The recession has been great for social marketing , in fact, I feel it’s spurred the industry on. With overall reduced marketing budgets, companies must innovate, and find new channels that are more efficient than the ‘carpet-bombing’ techniques of traditional marketing. There are a handful of goals that companies can have with social technologies, from learning, dialog, support, and innovation ( see Charlene’s deck, starting at slide 8 to learn more ), I want to drill down in the following matrix to focus on the goal of spreading, and word of mouth, and viral. I call this “Advocacy”. Marketers, who strive to find efficient ways of reaching customers at lower cost, seek ‘ force-multipliers ‘ or a method where using a small degree of energy (or the energy of another force) to your advantage. Do remember, there is a downside to any action, and with ‘advocacy’ there’s reduced control over message and therefore more risk. With that said, many marketers know the benefits of content spreading are worth the risks. Matrix: Breakdown of Advocacy Marketing Sophistication and Description Investments and Returns Strengths: Weaknesses: Great For: Sharing Tools Baseline effort. Tools like Sharethis , AddThis , Gigya , and some features in Pluck , and Kickapps . High. Low investment as it can easily be deployed on CMS templates. Continual returns of content spreading with no additional overhead or cost. Easy to deploy, yet transactional Do not build deep relationship with customers Getting started, a baseline activity. Viral Marketing A basic technique. Word of mouth campaigns on Facebook apps, YouTube (see popular) , or Twitter (see moonfruit example) Low. Being able to hit the right elements of the content people want, timing, and other factors are difficult. Chances are, most campaigns that intend to be viral never are Easy for media and interactive agencies to create and deploy. Dime a dozen. Short term and cheap. Not conducive to building long term relationships. Traditional agencies and transactional marketers that are trying to learn social Social Network Connections An intermediate technique. Facebook, Twitter Connect. Easy to comment systems on blogs, to sophisicated Huffington Post social recommendations , see Buddy Media . Moderate to High. Allowing customers to login to your site with existing connections increase value of social sharing and chance to serve up contextual data. However there are considerable costs in creating contextual content and systems that are not yet mature. Encourages people to quickly login, share, and find others who have interests Challenges in collecting email leads as customers now ‘login’ using social connections. Static websites who need to inject social interactions. Advocacy Programs An advanced technique. Longer term programs with customer advocates like Microsoft MVP or Walmart’s 11 Mom’s High return but high cost. Companies can benefit from an unpaid army that will market, defend, and support customers, but this requires significant resources to launch, grow, and maintain. Builds long term deep relationships with a customer group that will defend brand. Requires full resources for program, takes time to build Companies that can’t scale their marketing in a high touch customer experience. Companies Should Embrace Advocacy Programs Organizations are already deploying these word of mouth tools, but often without a plan or strategy, get started now by: Deploy simple sharing features now. These cheap and easy to insert embeds should be on every content type where companies want the content to spread. From press releases, to blog posts, companies need to make it easy for their market to share with others. Reduce risks by providing proper support and resources . Organizations should first understand the costs, downsides and risks for each type of marketing program, with greater returns (Advocacy program) comes greater commitment of resources, and greater risk, so to reduce those risks, put the right resources behind it. Develop new measurement techniques. Measuring the spread of information is more difficult, as often companies won’t have web analytics installed on third party websites. Instead use a variety of mention and url tracking with brand monitoring software to track how far information spreads over time.

Go here to read the rest:
Matrix: Breakdown of Advocacy Marketing

Above, thanks to Mitch Canter, we’ve a new header graphic for the “On The Move” series, which needed an update since I started this digest a few years ago. In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series ( see archives ) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: My former colleague Alexis Karlin who was very involved with Forrester’s social media efforts now joins Neolane , and will be starting their social strategy from scratch and running their web site. She’s quite the professional, an incredibly fast learner, and I’m glad to have worked with her. Follow her on Twitter at @akarlin . David Armano moves on from Dachis Group and joins Edelman Digital as a SVP . Regardless of where David works, his blog is a fantastic collection of thoughts, informative graphics, and insight, I’ll follow his insights anywhere, find him @armano It’s interesting to see how Edelman is placing bets in social strategy, with that in mind, also see that… Michael Brito, formerly one of Intel’s Social Media Strategists also joins Edelman in Silicon Valley office as a Vice President . I’ve worked with Michael on projects in the past, and have been impressed, great hire. Find him on Twitter at @britopian Paul Gilliham, who I’ve had excellent professional experiences with, joins Lithium Technologies Director, Customer Marketing where he’ll be Running Lithosphere (Lithium’s customer community), social strategy, customer consultancy, customer/analyst relations. Find him on @bladefrog Samir Bhavnani has been hired at EXPO as a Vice President where he’ll be working with brands to engage with consumers, on video, for insights and marketing. Find him on Twitter at @samirb Deidra Bodkin leaves Zenith Optimedia and joins IDG as VP, Group Media Director as VP, Client Services leading social media marketing programs for IDG’s IT and B2B Clients. Find her on Twitter at @deidrabodkin . How to connect with others (or get a job): Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how you can too: Submit an announcement If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, fill out this form . Seeking Social Media Professionals? If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals . Job Resources in the Social Media and Web Industry Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting) Read Write Web keeps announcements flowing at Jobwire , although is broader than just social media jobs Facebook group for community manager group in Facebook Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community Teresa has a few jobs, some around community New Media hire has an extensive job database Social Media Headhunter Social media jobs Jobs in social media Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies Hiring? Leave a comment If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)

Go here to see the original:
People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Dec 16, 2009

Steel Media, LLC Names Diane Sanfilippo Philly Adwords , Director of Sales … Earthtimes (press release) Sanfilippo will be responsible for strategic direction and growth of the top line revenue of the Philly AdWords Division. …

View original post here:
Steel Media, LLC Names Diane Sanfilippo Philly Adwords, Director …

New Media Strategies, Ideas and Designs that caught our attention. From Gadgets to Guerilla-Marketing Campaigns, from Innovative Online Advertising to Inspired Internet Sites. Served daily.

See the rest here:
User location targeting on AdWords at The TrendWatch

For a few years ago, I’ve created what I call Industry Index lists to track companies in any particular vertical. Yesterday’s post on Social CRM vendors walking the talk raised the appropriate awareness of this nascent space. I expect this space to rapidly increase in size as social channels will be bolted onto CRM vendors, and many brand monitoring and community platforms are adding workflow, triage, capabilities. The purpose of this list is to quickly capture the vendors participating in this space, and to acknowledge those that were not on yesterday’s review, I expect there to be many more vendors who leave a comment, which we can quickly add to this list. We prefer Paul Greenberg’s definition of Social CRM , which he summarizes as: “CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (read his 2009 review of this space ) List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings Traditional CRM Vendors offering Social CRM Microsoft Dynamics: Partnered with Neighborhood America Oracle Siebel Social CRM: Promises the ability to provide insights based on the buying behaviors of similar customers, as well as shared content to be used between sales teams. RightNow CRM: Offers several feature s in their suite such as Support Communities, Innovation Communities, Cloud Monitoring, and Social Experience Design Salesforce: Offers acces to Social Networking like Facebook and Twitter . Salesforce, like SAP is importing the Twitter “firehose” feed, and has offered social features like Q&A, and social networking like Chatter, and has lightweight LinkedIn integration . SAP CRM: Imports the Twitter firehose feed, and Sugar CRM: Offers “SugarCRM Cloud Connectors connect via Web Services to leading third-party data service providers such as Hoover’s, JigSaw and LinkedIn” Community Platforms Offering Social CRM Jive Software: Community Engagement , offers data integration from Radian6, encouraging management of the discussion. Lithium Technologies offers the Social CRM Suite . Neighborhood America: Has had a partnership with Microsoft Dynamics, read press release , and commentary from Paul Greenberg on ZDNet . Brand Monitoring Offering Social CRM Radian 6: Offers brand monitoring tools that allow tools to discuss (Conversation Sidebar), triage, and manage disparate conversations, see Dave Fleet’s write up . Social Media Clients CoTweet: Offers a variety of features that allow teams to monitor, manage, and triage conversations in Twitter, see features page . Hootsuite: Provides workflow, analytics , for teams to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Sales 2.0 InsideView: Offers some unique offerings that mine a business social graph to provide alerts as a plugin to traditional CRM systems, Watch this lengthy demo . Social Network Connections Appirio: Offer s the ability for companies to create applications on Facebook which then marry data back to Salesforce, called Cloud Connectors. Not on this list? Leave a comment, with a link, I’ll take a look and add to it. Sal

See more here:
List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings

I first posted this on the Destination CRM blog , thanks to Josh Weinberger @kitson. Surveying the Social CRM Industry Business partner Ray Wang (focused on enterprise strategy) and myself (customer strategy) of the Altimeter Group is undergoing a major project for a client in the nascent Social CRM arena.  We’re surveying the landscape to learn about a variety of vendors in the space, their capabilities and deployments. A small portion of our survey is to see who’s eating their own dog food, and truly demonstrating they understand the ’social’ aspect of social crm and living it. Companies Who Sell Social Products Should Demonstrate Credibility By Living It While critics may be quick to dismiss the mere inclusions of a blog or community to a product landing page, the message goes much deeper. Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a new plugin to your system like a new air foil on your minivan but instead a new way of doing business. The promise of social crm says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever they are, responding, anticipating, and making the commitment to improve products and services. Vendors that are assisting brands with this promise to the market need to demonstrate they fully understand the ramifications of social crm –not just a keyword checklist of the buzzword du jour. Criteria: How We Graded the Social CRM Vendors There are four major areas of grading, from very tactical ability to 1) Simple sharing of social content from the corporate product page 2) Surfacing a developer or business community, and a look inside of the discussions in each community, with bonus points for integration with product page. 3) Thought leadership with relevant blogs on the subject, and a gauge of their level of interaction and any twitter accounts they may have. 4) A subjective look at the overall page experience in the context of a company that’s offering a ’social experience’. Findings: Overall, Social CRM Vendors Aren’t Walking the Talk We’ve decided to make our findings public, at least for this part of our client deliverable to see how different vendors that are in the Social CRM space are walking the talk. Sharing Features on Product Page (out of 1 point) Community and Integration (out of 1 point) Thought Leadership: Blogs, Twitter (out of 1 point) Overall Social Experience (out of 1 point) Final Score (out of 4 points) Salesforce 0 0 0 .25 .25/4 Microsoft Dynamic 0 0 0 .5 .5/4 SAP CRM .5 0 0 0 .5/4 Jive (Community Platform) 0 0 .5 .5 1.0/4 Oracle/Siebel Social CRM 0 .5 .5 0 1.0/4 RightNow CRM 1 0 .5 0 1.5/4 Lithium (Community Platform)* .75 .75 .75 0 2.25/4 To pass, companies need to receive greater than a .5 in each category for a total score of 2.0 plus making Lithium the only vendor to pass. For details, see the data, and our justifications on this Google Sheet . Highlights From Study The product pages are devoid of true social interaction, and none of them actually surface discussions about how the market is even talking about them. Marketing machine Salesforce demonstrated they aren’t engaging in a social experience on their own product pages and SAP and Microsoft’s typical enterprise looking design stayed consistent with ‘boring’ social experiences. Although Oracle’s bland web experience looks like it’s designed for the media-phobes, there is links to community and thought leadership blogs. Despite the overall meager findings, there were a few social hopefuls such as Lithium (Altimeter client*) who integrated social throughout the experience followed by RightNow Technologies who demonstrated thought leadership through executive blogs. Honorable mention to Jive engaging online video that captures the spirit of the Social CRM movement. We know that soon every webpage will be social, even if you don’t choose for it to be , so companies should enable features that allow websites to have conversations. Social CRM vendors that want to demonstrate to the market they are experts at this space should gear up to demonstrate they’ve the ability to do as they preach –as for now, it doesn’t show. *Altimeter Client. At the Altimeter Group we practice open leadership (also the topic of Charlene’s upcoming book) and disclose our relationships with clients, given their permission. We hope you will trust us more if we do.

Go here to see the original:
Finding: Social CRM Vendors Don’t Walk The Talk

Funny ad from The Sun – not sure about it’s interface or ability to leave comments but still, a nice try! Seen any other ads where newspapers are fighting back? PDA: Sun Newspaper Ad is a post from: Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy Technorati Tags: ad , funny , humor , PDA , The Sun Tags: ad , funny , humor , Humour , Media , PDA , The Sun Related posts Humor: Swine Flu Discussions on Twitter (6) Wanna job in Online Communities? (0) Twitter Lists I Am On (22) Pay for News vs Save The Media (5) Mobi Wiki and New Zealand web 2.0 job (2)

Read the original post:
PDA: Sun Newspaper Ad