Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 derives from Web 2.0, and refers to social software application that sit behind or are used behind the corporate firewall. Wikipedia has a good entry on the topic, and I just came across this slide deck about Enterprise 2.0 by Scott Gavin. It is very well done and told as a story, that may help you convey the concept in a more understandable way to peers in your organization. Have a look.

The Reputation Economy

I was at a conference recently where one of the presenters threw out some blogging statistics (unfortunately I don't have the source in my notes). 17% of companies currently are blogging. 35% expect to be blogging by the end of 2007 and 48% have no plans. Almost half of the companies out there have no plans to implement a simple (and almost free) means by which to start meaningful conversations with their customers.

A year ago many companies and executives still didn't even know what a blog was. Now it is unlikely that there is a CEO that doesn't know what one is, however the problem they are trying to figure out now is how to enter into this game without screwing up... and by the way screwing up means different things depending on who you are talking to - Peers, shareholders, investors, customers, industry experts, and other bloggers. Unfortunately it seems that most are just planning to ignore it.

What companies need to understand is that we are now truly in the reputation economy. Of course having a good reputation has always been important, but in the past companies had some means of controlling reputation perception through PR and advertising. Additionally, the mechanisms by which reputation spread was somewhat limited. You may have a good or bad reputation in your town, but move out from there and its like starting over (which could be either a positive or negative depending on the company).

Its similar to the ebola virus. It has always been around, but if it hit a small village it might wipe out the town the it could only spread that far since there were little to no connections outside of the town. Then towns became closer together, and faster means of transportation got developed, and the virus now pops up in many different places and everyone gets in a panic about the new virus...Social software tools are the rapid transportation mechanisms that are allowing reputation virus's spread quickly, pop up in new areas and surprising consumers... and can no longer be contained.

And its not just blogs that determine your reputation now - A plethora of social tools are now going mainstream. Wiki's and social networks from the behemoth mainstream players to the growing population of niche social networks, are the places where your corporate reputation will be determined - not your PR engine.

What makes this entire situation more interesting is that not only are tools available for the market to define your reputation, but whatever they define will be recorded for eternity in search indexes.

So for the nearly 50 percent of companies that have no plans to blog (and presumable no plans to use any other social tools), ignoring the change is not going to solve the problem. The solution is to learn, participate, communicate, and learn some more. Above all be humble.

The Long Tail of Social Networks

Yesterday I received a post on Tech Crunch regarding a company called Ning, that now has now modified their tool for creating online social networks without any development knowledge. I created one myself in about 5 minutes and also sent the link around to a few at work. One of my colleagues also created one, and we started talking about what this means. A tool like this that any web-savvy user can create with, the long tail of social networks will start. They have as Chris Anderson stated 'democratized the tools of production'. No longer is one forced to mold into one of the big existing social networks. These now mainstream social networks have critical mass in terms of size but little to no focus, on anything besides creating large friend lists and an online communication portal. I have already stated that I think large social networks will reach a tipping point. Ning's tool will allow social networks to be created on any topic/interest that one can imagine. And just like the long tail has proven for niche content creation through blogging, I expect the same to happen here.

Of course these long tail social networks will not build memberships in the 10's of millions, but that is not their purpose. Their goal is not to compete against MySpace or Facebook. They offer what the mainstream social networks can't, due to their large size. They allow small focused groups to form, bond and socialize on specific topics of interest. Think about the potential for knowledge sharing and networking that could be done now. Personal blogs started two way conversations. Long tail social networks will create focused many-to-many conversations. They may become a natural extension of active blogs, where blogs test the waters to see if the conversation is worth having, and niche social networks extend these conversations. The long tail has proven that if one person has interest in a topic, there are others.

From an advertising perspective, long tail social networks could be an untapped goldmine. A few hundred eyes or possibly a few thousand eyes, that are part of a long tail social network that has a narrow focus, it likely more valuable than 100,000 eyes in a mainstream social network, where all you really know is that these people are social and they are likely under 30.

Personal Information Aggregation

When the internet first came out the problem was finding what you wanted. Then search started to evolved, as more and more content came online in the form of web pages. Browser bookmarks became the tool of choice. Then at some point information overload started to occur and people wanted to find tools to find and filter. Search got better, RSS came on the scene, and a plethora of tools to help you sift through the growing information haystack came on the scene and continue to do so today. Tagging tools, feed readers, personalized home pages, widgets, etc etc. We are now at a point where we even need filters for our filters, or ways to collect and better assimilate out of our various filter points. I can't tell you how many times I am in a conversation, and I remember a an interesting topic I read recently, but cannot pinpoint where it was that I saw it - was it in my rss reader, as i scanned the backlog quickly, and if it was - what blog was it from... did i flag it, tag it and post to delicious? Was it an amazon review, or just something that somebody emailed to me?

At one point I had this idea for a personal web based data warehouse - a place in which you could store content, pointers and references, that could be categorized, tagged and it would work seamlessly across files on my hardrive as well as the web and accessible from any point, and it would 'learn' my interests and start looking for other items that match what interests me. It would also allow me to connect ideas to formulate new ideas.

To my knowledge this doesn't exist, but I have recently come across Google Notebook from Google Labs. I am finding it to be very useful at least for information aggregation. It gives me a tool to capture snippets from blog posts, websites or anything online and it brings the URL with it. You can create different notebooks which can be shared out, and within notebooks create different tabs, and its online, accessible any location and searchable with Google's powerful search engine. Yes its not perfect but its free and will likely evolve with more features. I quickly created a notebook for work related topics which I shared with a colleague. I also created a personal notebook with tabs including 'items I want to blog about', 'items that I find, but want to read later', etc. If you are looking for something new to try to help manage your information overload check it out, and let me know if you have found other useful information aggregation tools. (be aware - it doesn't work with the new IE 7)

Blogs as an Extension to Your Resume

When you attempt to sell your offering to the job market, the traditional tool for this has always been a resume. Resumes are the ‘traditional media’ way to advertise your skill set. They are somewhat impersonal, and one dimensional in what they communicate (a list of skills and accomplishments). As with traditional media there was a time when this method was highly effective – when knowing a skill was all that mattered to carrying out a job. Now as we have progressed away from office workers, through knowledge workers and more towards self directed innovators, a resume with a list of skills doesn’t really seem to tell the whole story.

Now, just as blogs are allowing companies to create more authentic relationships and better communication with their customers, so too could it be used to help with personal marketing and fill in where traditional resumes leave off. This is not about taking the contents of your resume and posting it on a blog. (Some marketers in companies made this mistake by trying to advertising products through a blog). A blog can give you an opportunity to show prospective employers/clients how you think. As jobs become less task based (where the tools matter) to more about the optimal application of those tools to solve business problems in innovative ways, a blog can be a mechanism to showcase this.

Also, just as new media won’t replace traditional media in the corporate marketing sense; neither will blogs fully replace the resume. It’s about correct application of the tools to optimize success, and what you want out of your career. If you want to be an office worker – use a resume. If you want to be a self directed innovator, try using a blog.

Blueline: New Media Conference

Be Your Own Media was the title of a one day conference held yesterday at BSU by a local grassroots marketing firm Blueline on using new media to create more authentic two way connections with your customers. It was the second event by this name held this year (first event was in April), and based on some questions asked of the audience early in the morning by Blueline New Media guy Tac Andersen it was encouraging to see that the concept of new media has definitely progresses in the past 6 months from being limited to the local innovators to at least the early adopter crowd based on current spread of knowledge on new media mechanisms, active bloggers in the crowd as well as conference attendance in general. And similar to the shift and emergence of new media marketing - so has Blueline itself, with a new look and feel as was as a company strategy that appears to be focusing more clearly on grassroots marketing. Congrats on finding focus.

Couple concepts I found interesting:
1. Napsterize your Knowledge

Not a new concept, but I like the way they phrased it. This is the concept that if you give knowledge away for free, you can still have a viable business (disregard the fact that Napster got sued out of business for their disruptive business model:). Many companies think that if they give information away, they will have nothing to bring to the table for their clients, but it is completely the opposite. The information builds trust between you and your customer on your ability to deliver. Maybe they could take this information and do it for themselves, but typically that is not their business and when they need someone to deliver a service, who will be top of mind for them?

2. Four points raised from a Book called Pyro Marketing by Greg Stielstra as it related creating customer evangelists (high on the metaphor scale which makes it easier to burn into your mind)

• Gather the driest tinder
• Touch it with a match
• Fan the flames
• Save the coals

3. Rule # 1 with New media marketing: Its not about generating traffic, its about creating relationships

Many people equate blog readership as the yardstick of success, and while this can bring notoriety and possibly some add revenue, blogs can still be a success with only a few niche readers. The 'Volume = success' is a carry over from legacy media in my view (e.g. TV media). If you have 10 readers of your blog, that actually would hire or recommend to you, wouldn't you consider that a success?

All in all the conference was a great value for the $25 attendance fee with the content as well as the opportunity to network with others people interested in this space.

Stimulating as Black Coffee

I came across this quote this morning:


"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after."
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh, aviation pioneer, writer


This exemplifies why new media options used to create meaningful two-way conversations with your customers (eg. Blogs) are powerful marketing tools. One-way marketing puts your customers to sleep, two-way marketing gets them engaged.

The Anti-Blogger How-to

I have a few Google gadget items added to my Google search page. One of these puts up random 'how to's' from WikiHow. One that caught my attention this mornings was entitled: How to Dissuade Yourself From Becoming a Blogger. Here is an excerpt:

• Find five completely random blogs, and read them daily for a month. After thirty days, you will absolutely dread your self-imposed requirement to read all that dreck. Any blog you create will most likely be on par with what you've been reading. Don't put anyone through that.

Among other things, it suggests that bloggers are often craving attention and validation... me - I'm just looking for a way to capture ideas, and thoughts. If no one reads them, its still helps me clarify my own thoughts. One suggestion they have which I have been contemplating for a while now is moving from a blog to an online wiki format - much more collaborative...

Mind B(l)oggling

Most people would agree that blogging has definitely reached mainstream pop culture, and is getting to be just yet another communication channel in the new internet era, but take a look at these stats on the current state of the 'blogsphere'. For example the blogsphere is 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago, doubling every 3 months with 75,000 new blogs created each day. These numbers are staggering, but how much of it is new, worthwhile (relative) content, and how do you filter through to find what you need. It just points towards more need for even more advanced content and information filtering, and tagging tools to help us wade through the sea of information and find those gold nuggets that are hidden out there in all the silt. The difference with this too is that what is gold to one person is plain rock to another.
Another set of numbers they had in this report was a chart of daily posting volumes mapped to current events. It was amazing to see the correlations between the two and how some events generated greater flurry than others.