Filed under Newsletter

It seems like a new social networking site pops up every other day. They aren’t trying to compete with Facebook or MySpace. Instead, these new social networks aim to be the Facebook of their niche. Here are just some of the more recent examples that I’ve come across:

Currently in preview mode, BusinessTravelConnexion.com is American Express Business Travel’s B2B social network for the corporate travel industry. The site will have online discussion boards, hot topic polls, product development councils, blogs, benchmarking ability, and a whole host of other features. Of course, they hope it will be “the Facebook of corporate travel.”

CookEatShare, which just launched publicly in June 2008, calls itself “a Facebook for home cooks and professional chefs.” Besides the obvious function of being a repository for recipes, CookEatShare also lets chefs upload cooking DIY videos, and hopes to foster interaction between home cooks and professional chefs. While it sounds promising, there already are many well-established cooking/recipe sites. It seems that the ability to interact with professional chefs will be a key differentiator – time will tell if the chefs actually want to interact too.

The most high profile new niche social network so far has to be SportsFanLive, started by a former CBS and Yahoo! Media executive. Although it is targeted at super-passionate sports fans, the site will not just be a general place for sports fanatics to meet each other. Instead, each user can customize SportsFanLive to feature his/her favorite team. FanFeed allows fans of the same teams to share articles with each other, while users will be able to find out if anyone is congregating at the local pub to watch a game with FanFinder. Skeptics say the market for sports sites is already saturated, while others think this may be, yup, the Facebook of sports fans.

From a consumer’s point of view, I think social network fatigue is definitely kicking in. Even with niche social networks that target specific interests, there’s only a certain number of social networks you can join before you burn out. And even if you do join 15, or just 5, social networks, how active can you really be on each one? The value that these social networks add to users’ lives has to be so great that they will be willing to go through the hassle of setting up a profile, connect with others, and most importantly, return to the site constantly.

That last point is important to advertisers, who value the ability to target the specific demographic they know are on these social networking sites. In 2007, BusinessWeek wrote about how advertisers are willing to pay “double-digit figures for every 1,000 times their ad is viewed” on niche social networking sites, versus the less than $1 norm on other general social networking sites. This year, Mashable reported that 8.2% of the $920 million spent in 2007 on advertising within social networks went to niche sites. For 2008, “it is estimated that spending will increase to $2.1 billion, and the take for smaller networks will rise to 10%.”

So far, advertising on general social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace hasn’t seemed to produce the results that some advertisers had hoped for. Do they really think that it will make a difference if the ads are more accurately matched with users’ interests? Apparently so.

Last week, I attended a brown-bag lunch on social media organized by the Association Forum. While we started the discussion talking about blogs and various other social media, the conversation soon gravitated to the pros/cons and dos/don’ts of corporate wikis. And if the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council (APC) study is accurate, it’s no wonder: the study predicts that by 2009, at least 50% of organizations will use wikis as important work collaboration tools.

The APC identified 7 strategies after surveying more than 160 “active corporate wiki users.” I’ll focus on integration and culture.

Integration
I know I’ve already talked about integration in my last two blog posts, but I can’t emphasize this point enough. Just like you wouldn’t hire someone and then seat them in a faraway corner, separated from everyone else, new media has to be fully integrated within the company for it to truly be effective. As the APC report states, the wiki should be integrated as “one of several important tools in an organization’s IT collaboration architecture.”

Culture
One of the APC’s recommendations is to understand that “wikis are best used in work cultures that encourage collaboration. Without an appropriate fit with the workplace culture, wiki technology will be of limited value in sharing knowledge, ideas and practices.”

At Duo, collaboration is one of our core values. To facilitate collaboration, we started an internal wiki two years ago. “At first, I thought only the tech guys would use the wiki, but I’m amazed at how quickly everyone in the company embraced it. Now the project managers use it regularly… and the wiki has become a repository of shared knowledge, great for troubleshooting issues,” said Jason Priestas, a senior developer.

For companies where active collaboration and open sharing of information is not so much a part of the work culture, a fellow participant at the Association Forum brown-bag lunch recommended some ways to make wiki use a habit. For example, instead of simply answering questions over email, people can be incentivized to direct each other to the wiki instead. The APC also suggests assigning a champion to each wiki.

Interestingly, the State Department has its own internal wiki, Diplopedia, a resource that contains biographies of political and business leaders, reading lists and even instructions on how to order lunch. It may surprise some that such a top-down organization is actively using grassroots technology – especially technology that allows anyone to change entries. But according to Noam Cohen, “Diplopedia does not allow anonymous contributors, so bad actors could be tracked down.” Such safeguards have, so far, successfully prevented people from “committing career suicide,” as Mr Johnson from the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy puts it.

—

To learn more about wikis and how to implement them effectively, come listen to the wiki master and evangelist, Stewart Mader, give his keynote address at the Web Content Conference 2009 in Tampa Bay, Florida! Mader is the author of Wikipatterns: A Practical Guide to Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization and founder of Wikipatterns.com.

I’ve been harping on the importance of fully integrating social media tactics with your company’s marketing strategy and business goals for awhile now. This week, I came across two examples that illustrate my point.

Apparently, Cartier is the first luxury brand to market itself on a mainstream social network – MySpace. My first reaction was: why MySpace?! It’s interesting that out of all the social networks to choose from, Cartier had to choose the one that had a reputation for being: creepy, sketchy, sleazy, and full of perverts, pedophiles, predators and porn. The article talks about how Cartier had to police the people who were friending the brand in order to “respect the brand’s objectives” (if you have pictures of yourself drinking beer at a party, sorry, you can’t be a friend of Cartier). Again, why MySpace?

Taking a step back – why market on a social network in the first place? How does that fit with Cartier’s business goals or branding strategy? It’s true that the current recession has hit luxury brands hard, with people cutting down on spending across the board. Even Louis Vuitton advertised on television for the first time. But is having an official presence on a social network to reach a younger audience worth the risk of diluting the brand? (Unofficial fan pages created by users are a different story for another post.)

At the other end of the spectrum, there is Threadless, a company that grew organically from an online community and is built on a social network. Users submit their T-shirt designs, vote for their favorites, and those favorites are produced and sold. Unlike most retailers, Threadless doesn’t have an inventory problem – and why should they? The T-shirts that are produced are the ones the community has already indicated a desire for. It is the pipedream of every retailer – to be able to know beforehand exactly what consumers want.

In the case of Threadless, the social network and community aspects are so fully integrated into the company that “the Threadless brand is not the shirts but the community experience,” writes Max Chafkin. Jeff Lieberman, quoted in Chafkin’s article, goes so far as to claim that “to say it’s just a T-shirt company is absurd. I look at it as a community company that happens to use T-shirts as a canvas.”

Not every company will be able to achieve the level of integration of social media that Threadless has. In fact, most probably won’t. The point is that social media tactics need to be part of something bigger – part of the business strategy and goals, and part of the company’s culture, from top to bottom.

Results of the first (statistically significant) longitudinal study on corporate use of social media reveal some interesting statistics:

• 39% of Inc. 500 companies have blogs, compared to 11.6% of Fortune 500 companies
• In the past year, 20% more Inc. 500 companies started blogging, compared to 3.6% more Fortune 500s
• 44% of Inc. 500s think social media is very important to their business/marketing strategy, compared to 25% last year
• Inc. 500s are most familiar with social networking, while wikis have seen the most growth in terms of familiarity
• 77% of Inc. 500 companies report using at least some social media tool

It’s not surprising that the Inc. 500 companies are outpacing the Fortune 500s in social media adoption. It’s also encouraging to see the increased recognition of social media’s role in a company’s business/marketing strategy. However, simply using social media and thinking it is important is very different from effectively using social media and integrating it into a company’s everyday operations.

At Zappos.com (one of the Inc. 500), for example, almost everyone blogs. The CEO and COO have their own blog, and many other employees blog on Running, Fashion Culture, Outdoor and more. Zappos.com also uses Twitter (not included in the above study) as part of its customer service function, fostering a sense of community between the company and its customers, and between customers themselves.

Contrast that with the list of social media fiascos, like Whole Foods’ CEO hiding his identity and posting comments anonymously. Or Wal-Mart’s fake blog that was financed by Edelman.

An important and often neglected factor in effectively employing social media is the choice of people to “reveal” to the public. Unfortunately, not all bloggers are born equal - some people just have more personality than others. Figuring out who should be the “social media face” of the company is not a trivial matter.

Integration should also not be taken lightly. Social media tactics cannot be stand-alone events, but should instead be part of the execution of marketing strategy designed to meet business goals. I believe metrics for measuring the impact of social media (Return On Involvement?) will eventually develop to aid in the integration process.

Mashable does a nice job of highlighting many more examples of effective corporate social media.

That’s revenue Google gets by focusing on the effectiveness of its advertising engine. “The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine” in today’s New York Times, shows the importance of analytics and how it is used by Google to drive revenue. The story reviews the genesis of the Googles AdWords program, five years ago when GoTo.com was acquired by Yahoo. GoTo was the first to pioneer advertising, but Google made a critical advance improving the system by actually looking at the click-throughs, not just what people were willing to bid for ads, that pushed Google ahead to stay. On the web it’s all based on metrics and analytics. At Duo we keep harping about analytics and how clients should benefit from studying what really go goes on with their sites – but few take advantage of that recommendation. The advantage there is there for those that do – and they are going to reap the rewards.

“The economy and a newly designed Web site are being credited for a dramatic increase in interest in the Chicago Public Library system,” WBBM’s Bernie Tafoya reported last month. In this interview, You can reserve a book, CD, or DVD online, and if it not available it will be delivered to the library branch of your choice and you will be notified by email.

The Chicago Tribune, in a recent article about this Find it, Chicago service appropriately labels it “NetBooks” because it offers the functionality of NetFlix without the subscription fee. At Duo we’re just glad that the thousands of hours spent learning about users needs, designing the new interface, and developing the enhanced functionality has paid off for the Library and citizens of Chicago.

Another successful registration for the Chicago Park
District.

Once again today we had a successful registration event for
the Chicago Park District.  This was our
biggest one ever – as the summer session usually is.  At peak we had over 10,000 simultaneous users
and revenue of over $100,000 per minute! 
This has been a great project (and case study) on the effectiveness of a
well designed and executed AJAX
application (and significant load testing). 

Because we only have these registration events quarterly, we
needed the ability to handle a huge increase in traffic without adding
additional servers (because this burst happens only four times per year).  We built a lightweight AJAX application at http://programs.chicagoparkdistrict.com/programBrowser/
that allows user to browse programs and build a wish list in advance.  Then, on registration day users easily move
their pre-selected programs into a shopping cart and check out quickly
(minimizing utilization of hardware or software resources).  Using this approach we were able to reduce
our hardware requirements by over 50% - and service the expanding user base
with a minimal amount of infrastructure. 

Congratulations to the Chicago Park District team for this
amazing and efficient application!

We have
added some of my favorite ebooks to our site for your reading pleasure.  The first one you might want to download is
from Seth Godin called Knock Knock.

He says
“just about everything you think you know about Web sites is wrong.  What the establishment has taught you about
Web design and strategy is largely self-serving, expensive, time-consuming and
completely ineffective.”

The short
book offers just a few key points – but they can make big difference in your
website strategy.  Subjects covered
include -

• Buy traffic
• Tell a
  story
• Web pages –
  not web sites are what’s important
• Treat
  different people differently
• Test and
  measure

Good stuff
– direct and to the point.

Download it
now at:

http://www.duoconsulting.com/downloads/other_resources/KnockKnock.pdf

If the
content on your site isn’t relevant — fresh, correct, easy to find, and easy
to use - you could be hurting your company.  Join us for a half day of
interactive workshops with Duo’s Web experts and learn:

• How content drives business on
  the Internet;
• Secrets to getting your content
  noticed by search engines;
• How to save costs and boost
  profits through community involvement;
• How to create great websites that
  drive the business results.

Thursday,
Nov. 16, 2006 | 8:30 am - 12:00 noon | $125