This video originates from Jennings Social Media Marketing.  I’ve posted it here because it presents an excellent example  for using a blog “… to educate, advocate and promote [a] company.”  More specifically the blog is used by Kevin Klinkenberg (Principal of 180° Design Studio – The New Urbanism Blog) “… to do short pieces that are very topic oriented to see if there is a response to them out of the community.”  Enjoy …

What the hell is Social Media – in 2 minutes. Enjoy …

(Found this YouTube video on James Russo site – well worth a visit if your interested in CRM, Social Media, …)

The Gartner Group have published their Social Media predictions for 2010 and beyond.

Gartner analysts acknowledge that a lot has happened with social software and collaborative software in 2009, and that there’s been a growing use of Facebook and Twitter by business.  But their predictions for beyond 2010 don’t read so encouragingly.

The five predictions are:

1. By 2012 over 70% of IT department led Social Media initiatives will fail

• similarly, only 50% of business led social media initiatives will succeed
• but, even to enable these successes the Gartner analysts warn organisations that they will need new skills sets around designing and delivering Social Media solutions

2. By 2012 over 50% of organisations will be using microblogging.  But, only 5% of these will be stand-alone/single purpose enterprise microblogging applications – the rest being consumer services like Twitter

3. Post 2012 social software market growth will accelerate as will the overall impact of Social Media on business and society

4. By 2014 social media will replace email for 20% of users for business communication

• essentially, microblogging is better than email for status updates and expertise location within the organisation
• therefore, Gartner recommends organisations must develop:
  • long-term strategy for collaborative and social networking software services, and
  • policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes

5. In terms of analytic’s, by 2015 some 25% of enterprises will utilise social-network analysis to improve performance and productivity.  Social-network analysis (and here)  is used to examine interaction patterns and information flows among people and groups within the organisation, and among business partners and customers.  The Gartner analysts claim that this is an untapped source of insight – but requires trust and buy-in, due to privacy & confidentially concerns

More information available from Gartner: “Predicts 2010: Social Software in an Enterprise Reality” – http://www.gartner.com/resid=1243515

This has been a title for a post since well before January – I’ll now delete the draft!  Enjoy …

Charityhowto.com have further video training guides for nonprofits on YouTube (here)

The Social Media Governance (tagline: Empowerment with Accountability^TM) has a database of Social Media Policies, and Social Media Research.  Both worth a thorough review.  There’s also currently a free report called Analysis of Social Media Policies: Lessons and Best Practices (Dated December 2009) by Chris Boudreaux.  Chris’s blog is here.

Just stumbled upon this YouTube video – essential viewing for when your preparing your strategy … enjoy!

In a rather superficial Q&A in Computer Business Review (CBR), late last year, Parker Harris (executive VP of Technology, and co-founder of salesforce.com) identifies what salesforce.com will be concentrating on in 2010.

The majority of the article focuses on Cloud Computing gaining acceptance, salesforce.com competitors, and [Cloud] Security.  Then, in the final paragraph, Parker not surprisingly states that the Service Cloud, to which he is actually referring to salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 2, “will be the next billion dollar business”, but, then there’s no surprise there.  Similarly, and maybe more significantly, he acknowledges that Collaboration (Wikipedia: “a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals”) is not fully understood by business.  Here Parker is referring to salesforce.com’s pending collaborative layer/tool Chatter.  Parker, or Janine Milne the author of the Q&A, then slip into verbal melt down and end the Q&A with “instead of being data-driven your data will come alive … the whole concept of viral communication will take off.”  Now, I’m familiar with the phrase Viral Marketing, and one of my favourites (below) is the Cadbury’s (should that now be Kraft?) Gorilla Advert of 2007, but viral communication?  With definition’s like “is the dissemination of information (either true facts or plain rumours) between individuals by self replication” (Behavioral Finance Group) – Oh, come on!

As a stark comparison in the same edition of CBR there’s another related Q&A.  Rob Howard, founder and CTO of enterprise collaboration firm Telligent (“a pioneer of social media platforms”) explains how social media is becoming the established way for businesses to communicate – Rob also has a blog Enterprise 2.0 and social computing.  Rob’s reply to “will 2010 be year of social media?“, is that he doesn’t think we are there yet, and that we have some 12 to 18 months for the market to mature.  More pertinently he warns against the misguided belief that Social media replaces the way business work – and that it’s all about “integration”.

As an act of due diligence I searched for the phrase “viral communication”.  For your amusement here are some of the references I found:  from the MIT Media Lab of 2005 a disturbing claim that “Viral Communications focuses on constructing agile, scalable, collaborative systems that permit uncontrolled growth, minimal power use, and maximum ability to intercommunicate, with viral architectures moving the intelligence from the trunk to the leaves.” [Aargh!] And, in Changeworksblog, written by Sue Tupling, you’ll find several posts listed against the keyword/s “viral communication” – but only one post, from 2008, includes the phrase.  And, finally in an Abstract of the IIW Institute of Information Management, “The paradigm of viral communication” (published in 2002!), which apparently identifies “… viral messages as a new paradigm of communication …”  So, now you know.

Dell launched Storm Sessions in December 2009.

Background: Dell’s IdeaStorm was launched in early 2007 “as a way to talk directly to our customers“, and “to have on-line brainstorm sessions to allow you the customer to share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell.”

The model is a simple one: users of the Direct2Dell site post suggestions and requests.  As these posts are promoted, by other users of the site, their score is increased.  Dell then uses this ranking to identify which ideas are the most important.  It has proven to be a very successful model with some “2,000 ideas submitted within the first few weeks,“  and, over the three intervening years of use, Dell claim to have “implemented almost 400 ideas.”

IdeaStorm is therefore an extremely successful example of crowdsourcing (and what a horrendous term that is!) – which Wikipedia (another model of crowdsourcing!) insightfully defines as “the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community.”

So why has Dell changed this successful formula?  What does Storm Sessions bringing to the equation?

Vida Killian‘s (VidaK: Twitter Bio “Idea girl at Dell“) in her Direct2Dell blog post “Storm Sessions Launch on IdeaStorm” suggests that Storm Sessions is the “next level“.  Essentially, Dell will now be choosing the topics!  Driven by Dell’s current business needs Dell will post “targeted, relevant, and time bound ideas” and seek the users comments.  Dell even offer to provide, when the “time bound” is up, feedback on “how and when the idea will be put into action.”

Now this sounds like something worth monitoring …

IdeaStorm and Storm Sessions are powered by salesforce.com

See salesforce.com’s IdeaExchange.  On the IdeaExchange site salesforce.com users can “suggest new products, promote favorite enhancements, interact with product managers and customers.”  Similarly, all editions of salesforce.com CRM come with an in-house “on-line suggestion box” called Ideas – where “a community of users [can] post, vote for, and comment on ideas.“

I’ve just come across an excellent post titled the 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy by Sharlyn Lauby (the president of Internal Talent Management), in Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists section.

Sharon starts her post by claims that their are two extreme approaches to social media policy making.  The evolutionary way, or by having a clear policy from the outset.  She then lists 10 tips you should most definitely consider.

The list is:

1. Introduce the purpose of social media
2. Be responsible for what you write
3. Be authentic
4. Consider your audience
5. Exercise good judgement
6. Understand the concept of community
7. Respect copyrights and fair use
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary information
9. Bring value
10. Productivity matters

Sharon also includes a sample social media policy from the Headset Bros.

Mashable is a site that claims to be “the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news” – well worth a regular visit!

To reflection the influence that social networking sites have had on the English vocabulary in 2009 the Oxford English Dictionary has added, amongst many other words:

• Tweetup – to organise a gatherings through Twitter
• Hashtag – one or more words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol (#) so that Twitter users can search tweets …
• Unfriend – to drop a contact from Facebook