Enterprise 2.0 Smackdown - watch the video
If you missed the debate, watch it below!
Why I love my MacBook Pro
I’ve been running my 15″ MacBook Pro for about four straight days now without a restart. I’ve put it to sleep four times, been in two different cities, bounced it in the back seat of my car ran the battery below 5% three times, am running OSX and Windows XP via Parallels simultaneously, and have started and stopped multiple applications on both operating systems, and it’s still running fast.
I may reboot it tonight for the hell of it, provided that I get through about 10 tabs in Firefox that I’ve been trying to read for about 3 to 4 days.
Thanks Apple for a great product!
^ brian
Social Media being adopted by most of Inc. 500
DM News and Social Media blog are reporting on a study conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on the use of social media by Inc. 500 companies, which are among the fastest growing companies in the nation.
The results are encouraging … 26% find social media to be very important in their business and marketing strategies. The early adopters appear to be leading the way.
PodTech:Dell Explores Social Media
This is a long, but very good
question and answer session
between Michael Dell and
bloggers at the recent CES. I
thought the session provided
great insight into how Dell is
currently viewing social
media, as well as its
evolution in thinking about
social media. Well worth the
time to watch.
It is clear that Dell is
serious about using social
media to connect with its
customers and improve its
business. It is also clear
that they are experimenting
and do not have clear answers
as to how to best leverage
social media yet.
I am certainly looking forward
to Dell\’s continued evolution
in this area, and hope that
Kalivo can serve them as well.
Click here to view the interview
SEC Chairman indicates blogs may constitue fair disclosure
The Chairman of the SEC, Christopher Cox, was having a dialog with Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems about using blogs for reporting financial results. Mr. Cox seems to be open to this notion, which makes a ton of sense. Posting financial results to the corporate blog, or we would prefer to the company’s Hub, would seem a more expeditious and fair way to disperse this information to the public than today’s methods, and thus satisfy Regulation FD.
Mr. Cox went so far as to post his letter to Mr. Schwartz on Jonathan’s blog here.
Can anyone say Investor engagement?
– brian
My podcast interview on Talking Portraits
I was recently offered a great opportunity to speak with Tom Parish at TalkingPortraits about customer engagement on the Web and Kalivo. Tom has an excellent background in search engine optimization, podcasting, and leveraging Web 2.0 technologies for enterprises looking to market to and engage with their customers on the Web. I enjoyed the discussion and Tom’s forward thinking in this area.
You can find the podcast here on the TalkingPortraits site.
If you are Pluggd user, you can find the interview here, and you can subscribe to Tom’s TalkingPortraits through this channel.
Enjoy and feel free to comment here!
– brian
FujiFilm and how a Hub can amplify your product in the marketplace
A reader of my blog pointed me to this Engadget review of the Fujifilm Finepix Z5 as an interesting example of some my my writings about customer engagement on the Web with Hubs.
I found this review to be interesting, in that the first commenter, David, ostensibly could have been a power user of the Fuju product or even a company representative. The point being, by David participating in the conversation (in this case a review) and refuting an apparently false statement by the reviewer, he had a couple of positive effects for FujiFilm. The first is other users of this camera agreed strongly with David’s statement in the first comment and chimed in to that effect; and second is that this review with enhanced comments now serves as a positive endorsement for this product and for FujiFilm’s brand with respect to its technical innovation capabilities.
Being an Engadget review, this information will be amplified for those interested in point-and-shoot digital cameras. FujiFilm could have taken this a step further and pulled this post and comments into their Hub to share with their Hub members on their own site. This way other evangelists that may not be Engadget readers would find the post and could add their support for the FujiFilm product. The responses on the Hub would be broadcast back to Engadget, and it may even lead the reviewer to retract his comment or post a subsequent review favorable to FujiFilm on this point.
Moreover, with a Hub FujiFilm would be a more proactive participant in what is being said (correctly and incorrectly) about their products on the Web. Clearly these blog reviews are having an impact on purchase behavior (read the comments). We can make an assumption that David, the first commenter, was a FujiFilm representative and thus they are managing their messaging on the Web. However, in all likelihood David is just a power user, the kind that FujiFilm should be courting to a Hub so that they can amplify David’s voice the next time a false statement or negative review is made about one of their products.
The future of customer engagement on the Web is when companies are alerted to articles such as this one automatically, they can respond with a factual and appropriately positioned message, pull the conversation into their Hub, and can recruit their power users, or “evangelists”, to their Hub and have them provide the meat of the substance supporting the company and its products.
We are not far away from this future, but indeed more companies need to appreciate or be made aware of the purchase decisions that are being made outside of their purview due to user generated content and conversations on the Web. Engagement will be the only answer.
– brian
Staying current on customer needs … A Southwest example
Hill & Knowlton posted an interview with Colleen Barrett, President and Corporate Secretary at Southwest Airlines, on its Client Service Insights blog about Southwest’s approach to customer service. It’s a good read, and I wanted to highlight the acknowledgment of the effectiveness and contribution of Southwest’s blog to their customer service excellence from the top of the company.
Below are Colleen’s comments regarding staying current with customer needs:
CSI: How do you manage to stay in touch with your Customers’ expectations?
CB: There are many ways we can stay current on our Customers’ needs. One of them is our new corporate blog where we get new insights every day into our Customers’ psyches. We do market and Customer research; we send our frequent flyers quick online surveys; and we TALK to them when they are in our airports and on our planes. Our Employees know each of them is a marketer of our product, and that any ideas or suggestions they might get from a Customer can be sent right up the chain with little effort or red tape. We maintain a constant line of communication with our Customers, and we’re working to improve those channels each day.
Southwest posted its own link to this interview here.
– brian
links for 2006-11-02
links for 2006-11-01
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(tags: newton)
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(tags: entrepreneurship startup)
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(tags: enterprise2.0 marketing)
links for 2006-10-31
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(tags: enterprise2.0)
Optimizing Engagement Efforts
It’s a well known fact that by blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs, forums, and community sites, that the search engines will more easily find your own site for relevant search terms. As you begin your engagement efforts on the Web, it is important to keep in mind how the major search engines will interpret your content and linking efforts. Below are some pointers from seomoz.org, as well as a link to a good resource outlining Search Engine Ranking Factors.
Most Important Factors
The following are the top 10 ranked factors across the 5 categories:
1. Title Tag - 4.57
2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
4. Accessibility of Document - 4.3
5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69
Web engagement to ensure your message is heard by key constituencies involves some or all of the following activities:
- Blogging your own message
- Commenting on external sites
- Establishing a Hub community, where others can start their own blog conversations on your site
The last point above is one that is often overlooked in these engagement debates that can center around blogs only far too often. By encouraging other constituents to converse on your site, search engine results can be enhanced through many of the items above. This includes the fact that more terms will be relevant on your site, more internal links and links to external sources will exist. And most of all, with outside constituents such as your customers blogging on your site, the chance for quality inbound links from external sites will go up tremendously and not involve the action of internal company team members.
It’s well worth the effort to scan Search Engine Ranking Factors to be aware of how your activities will be interpreted by the search engines.
– brian
For the Record with the Department of Defense
Jeff Nolan wrote this post highlighting the Department of Defense’s initiative to correct media misrepresentations of its comments, policies, and actions. The DoD put up this site, called “For the Record“, where they counter incorrect information in the media world (fyi - before comments come on politics, this is an apolitical post). Jeff wrote about his experiences at SAP and how they could have utilized a similar approach to counter Oracle’s aggressive advertising campaigns. He also provides some constructive criticism of the DoD site.
Jeff’s post is a worthwhile read. The DoD “For the Record” initiative is further evidence of the need for and value of having a communications vehicle in the form of a lightweight website to ensure that you can influence your message. I agree with Jeff that the site needs to add RSS feeds (BTW - they seem to have RSS for everything else). Most organizations would want comments as well, however, I can understand why the DoD did not do this.
These sites do not just need to be to counter negative information or overly aggressive campaigns of competitors. All companies, as part of an effective communications program in this day and age, are missing an entire part of their marketing communications arsenal by not having a lightweight website communications vehicle. They should accept comments too … as that is a critical feedback mechanism.
– brian
links for 2006-10-30
links for 2006-10-29
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http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/wp-trackback.php?p=70(tags: enterprise2.0)
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(tags: enterprise2.0)
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(tags: enter)
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(tags: rubyonrails)
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(tags: ruby rubyonrails)
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