a method where users can opt-in for additional content. For more information start with Six RSS Resources for the Internet Professional or Web Strategist, when you’re ready to deploy read Web Strategy: Understanding Syndicated Feeds for your Corporate Website.

    4) Brand Extension
    This is not a new concept, it’s simply been applied to web properties. The strategy is simple: where your market is, so should your brand.

    A) Web Advertising
    I’m sure you’re all familiar with the banner, tile, or skyscraper advertising (IAB) model on websites. This age old strategy simply suggests that if there are eyeballs your brand should ‘impress’ upon the users. Click through rates are typically in the 1% or lower rate, sometimes success is measured by brand impressions, (visitation by traffic). These ads are static and do not change even if the content on the webpage changes.

    B) Contextual Advertising
    These targeted ads will be served up on the webpage depending on the content that’s on the page. This is a more ‘intelligent’ and therefore more relevant than Web Advertising, which may not be targeted at specific content. This form of advertising can be text, images, media or other form and are common on websites, blogs, and are now appearing on web based emails sites. (Submitted by David Berkowitz: Feb 13th. 2007)

    C) Sponsorship and /Cross branding
    This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand. This can occur on content sites, shows, media properties, blogs, podcasts, and just about everything else. This is expected to increase in 2007.

    D) Social Advertisements
    Having just appeared this year from Facebook, it uses contextual information from users who have become “Fans” of a brand, then ads are severed to their network, in an endorsement. This has been highly controversial, and the return on investment is not yet known.

    E) Widget Advertising
    Having just appeared this year from on containers like Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Friendster, widgets have proliferated at an amazing growth rate. Expect advertising networks to form over the next year, where a brand can purchase space on any number of widgets across different social networks and communities, groups such as: RockYou, Slide, Widgetbox, and Watercooler to start with. See all posts tagged Widget Strategy.

    F) Affiliate Marketing
    Affiliate marketing programs compensate partners and alliances that bring referrals, leads, or sales. While it overlaps with other forms of web marketing, the goal is to provide the right content or products to the target demographic. Examples of this include placement on comparison shopping sites, loyalty sites, and product review sites.

    5) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing
    eMarketer’s research indicates that this is the fastest growing area of growth for Web Advertising and Marketing is in the Social Media space. In my experience, the awareness rate is around 30% and deployment 10-20% for most corporations. Some of the tools listed below are not new, while some become critical in how prospects find information about products. Remember this section is less about the tools than it is about the end result: people connecting with other people.

    A) eCommerce/Rating Sites
    For most consumer products and a majority of enterprise products, there’s a variety of websites that rate products both by expert (sometimes called analyst) or peer review. The most popular site that has done this in the text industry is CNET reviews which deploys both editorial reviews, video demos, and user ratings and opinions. Content can be both positive and negative about your company as well as your competitors. Ratings and voting has evolved with popular news voting sites like Digg.

    B) Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
    I’m tying these two together as both features are starting to merge in many modern versions. While founded from early usenet days, forums allow for communities to form around similar ideas and collaborate. Approximately 33% of companies deploy forums. Wikis have also been used to tie industries together as well as. Savvy marketers are starting to also realize the power of social networking sites in every flavor of focus, including image sharing sites like flickr for marketing. I’ve created a list of all White Label Social Networking platforms.

    C) Syndicated Marketing
    See section 3C above.

    D) Podcast Marketing
    Many corporations are reaching their community though on demand content on mobile devices, the key to this medium is certainly in the ‘pull’ strategy. I’ve listed out my recommendations in a recent post called Corporate Podcasting Strategies for 2007.

    E) Blogging
    I estimate about 30% or less of businesses are considering blogs (web logs) as forms of business communication. The subject has been talked about quite extensively, I recommend reading Naked Conversations, the Weblog Handbook, and the Corporate Blogging Book. To learn about all the forms of businesses blog. If you’ve not yet deployed a Corporate Blogging program, I reccomend learning from my experience as a corporate blog evangelist.

    F) Widget Marketing
    Widgets are light weight web applications that are being embedded in websites, blogs, forums, and social sites. Flickr badges, MyBlogLog, and in ways even the Firefox community marketing campaign are companies that are engaged in this way. This isn’t anything new, I noticed this trend before the term gained popularity, and called it Viral Chicklets, to learn more there’s a growing list of examples on Widgetbox.

    G) Online Video and Live Streaming
    While Online Video has existed for many years on the web, it’s most notably been gaining traction from the video blog, or video sharing sites of great popularity such as Google Video, or it’s recent acquisition YouTube. I recommend starting with thinking about Video for your Executives and thought leaders. This also includes live streaming where participants can webcast video in real time, often accomplished by chat features, see this full list of live streaming companies.

    H) Instant Messaging, Presence
    Clever marketers are figuring out how to involve real time conversational media using Instant Messaging tools, presence, and status tools, such as Twitter. These tools tie to online and mobile devices. My experience with Generation Y is that they are using IM as their primary way to communicate over all other mediums.

    I) Tagging, Collective Tools
    I’ve discussed how tagging can be used to harvest marketing intelligence as well as help your SEO results. See using Delicious for Market Research. Properly tagging content as well as researching how tags are used will help communities find your content.

    J) Voting Features
    Popularized with the website Digg, members submit news stories and they are voted up by the community. More representative than democratic, there’s criticism that only a few hundred users can control the content that makes it to the front page. This has also been deployed in corporate extranets, such as Dell’s IdeaStorm where customers can vote for future products or features. Expect this feature to appear in other websites over the next year.

    K) MicroMedia
    These microblogging tools allow users to share bite sized information with their social network or from mobile phones. With the launch of Twitter spring 2007, it started to gain traction, as well as Pownce and Jaiku. Expect this form to be a major form of communication for 2008, as it starts to gain hold. See all posts tagged MicroMedia.

    L) Infinite Other Flavors
    The list of potential applications can go on and on, from Toolbar plugins such as Delicious plugin, Alexa Plugin Attention recorder, etc, to web based mobile applications. User voted news sites are rapidly appearing such as Digg. There’s a whole another category (read all my posts tagged Community Marketing) on the many different forms the above tools create when they’re combined, from Community sites like Microsoft’s Channel 9 to real time Conversation indexes like Techmeme or Technorati’s WTF, new ways to find, sort and harness information will emerge over the year. The notable attributes include a ‘community’ or ‘viral’ and ‘conversational’ tone to them.

    6) Virtual Worlds
    Tied both to online gaming and social networks, the virtual world emulations have gone from experimental to a haven for some immersive communities.

    A) Virtual Worlds
    Second Life is being trialled by large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Sears and a variety of retailers, although there are many other virtual worlds such as ViOS, ActiveWorlds, Entropia Universe, Utherverse (Redlight Center & more)

    B) Online Massive Multi Player Games
    Also popular are Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG for short) are appearing online such as World of Warcraft (WoW), and Club Penguin a growing online game for kids, teens, and some adults. XBox 360 has IPTV capabilities and most console games have online components, so there are multiple experiences to tap into. Opportunities include content cross-over, branded experiences, and external social networks on the internet.

    C) Online Games
    Gaming networks have started to create mini-flash games such as mini-clips, Yahoo Games, and other networks. Supplemented with advertising or sponsored branding, these can be embedded and spread to other websites.

    7) Related Mediums
    The web will be a platform and will extend to other mediums as well as create new ones.

    A) Internet TV (IPTV)
    While still emerging, the web will marry the TV and content, communication will evolve to a new form of media we’ve not yet seen yet. I doubt it will be as simple as ‘TV content online’ or ‘Reading websites in the living room’. Something new will appear, and it will impact your web team. See all my thoughts on IPTV.

    B) Mobile Content
    Websites are already being viewed on mobile devices, either full browsers, or fast load browsers. Many executives, decision makers, road warriors and techies are accessing the web using mobile devices, so a strategy to deliver correctly to this medium is necessary. See all my thoughts on Mobile Technology.

    8 ) Experimental: To Watch
    While not yet here, here are some following forms to watch this coming year.

    A) Portability of the Social Graph
    Currently, social network members have to add over and over new contacts, and inaccuracy between networks is common. Expect the social graph (the online representation of your network) to be separated from the social networks. Websites will soon have members interacting with each other as the social graph extends to static websites. Read all posts tagged Social Graph.

    B) Vendor Relationship Management
    Purely conceptual, expect a systems to rely on the intents of prospects or buyers to emerge, which will anonymously signal to vendors to bid for the needs of customers. Learn more from Doc Searls program.

    Putting it all Together
    Whew, that’s the major families, but remember for many corporations, these elements will not be successful in a vacuum, the opportunity for momentum happens when they are combined and used strategically. At least one person or group should have full knowledge of how your brand is being used online and in other mediums.

    Posted in Web Marketing, Web Strategy | 207 Comments »

    8

    The Three Web Activities: Task, Project, and Business Programs

    Categories: Web StrategyPosted on December 29th, 2007

    For the web professional, there are various activities that occur on a consistent basis, I’ve boiled them down to three succint types of activities. Working as a lowly production UI designer to managing a global website, I’ve had to do all.

    The Three Web Activities: Task, Project, and Business Programs

    The Task

    What: A web task is a short term undertaking that could involve any type of activity that supports a website.

    Examples: These could be content changes, database checks, stylesheet changes, or reporting and monitoring.

    Who: Typically assigned to the content, development, web analysts, production, or engineering team, these are the core activities that keep the website running efficiently.

    The Project

    What: A specific-duration activity, this project involves the completion of a goal, and success is measured upon completion and timeliness to complete.

    Examples: Several projects may be going on during any given time such as a redesign project, code upgrade, cms install, or language translation.

    Who: Often assigned to a web manager, business analyst, or dedicated project manager, this person may call upon resources from various teams in the company from the web team, marketing, and often IT.

    The Business Program

    What: These ongoing business programs (not to be confused a web application ‘program’) are the heart of a web managers purpose, their job is to manage these ongoing programs with a specific goal in mind: increase revenue or decrease costs. These web programs are designed to fulfill objectives of a web strategy.

    Examples: the Intranet program, the Extranet program, the International website program, the Community Program, the Blogging Program, or the corporate website program.

    Who: This duty is typically relegated to the Web Strategist (titles include web manager, web director, vp of web marketing). They will employ a number of ongoing resources to properly allocate for content, code, production, management, and ongoing maintainence.

    While any of these activities can be outsourced, it’s ill-advised to outsource the entire activity, as control and management will be needed. Learn more, see the three spheres of web strategy, or my employer’s Forrester POST methodology for social computing endeavors.

    Posted in Web Strategy | 8 Comments »

    3

    Web Strategy: How to use Live Interactive Video Streaming for your Web Experience, Events, and Crises

    Categories: Live Video, Web StrategyPosted on November 19th, 2007

    Summary
    Live Interactive Video Streaming, also called live streaming, life casting, or event streaming can provide the web strategist with a low-cost effective tool to enhance communications to customers. This document outlines the most successful ways to use these tools, and provides some best practices.

    Situation
    Live streaming has gotten the attention of the media, press, and bloggers, yet when peering back in history, it’s not a new technology. The big difference is that there are many providers that offer this service and it’s the frequently self-publishing of individuals on blogs makes it easy for anyone to get in on the action

    Opportunity
    Live video streaming in an inexpensive and ‘human’ medium that can involve a community in an interactive online event.

    Definition
    Life Interactive Video Streaming: A real time video that is often created from a webcam or embedded camera on a laptop (many Macs come standard with this) that let’s anyone publish in real-time to their audience. The interaction part comes from the live attendees being able to interact with each other and the show creator in a real time chat room. I find this attributed to be critical in describing this form of the medium.

    Three Effective Use Cases:

    1) Event Streaming
    One of the best uses of live interactive video streaming is at events, whether at corporate ones, conferences, or product announcements. Supplement your many events with this inexpensive service by assigning an employee (or inviting an existing event streamer) to your event. Provide them with power, robust internet access (Lan line prefereed) and a good location to setup their camera. In come situations, if the event is already being streamed, it’s possible to import the existing audio and video feed into the site, making it easier.

    Who’s doing this? Corporate events, presidential debates, conferences organizers

    Risks: I’ve seen issues where corporate firewalls have caused havoc in setup, mismatch between audio video gear, and lastly, issues with existing video crews not wanting to participate due to threat of newer cheaper tools, or ‘union rules’.

    2) Crises
    Ever had a crises? Sure you have, nearly every brand is going to have an exploding product or downed website. In the new live and social web, the best thing to do is to put your best face forward, apologize, and demonstrate to your customers how you genuinely and authentically fix issues. Take zooomr for example, this two man photo sharing startup by Kris Tate and Thomas Hawk was going to release a new version of their website, but sadly, the upgrade went horribly wrong, and the site went down, and appeared by unrecoverable. Rather than scurrying away, they use live interactive streaming to broadcast and show exactly what they were doing to fix the issue. They streamed for over a week on end and showed how they were fixing the problem, even when they were too dead tired to carry on. In the end, they earned the trust of their community, received donations, and eventually got their website back up.

    Risks: Exposing how weak you are during a vulnerable time is a risky strategy, but one that could win over the community if you are honestly giving the effort to correct what your audience and customers want. Authenticity requires genuine action.

    3) You’re interesting
    This pretty much applies to all other situations. For many digital egoists, they are applying life casting and streaming to the whole world their very minutia of their lives. Sadly, after the hype has left the medium nearly half a year ago, the world has stopped caring about watching the lives of an average Joe or Jane. Only people with very interesting lives will gain traction and audience from life streaming. Those would include the rich, famous, actors, musicians, talented, or the very attractive. Secondly, those who live in very unique areas or have a unique lifestyle (like NY’s “Naked Cowboy”) will get traction.

    For companies, if you have a very unique behind the scenes process that you want to share about your products being manufactured, or have an exceptionally busy of amazing store (or a view from that store) consider using live video web streaming. Depending on the situation, you may want to turn off comments.

    Risks: Failing to truly be interesting will result in wasted time and embarrassment from your peers. Learn to use these tools effectively.

    How to get started?

    Input Device: Locate an on-board webcam, or purchase a webcam (a hundred dollar Logitech is more than sufficient for most uses. For higher quality events and conferences, consider using higher grade cameras and mics for best production

    Services: There’s quite a few Live Video Streaming services available, you can see my master list (which has been republished by the LA Times) to find the right one for you and your demographic.

    Experiment internally:     Start playing with these tools to get familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. Try obtaining an EDVO card to stream from remote locations. Also test if these tools work behind the firewall.

    Integrate with other communications: I found that if you plan to live stream an event, you’ll need to tell attendees in advance so they can schedule on their calendars to attend. Also consider using Twitter to attract people to your stream.

    Interact: The best case scenarios are when the audience gets to help guide and lead the experience. As a result, they will feel ownership, stay engaged, and want to be part of the experience. Read and participate in the forums in near real time, ask questions, let them guide and be part of the show. For example, I used live streaming at the web 20 expo and the viewers told me who they wanted me to interview, where, and what sessions to cover.

    My Background with Live Video Streaming
    I was one of the first to use event streaming at the Web 2.0 expo using Ustream.tv technology. Working with that team, we experiemented with the medium, which included giving a set to Robert Scoble. I use a tripod, and created an ‘online show’ and interviewed hundreds of attendees, and Robert became a temporary lifecaster. In our final panel, Chris Pirillo joined us, and has been publishing his Live Pirillo show ever since.

    Lastly, I was on the Board of Advisors for Ustream.tv, until joining Forrester as an Analyst. I’m very familiar with this growing market.

    Additional Resources
    For more information, read all my posts tagged Web Strategy (they’re like white papers, or reports) or all posts tagged live video streaming.

    Posted in Live Video, Web Strategy | 3 Comments »

    76

    Explaining what the “Social Graph” is to your Executives

    Categories: Social Graph, Web Strategy, Web TheoryPosted on November 10th, 2007

    Many are talking about the Social Graph at the technical level, leaving many business folks with many questions. The following, using clear business language (void of tech speak), will explain what is the Social Graph, why it matters, and what you should do.

    In respecting your time, I’ve boiled down the entire post to seventy words:

    Executive Summary
    The Social Graph is the representation of our relationships. Today, these graphs define our personal, family, or business communities on social websites. Unfortunately, we’re duplicating our same Social Graph on multiple websites, resulting in inaccurate data and time spent managing it. Despite many challenges, our Social Graphs should be self-managed from a single trusted source, replicated to websites of our choosing, thus resulting in accurate, efficient, relationship management.

    Want to be able to have an intelligent conversation with others on the topic? The detailed, more in-depth analysis follows:

    Situation
    Relationships are nothing new, from paper based address books, to the arrangement of huts in early villages, we’re social creatures. The big change? The internet has broken down physical barriers, allowing us to connect and create online communities.

    Online social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Ancestry.com, and thousands of others are increasing in global adoption. I predict that social networking features will be part of nearly every website.

    While we have many networks, and thus many social graphs they often fit into three major categories: business, personal, and family. Alex Iksold breaks down the components to three specific elements: People Identity, Type of Relationships, and Relationships Identity. These relationships can be mapped, displayed, or documented in what we call the Social Graph.


    [Definition: The Social Graph is the representation of our relationships. In present day context, these graphs define our personal, family, or business communities on social networking websites]

    Pains
    Today, individuals are part of many online social networks. Sadly, the same Social Graph is inefficiently being duplicated; we’re forced to add the same contacts to each social network. Beyond frustration, this results in inaccurate networks, and inability to control our own data. As we join and register more websites, this pain will grow exponentially.


    [Unfortunately, we’re duplicating our same Social Graph information on websites with social features, it's annoying to manage and inaccurate across sites. These disparate and disjointed social graphs will not scale, ultimatly resulting in a fragmented user experience as we use multiple websites]

    Opportunity: Aggregating Social Graphs
    The idea is simple: Allow relationships to be quickly shared once and then replicated across multiple websites. A movement has been started to allow these relationships to be transplanted from one social network to another. The goal? reduce inefficient adding of relationships, improving the accuracy of the network, and providing users with control and management of their relationship data.

    Benefits

    Users: For users this means efficiency and control over one’s personal data, their relationships, and how they are deployed on different social networks, it makes navigating the web better.

    Social Networks: For companies that are social networks, they can benefit by increasing the amount of users as the social graph will populate all of a users network they permit.

    All other websites: For companies that are not currently social networks, (like a corporate website) expect these social features to be part of your site. People will co-surf and share information about your content whether you like it or not.

    Scenario: What does success look like?
    In the most ideal scenario, aggregation of the social graph would allow Ted to quickly move from one social network to another, his trusted contacts would be pre-populated (as specified by Ted) and sharing of information would be instant. Furthermore, Ted would be able to quickly aggregate all information about his friend Chris on one page, and see what Chris has chosen to share across all social networks. Lastly, Ted would have full control over his graphs and can remove, adjust, or modify at will. Ted is in control, has accurately updated information from his social networks, and saves time at work, in his personal life, and with his family. He has more time to do what he really wants, which is to read this Web Strategy blog.

    How can this be accomplished?
    By centralizing a users Social Graph on a trusted, third party area that can be a central place where relationships are updated, and then replicated to every social networking website using a common process and technology.

    Many Challenges
    Like many new initiatives, we’ve not laid out the infrastructure for open relationship movement, there’s a few obstacles to overcome.

  • Social Network vendors scared to open up and let customers and their relationships easily move to other networks
  • Agreement needed between all vendors and participants
  • Ownership over project and data
  • Lack of general market awareness
  • User adoption (sadly, I think most users are sheep)
  • Likely, a need for a single login
  • Creation and costs of third-party silo
  • Privacy concerns: many European countries may not embrace
  • Multiple security issues
  • Legal and government may get involved

    • As an industry, these challenges are not insurmountable, what’s required is a clear roadmap, willingness for vendors to ‘let go’ and industry-wide support.

    Future Outlook
    Recently, an alliance called OpenSocial was formed between Google, MySpace, (list) to create an agreement so applications could easily be ported from one network to another. Although still at it’s starting point this alliance should be the precursor to establishing the management and flexibility of the Social Graph. To learn more about OpenSocial read: Explaining OpenSocial to your executives.


    [Ideally, our Social Graphs should be self-managed from a single trusted source, and then replicated to websites of our choosing, thus resulting in accurate, efficient relationship management]

    What you should do:

    1) Wait and Watch: We’re still at the conceptual level, although several vendors are working hard to release products or services to fix this, there’s not much to do.

    2) Plan: If you work for a company that has relationships on it’s website (having a ‘login’ is a key indicator) then you should make your web teams aware of this market change, and have an internal discussion.

    3) Obtain more information:     I’ve created a new tag called Social Graph on this blog, and will keep you updated of changes as I see it. Being an industry analyst, vendors will brief me, I’ll analyze with my peers, and report back.

    Additional Resources:

  • Brad Fitzpatrick, who’s leading the movement provides solutions and discusses where he’s at, developers should work with him.
  • Plaxo, a vendor in this space is moving forward: Building an Open Social Graph
  • Six Apart: Is supporting and will release versions of the social graph
  • Alex Iksold: Social Graph Concepts and Issues
  • Jim Calhoun: Has a great video where he explains how the Social Graph works
  • Josh of RWW suggests that we should retire the term Social Graph and use the term Social Network
  • Dave Winer: Suggest we use the term social network, I get what he’s saying, yet the need for portability and aggregation between social networks that is the crux of the issue.
  • I suggest that one way is to use a browser as a viewer for the social graph

    • Why this analysis?
    When I’m asked the same question several times (in this case, colleague Jennifer D and Bill Claxton), it’s a signal to write an explanatory blog post.

    Feedback from peers
    I’m trying to be as accurate as possible and incorporated the feedback of the two-line definition from my peers at the Blog World Expo which included Marshall Kirkpatrick, Jeremy Pepper, Jake McKee, Stephanie Agresta, Chris Heuer, and anyone else who would listen to me. Please note they did not approve or review the rest of the text.

    Your comments wanted, even if you don’t agree
    For more posts like this, I’ve tagged it Web Strategy, where I publish many how-to, and what-you-should-know posts

    If you have suggestions to improve this document, leave a comment, and I’ll update as appropriate, I hope you share this with others.

    Posted in Social Graph, Web Strategy, Web Theory | 76 Comments »

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