How Social Computing enters the enterprise?

As I've embarked in an interesting journey about creating a social networking set of tools and community site for my company, I tend to look more closely on how others did it and the dos and don't on the topic.

Here is an interesting quick summary of the considered two ways social computing are adopted in the enterprise, according to Dion Hinchcliffe: Top-down and bottom-up. No rocket science here, but it's interesting to see first that both ways are recommended and not exclusive as well as what drives and supports each way.

Here is an "encouraging" note to those of you in a hurry ;-) from Social Computing Journal :

"Based on their findings, the Nielsen Norman Group estimates a timeline of approximately three to five years for most organizations to successfully adopt and integrate social technologies into their intranets. They also suggest that the political and cultural changes needed for its useful and widespread use may take longer"

Have fun! I'll keep you posted on how it goes for us.

Online Ads more effective than TV for offline CPG Sales growth and brand building: +9%

A recent study published by ComScore and its research partner dunnhumbyUSA, shows that consistent online advertising can actually lift retail sales in the CPG industry by 9% over a 3 months period and contribute more to brand building than TV ads (+8% over a 12 months period according to an Information Resources, Inc. report.).

"These early results confirm the ability of online advertising to successfully build retail sales of [consumer packaged goods] brands on par with the impact of television advertising. It is likely that the more precise targeting ability of the Internet – especially in terms of accurately reaching the desired demographic segment – is a key reason for its effectiveness. That is meaningful in and of itself, but when you take into account the fact that online advertising is generally less costly than television, these results take on even greater significance," said Gian Fulgoni, Executive Chairman of comScore

Let me know how does your marketing-mix looks for the remaining part of 2009, you may bend it to more of the web?

Social Networking Users Demand for a Single Place for their Digital Identity

Power To The People: Wave 4 Social Media Study by Universal McCann

View more documents from IN2marcom .com.

Good Material to support our Marketing Plans. This Universal McCann research is conducted every year and this is the 4th Wave. Social Media is taking the web planet by storm but now is the time where it seems active internet users - those accessing at least every other day - are looking for the "one place" for their digital identity rather than spreading around various specialized social sites.

Just a few numbers to give you a clue:

1. 62.5% of active internet users (16-54 years old) have created a social profile in 2009,
2. 71,1% have visited a friend's home page.
3. 81.5% of Social Networking Users did message friends,
4. 76.3% uploaded photos,
5. 74.3% found old friends
6. 56.4% found new friends
7. 47.9% joined a group

We should provide these influencing people ways to populate their unique digital profile with ways to engage and maintain dialog with our brands in different form factors. Video is still the #1 form factor, but "instant UGM news" is ramping up as twitter's success attests and Facebook acquiring FriendFeed - that I started to use recently - reinforces as well.

Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy at Java One video

What a pleasure to see these two great leaders on stage again. How could one imagine Scott would love to go on stage with Sam Palmisano ;-)

Many have been asking me about the underlying strategy of Sun's acquisition by Oracle, Scott gives it a clue: free advertising for winning the America's cup and cutting travel expenses on Java One Japan by doing it in Larry's garden.

We do not know what's next, but what is appearing more clearly is that the Oracle/Sun combination is bound to become another IT giant that can compete head to head with HP and IBM. As Scott would typically say: go kick some butts gang!

Good luck to them, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch.

Enterprise 2.0 is coming: 30% of executives see social networking belonging to their business strategy

A recent research from Deloitte - see chart - gives us a clear signal that Enterprise 2.0 is making progress in our 2009 corporate world. As expected, this social transformation is coming from the people getting self-organized rather than from the top, as anticipated in the very good book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

As a matter of fact, 55% executives reveal that their company do not have an official policy for social networks. They'd better have one because it's easy to damage a company's reputation on social media as nearly 75% employees agrees.

There is also a risk for employees to expose their profile on social media as it can impact their reputation in their job context in a negative way. We need to address these privacy issues over time, but for now just beware to separate what your "friends" see from what the world can see.

B2B Marketers’ Priorities and Pain Points for 2009

According to Marketing Sherpa new research, the previous one was conducted in Feb 2008, B2B marketers will focus on:

1. Dealing with lengthening sales cycles
2. Doing more with less
3. Web 2.0 and social media marketing
4. Focusing on lower-cost, high-impact lead gen tactics

I will obviously only highlight the point 2. which wouldn't have been on the list a few month ago. I remember being looked at as a strange animal when pitching about Marketing 2.0 back in 2007. I heard many things as "this is just a fad", "you're always trying to bring up something new", "Our customers are not 15 years old", etc.

In the marketing area, social media and Web 2.0 importance is raising under this economic downturn period we're in, more rapidly I anticipate than if the business was going to grow. I'm expecting Cloud Computing and new software subscription business models to come up more rapidly in the IT space for the exact same reason. The economic downturn is an incredible opportunity to reconsider what we've been doing so far, to challenge deeply our fundamentals, to stress decisions that were not that urgent otherwise. A good thing in my views though of course I suffer just as everyone out there of this downturn (mood downturn as well by the way).

The research points out that many marketers still find Web 2.0 usage within their marketing campaigns arsenal a challenge. First and foremost because Web 2.0 is still new for a lot of them. They're not digital natives and tend to relate to the activities they're comfortable with (Webinars, White papers, etc.). Their top challenges, according to the research are:

1. Social media development/integration
2. Developing emerging Web 2.0 content, such as videos, blogs and podcasts

My take would be for you, already a blog reader ;-), to start your day in the office tomorrow by deciding to integrate in one of your planned campaigns a Marketing 2.0 technique. Try to pick the one that is intuitively the most relevant to your audience (start a blog or a podcast, foster a community or integrate an existing one, turn a major topic of interest into a wiki for and by your customers, start a twitter micro-blog for one of your offer) and do not forget about including video material as we discussed earlier this month.

I would also support this recommendation from Marketing Sherpa:

“Mapping content to the sales funnel “ is an immensely important aspect of success in lead nurturing for the complex sale. It deserves to be among the top priorities because some of the others – Web 2.0, social media and traditional content – are at their most effective when mapped to the sales cycle.

Marketing 2.0 will make it big in 2009.

Video is even more Web 2.0 mainstream in 2009

According to Comscore, 77% of the US Internet audience viewed video online in November 2008 for a total of 12.7B videos viewed, growing 34% compared to 2007. Do you really consider your 2009 campaigns without it?
So, some numbers for you:

• YouTube is is still on Top, representing 98% of all videos viewed on Google's sites.
• The average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video.
• 97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (52.3 videos per viewer).
• 52.5 million viewers watched 371 million videos on MySpace.com (7.1 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 3.1 minutes.
• The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Web 2.0 is video intensive.

Happy New 2009 Year

I strongly believe that 2009 will be the opportunity for everyone to revisit everything they've been doing so far. Our values are changing, rules must follow thus giving birth to a better world.I wish you a very happy 2009 new year looking at the stars with a smile on your face.