November 19th, 2009

Hello Salesforce Chatter, so long Yammer?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:37 pm

Categories: CRM, Corporate Social Networking, Dreamforce 2009, Enterprise 2.0, Marketing, Salesforce.com, Social Business, Social Media, Social Networks

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Sales Force Management, Sales, Jennifer Leggio

Salesforce.com yesterday announced its new Salesforce Chatter at Dreamforce 2009. Dubbed as an enterprise collaboration application and social development platform, Salesforce Chatter promises to provide a secure social network within the enterprise, complete with individual profiles, status updates, feeds, applications, as well as integration with existing popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

“Why do I know more about strangers on Facebook than my own employees?” asked Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. “Now, through Salesforce Chatter, my business is tweeting me. My employees can use the models they love to get the collaboration they need.”

When the product is available in 2010, not only will companies be able to use the standalone Salesforce Chatter features in new applications within the enterprise in a more secure fashion than one-off cloud offerings, Salesforce.com plans to immediately make social its other 135,000 native Force.com applications.

This is a good opportunity for Salesforce.com, as enterprise hesitation over pure in-the-cloud social networks is rampant — and legitimate. With Salesforce.com being a trusted enterprise collaboration and application development solution already, this could up-level the use of such social enterprise applications, and bring more Twitter and Facebook data, into the enterprise.

Salesforce Chatter’s biggest threat seems to be that of SocialText, which provides similar services and offers compelling enterprise-worthy collaboration and social networking services. It’s likely now, however, that current Salesforce.com customers would choose the incumbent offering, so Salesforce Chatter adoption might grow through current user base first.

Other competitors, such as Yammer, may not have as much of a leg to stand on in competing with Salesforce Chatter. While Yammer has made some enterprise traction, most companies that use it are smaller to mid-size businesses versus large enterprises. Most large enterprises with whom I’ve spoken about Yammer express trepidation over the service’s pricing and community model. At the same time, SMBs with whom I have spoken about Yammer don’t seem to have the same security or expense concerns, so Yammer could stay a viable solution for the smaller markets. The introduction of Salesforce Chatter, and the already strong SocialText solution, should knock Yammer out of enterprise consideration.

“We are constantly evaluating tools that promise to increase the productivity and collaboration of our employees. Salesforce Chatter recognizes that enterprise collaboration is more than connecting people, but also connecting content and apps. With Chatter, collaboration within our company will truly come alive, all from within our trusted Salesforce apps,” said Daniel R. Chiazza of Harris Interactive.

October 27th, 2009

2010 Predictions: Will social media reach ubiquity?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:19 am

Categories: Blogging Best Practices, Brand Management and Monitoring, Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0, Marketing, Microblogging, Public Relations, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security

Tags: Social Networking, Facebook, Marketing, Network, Twitter Inc., Social Media, Foursquare, Poken Pulse, PR People, Jennifer Leggio

The year 2009 has been a pivotal one in social media. We’ve seen the explosion of a previously misunderstood social network as well as the rampant adoption of social media by major brands. We’ve seen these companies take big chances, some ending in success and others ending with harsh lessons learned. It seems that almost everyone’s brother, sister, mother and grandfather are now on Facebook, and that social media itself is a bubble baby no more. At the same time, it’s important to note that both business users and consumers have barely scratched the surface of opportunity that the tools and strategies around social media can provide.

In order to achieve continued success many things have to happen. Cracks in the echo chamber, widespread communication of proven successes, best practices for return on investment (ROI) are just a few. And as companies embark on their 2010 planning, they are hoping for a glimpse of what is to come.

Rather than create a wish list, I followed Peter Kim’s model and turned to my network to find out what it believes social media will become in 2010. I asked about 40 people to participate and 31 responded with at least a few words on what might happen next year.

The predictions are meant to be thought-provokers more than gospel, and come from a mix of thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and folks who get their hands dirty every day dealing with social media for their companies. Predictions range from general social media to enterprise 2.0, government 2.0, security, public relations and even location-aware social networks. But the over-arching theme of most of the predictions say that 2010 is the year that social media will just be, rather than serving as a shiny new toy.

Without further ado, here are the 2010 social media predictions.

Next: David Armano, Karen Auby, Andrea Baker, Nenshad Bardoliwalla –>

October 7th, 2009

Enterprise investment in online communities continues to grow

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:01 am

Categories: Community Management, Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Community, Recession, Investment, Finance, Jennifer Leggio

Enterprises are investing heavily in online communities in the face of the recession, a new survey says. According to the “2009 Tribalization of Business Survey,” 94 percent of respondents stated that they plan to continue their online community investments, despite other signifiers that these companies are still struggling with social media. This study was conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research, and surveyed more than 400 companies, including Fortune 100 organizations.

The survey also found the following:

• A majority of surveyed companies agreed that increasing word-of-mouth (38 percent), customer loyalty (34 percent) and brand awareness (30 percent) continue to be the top business objectives of online communities
• Idea generation (29 percent) and improved customer support quality (23 percent) come second
• Marketing continues to be the main driver of online communities, which unfortunately results in a significant gap between community goals and organizations’ capability to fully leverage these communities on an enterprise wide basis
• More than 32 percent said they are paying closer attention to community value derived by “lurkers”
• Another 20 percent of survey respondents have set up ambassador programs to entice outsiders to participate in the community
• Near 40 percent said that more jobs are being created to manage such communities

Finally, the study unveiled that goals and measurement of online communities may not be well aligned, reporting that the two top most-used metrics for determining success are the number of active users and how often people post or comment. If goals are indeed as stated, more useful analytics such as increase in search engine rank or citations and links should be higher priority, the report states.

This study echoes a recent research report published by analyst firm IDC, which forecasts strong growth in the online community market despite the recession. The firm predicts that the U.S. online community software market will grow from $278.4 million last year to $1.6 billion in 2013, at a CAGR of 41.8%.

September 9th, 2009

Government as a dialogue: Will the Gov 2.0 Summit contribute?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 10:13 am

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Gov 2.0 Summit, Government 2.0, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Web, Leader, Government, Enterprise 2.0, Conference, Programming, Andrea Baker, Summit, Beltway, Deadliest Catch

Guest editorial by Andrea Baker

A fall breeze has come to Washington DC in the form of the Government 2.0 Summit. This week in Washington on Sept. 9 and 10 O’Reilly Conferences and TechWeb bring to our mostly political town to talk shop with the whose who of Goverati. The Summit is about Government as a Platform, according to the man behind the conference, Tim O’Reilly.

I feared at first this conference might be too vague in thought. As I looked at the conference being planned and the names announced presenting, many Web 2.0 thought leaders are talking, but few actual inside Government change agents — going into today it feels more balanced. The Government 2.0 Expo seemed to feature those types mostly, but the marquis event–the summit billed towards decision makers in government screams more “Industry Tell Us What To Do”! I do not doubt this line up is stellar, but are the efforts of our own being out-shadowed by the cool and the hip? I hope I am wrong.

I hope the decision makers in Government 2.0 come out to hear our successes and this is not another echo chamber. For those of us breathing and living Government 2.0 have seen many of these names representing government before. I am optimistic there will be those open to the message O’Reilly is bringing to us over this week. I know one of my government customers will be attending, but he is not the typical government leader. He gets innovation and has been an exemplar for others. The ideal attendee is one that has heard these buzzwords and has a strategic plan to collaborate and transform their organization to a more open one, but is just starting to implement the plan.

We aren’t immediately considered innovative in DC in tech or new ideas, but we are very much a buzz every night of the week. In fact, while I am attending the summit with great hope for new ideas and momentum. I am also fraught with skepticism on how experts in Web 2.0, whom I can hear at the Web 2.0 events are going to impact what is already happening in the Gov 2.0 world.

DC: A tech center –>

June 28th, 2009

Organizational social anxiety

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:05 pm

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Media, Worker, Caroline Dangson, Social Media Movement, Jennifer Leggio

Guest editorial by Caroline Dangson, IDC

As I talked to the vendors exhibiting at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, I noticed less emphasis on the buzz word social and more emphasis on collaboration and getting work done.  From these conversations I realized that the enterprise is not yet sold on social.  Some executives hear the word social and immediately think Facebook (the poking and throwing sheep) for business.  And believe it or not there are executives still fearful of the transparency that comes with the social media spotlight.  The social media movement is disruptive because it challenges traditional power structures - no one person gets credit; no one person has power.  Executives who do not understand what social can do for their business only see that it forces them to give up control and power.  Hence, there is still a need for education.

The social media movement has divided the enterprise into two camps.  There are companies that trust in social media and are embracing these new ways of doing business.  On the other hand, there are companies that are fearful of changing the way they do business and need concrete, quantifiable evidence that social media provides a return on investment.  I believe the tough economic situation is making this divide even more pronounced as it pushes companies to either take risks or retreat into comfort zones.  What is interesting is that executives fearful of the social media movement have no way to stop it as individual employees are bringing these tools into the workplace.  According to a mini poll conducted by IDC’s Software Business Solutions Group this past January, 51% of total respondents said employees at their company use social networking services for business.  Two-thirds of those who are using social networking for business do so through a self-directed, not corporate, initiative.

Corporate culture has everything to do with adoption of social media.  I believe the number one factor preventing full adoption of social media is the lack of executive trust in employees.  This culture is about control and creates a workplace of silos.  This type of workplace is not set up to be social and the silos are barriers to worker productivity.  The fun factor for this environment is low and young, energetic talent will come and go.  I think connecting employees and allowing them to have some fun is an important investment as it keeps workers interested and invested in the company.  Talent attracts more talent and keeping these workers is a key business objective.  Companies also face the fact that close to 20% of U.S. executives, administrative, and managerial employees will retire in the next five years.  The next generation of workers have grown up using social media.  Organizations who want to attract these workers need to understand how they work.

Those who use social media for personal reasons can more easily translate its value for business purposes.  This is why so many social software vendors are finding success in offering free trials - get your hands dirty, realize the value for you, get addicted, and get sold.  This is really a great prescription for what I call organizational social anxiety.  Fear comes from inexperience.  Failure comes from not trying.

Caroline Dangson is a research analyst covering social media with IDC’s Digital Marketplace team. In this role, Ms. Dangson drives IDC’s Digital Marketplace: Social Media service which advises clients on how to leverage social media to effectively communicate and collaborate with target customers and business partners based on actionable primary research. She also tracks trends for enterprise social media participation, monitoring and measurement in this program. In addition, Ms. Dangson runs the Digital Marketplace and New Media Watch program, which delivers timely and frequent strategic news analysis and opinions about the most important events in the online marketplace.

May 5th, 2009

Three reasons companies fear social media – and why they shouldn’t

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:12 am

Categories: Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Inbound Marketing Summit, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices, Social Media Measurement

Tags: Marketing, Social Media, Jane McMurry, Jennifer Leggio

New Marketing Labs hosted the Inbound Marketing Summit here in the Bay Area last week. As I was unfortunately unable to attend, I asked my marketing-savvy friend Jane McMurry to provide a recap of her experience there. What she found is that despite all of the proven results and case studies, companies are still fearing social media. She recaps why — and explains why the fear is unnecessary. - J.L.

Guest editorial by Jane McMurry

Coming from a background of more than a decade in marketing, I have seen my share of changes in marketing/brand methodology and strategy. We’ve come from a world of printed brochures, radio, TV, direct mail and press releases to Web sites, online marketing, email blasts and e-newsletters. Over the last two to three years this has changed again with corporate blogs, Twitter personas, LinkedIn communities and Facebook fan pages. All marketers owe it to their companies to keep up with the current methods and incorporate them into the over all marketing and brand strategy. The question is …”where to start?” These new methods still blend with the traditional ways of marketing but actually provide something more, a voice of the customer.

Last week I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco put on by New Marketing Labs. It was a two-day event with a full agenda of speakers and panels. The summit was a mix of “A-list” experts in the blogosphere, companies with social media solutions and folks that have made a living at developing a personal brand. All their perspectives provided a deep dive into lessons learned and tools to use to jump start more innovative marketing programs.

During my conversations at the breaks and evening tweet-ups, I met attendees from all levels of the social media marketing. Surprisingly many were just dipping their toes in the social media ocean and were not even familiar with Twitter, didn’t have a blog and were looking for tips to improve their companies’ Web sites. The consistent concern I heard from these folks was confusion on where to begin. After listening to all the speakers/panels at the summit, there were three strong messages that addressed these fears and concerns.

1. Develop a clear social media strategy and plan
It seems that most companies are automatically implementing a program on the four major social media avenues (blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) without first stepping back and seeing what makes sense to reach their customers. Social media is about relationships, so it is important to thoroughly understand their customer and what matters to them.

2. Criticism is an opportunity
Like death and taxes, criticism is going to happen. Companies need to get past the fear of opening the dialog with customers. Social media is about listening, monitoring and responding. A company can’t be in the reaction mode to all criticisms but instead be prepared and decide what the best listening tactics are and align them their strategy. As in any relationship building, it is important to pick your battles.

3. ROI metrics can be your friend
Marketers are always challenged with justifying dollars spent and headcount to support the program. As with any relationship you can’t always attach a dollar sign to it. There are many tracking methods to show the return but the largest proof point is the strength of the customer relationship and community built around a company and its product. A marketer not only needs to track the lead and sales but how the growth of the community and the strength in the voice of that community.

Social media is not a passing trend; these methodologies have taken the mom and pop store approach of building customer relationships to a new level.   Companies of all sizes need to get past these fears, plan for success and in like any relationship is flexible when needed.  It is time to throw away the old thinking of “what if”, “what’s in it for me” and “we always did it this way” and dive into that social media ocean. Like getting to know a new friend, you just might be pleasantly surprised what you discover along the way.

Jane McMurry has spent more than13 years as a marketing consultant in the high tech industry. Her Fortune 500 clients include HP, Apple, SAP, Sun Microsystems and Palm. Most recently, Jane was a core member of the corporate events group at Sun where she developed concepts and programs for large productions, integrating social media practices into program planning.

April 29th, 2009

You Were Never 1.0, but get ready for Enterprise 2.0

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:07 am

Categories: Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0

Tags: Team, Employee, Collaboration, Blog, Social Media, Business, Enterprise 2.0, Tool, Workforce, Andrea Baker

Guest editorial by Andrea Baker

Let’s face it, it’s probably true. Your business is deeply married to email. You never read a blog until the past year (at least with some regularity). And you probably don’t know what a discussion page is on a wiki.

Don’t feel bad. You are in the majority.

You are hearing buzz words like “Web 2.0″ and “Facebook group” and “Twitter page” from social media or new media “experts”. This leads you to believe you must be on or using these websites in order to be “with it” and be viable in your business. The common misconception is that you must embrace social media websites or Web 2.0 solutions out on the open internet to run a successful business or be “collaborative and transparent” to your stakeholders. This simply is just not the case. As the decision maker in your business, you need to take control of the internal aspects in order to have a successful external presence.

If you are a normal business, you live in the world that some would call “1.0″.  Note, that’s not a bad thing per se.  Actually, much of business requires the kind of collaboration that you have established over the past 15-20 years. Along comes “Web 2.0″. If you are like most businesses, you have been ignoring it for the past few years.  But it is harder to ignore these days.  I bet you never thought of yourself as a “1.0″ company and maybe you are upset if someone calls you old fashioned. After all, you probably spend(t) a lot of money on technology, and it would be upsetting if you found out that the technology is considered “old-fashioned”.

I would tell you to not be upset with this assumption. You are now willing to learn about this buzzword that you have been overhearing at conferences and other social events. You are coming in at the right time where early adopters have tested the waters for you and its time to test the waters yourself, starting at the shallow end. The shallow end is your Intranet and you are ready to hop in. You are now ready for Enterprise 2.0.

The focus of Enterprise 2.0 for business is not outward facing, it is mostly internal. I stress internal. I argue that in order to be successful on the outside of your business in the social media realm, you must practice what you preach internally. You don’t just pick up your tennis racket and win Wimbledon, you have to practice for long hours with coaching along the way before you can step out on to center court. So you must apply the same behaviors to your Enterprise 2.0 for business approach.

Read more –>

April 23rd, 2009

Open APIs for secure social enterprise computing drive innovation

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:32 am

Categories: Corporate Social Networking, Development, Enterprise 2.0, Open Social, Security, Social Business, Social Media, Social Media and Security

Tags: Innovation, Enterprise Computing, Collaboration, API, Social Computing, Chet, Social Networking, Leadership, Online Communications, Marketing

* Jennifer Leggio is at RSA Conference

Guest editorial by Chet Kapoor and Michael Richardson

As the “Chief Innovation Officer” now for most enterprises, the CIO needs a new portfolio of social computing capable methodologies to enable collaboration between empowered users inside and adjacent to the organization. Social networking is an obvious way for people to connect and collaborate outside of work, but what happens when companies harness this social computing inside company walls to foster collaboration and innovation? The possibilities are astounding when you consider the power that personal connections have in finding employees’ skill sets and matching them to where they are needed within the organization. Move social networking inside and across a corporation and you’ll be able to encourage more relationship building and collaboration to organically happen where it wouldn’t otherwise. This is the key to enterprise 2.0 adoption throughout an organization.

Adding a social layer to the way you do business gives your employees a powerful new means to easily discover each other in a way they would not otherwise happen. This discovery takes place via social navigation based on skill sets, location, career path and professional affinities, or even hobbies. This fosters productive new connections between people and opens the doors for new approaches to collaboration and innovation, creating a better way to find and capitalize on employee talent and ability, while improving retention and employment brand loyalty.

Businesses can catalyze innovation by opening applications to the Web with APIs that enable social interactions across the company. Opening APIs outside of the company can also, for example, give companies the ability to seek out certain highly-specific skill sets from former employees that may be needed down the road. An open API will break the down walls between departments within a company, as well as the walls between the company and former or prospective employees.

There are an unlimited number of business benefits to adding a social layer that fosters innovation, but there are also several key issues that must be addressed. The first and most obvious concern is security. As more information will be moving in and outside of a corporation with open APIs, businesses need to be sure that this information is secured wherever it moves across the Web. A secure layer can be added to social computing to make monitoring security and effective governance a painless process.

Another concern is monitoring who and how people are operating within this social context. The same layer of information that adds security can also give a company analytical insight into social API interactions. Employing analytics to track this data allows companies to observe how the social layer is working so that they can recognize and develop best practices. Analytical insight into how APIs work enables companies to advance best practices by observing what does and does not work well for the company.

Secure open social computing APIs bridge the human information gap between existing systems and unlock opportunity for more effective collaboration, and will ultimately help companies drive innovation and best practices that, in the end, will open up new revenue channels.

Chet Kapoor, CEO of Sonoa Systems, has spent 20 years in leadership positions in innovative software and hardware companies including VP of Content Management and Search Products at IBM and VP/GM for the Integration Group of BEA Systems. In addition, he was CEO of Gluecode, an open source application server company that IBM acquired. Chet also served as a Vice President at webMethods and held various positions at NeXT. Chet publishes a blog with his thoughts on technology at www.edgeofthecloud.com.

Michael M. Richardson, Chief Technology Officer, SelectMinds, is responsible for the overall strategic direction of SelectMinds corporate social networking solutions including technology development, deployment and product strategy. With more than 25 years of high tech and engineering experience, Michael has served in key executive leadership and CTO posts at many leading edge global technology companies, serving the needs of Global 2000 organizations.

April 16th, 2009

Is it time for a Chief Social Media Officer?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:46 am

Categories: Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Social Business, Social Media

Tags: Social Media, Jennifer Leggio

Peter Kim posed the question during his Web 2.0 Expo panel in San Francisco a couple weeks ago: “Is it time for a Chief Social Media Officer?” It was a question that no one else really touched on and, from my perspective, the packed room was split between nods of yes and looks of “are you kidding me?” No, I don’t think he was, nor should he be, kidding.

A Chief Social Media Officer or CSMO role might appear to some as being superfluous to an organization. Do you really need social media reporting directly into the CEO? Perhaps not. Is this just a way for those snake oil social media people to make themselves feel more important? I don’t think so.

However, if a company is serious about its social media endeavors, whichever person runs the program needs to have visibility and communication from top to bottom and across the organization. It truly needs to be a cross-functional, senior role. Someone who has an intricate understanding of the company’s business goals and objectives. Someone who understands how to leverage social media to accomplish those objectives. Someone with a proven track record of turning programs into measurable successes.

It’s no secret that social media is often initially driven by the marketing team who started out by leveraging social media for base marketing and PR endeavors. Social media has just grown beyond that. It really should not be entirely run out of a marketing organization and it definitely shouldn’t be run entirely by a PR agency. Those teams should merely play a supporting part. Truly successful social media is driven out of many different groups in an organization:

• Marketing
• Customer Support
• Customer Programs
• Product Management / R&D
• IT
• C-Suite
• Operations

This begs Kim’s original question. Even if a CSMO title is, again, a little much the person who runs a company’s social media needs to have contacts and some authority into each of these organizations in order to make the appropriate programs happen. Whether it be running an internal communication campaign to influence employees or managing a Salesforce.com integration of Twitter for support programs or launching a CEO blog, cross-functional participation and decision-making is key.

So, perhaps having a CSMO title is premature. But you know how folks say you need to do the job before you actually get the job? Whether your title is director of social media or PR manager or customer support engineer, if you are responsible for leading your company’s social media charges, I urge you to think like a future CSMO. The role may not be prominent now, but it will happen.

April 2nd, 2009

MindTouch adds messaging, enhanced application development to open source collaboration

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 6:00 am

Categories: CRM, Collaboration, Corporate Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Open Source, Social Business, Social Media, Web 2.0 Expo

Tags: Application Development, Open Source, Messaging, MindTouch, Groupware, Collaboration, Instant Messaging, Enterprise Software, Software, Internet

MindTouch has released MindTouch 2009, an enhanced developer platform for building collaborative enterprise applications and communities. The new version includes four important features for enterprise companies considering open source collaboration:

• A bi-directional messaging bus serves as a switchboard for every system, application and workgroup. Users can set up and receive change notifications when changes are made within MindTouch 2009 or to applications that users plug into MindTouch 2009, such as enterprise systems, databases, office productivity applications, Web services, etc.
• Developers now have the freedom to more efficiently develop rich Internet applications and deploy collaborative apps for business automation.
• Platform extensibility with a front-end plug-in architecture that enables developers to extend or modify MindTouch’s front-end without affecting the ability to upgrade the software.
• Custom application development through improved metadata management.

Fulkerson launched MindTouch in 2005 with the idea that the way people operate with collaboration was incredibly inefficient due to the plethora of application and data silos that exist within email, file servers, SaaS applications, CRM systems, etc.

“The dilemma was that all of that information access and sharing is hard, and making sure you know what is most up to date is really hard,” Fulkerson said. “But with a collaboration platform, companies can stretch across existing assets and realize more value out of these assets.”

The original MindTouch product was released 18 months after the company launch, making MindTouch 2009 largest upgrade in two years. The company currently has more than 10 million users and more than 600K active installations. Fulkerson said customers such as Microsoft, NEC, Amazon and IBM Global Services are using the MindTouch platform due to its simplicity, extensibility and ease of use.

“It looks like a wiki yet behaves like a portal,” he said. “You don’t need a six-month development process to install this.”

Catch a demo of MindTouch 2009 at Web 2.0 Expo booth #408.