The Votivation Blog

The Social side of business

votivation — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:25:05 +0000

Despite its image as a consumer-focused technology, Web 2.0 has the potential to deliver valuable business benefits:

Web 2.0 allows firms to get closer to customers, conduct R&D, and track usage patterns

Facebook is used as a networking tool by 130,000 businesses, such as Virgin and Disney, to encourage fan sites, and create the means to opt in to marketing.

Thousands of advertisers are coming to the site and reaching reaching people, according to Facebook

Facebook’s 130 million active users generally like using new applications to share information –businesses are now developing their own applications to reach users

The common interpretation – and common mistake – among CEOa is that sites such as a Facebook and Myspace are for “time-wasters”.

Social networking tools used in everyday business has been shown to increase efficiency; according to research, 64 per cent of employees using them claim to be more organised, while 46 per cent say networking sparks ideas and creativity

The top five tools being used in organisations are: collaboration sites on intranets (39 per cent); internal forums (20 per cent); shared videos (16 per cent); social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn (15 per cent); and external collaboration sites on the web and internal blogging sites (11 per cent)

The BBC is behind one of the most successful Web 2.0 projects – iPlayer, because it is easily consumed
(Source: ComputerWeekly)

Making sure your business is listening

votivation — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:24:04 +0000

Everyone knows that communication is a key part of a successful business, but when it actually comes to communicating, very little credence is given to it.

The first hurdle then, is to convince your project teams that communication is vital for success. Ah yes, success!

To do this, you can explain that communication is:

one of the top five challenges to change programmes

fundamental to business change

fundamental to winning stakeholders’ heads, hearts and hands

used to inform, involve and influence

used to get stakeholders to take action

used to reduce resistance to change

used to set expectations and prepare stakeholders

Once your project team is convinced, you then have to deliver on these expectations. You don’t want your project lessons learnt report to say “We should have had better communication.”
There are many pitfalls for comms managers. The least we can do is follow a few basic rules to maximise the chances of “successful communications”. Ask yourself the following questions:

What is my intended message and outcome? Is my message clear?
Who is my audience?
How will I communicate?
When will I communicate?
What will I do to check the understanding or to get feedback?
(Source: ComputerWeekly)

Reuters pulls out of Second Life

votivation — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:23:18 +0000

Reuters has closed down its bureau in Second Life after failing to generate much interest. It was among a host of major firms to have invested in Second Life as the corporate world picked up on the possibility of making money out of the virtual world.
Although the likes of IBM are still there, Reuters has had second thoughts, and Second Life will be hoping it does not signify a mass exodus among real businesses.
Linden Lab, which runs Second Life, recently announced redundancies and was met with opposition from Second Life users when it decided to put up its virtual land prices. (Source: ComputerWeekly)

Will online advertising beat the recession?

votivation — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:39:12 +0000

With the recession looming, many businesses are trying to predict whether internet advertising will grow faster or decline like other forms.
Recent history is cause for pessimism. Between 2000 and 2002, during the dotcom recession, online ad spending in America fell by 27 per cent.
Yet the web has changed a lot since then, with banner ads evolving into search-click and “rich media” behavioural/brand engagement methods. All this makes spending on advertising much less speculative, and it starts to be treated instead as a cost of sales. This is one reason why online advertising should suffer less than other sorts.
Online marketing increasingly aims for awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty. This approach is more robust than TV or print ads.
Potential is also growing for embedded online videos and social networks. Their big weakness is that users go to social-networking sites to socialise, not to shop (as they might on search engines). Their biggest strength is that users spend so much time there. Two years ago 11 per cent of time spent online was at Yahoo and MSN, two web portals; now their share is down to 5 per cent, and 5 per cent of online time is spent at YouTube and Facebook. (Source: The Economist)

Beating the price comparison sites

votivation — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:38:18 +0000

Electrical retailer Comet is planning to use customer review comments in its online and offline marketing campaigns after introducing-user generated content to its website.
The retailer is trying to combat competition from price comparison sites by building its own website into an online destination and community where customers share product knowledge, give star rating reviews and upload video content of their experiences of products. (Source: Marketing)

Fruit drink backs social network for creative projects

votivation — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:36:57 +0000

SUSO has launched an online social network called the SUSO Project, which aims to establish a creative network.
The online experiment set up by the drinks brand will fund ideas and initiatives by offering grants between £1,000 and £10,000 to help build collaborations. (Source: BrandRepublic)

Marketing chiefs play down value of social networks

votivation — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:36:18 +0000

More than half of chief marketing officers are not interested in incorporating social networking sites into their marketing strategies, according to a survey by Epsilon.

Only 10 per cent of respondents said they used social networking in their marketing plans, with 55 per cent saying they were not too interested or not interested at all.

Yet, of the marketers surveyed, 27 per cent said they did want to develop social networking and word-of-mouth in their campaigns. (Source: BrandRepublic)

Roughly One-Tenth of Brand Searches “Hijacked”

votivation — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:54:10 +0000

Companies put all sorts of time and effort into getting people to search for certain terms. This happens with the expectation that people will then visit corporate sites, but a fresh Hitwise report relays the somewhat threatening news that about 13 percent of searchers wind up somewhere else.

Heather Hopkins writes, “Our analysis considered the 30 leading
e-commerce brands in the Airlines, Appliances and Electronics, and Insurance categories and revealed that in the four weeks ending September 27th, 2008 an average of 87% of searches for the top branded search terms (i.e. ‘southwest airlines’, ‘usaa’, ‘best buy’) sent visits to the brand owner’s website.”

If searchers misspell terms or add extra words, the problem of what brand owners might consider hijacking grows worse. Problems exist in areas outside of e-commerce, too, with the Drudge Report losing 3.79 percent of people who searched for it to Google News, and even the Red Cross forfeiting 1.93 percent of searchers to BestWebGifts.com.
Brands that are being affected by this issue have some options, however, with the airlines serving as examples of companies that defended their brands rather well. Travel agencies, which surely fought back as best they could, have been seeing less and less “intercepted” traffic.

Hopkins notes, “Traffic from searches for a portfolio of the top American Airlines brand terms three years ago made up nearly 4% of visits to Travel Agencies. That is down to less than 1% for the four weeks ending September 27th, 2008.” (Web Pro News)

The kids are alright

votivation — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:53:34 +0000

WORRIES about the damage the internet may be doing to young people has produced a mountain of books—a suitably old technology in which to express concerns about the new. Robert Bly claims that, thanks to the internet, the “neo-cortex is finally eating itself”. Today’s youth may be web-savvy, but they also stand accused of being unread, bad at communicating, socially inept, shameless, dishonest, work-shy, narcissistic and indifferent to the needs of others.
The man who christened the “net generation” in his 1997 bestseller, “Growing Up Digital”, has no time for such views. In the past two years, Don Tapscott has overseen a $4.5m study of nearly 8,000 people in 12 countries born between 1978 and 1994. In “Grown Up Digital” he uses the results to paint a portrait of this generation that is entertaining, optimistic and convincing. The problem, he suspects, is not the net generation but befuddled baby-boomers, who once sang along with Bob Dylan that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is”, yet now find that they are clueless about the revolutionary changes taking place among the young.

“As the first global generation ever, the Net Geners are smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors,” Mr Tapscott argues. “These empowered young people are beginning to transform every institution of modern life.” They care strongly about justice, and are actively trying to improve society—witness their role in the recent Obama campaign, in which they organised themselves through the internet and mobile phones and campaigned on YouTube. Mr Tapscott’s prescient chapter on “The Net Generation and Democracy: Obama, Social Networks and Citizen Engagement” alone should ensure his book a wide readership. (Economist.com)

Corporate Twitter Accounts and Online Reputation

votivation — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:51:52 +0000

As with blogs that went before, the question of whether companies should use “corporate” Twitter accounts still polarises opinion. There are those who believe that “social” media should be exactly that, and others who think it is fine for companies to use any channel as a marketing channel.

This polarisation generally results in criticism rather than praise, as the former is much easier to do. The only corporate uses of Twitter that have been widely praised so far are when consumer-facing companies use it for proactive customer service (i.e. monitoring for mention of product issues and making contact in order to help solve the problem), and even those have also been criticised.

Within this context, the concern of anyone charged with promoting and protecting a company’s online reputation globally should be to minimise any criticism which could damage the brand as a result of using social media in this way. (blogs.Hillandknowlton.com)