Social Business

March 18th, 2010

The Quick'n'Dirty read on ebooks, with Smashwords

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 5:16 pm

Categories: Publishing, Quick'n'Dirty Podcast, Social Business, Social Media, digital publishing, ebooks

Tags: Wine, E-book, E-books & E-Readers, Personal Technology, Jennifer Leggio

This week’s episode of the Quick’n'Dirty podcast was “reunited” part deux for me and co-host Aaron Strout. It almost seems as if we’ve been apart more than together this year, with his being a jetsetter as part of his CMO job and me being… well it’s mostly due to his being a jetsetter. However, we’re back on track for good after with this week’s episode, and oh what an episode it was.

Our very special guest was Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers. Mark is a serial entrepreneur who has a most interesting story — he founds companies to address significant holes in their respective industries. Not a stranger to innovation having launched BestCalls.com and Dovetail Public Relations, Mark launched Smashwords after being told that a book he authored with his wife, Lesleyann, did not have enough “commercial appeal.”

“After pouring thousands of hours, everything we had into this book, we wanted to see it published,” he said.

Smashwords not only gives authors a vehicle for self-publishing, but authors and publishers have control over all aspects of their written works, including sampling, pricing and marketing.

For more on this interview with Mark, during which he talks about how there will not be a killer ebook reader, check out the replay of the Quick’n'Dirty podcast.

Aaron and I kicked off the show by having him give a recap of what he most prominently saw at South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) this week. He told a story of how issues with Foursquare privacy settings — and a little bit of bad luck — was causing rampant issues for many of the conference attendees. This turned into a bit of an impromptu point / counterpoint so we postponed our scheduled topic to next week. Give it a little listen.

Finally, we did give some love to our chat room attendees. Many thanks to Christopher Burgess, Doug Haslam, Keith Burtis, Jim Turner and Jeremy Pepper for joining us this week. They all got to witness the wonder that was our featured Twitterer of the week, none other than Evan Cover (@evancover), CEO of Cruvee. I met Evan last week at the Napa Valley Tweet-Up sponsored by Robert Mondavi Winery, and learned a bit about his cool company which provides business intelligence solutions specifically to the wine industry. Follow Evan for his insights on wine and technology, and for a truly entertaining stream.

Speaking of wine, next week our special guest will be Paul Mabray, chief strategy officer of VinTank, a digital think tank for the wine industry. Have you noticed a wine theme? This is what happens when Jen goes to Napa. Join us at 3 p.m. PT/ 6 p.m ET on March 25.

Important announcement regarding the Quick’n'Dirty podcast. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Sort of. Beginning April 29 we will move the show to noon PT / 3 p.m. ET and will cut the show format from 45 minutes to 30 minutes to make it truly “quick and dirty.” If you’re a regular live listener and chatter, be sure to mark your calendars. Otherwise you can still catch our replays on Blog Talk Radio or find us on iTunes by searching “quickndirty.”

March 16th, 2010

Cirque du Soleil's social media balancing act

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:47 am

Categories: Blogging Best Practices, Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Cirque du Soleil, Corporate Social Networking, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Cirque Du Soleil, Social Media, Cirque Corp., Berlin, Blogger, Blogger Relation, Blogging, Internet, Jennifer Leggio

When one thinks of Cirque du Soleil, beautiful imagery and athleticism come to mind long before the nitty gritty business operations. The team at Cirque du Soleil works hard to maintain these images and the mystique that go with every one of its shows. However, just as many businesses are these days, the company is using a mix of blogger relations and social network outreach to help grow attendance for all of its home and traveling shows.

Jessica Berlin, Cirque du Soleil’s social media manager, first came onto the social media radar after Chris Brogan sang her praises 18 months ago for her keen view of blogger relations, and how endearing bloggers to the Cirque brand eventually helped publicity for the show. Previously a publicist for Cirque, she had long been networking online and made a point of meeting as many influencers in person as she could.

“I think one of the biggest mistakes companies make is trying to just pitch bloggers,” she said. “Social media doesn’t work like traditional public relations. You have to form a relationship with someone first and foremost before they are interested in blogging about you and your brand.”

A bit of a pioneer for Cirque du Soleil, Berlin says that her current position was created after she became an advocate for giving bloggers the same access that Cirque would give to any mainstream media outlet.

“I strongly believe that bloggers can tell the story of our shows better than anyone else because its not as formal as a magazine articles or as structured as something in the paper. It is someone’s first-person account of their experience and so many readers will trust their opinion on the show,” Berlin said.

More important, Berlin understands that the new influencers, or those who serve niche interest groups, might be better at driving awareness to the audience that Cirque wants versus some of the mainstream press.

“Just because a blog may not have the same number of views or readers as a magazine or newspaper, that doesn’t make them any less valuable,” she said. “In fact, the smaller audience may actualy be a more targeted/relevant audience for Cirque and potential ticket sales.”

According to Berlin, this success did not come overnight. There was a lot of internal education that was important, to ensure that upper management saw the value in engaging with bloggers along with traditional media. She also said that it took a bit of trial and error to figure out the best way to leverage social media followers and have them become evangelists for the brand.

“People don’t usually understand the legwork that goes into making a post about one of our shows happen. While I’m lucky to work for a brand so many people have an emotional connection to, that doesn’t mean they will write about us. It took a while to educate people internally on the process.”

Next: Beyond word of mouth –>

March 11th, 2010

SXSW preview: Social business content management made easier

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:13 am

Categories: Aggregators, Brand Management and Monitoring, Conference News, Corporate Social Networking, Marketing, SXSW, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Twitter Inc., Social Media, Social Marketing, Content Management, SXSW, Jennifer Leggio

One of the biggest challenges of social media managers who oversee large consumer or enterprise brands is content manageability. It seems as if a new social network is born every day, and only a few days after it’s introduced to the world a multitude of people push to figure out how businesses can benefit. With many companies taking the be everywhere for everyone approach to social networking, trying to keep it all in sync is a major feat.

Calling it lack of manageability might be too simple of a way to put it.  Some of the intricate challenges are:

• Control: Who is posting what and where to whom?
• Security: Some companies have multiple users sharing the same passwords or admin rights.
• Tracking: Great, you posted on Twitter. Did anyone even read it?
• Redundancy: Not redundant content, but redundant work. Time loss due to multiple postings of the same data to multiple sites.

Awareness Inc., with its pedigree in branded communities, is unveiling at South By Southwest Interactive a new product called the Social Marketing Hub, which promises to help the heavily tasked social media manager with their multiple online presences. Will it help? I watched a demo today and I immediately saw all of the ways that this product could help streamline efforts and improve control. I am not one to boldly sing the praises of a solution — and I’ll reserve full hallelujah until I get a chance to try it firsthand — but the concept of the Social Marketing Hub could be a game changer for managing social business content.

Companies that subscribe to Awareness’ service for $2K per month have the ability to set up five social networking “channels.” A channel is a direct link into a Twitter stream, a branded community, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel or a Flickr page, and is connected from the Social Marketing Hub to the services through varying methods of OAuth (other social networks are promised post-launch). Here are some of the features:

• One-click publishing across multiple social media channels
• Upload photos to Flickr, Facebook and your community
• Enter text and a link and send to Facebook and Twitter
• Upload videos to YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and your community
• Measurement tools and real-time updates
• Manage login credentials for all social media channels

My first reaction when seeing the demo for this product was to liken it to a more robust version of CoTweet, which currently only works with Twitter and allows multiple users under an admin that controls the security and can assign and monitor posts. However, what the Social Marketing Hub also offers is an approval process for managing content and some really “smart” update features (i.e. make edits to posted content and it will re-post according to each site’s policies, it knows which sites can take which types of media, etc.).

Awareness already has some pretty good brands using the Social Marketing Hub, such as Kodak, Best Buy, USA Today, Kayak.com and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.

“Many brands, including ours, are realizing that focusing on only one social media channel to reach an audience isn’t enough to get results desired. As channels are added, so are the complexities in measuring the impact you have on the marketplace” said John Bernier, manager, social and emerging media at Best Buy. “We’re excited about the possibilities that the Social Marketing Hub brings to our ability to carefully measure all our social media activities from one central console.”

One drawback I currently see to the Social Marketing Hub thus far is a lack of granularity with some updates. For example, if I want to upload photos or videos into specific albums on Facebook this still has to be done manually as the service currently only automatically posts them to the Facebook wall. The other is that it is cost-prohibitive to anyone except for very large brands or enterprises, whereas companies of all sizes that have multiple product lines or campaigns could also benefit from such a service. Perhaps a lighter version in the future?

March 8th, 2010

Allstate ensures community through collaboration

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 8:17 am

Categories: Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Collaboration, Community Management, Corporate Social Networking, Fortune 500 Series, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Networking, Collaboration, Agent, Social Media, Allstate Corp., Real Estate, Business Operations, Jennifer Leggio

Allstate is only one of a growing number of Fortune 500 companies that is digging deep into social media help improve brand awareness and create more mutually beneficial relationships with customers. The company began developing its social media program two years ago during the upswing of industry buzz, and has since developed a strong community and social networking presence. I did a very quick Q&A with Ben Foster, senior strategy and content manager for social networking at Allstate, about the company’s vision and execution of community for both consumers and its agents.

Q. [Jennifer] How long ago did Allstate launch it’s social media program and what is the primary focus for it?

A. [Ben] We’ve been in social media since 2008 in the form of forums, Facebook,Twitter and blogs. The initiative picked up steam in mid-2008 when Allstate Financial created a social networking division.  Since then, nearly every function of our business has tried to include the social web in their initiatives.

We have 3 business objectives: 1) Improve brand equity and awareness 2) Improve the customer experience and 3) Encourage collaboration between Allstate agents.

To improve brand equity and awareness, we provide interesting and relevant content based on well-defined consumer needs through the Good Hands Community and its corresponding Twitter account. We engage with consumers through our flagship accounts on Twitter and Facebook.  And, we’re working on an agent collaboration tool to help one of our most valuable assets, our agents, interact and share best practices with each other.

Q. How did the social media strategy get started and which person, or group, was the largest champion for it?

A. The social media strategy was pioneered by our marketing organization who recognized the tremendous value that the medium could bring to customers.  The largest champion for it has been our leadership who recognize that social media is a critical tactic to executing our vision of “Putting the customer at the center of all we do”.  Executive level support led to the creation of our Consumer Engagement team that is primarily focused on using social media and social networks to engage with customers when and where they want to be reached.

Q. As an insurance company, how do you address inquiries / comments from customers over issues that might be confidential?

A. With inquiries that might be confidential, we have to resolve them privately to prevent the exchange of personal information.  Many times these inquiries and comments are sourced from publically available websites like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums. To protect our customers, we resolve these issues directly.

Q. Do you use social media to interact with agents or just direct customers?

A. There is a huge opportunity to use social media to not only interact with agents, but also their staff.  Social Media improves the ability for agency owners and their staff to communicate with their peers from across the country on topics relevant to their businesses and their relationship with Allstate and their customers.  Agents can engage with
each other in conversations and share their knowledge and expertise with peers from across the country.  It’s important to note that this isn’t just another way to direct information at agents.  We use social media to allow agents and staff to create and share information that works best for them.

Q. What has been one significant challenge of leveraging social for Allstate and how did you overcome it?

A. A significant challenge we’ve overcome is the tendency many people have to use social media without clear business objectives.  Some people want to dive into the space without clearly understanding the business problem they want to solve.  We’ve overcome this by working closely to define the strategy with functions looking to use social media as a tool. By focusing on the business objectives they want to solve, we select the right tool and improve the ability to execute successfully.

March 5th, 2010

Social networking: Think before you link

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:05 am

Categories: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Buzz, MySpace, Personal Branding, Reputation and Privacy, Security, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Social Video, Spam, Twitter

Tags: Fortinet Inc., Network, Jennifer Leggio, Social Networking, Security, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion

Jennifer Leggio is at RSA Conference

Guest editorial by Anthony James

It strikes me as somewhat of a mystery that the social networking explosion has not given rise to equal amounts of reaction to the security concerns it can create.  Besides the obviously sensationalized issue of “bullying” or intimidating through this personal medium, the greater issue of security is a significant concern that should be thoroughly thought about and discussed.

Consider a typical social networking environment in which users are able to link with friends, distribute topical commentary and share endless bounds of content treasures discovered by even more endless “circles of friends.”  I will admit, there are some nuggets of gold to be had within these social circles and content sharing, but there are also many nuggets of pyrite (fools gold) with sinister intention hidden in the seemingly endless treasure trove of links.

By dissecting the nature of social networking, it is easy to see how a threat can flourish at an alarming rate on a large scale of unknowing recipients. Given that the “circle of contacts” users typically befriend are people that they know and inherently trust.  And since there is an assumed trust, one would not expect these contacts to knowingly distribute malicious links or content.  Unfortunately, trust is not 100 percent guaranteed, and is possibly compromised by hackers discovering login credentials and pushing their attack items to the trusted contacts from that login.  Even more alarmingly, third-party applications inherent to social networks have been identified as sources of malicious intentions.  Obviously the social networking vendors are taking security seriously and scrutinizing externally developed applications before they are published on their networks, but unfortunately, as seen in 2009, there will always be a highly motivated developer determined to don their wares on unsuspecting recipients and figure out a way to bypass security measures.

What does this mean? Is it safer to boycott social networking and step back into non-digital mediums for social interaction? This won’t work, as social networking has an established foothold in the everyday lives of millions, and the perceived value far surpasses the potential threats.  So that leaves us with the question of security and how can we apply security processes, tools and techniques to this new generation of applications, ensuring freedom of use without risk of compromise.

Think about the basics - regardless of the increasingly sophisticated delivery method of threats, many of the traditional protection methods are still valid.  By ensuring the most recent security patches and updates for operating systems and applications are applied, you are staying ahead (or just behind) the curve of attack opportunities.  Use of desktop security software is an absolute must, as the vast majority of attacks will still rely on the ability to install and execute some code from the desktop system.  If you have a reliable desktop security product and it is up to date, much of these attempts by attackers will be thwarted ensuring you are not falling victim to an attack carried by social networking.

As Fortinet cyber security and threat researcher Derek Manky says, “Think before you link.” Make a judgment call on links proposed to offer “so-called internet gold”.  Does that YouTube link forwarded to you actually take you to YouTube? Did you verify the domain in the URL? Youtube.com can look like y0utube.com at a glance.  Avoid links on a Web page that suggest updates to applets or applications - more than likely the application will have their own update mechanism and will guide you through an update if necessary vs. a “click to upgrade” propose link.

Be social, but be safe.

Anthony James, vice president of products for Fortinet, has 16+ years of networking and high-tech product experience. His objective is to help ensure Fortinet’s continued market leadership and technology innovation, and to proliferate the value of ASIC-accelerated, consolidated security as the core function in protecting the world’s enterprises.

[Disclosure: Fortinet is also Jennifer Leggio's employer]

March 4th, 2010

Securing your social networking brand

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:04 am

Categories: Branding, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, MySpace, Personal Branding, Reputation and Privacy, Security, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Brand, Password, Blog, Site, SSL, Jennifer Leggio, Ssl/Tls, Authentication/Encryption, Blogging, Social Networking

Jennifer Leggio is at RSA Conference

Guest editorial by Branden Williams

Social networking sites as innocent as LinkedIn and as provocative as Twitter (have you seen my stream?) have now become a personal branding vehicle many professionals. Some of us have had the unfortunate experience of losing a job we barely had thanks to social networking. Others have seen it as the boost to their career they have been wanting for years. Let’s talk about security in the context of the latter.

When I moved my blog to a setup I administered, I made two commitments to myself. The first is that I would make frequent backups because there has yet to be a flawless content management system introduced to the market and I could only assume I would have some kind of security problem along the way. The second was that I would pay money to wrap my entire blog inside an SSL stream.

My primary goal with forcing all of the traffic through and SSL tunnel was to seamlessly provide a way for me to connect and administer the content from anywhere (like a coffee shop I frequent) without fear of my credentials being snooped. Like most of us out there, I’ve hacked together some security tricks that work 95% of the time, but require some attention when they break. I didn’t want to be fiddling with a broken SSL stream when I had an inspiration for the next pile of brain vomit for my blog.

While I realize that at some point in my life my site will probably be hacked (odds are NOT on my side here), I’d rather it be because of a software bug and not my credentials being stolen.

But what does that mean for those of us that choose to further build our brand and professional identity through other social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn?

Not only are strong passwords a requirement, but it is critical to ensure the sites you use take adequate precautions to protect your credentials during the login process. It’s one thing to log into a site that does not protect credentials when you are sitting on your couch, but it is entirely another problem when you are on the road trusting your hotel, coffee shop, pub, or airport to protect your credentials in-flight.

The hope for the hacked is the event only becomes an embarrassment. Many of the compromises I have seen are not taken seriously enough to tarnish someone’s reputation, even if it stands as a permanent embarrassment that the guy that had it happen to him. The more sophisticated attacks create significant cause for concern. If malware-laced links all the sudden started showing up on your social media stage, you may become part of a launch vehicle for malware. If you frequently post links to other sites or news items, the likelihood of a follower clicking a malicious link greatly increases.

What can you do? The first step is to make sure that you actually take password complexity seriously. There are too many tools available to create and securely store random passwords for these sites to claim that you can’t remember yet another password.

The second is to consciously be aware of which sites allow you to submit passwords in the clear. Facebook, for example, handles login credentials over SSL streams. What about your blog software? Be conscious of where and how you log into these sites.

Finally, check yourself out! Sure, you can do it in front of a mirror and do your own special version of Blue Steel, or more productively you can regularly review your social media sites and look for strange activity. If you run a blog, be sure your software is up to date, and regularly review it for hidden links.

Don’t be afraid to use these tools, but be aware of what can happen once you have a following. Protect your online persona just like you protect your physical one!

Branden Williams is the director of the security consulting practice at RSA, the security division of EMC.  He is a published security author who regularly writes and consults on key security issues that impact today’s global business.  Branden lives in Texas, loves BBQ, flying, and a great brewpub.

March 3rd, 2010

Social network security: Where is the outrage?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:03 am

Categories: Data Center 2.0, Facebook, Google Buzz, IT Management, Networking, Security, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Fridge, Security, Network, Twitter Inc., Network Security, Jennifer Leggio, Resiliency, Network Resiliency, Data Centers, Networking

Jennifer Leggio is at RSA Conference

Guest editorial by Kyle Flaherty, BreakingPoint Systems

Do you have an iPhone? Of course you do, you are reading a blog dedicated to social media. If you don’t have an iPhone you are probably even more cutting edge with a fancy Droid, or perhaps you are just waiting for that iPad to arrive. Whatever you have in front of you check out the back of your phone, you’ll see a variety of logos, each representing some performance or safety standard for the phone. Now pick up your refrigerator and…oh never mind, I’ll just tell you that somewhere on every appliance in your house is this:

Along with a bunch of other logos, all of which mean that it has been evaluated against a certain standard and under realistic conditions. The most famous is the one above for Underwriters Laboratories and that logo lets us consumers know that when we plug in that microwave or fridge it won’t blow up the fuse box or grow titanium legs and become our appliance overlords. The reason it has the UL “stamp of approval”? It has been validated for hours and hours on end, through a battery of real-word scenarios and certified that it will perform as expected.

Now, a pop quiz. What undergoes more inspection and certification under real-world scenarios, that fridge or the network infrastructure holding up your favorite social network? It’s the fridge. The result of course is that Twitter (or name your fave social site) not only has difficulty performing, but continues to be a harbinger of nasty malware and viruses.

This is not to pick on Twitter. I’ve been using the service since December of 2006 and I realize that we get what we pay for when it comes to any of these services. My concern is that as these networks become more ubiquitous in our lives that users never stop to question these problems and that we never institute a set of standards to measure and certify the performance and security of the devices that run these services. Read the rest of this entry »

March 2nd, 2010

Evil memes: Securing your corporate reputation in social media

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:02 am

Categories: Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Reputation and Privacy, Security, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices, Social Media and Security

Tags: Social Media, British Telecommunications, Jennifer Leggio, Toby Weir-Jones, Dave Carroll, Social Media Tool, Toby

Jennifer Leggio is at RSA Conference

Guest editorial by Toby Weir-Jones, BT Global Services

A few years ago, in 2006 - ancient history in social media - various researchers proposed methodologies to study how quickly a meme can spread.  Some tried to characterize based on qualitative attributes of the meme itself, such as how funny it was, or how socially relevant, while others avoided those grey areas and focused instead on the quantitative attributes of network owners who posted links or tracked referral URLs.  In both cases, the general conclusions were fairly predictable:  given a good story, it can go viral and appear everywhere within hours.  This isn’t just a convenient generalization; some of the biggest memes, such as Dave Carroll’s ‘United Breaks Guitars’, the rise to superstardom of Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent, and Jill and Kevin’s wedding dance led to tens of millions of views and further pop-culture references on news programs, talk shows, and even scripted TV sitcoms.

In general, social media operators like Facebook and Twitter love this situation, since it drives eyeballs to their platforms in huge numbers.  But it is this very phenomenon which could be leveraged by attackers to crucify corporate reputations, spread libelous stories, and generate massive public fear and unrest.  There is a crucial ingredient which will allow a firm to be victimized in this way - if they’re not organized enough to fight back on the same battleground as the attack is launched.

Returning to Dave Carroll, there were two main points about his experiences with United Airlines.  The first was more of a traditional big-company PR/customer service screw-up, with ambiguous lines of accountability and processes which hadn’t kept up with the practical realities of their business.  The second was the fact that the speed of United’s response lagged far behind the growth of the meme once Carroll went public with his song and video.  Since then, @UnitedAirlines has become an active voice on Twitter, and the airline has issued multiple statements assuring customers of changes to their customer service practices.  None of that was enough to mitigate $180M in lost shareholder value in the four days following the release of Carroll’s video, however.

Any company which operates in the public eye is at risk for this kind of pounding to their reputation.  Carroll’s guitar was certainly broken, but imagine instead if someone fabricated a story for no other reason than to capture the public’s imagination and impugn a company’s reputation irreparably.  It could be a story suggesting a US-based baby formula company was using the same toxic melamine additives as the disgraced Chinese firms, or a story about yet another safety hazard with a major car manufacturer, or anything which was designed to leverage the rubric of current events against a new target.  How can a firm prevent this?

The reality is they can’t stop anyone from trying, but they can be right there with a response.  Whomever speaks via social media needs to have the same kind of hotline access to senior management, and the authority to make definitive statements promptly, even if they are not fully-researched responses.  Most importantly, however, is that the effort needs to be publicized and sustained, so that customers know an official voice is out there today and will be tomorrow.  There are plenty of abandoned Twitter accounts from companies testing the waters, as well as Facebook landing pages for individual campaigns which have served their purpose.  All of the platform operators offer various methods of validating the identity of an official corporate account, and such certifications are essential for any corporate mouthpiece taking steps into the arena.

Social media tools are a real forum where customers share valuable feedback and look to companies for real information which isn’t just regurgitated mainstream PR; the responsiveness needs to bypass the formal and laborious approval cycle of press releases and artfully-massaged brochureware.  The voice of social media needs to be raw and authentic, honest and humble, and the best-informed, most visible spokesperson in the company.

Toby Weir-Jones is the vice president, product development in the Managed Security Solutions Group for BT Global Services. Toby is responsible for the strategic planning and execution of BT’s Managed Security Solutions Group roadmap, combining BT’s vision for managed security solutions with feedback from customers and employees. You can find Toby online as part of BT MSSG’s SecureThinking blogging and tweeting team.

March 1st, 2010

One year later, Threatpost continues to succeed for Kaspersky

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 8:08 am

Categories: Blogging Best Practices, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Kaspersky, RSA Conference, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Kaspersky Lab, Threatpost, Corporate Communications, Branding, Blogging, Marketing, Internet, Jennifer Leggio

Last year when Kaspersky Lab launched Threatpost, an independent news site that mixes original content with aggregated content from existing online entities, it was done in an almost experimental way. Would the industry embrace and support such a large social media effort from, in some cases, one of its competitors? The answer turned out to be yes.

According to Kaspersky chief marketing officer Randy Drawas, the only way this would’ve worked was it for it to be “open and trusted.” Open and trusted it was, and the site now boasts an impressive 200K page views per month, and has even expanded its presence with versions of Threatpost in the Latin America market. The associated Threatpost newsletter now also has 10K subscribers.

“We had very low expectations,” Drawas said. “We absolutely did not expect this. We said that if we got to the end of December (2009) and got ourselves to about 80K page view per month, that would be great to report. With the newsletter we expected maybe a couple thousand. Everything that has happened is completely beyond our expectations, and it proves that our thinking was valid.”

For a little background, Threatpost has its own brand and position mostly independent of Kaspersky and is run as a standalone editorial site. Editors Ryan Naraine and Dennis Fisher manage or create all of the content, including articles, videos, podcasts and webcasts. Naraine and Fisher are best known in the security industry as leading IT publication journalists, and while now employed full-time with Kaspersky they still strive to maintain an editorial balance. When Threatpost first launched, some questioned if that could be managed this way on a vendor-operated site.

“We’re very upfront about being owned by Kaspersky. Aside from the original questions we got at the front of the launch regarding balancing our independence, we haven’t really gotten any static at all,” Fisher said. “If anything, people are seeing this as a positive. The independence has really shown through.”

When I wrote about Threatpost last year, I held it up as an example of creative social media efforts that companies with a strong business to business (B2B) focus should consider in order to help support their overarching brands. Kaspersky is reporting that the success of Threatpost has had a very positive impact on the parent brand, with partners especially embracing the outlet.

Read the rest of this entry »

February 28th, 2010

New book teaches social business users how to "Engage"

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 3:21 pm

Categories: Book Reviews, Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Brand, Social Media, Broadcasting, Branding, Marketing, Jennifer Leggio

The social media landscape has grown to bring immense opportunity to both individuals and  business as far as branding is concerned. Unfortunately, with that mass adoption has come the creation of many bad habits in terms of using social media as a broadcasting method rather than engaging with people. A new book, “Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web” by Brian Solis, promises to explain how we’re supposed to interact with each other.

Solis is no stranger to successful book writing. His most recent previous book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“, was published as a foundation for helping public relations professionals learn to navigate the new, somewhat confusing waters created by the influx of social media.

“Putting the Public Back in Public Relations focused on building new two-way roads of communications between the new genre of digital influencers, customers, prospects in addition to traditional intermediaries,” he said. “It was written to give a voice to brand and also empower them to build relationships necessary to extend their story and the value they bring to the table.”

According to Solis, “Engage” will provide the following:

• Create a space in the online ecosystem that truly represents your business and cultivates your customers’ loyalty and trust
• Participate in the unique culture of each available social media platform to engage your customers
• Establish an organizational structure that constantly targets the next new media trend
• Attract online champions and change agents who will uncover the social networks you need to reach and the influencers who will help build your reputation in the networked world
• Consistently adapt your company to market needs and trends based on the invaluable connections you forge and the empathy and insight you garner in the process

“The book is called engage for a very specific reason. As a verb, it implies action…and action is what propels the social web. And it is action, that speaks louder than words,” Solis said. “Engagement is an act of connecting, but it is how we connect and why that determines the reaction and ultimately the impression and experience. And, engagement is the physical investment in the relationships we hope to earn.”

Solis also examines the challenge of balancing a personal brand  while also promoting or managing a company brand.

“There’s an entire chapter about this very subject. Engage examines the brand “you” as well as the brand you represent. They are different and I refer to this impending crossroads that each of us faces or already face, as multiple personality order,”he said. “We will build personae and social graphs around who we are and what we do…one size does not fit all.”