Open or Closed? A community can be open or closed. An open community, in which all content pages and functionality are available to anyone, allows the content to be found on the Web – driving up your organic search results – and encouraging clients and even non-clients to interact and engage. A closed community, or one that requires registration and access via a username and password, has its benefits, too. You can decide exactly whom should receive access, and the members in … [Read more...]
What Yahoo Will Do with Tumblr
With the news that Internet behemoth Yahoo will buy blogging and content platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash has many analysts, including this one, wondering what will happen next. Yahoo clearly wants to buy its way into the social media elite. In December 2005, Yahoo bought social bookmarking site Delicious, but it later sold it in 2011 to the founders of YouTube. In September 2006, it offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion, but Facebook walked away. And Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer … [Read more...]
Does Your Website Act as a Lead Generation Tool or Community — or Neither?
I'm happy that most companies, small businesses, and individual professionals are aware of the importance of having a website. But is your or your company's website still nothing more than brochureware -- with only pages for Home, About, Products and Services, Who We Are, and Contact Us? Though the cost of building and running a website today is low -- or even free, thanks to such services as Wix and Weebly -- the attention it deserves usually results in higher costs (time and hiring a Web … [Read more...]
One Blogger Alone Is Not Enough To Increase Eyeballs — and Sales
Some companies still think that the job of blogging should go to only one person -- whether internal or to a freelance ghostwriter. While this may make economic sense and address a task that needs to get done, companies will find that there aren't any more inquiries or sales leads. This is because content is only one part of the job; content marketing and distribution is the second and more important component. You can't have one without the other. When an employee or consultant writes … [Read more...]
The Power of Adding One Letter to the End of a Company Name
Today's news that Toronto-based press release distribution company Marketwire is rebranding itself to Marketwired -- yes, you read that correctly, all they did was add a 'd' -- had me thinking: how much longer will press release companies continue to sell the traditional press release (i.e, exist)? (Share Clip) Oh, and the company has also poached Stu Ogwa, former VP of business intelligence of Yahoo, to join Marketwire as EVP of product and technology, according to … [Read more...]
Hoping That Social Media Will Fix Crappy Banner Ads
Long live the banner ad: it has managed to survive not only the dot com bubble but also Facebook's IPO. Yet few admit to wishing to perpetuate its existence. Talk of 'social advertising' usually means buying ads on Facebook, Promoted Trends on Twitter, or even the new SlideShare ads -- complete with inline lead capture -- on LinkedIn. A few companies have been hard at work at transforming the banner ad into a richer experience. A richer experience of course transfers into engagement -- … [Read more...]
If HootSuite and Yammer Got Married
There is a category of enterprise social software which is emerging which doesn't know what to call itself yet. But if engagement platform HootSuite and enterprise social platform Yammer got married, this would be it. Basically, the software encourages any employee to engage in social media activity outside the four walls of a company, and tracks which content -- and which employee -- has been influential and responsible for the intended engagement (prospects, leads, job candidates, … [Read more...]
IBM Develops an Enterprise Twitter Solution, But Will Anyone Buy It?
For those employees who tweet during the workday, wouldn't it be great to have a platform which allowed you to view all of the tweets and activity from all of your coworkers -- without the noise and clutter of the rest of Twitter? For most companies, large and small, that want to collect or keep track of employee activity on Twitter, the social media manager usually creates a List on Twitter. This is problematic primarily because all of the adding and removing of employees needs to be done … [Read more...]
From Liking to Leading: IBM Lotusphere Is Now Connect
Whew, finally a break from the 2-hour morning General Session, featuring not only the VP and the General Manager of IBM's Social Business division, but also a performance from 1980s pop group They Might Be Giants and a speech by actor-director-producer Joseph Gordon-Levitt (for those of you unfamiliar, he was in Lincoln and 50/50, among others). Perhaps what's most telling about this year's event is the name change: Lotusphere is now Connect. While IBM is normally never referenced in … [Read more...]
A New Victory in the Social Media Policy Debate
According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online. Apparently, the National Labor Relations Board continues to inform private-sector companies that workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution -- whether those discussions take place at the office or on Facebook. (Share Clip) Such guidelines set by the National Labor Relations Board, are … [Read more...]