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At a new media session at CES that I attended last week the panelists cautioned companies to ignore new media (especially blogs and social networks) at their peril. If companies insist on being ostriches with their corporate heads in the sand, they risk losing control of their brand.
Last weeks furore over Tim Horton’s employees and their Facebook antics is a case in point. With over 3,400 members, the “Rules of Ordering and More” group lists 80 or so tips that customers should take to heart if they want good service. Apparently the group is administered by Timmy’s employees unbeknownst to their employer. Its actually quite funny – you should take a read.
Had Tim Hortons (the famous Canadian Donut franchise owned by Pepsico) been monitoring the Internet effectively, the company would have been aware of groups like this much sooner and could have put contingencies in place to protect its brand or HR policies to outline appropriate employee conduct on the Internet. Had it been more proactive it could have channeled the publicity it received last week to its benefit rather than detriment.
Companies cannot ignore web 2.0 technologies any longer. They must, at the very least, be listening to what is being said about them even if they are not ready to be contributing to the conversation: in that way they have a chance at least of maintaining some control over their brand.
Last week Out-Smarts joined the growing number of companies setting up shop in Facebook and added a company “page”. Similar to an individual’s Facebook profile, a company page allows friends to become “fans” helping your company establish its brand and grow its network. Your company “page” is also the foundation by which to use Facebook’s new Social Ads advertising capabilities (should you choose to advertise in that forum) and to track and monitor your Facebook visitor traffic. Best of all, its really easy to set up:
1. Go to:http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php;
2. Choose your category of business (from: Local Business; Product; or Artist/Band/Public Figure), enter the name of your company in the text field et voila! – your page is ready to customize and publish;
3. Customize your page by adding hours of operation, uploading logo and pictures, including links to your site and blog and applicable Facebook applications that your audience will enjoy. Once customized the page is ready to publish so click on the button to the right of the edit page to do so;
4. Finally, send out an invite to all of your business contacts and friends so that they can become a fan (a fan is to a page what a friend is to a profile – the more you have the more people you reach), view company updates and participate on your page. Your logo or thumbnail image appears in the “I am a fan off” section of the fan’s profile so the friends of your friends see it and so your company profile and network grows.
I was recently asked for my insights into Alexa widgets and in which situations a company would use these on their web page. I thought this would be a good forum to share the answer……
Alexa is a web information company that provides users with web search, toolbar functionality and services that allow visitors and web developers to track traffic ranking and to compare the results with other pertinent sites. The company has a suite of additional add-ins that developers can use on websites: to facilitate search; add thumbnail images of websites; customise the toolbar, to publicize traffic ranking via widgets and generate reports.
An Alexa widget allows visitors to see how the website ranks:
a) in a graph comparing sites
b) in a button showing simply traffic rank or
c) in a button showing site stats (links in and rank).
To set this up simply enter the website you want to track: the code is automatically generated for you to cut and paste into your website where ever you want it.
The widgets would be put to best use by companies with a loyal following on their site or those that are quickly increasing in rank. Bear in mind that Alexa tracks this data using their toolbar so the search results will only include Alexa traffic – making the results rather skewed.
Have you had any success with Alexa widgets?
GoogleAdWords is a great way to easily target your niche audience and promote your product to that audience. With hundreds of millions of Google searches performed every day it makes sense to tap into that huge potential market and thats just what GoogleAdwords lets you do.
When you next Google something look at the right hand side and the top few searches of the page: these are ads (usually highlighted) placed and paid for by companies using the GoogleAdWords service.
The major benefits companies find in using this service (increased traffic notwithstanding) include:
- ability to get started on a minimum budget: as little as $5 per month;
- manage your budget effectively with monthly spend limits;
- test the waters, try different keywords and ad wording and make adjustments easily;
- you only pay for actual clicks (people who click through to visit your site);
- advertising with Google, unlike advertising in traditional media, is highly targeted by location and language;
- its relatively simple to get started
- and the service offers advanced reporting options if you are so inclined.
All in all, GoogleAdWords brings great bang for your advertising buck.
Once again the power of blogging is in evidence this week as we see bloggers worldwide unite to condemn the situation in Burma. Through social marketing on networks such as Facebook, using wikis, search and bookmarking sites, the plight of the Burmese people has been brought to the attention of the masses. Over 4000 bloggers have signed up to support the peaceful demonstrations that are taking place in that country in opposition to the military dictatorship and to help spread the word about the atrocities going on there. Attesting to the worldwide reach and popularity of blogging, its great to see this technology put to good use to make a difference in the world.
I’ve been stumbling quite a lot lately and its nothing to do with cool beer on a summer day. I’ve been stumbling upon new websites, blogs, and videos with StumbleUpon, a great Web 2.0 tool that downloads to your browser and allows you to sample web pages according to your specified interests.
I’ve tried using other social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us and nothing has hooked me so far. StumbleUpon is easy to set up: register and download the browser add in at StumbleUpon, click on the Stumble button on your browser toolbar and off you go. You can flag and tag those you like, give the thumbs down to those you don’t (further honing in on exactly what interests you) and you can share finds with friends.
E-bay bought StumbleUpon earlier this year and it remains to be seen how this will change the offering. Recent updates to the interface have annoyed longstanding Stumblers and they have been criticised for their insensitivity to freedom of speech.
Social bookmarking sites like this are evolving and becoming more dynamic with alternatives like Trailfire also gaining popularity. Its becoming easier everyday to find and track new sites you like and you might just stumble upon something amazing.
The third annual International Blog Day is coming up next week. On August 31st, bloggers worldwide will be posting and introducing their audiences to their 5 favourite blogs from other cultures, backgrounds and interests.
The worldwide event aimed at further establishing blogging and in particular spreading the word about valuable and diverse blogs has the added benefit of promoting tolerance. By linking to other great blogs from alternate perspectives to their own, bloggers spread the buzz about blogs they like so that their audiences in turn can discover them and learn.
On the blog day web site, the blog posting guidelines are as follows:
- Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
- Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
- Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
- Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
- Add a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org
Watch this space for our own International Blog Day post next Friday.
Its seems like everyone is flocking to Facebook and other social networking applications these days to keep in touch with friends, make new ones and generally hangout and socialise but people are quickly realising that these applications can prove valuable as business development tools. Following a recent discussion in Facebook I thought I would share with you some of the ways people are using Facebook for business today:
- Networking – the obvious reason, people are using Facebook to connect and maintain relationships with existing contacts.
- Research – Facebook can be used as a research tool – you can easily create polls asking Facebook users a question pertinent to your offering and have them answer. This a great tool to enable market research within specific communities.
- Driving traffic to your website – By adding a link to your Facebook profile interested parties will click through to your website. Interestingly enough, my website gets more click thru’s from friends profiles than my own.
- Lead generation – Facebook can be used to establish contact with new prospects. This seems particularly popular with real estate agents.
- Collaboration – many companies are using Facebook as a forum to collaborate. Facebook is a great place to brainstorm with like minded professionals in decentralised locations.
- Advertising – some companies have set up Facebook profiles that simply advertise and promote their offering – its amazing how many friends Pepsi Platinum has.
- Content Distribution – I use Facebook as a forum to distribute blog content and others use it for music – video etc.
- Branding – folks on Facebook can add “favorites” to their profile. These “things I like” can be products or services and many companies have posted their logo or band image. Each time a person looks at these on someone profile the brand is being reinforced.
We are seeing an evolution of social networking as people begin to recognise that its applications reach beyond simple youth networking. New applications are being added regularly that enhance Facebook as a true business development tool. I envisage membership to social networks like these will burgeon as professionals and business people become aware of the possibilities and reach these offer.
Worried that your good work could be plagiarised or that someone’s going to steal your thunder on the Internet and not reference your writing appropriately? There’s a solution to every problem and this one comes in the form of Creative Commons. An offshoot of a US non profit organisation, Creative Commons was founded in 2003 with the help of the University of Ottawa Law and Technology Program and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
The service allows you to license your work easily and at no cost. With various different license offerings based on how much freedom you want to give people to use your writing and in which forums, Creative Commons steps you through an easy process to find the right license and then you simply download some HTML to your web-site and your covered like so:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License
People using the works are then morally and legally obliged to use them accordingly (or not at all if you so choose). Whether or not people act appropriately remains to be seen and there’s also the issue of the global reach of the Internet with different laws governing different jurisdictions but if this plagiarism is a concern for you then Creative Commons is definitely a step in the right direction to protecting your work.
Imagine a large dispersed staff collaborating on projects just as effectively as they would do if they were all in the same location or a small organisation avoiding costly overheads for bricks and mortar premises. This is not a pipe dream but reality for many organisations taking advantage of wiki technologies. Wikis are on-line tools that allow users to collaborate in real time over the Internet.
The best known example of a wiki is perhaps Wikipedia the on-line encyclopedia where anyone can login and contribute. Take that functionality and apply it to organisations and the ability to interact easily to get the job done is reality. Right now the most common applications of wikis are text based knowledge management, light project management and documentation related but wiki functionality is quickly being enhanced by the incorporation of voice, video and IM capabilities. Users are able to work on documents whilst simultaneously discussing and even viewing each other’s actions.
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