LiveBar – Add Community to your Site in Seconds!

A live interview with the CEO, Peter Friedman, from LiveWorld at Web 2.0 Expo about the launch of their new product called LiveBar.

If you ever dreamed of adding community to your website without having the hassle of a major integration effort involving your IT department then LiveWorld’s newest product called LiveBar is for you.

LiveBar adds contextually relevant community to your site by adding a single line of Java script to your header tag just to those pages which adds community to those pages in seconds.

If you’ve got a site with lots of content, it probably doesn’t make sense to have community features on every page. But, it does make sense to add real-time conversation to sections with high traffic volume—for example, content areas about a current program, or hot topics. Using LiveBar, you can add conversational elements like comments and “shouts” (which are similar to Tweets) to just those sections, and enhance the experience for those users.

A&E, QVC, Tulane University are already pilot clients for LiveBar and other existing customers include – Neutrogena, P&G, American Express, Kimberly-Clark HSBC, Kraft, Campbells and more …

Listen to Peter Friedman discuss how to do this and the best uses of this for your brand!



Link to Original Audio Source

Signup for this Podcast Series


About Peter

Peter founded LiveWorld, Inc. in April 1996. With 20 years experience in the executive offices of Fortune 500 companies, he connects strategic and operating strategies, as well as financial metrics, to community strategy. Peter sets the LiveWorld vision and directs overall operations. He is an executive sponsor for several of LiveWorld’s major accounts, working with clients to define how our services will directly support the client’s business objectives, as well as developing creative concepts for the programs. He is one of the few Internet executives to have launched and managed multiple online services on a global scale. His background is an unusual mix of creative, business, entrepreneurial, and corporate, but has always focused on bringing people together in successful collaboration. Prior to founding LiveWorld, Inc., he was the vice president and general manager of Apple Computer’s Internet/Online Services business unit. He oversaw the creation, launch, and growth of Apple’s online services, including AppleLink, Apple’s global online loyalty marketing and customer support community service, and eWorld, a consumer service based on AOL technology and Internet services such as Salon. During his 12-year tenure at Apple, his responsibilities also included managing Business Systems Marketing and product line management in Apple’s Macintosh division.

Peter holds a Bachelors degree in American History from Brown University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from The Harvard Business School.

 

The Challenge of Change

Tony Blair former Prime Minister of Great Brittan’s Q&A session at the World Business Forum

On the topic of Crisis Management

One can describe Crisis Management as everything that comes across ones desk – if you remember in my first term of office my objectives were clearly to focus on my top 3 priorities: education, education, education but in reality I was faced with 4 wars and the worst outbreak of foot and mouth disease! Then you quickly realize that not every problem is a crisis.

How do you identify the crisis?

Well studying the facts helps (laugh) – the best way to identify a crisis is to get the best analysis – sometimes you can skate across the surface of issues but sometimes you need to drop into the entrails.

What about the role of communication today?

Today that is incredibly important – if you can’t communicate properly then game over – and it happens faster than ever before – if you can’t sum it up in 20 seconds then you may not get your point across – you don’t always have the luxury in this media environment of being able to explain yourself in a long winded debate – that’s a real issue for politicians these days!

What are the Top things you would do if you were coming into office in the US?

Well clearly I would focus on the current economic crisis, terrorism, environment/energy, fixing healthcare and need for a strong strategic relationship with China.

What would be your policies on World Terror?

Since 9/11 the biggest thing that I have learned is the complexity of this issue and the depth of the roots that this issue has. Military means are not the only means – we have to win the battle of ideas as well as the battle of arms.

How about energy and the environment?

I think there will be a renewed emphasis on nuclear power – I think there will be big investments in renewable energy – but what really needs to happen is the creation of a global framework on climate change this is very difficult and very complex. There has to be a deal that has America and China in it – otherwise it won’t work. My advice is to actually do the basic brokering with the G8 + China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa - those countries form 75 % of all emissions – you will never get a deal with 192 countries around the table.

What’s your advice to our leaders in the audience?

The single most difficult thing about leadership is doing what you think is right even though it may not be the popular thing. Someone has to take responsibility on their shoulders. You can’t please all the people all of the time – in the end if you are in a position of leadership – what you owe the people you are leading is - the truth as you see it and the decisions that you think are right based on the data that you have.

 

Best of Times and the Worst of Times

Jack Welch former CEO of GE’s Q&A at the World Business Forum

What going on with the economy today and who is at fault?

One crowd is these damn investment bankers - when these investment banking firms went public they were playing with others people money – before they were playing with the partners’ money. To let people without accountability make money where the only penalty was a cut in their bonus not in their head is wrong!

How much does leadership or lack of leadership have to do with this crisis?

These leaders did everything for yield – which caused all these complicated products come into play that they didn’t even understand. I owned Kidder Peabody for only 4 days when these investment bankers came into my office and wanted to do a $400 million dollar deal – I almost lost my teeth – we were in over our heads so we sold it. Look, if you don’t understand what it is - don’t buy it! And if the earnings are too good to be true – it’s NOT! But the failure has to be with the leadership since their bonuses were tied to all of this. We have to get leadership compensation tied to shareholder value!

Will it change capitalism here in the US?

Yes but for like this long (very short finger spread). But we are in for one hell of a tough quarter and first quarter next year – some real negative growth. So my advice is to get your cost structure in place and be sure you are not over leveraged. And be sure to take care of your best people – take care of your stars, the top 20-30%. You don’t want to dump your soldiers in a time like this.

What has been the biggest change since you left GE, seven years ago?

Globalization for sure – China is huge threat and also a huge opportunity – we have to be the most competitive skill based economy out there – Also the information age is faster and more prevalent – how many attendees have a slower more easy going job today? None right!

So what should a leader do?

You need to articulate a vision to get through this time – you can’t over communicate in this time. You have to be in front of them, anyone can run the railroad when it is going straight – if you got capital - put it to work – bury your competition or buy them. Go on the offense – look at your competitors and the landscape. Also you gotta think about how you can use credit terms to keep your customers alive – this is the best times but also the worst times.

What does corporate social responsibility mean to you?

One word - Winning – create jobs and make money then you give it back. If you don’t win - you have nothing to give back. All this Corporate Social Responsibility is all backassward you have to win first then give back. It all starts with winning!

 

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste!

Jim Collins author of Built to Last and Good to Great’s speech at the World Business Forum

Good is the mortal enemy of great – I been curious to understand what systematically makes companies great. We now have over 6000 years of corporate data to compare what’s different.

The single most important distinction is most companies are like twins in the same industry with the same resources but one makes a leap and becomes great! It can’t be the industry or circumstance – greatness is not a function of circumstance – it’s a matter of choice and discipline.

What was the best publicly traded stock for the 30 year period of 1972 to 2002 – Southwest airlines!

What does it take to be Southwest not Pacific Southwest airlines – which was in the same industry with the same resources and even a bigger opportunity. If there was anything this last week in the stock market should teach us is that we should be very paranoid about our firms.

Weather you prevail or fail – depends more on what you do to yourself then what the world does to you. You can’t come back from death but you can come back from a near death experience – IBM, Cisco, etc used decline as a catalyst to make a comeback – a crisis is a terrible thing to waste!

Most Great Companies didn’t go out and get a new CEO on board who set a new vision a new direction and then motivates everyone to go in that direction. In fact the Great Company got leaders who admitted that they didn’t know where to go and what to do. They first got the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. It’s first who then what – who is the head of strategy who is the head of tactics etc.

What is the percentage of key seats on your bus being filled with the right people? It’s like an SAT score or a cholesterol test – if it is trending down your company is getting sicker and you have a problem if it is trending up you are getting more healthy. If you have the right people on the bus they tend to be self motivated to make a difference. And they are the ones that can carry you through a crisis.

10 to-do’s
1) Try the Good to Great diagnostic tool – and sit down with your team and assess yourself
2) Be able to answer how many key seats are open on your bus and what is your plan to fill them
3) Get young people in your face
4) Build a council that does not judge
5) What is your question to statement relationship and can you double it?
6) Turn off your electronic devices – take time to think
7) Start a "Stop Doing" List
8) Ask everyone on your team to talk in terms of what are they ultimately responsible for
9) Get your core values solid period
10) Set out a 15-20 year Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and identify what obstacles might get in your way and start removing them

He challenged us with one parting thought – now that you have listened to this - go out and make yourself useful!

 

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

Rudy Giuliani former 107th mayor of New York’s Q&A at World Business Forum

How is NYC doing today?

It’s doing wonderful – crime remains the lowest in the country, its clean, it’s a place that you either love or hate. It’s going through real difficulty lately since the Yankees aren’t in the playoffs – oh you thought I was going to say something about Wall Street. (Laugh) Well Wall Street is home town industry, like steel was to Pittsburgh, 40% of the tax revenues are affected by Wall Street.

Is the $700 billion bailout plan the right for America?

Yes the concept is the right idea – IF the crisis is not that bad then it will make the money back so the sooner we act the cheaper it will be – if we dawdle the price will be much higher. What you need to focus on is you are not bailing out specific companies, you are bailing out an economy. You can see it in NYC – if Wall Street has a bad year – people who deliver food and run the transportation are going to be out of work.

What went wrong?

The amount of capital these firms had set aside as per the capital allocations weren’t enough – what they don’t need is more regulations – they are drowning in regulations – these are heavily regulated industries. This bailout should be accompanied by reform – not just cash! And how about we actually understand the deals we are doing! I guarantee you, some of the people at the top of these organizations didn’t fully understand the nature of these deals.

How are we going to pay for this $700 billion dollar bailout?

The hope is that the growth of the economy will pay for this – not the taxpayer – if it works – it will pay for itself with 2-3% growth – worst case more is needed which is then where the taxpayer need to pay for this. My hope is we don’t go overboard with over-regulation we saw with Enron. The worst thing we can do is over-regulate which will hurt our competitiveness internationally.

 

Focus on your Customer

Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco’s speech at the World Business Forum

Tesco’s core purpose – to create a benefit to customers across 2 tenets - Treat customers the way they want to be treated and deliver them what they want

Simple but clear strategy to: grow the UK food business, to expand internationally, to become strong in general merchandise and to follow new customers into new markets

These 4 aims all require unending focus on the customer – you can never know enough about what customers are thinking

There is a saying at Tesco – one thing worse than knowing is knowing and not doing! Everything is shaped by the customers. As customers change Tesco needs to change.

They use the balanced scorecard (called the Tesco “steering” wheel) – 5 parts into equal weight – customers, community, finance, operations and people. The system is powerful because it is simple. Simplicity it the most powerful tool in business.

Since they created the steering wheel – the world has changed and so has Tesco. By focusing on what customers want they have been able to grow their business into new areas such as; online groceries, financial services, and new formats of shops.

None of this would be possible without a strong leadership team on the ground – with 160,000 people fewer than 200 are from the UK, 80% of all promotions must come from within.

6 things he would highlight:
- Always be looking to serve your customers better
- Make everything simple
- Implementation matters as much as Strategy
- Think local as tastes and cultures differ around the globe
- In times of change be sure to change yourself
- Trust people and allow them to take risks and innovate

In a downturn such as we are experiencing he left us just two words to focus on – Think Customer – reset your business to what customers need right now. Customers can change faster than companies.

 

Situational Leadership

Colin Powell gave a short speech over lunch at the World Business Forum

He relayed a story about two Captains in the Army he had the pleasure to lead as a means of highlighting the importance of Situational Leadership.

One time he told two of his Captains to “take that hill”. The 1st Captain ran off and proceeded to take the hill. But the 2nd Captain wanted to know what support would he get, what was the ultimate goal of taking the hill, why would we even want to take that hill? Which Captain is better?

It’s natural to say the 1st Captain is the kind of guy you want on your team because he displays the leadership that anyone would want on their team. But maybe he might make a mistake, maybe without truly understanding the business objective might get the job done but miss the strategic mark.

The 2nd Captain while he required a very different leadership style to nurture him. While it may have seemed like time was ticking and ground and lives could be lost. But in the end maybe he got the job done better.

His advice was to us was to try to create an atmosphere where you can find people who you can develop trust in and they will return the favor and trust in you!

 

Total Business Strategy: From Planning to Execution

Professor Michael Porter, Harvard Business School on the topic of Strategy at the World Business Forum.

Times like these the need for strategy and planning could never be more important. But there is still a lot of confusion about Strategy and what it is.

What are the core principles that are going to determine the success of an organization?

Have to start with thinking about the competition – the competition to be the best vs the competition to be unique. The worst error in strategy is to compete with rivals on the same dimensions. You create a competition that you can’t win.

There is no best car company – but there are only car companies that specialize in meeting a set of customer needs. Ex safety, reliability, driving machine etc …

So here are some other flawed concepts when it comes to Strategy
- Strategy as an action – examples to merge or consolidate, to internationalize, to outsource
- Strategy as an aspiration – examples to be #1 in our business, to be the technology leader
- Strategy as a vision – examples to provide superior service, to advance technology for all

A good question to ask yourself when it comes to Strategy is: What unique position will you occupy in the marketplace that gives you a sustainable advantage?

As a corollary to that a good strategy starts with appropriate goals.
- Only one goal that makes economic sense - superior long term return on investment
- Growth is good goal only if ROIC achieved and sustained
- Profitability must be measured realistically capturing actual profits on the full investment
- Setting unrealistic profitability or growth targets can undermine strategy

Then there is the issue of shareholder value. There has been a big shift over the last few decades to enhance shareholder value. Shareholder value isn’t a goal – it’s a result of delivering superior value to your customers. Stock price is a very bad guide for determining the value of a company or determining a strategy for a company.

So what’s a clear strategy look like?

Five tests of a good strategy
- Unique value proposition
- Do you conduct the business differently with a unique value chain
- All good strategies require you to make clear tradeoffs and choose what not to do
- Activities that fit together and reinforce each other
- Stick with the strategy for a while (3 years min to understand implement believe it)

Enterprise Rent-a-car – example of a company with a clear strategy
- Built a value proposition around “home city” rental
- Different way to deliver the service – where and how you deliver the car - at home!
- Clear strategy on what they won’t do
- Their delivery model reinforces the value prop and value chain
- They stick to this strategy

IKEA - another example of a company with a clear strategy
- Built a strategy around a set of market segments with a limited budget with style
- They deliver the service in a very different way
- They don’t have lots of floor sales people or offer lots of colors
- Their delivery model reinforces the value prop and value chain (very hard to imitate)
- They stick to this strategy

Whole Foods – another example of a company with a clear strategy and with a clear social dimension. Which also makes it hard to imitate.

His advice for this market is - Don’t overreact to these times – make sure you are making changes that map back to your strategy. Hone in on your strategic core rather than slashing and burning. Need for strategy has never been great and the need for strategic thinking has never been greater. Reflect on these points and he is confident that we all will prevail.

 

Next Generation Companies

John Chambers CEO of Cisco’s speech on Next Generation Companies at the World Business Forum


Keep an eye on Market transitions – always be looking at what’s going to happen in the next 18-24 months. The importance of Market Transitions cannot be understated. For example, look at how children with their social networking are growing up and how that will change the way businesses collaborate.

There will be no separate networks for voice data etc – the network will become the platform. Web 2.0 will usher in a new way to collaborate. Collaboration is nothing more than a group of people working toward a common goal – that’s what Web 2.0 is all about.

Next Generation Company – is highly collaborative. John can talk to twice as many customers and travel 50% less by using his own technology. Also they started a program called I-Prize – took in 1200 submission from 104 countries and identified 12 finalists. This was a way to identify ideas that Cisco can implement by collaborating with people outside their own organization.

The ability to be a Next Generation Company is the ability to transform how you interface externally but also internally. Example: John Chambers can post a video blog, have his employees comment, identify an expert with an internal Facebook-like application, have the expert post a short video on his/her expertise and train others on the solution via internal WebEx.

This era or an era even more dynamic is definitely coming Cisco is seeing network loads up 400% over 2007!

 

How to be an Authentic Leader?

Bill George author of True North’s speech on Leadership at the World Business Forum


The world is crying out for leadership – what can each of you do to make the world a better place? Today’s environment is a product of a leadership crisis – leaders who take responsibility for their firm. They lose sight on why are they called to lead. Historically we have chosen people for their image rather than their substance – what do you expect you will get if you chose a leader based on image.

So what is an authentic leader?

Bill conducted a survey of over 1200 submissions on LinkedIn. The survey was a single question: Who do you think is the most authentic leader? Warren Buffet emerged as the most admired authentic leader.

What emerged from this was a New Definition of Leadership for the 21st Century – just 4 simple words:

Align – align around mission and values – this is what we stand for – how else can people around the world in the company know what to do?

Empowerment – key to leadership in the 21st century is to empower wised leaders who empower everyone in the organization.

Serve – serving is not about serving the shareholder, its about how well do we serve our customers. The notion of serving the customer reinforces the shareholders.

Collaborate – collaborate within and outside the organization to solve customers’ problems

How do we develop these kinds of leaders?

Talked to 125 successful and authentic leaders – what stood out was the life stories of each of these individuals. More than 80% of the interviews identified a “crucible” moment – something that transformed them. Example: Howard Schultz – father fired, lost his pension, father had 30 rotten jobs – his goal was to build a company his dad would be proud of. Years later he took Starbucks from 3 stores to 16000 stores. The dream and the fear of failure were what propelled him.

6 key attributes of 21st Century leaders:

Self awareness – know who you are through honest feedback from people who know your blind spots. “Leadership is a long journey into you own soul”.

Practicing your values under pressure – put yourself in difficult situations that challenge your values – you will understand very quickly what your values are.

Motivations and capabilities – we like the recognition externally but it needs to be balanced with the intrinsic motivation.

Coping with the loneliness of leadership – build a support team around you that you can be gut level honest with.

Leading an integrated life – balance is key with today’s pressure of life – maintain the integrated of your life – are you the same person at home, at work, in the community?

Know the purpose of your leadership – follow your compass not your clock – your own True North! When you know you purpose you can really empower those around you.

Think about your own leadership - what are you going to do to make a difference in the world? At the end of the day the only thing we can take with us is what we leave behind!

 

Web 2.0 Expo – cool stuff seen on the floor of the show

Here are a few companies in alphabetical order I thought had shown some real promise at the Web 2.0 Expo

Ascentium – A model for the agency of the future

I spoke to the CMO, Romi Mahajan who explained Ascentium’s go-to-market strategy to me. They are the nexus of a digital marketing company mixed with a technology firm that does Microsoft CRM, Business Intelligence and Analytics to provide creative solutions for brand perception and instantiation.

No doubt very useful and very powerful when they come together (I read this as an agency mixed with a lead nurturing platform that can track ROI!). Not only do they build cool marketing campaigns but they can connect to your sales process. They in effect unify sales and marketing so that clients see that their campaign pay off – thereby eliminating the normal tension between sales and marketing.

Romi was also a speaker on Agency 2.0 on how should agencies of the future be organized. Clearly I would think Ascentium is a model for agencies of the future.

Brickfish - Measuring Social Engagement

Brickfish offers an innovative way for brands to connect with their target audience online. They offer a launching pad for highly viral marketing campaigns that allow you to reach consumers where they live on the social web. They get them to listen to your message and interact with your brand, and more than that, they produce the results.

What does this mean – as I understood it – they make various viral marketing campaigns or social applications that can then be shared with friends who can customize them to post it to their blog or website via an iFrame. The iFrame technology allows Brickfish to measure where, when, who and how many times your messages were viewed.

Some examples are Coach engaged consumers to design a new tote. Nike asked consumers to share their inspirational athletic achievements. Kodak got consumers to share their Kodak moments to celebrate their new low-ink printer. All of these examples needed consumers to make customize the message and make it their own then spread it virally. Best off Brickfish is an all in one platform to do this.

HiveLive – Platform for building unique communities

I spoke to the CEO John Kimbel and visited with HiveLive crew on the Expo floor and was very impressed. HiveLive has a very different take on Enterprise Communities. In short, what they do is act as a platform that aggregates all your types of media (both new media and social media) to create a very different type of experience than say a standard community. So that means they integrate things like blogs, podcasts, wikis, forums into a “Hive” (one could say mashup here). That can be customized to the experience you want to create for your users.

One of their customers is Serena Software. Their CMO, Rene Bonvanie is a forward-thinking marketer who's been leading the community charge for quite some time now at places like SalesForce, SAP, BusinessObjects, and Oracle. Below is a video where he does a great job explaining Serena's vision of a new model of community-powered marketing and how they're using tools/technologies (like Facebook, HiveLive, and YouTube) to reinvent their business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDsJE98NPbM

InsideView – Smart marketing and sales tool

I was lucky enough to have breakfast with the CEO Umberto Milletti. Who started InsideView in 2005 because he saw that “business information was becoming more distributed over the web” though articles, interviews, various databases and then eventually social networks.

He viewed this as an opportunity to aggregate these sources of information to provide a composite view of a person or a company through the use of some proprietary Natural Language Processing.

All comes together in a mashup within your own CRM – InsideView integrates with all of today’s most popular CRM systems namely Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and recently announced Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, and Landslide.

InsideView also tells you who you are connected to in Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s a form of “Smarketing” as Umberto called it.

Over 200 companies use their application with hundreds of sales reps using the application. They sell per seat licenses but they also have a free version in the spirit of Web 2.0 with a limited version of the functionality. No doubt this is a company to watch in the coming years!

Wi5Connect – Welcome to Social Learning 2.0

I spoke to Matthew Bowman, VP of Sales and Marketing, from Wi5Connect who explained what they did as a “different approach to learning that marries two technologies – Social Networking and eLearning” into an easy to deliver SaaS solution.

Their new product LearnSocial is a revolutionary new way for businesses to train employees. Different than online learning, user manuals, or instructor lead training, LearnSocial is an online community that captures the power of social networks and fortifies with a state-of-the-art Learning Management System (LMS) platform. Finally, an effective learning tool that allows you to better engage, track the engagement, correlate progress to training, and measure ROI.

Matt called it “a way to combine the brain trust hidden in all levels of your own organization with the magic of your own corporate social network!”

 

Social Branded Applications – build it once and leverage on several social networks

This is a recap of a presentation by Michael Lazerow of Buddy Media from the Web 2.0 Expo

Social Networks are clearly here to stay with almost 50% of the population is using these sites (70% of teens).

Social Network have all opened up their platforms which means that brands have cost effective access to more than 500M engaged users (250M of them on just Facebook and MySpace alone!)

This is a massive distribution channel for any brand but still <1% of digital ad budgets are going toward Social Networks – why?

Because Social Network ad impressions are worthless – the old model of buying impressions is like shouting at consumers – you buy ads to “get in front of them” and “give them a message” – but that’s not going to work in a “social “ world by definition!

The new ad model will be about creating social brand loyalty by creating Social Branded Applications that allow users to interact with your brand attributes. That’s when we make the pivot from finding a target audience and moving messages to them – to creating Social Branded Applications that give away the message and letting the audience tailor it to the social graph.

Here are some examples of brands benefiting from Social Branded Applications …



FedEx

Created a Social Branded Application called - “Launch the Package” which is very in line with the FedEx brand. It is simple, fast, easy to use etc.

Has had the most activity of any application on Facebook with 72,000 packages delivered per day, 100,000 installs in 72 hours more than 300,000 active users in 6 days with less than 10% uninstall rate.



New Balance

Created a Social Branded Application to get in front of key customer and influencers. It’s a game called the New Balance Run-devouz where you earn points and redeem for shoes, kinda like a Chuckie Cheese but for Facebook.

So far they have 250,000 active users, with 86% returning at least once, 57% of which came back 9 times or more! And so far $1,000,000 in virtual dollars have been earned by customers which can be redeemed for actual shoes.




BudLight

Created a Social Branded Application that utilizes Facebook’s “age gating” so only certain age groups can use this application. So they created the Dude Campaign which connects to the BudLight ad Dude ad campaign but allows the user to determine through a series of questions what kind of dude they really are: Examples Game On dude, Red Neck dude, Gangsta dude etc.

So far they have 200,000 installs in 5 weeks, 14% average daily growth, 6000+ daily users, 19% of users visited every day during the campaign.







InStyle

Created a Social Branded Application for hair makeovers where you can grab celebrity hair and add it to your Facebook picture once you find the new hair style you like you can then save it and add the InStyle banner and upload it back to your Facebook profile for your friends to vote on.

So far they have 185,000 installs in 6 weeks, 78% of the user base is InStyle’s target demographic, average time spent is 7 min, with over 50% of total users returning to the application more than 25 times and an average user did 3 hair styles.

 

“Bored at Work” Network – a Web 2.0 Expo presentation by Jonah Peretti

Why do some ideas go viral and others don’t?

People who are “bored at work” are a network bigger than any major network: CBS NBC etc

If ordinary people see something online and start passing it around THEY decide what is popular out of main stream media. And today they can make a huge impact on a brand.

Who can make something popular on the web?

Duncan Watts said there are not some special people who do all the viral work – it’s the network that makes it popular.

Take for example in real life: a forest fire – once a spark hits a dry forest and the forest starts burning the whole forest will burn down – no one would say there was a “special spark” that burned the whole forest down.

If you remember The Tipping Point – East village hipsters wore lots of ridiculous clothes besides Hush Puppies but the problem is after the fact influential people seem like the key factor.

The problem is hindsight bias is not a repeatable event in the future.

Here are 6 strategies and solutions for predicting success with the Bored at Work Network

Solution 1 – Contagious media – include some sort of social imperative like “how to make your husband behave” - there is a social reason to share this on the Bored at Work network and it will catch fire. Other examples include: Nike Sweatshop, The Rejection Line. Limits of contagious media – is that it is usually silly or free, shocking, simple of fun. But businesses create drag on the message because they aren’t simple or free shocking etc.

Solution 2 – Big Seed Marketing – small seeds lead to failure: 10 people recruit 5 people etc. But sub viral growth is still growth. Big seeds lead to success: 1 million people recruit 500K people etc – examples: Tide Cold Water by P&G can seed a campaign with 4 million people and got 40,000 extra. Oxygen media seeded with 7,000 people and got 30,000 more.

Solution 3 – Multi Seed Marketing – try lots of creative ideas – nobody can predict what will be popular – test to see what is working using real data. Then Big Seed the stuff that is working best. More data enables more creativity. Example: BuzzFeed – Sarah Palin vs Tina Fey – most of the traffic was from the bored at work network. Unlike the Carl Sagan blog-a-thon which didn’t catch fire with the bored at work network, surprisingly. Got to try lots of ideas and remove what isn’t working.

Solution 4 – Mullet Strategy – best for businesses – all business up front but party in the back. Ex Huffington post – all business upfront with huge comment section in the back. The nerve center of the Huffington post is like Home shopping network for blogging. YouTube and Digg manage seeds in the same way the most popular stuff sits on the front page – as it starts to decrease they pull it and replace with a hotter story.

Solution 5 – Personality Disorders – examples include Perez Hilton, Ron Paul, Apple lovers. Help your audience engage with others passion. Especially appetizing are personality disorders like: paranoid behavior, schizoid behavior, antisocial behaviors etc…

Solution 6 – Learn from the Mormons – Mormons want you to be Mornom – make evangelism core to your strategy. Focus on the mechanics of how an idea spreads not just the idea itself.

 

Privacy in a Data-Deluged World

Drop.io's CEO Sam Lessin presented “A Brief History of Privacy in this Data-Deluged World” at the Ignite II kick-off of Web 2.0 in NYC.

I loved Sam's thought captured in the following quote: “For the first time in history it is now cheaper and easier for people to be public than to be private. What I mean by this is that for thousands of years publishing content about yourself was expensive and time consuming, and privacy was the default state... The web, and specifically the web 2.0 model, is turning that on its head in a very big way.... Even just a few years ago online 'privacy' meant little more than protecting your credit card information and identity, now it means thinking about every single thing you say, do, or write, online - and how it will be perceived, saved, and used - now and in the future.”

“In the end, privacy has been central to western civilization forever. It is something that has value. All that is changing is that something that used to come totally naturally is now something people have to both defend and actively invest in maintaining.”

To view his presentation materials, speech transcript and video online at http://drop.io/ignitesam

Small Disclaimer: many of the photos in the sidebar of my blog are delivered by using Drop.io

 

Yodle: Managing the Long Tail for the Long Tail!

Two years ago less than half of all consumers used search to find a local business but today that number is upward of 74%!

However, most small businesses today still don’t have a website in fact less than 10% of small business owners are online. For them the problem is not just that they don’t have a website but promoting their website as well.

Enter Yodle

Yodle helps small service based business get a web presence and then help them promote their business by buying lots of niche keywords and syndicating the results to local businesses. (ex Teeth Whitening Union Square NY)

Yodle growth has been outstanding (around 700% year over year) which should come as no surprise since their customers are long tail and so are the keywords they buy for them.

Check out my podcast with their CEO Court Cunningham …



Link to Original Audio Source

Signup for this Podcast Series

About Court

Court Cunningham is the CEO of Yodle, Court oversees all aspects of operations and strategy, including technology, product development and sales and marketing. Prior to joining Yodle, he held the position of COO at Community Connect, a niche social networking company, where he lead consumer marketing, product management and development efforts. Before that, as SVP/GM of the Marketing Automation group at DoubleClick, he was instrumental in establishing DARTmail as the industry leading email marketing solution.

Court received a BA in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

 

Blogging from the World Business Forum

Whenever September rolls around I always get excited about 2 things – fall sailing and attending the World Business Forum at Radio City in New York. For the past two years I have been going and listening to leaders such as Malcolm Gladwell, Clayton Christensen, Rudy Guliani, Chris Anderson and Jack Welch to name a few.

Because of this many of them have appeared on my blog either in summary format or in a live podcast (I never pass up the chance to chase one of these guys down for a quick chat).

This year I am going to do it again but I will be Moblogging and Microblogging right there from the site. I find ideas hit me as I listen to each speaker and I want to get these out to you as fast as possible.

This year the HSM team that runs the World Business Forum is mixing it up a bit with more social media aspects of the program. For example they started a LinkedIn group and asked a question of the members on:

Which CEO and/or company represents authentic leadership to you and why?

I was lucky enough to jump of the band wagon early with my response but as of this moment there are nearly 900 responses to this single question! Bill George, Professor at Harvard (his website is http://www.truenorthleaders.com) started the ball rolling and kudos to the team of Becky Gee and George Levy who are making it hum.

If you are going to the World Business Forum please let me know and lets hook up.

 

Marketing’s Customers: an Oxymoron or Reality??

They may not be the ones you think I mean. No not the internal customers or your bosses boss like the CEO, CFO or COO. I mean real customers of marketing. Let me explain …

If you are like me working to drive thought leadership out of our organization and into the hands of would be prospects, then you know the first place that this phenomena of Marketing’s Customers happens is online.

A person who downloads the paper and opts into our database becomes a lead start (notice I didn’t say lead). And with the lead nurturing system we have in place we can then develop a lead to the point that they are willing to talk to someone from our sales organization.

In a recent meeting with Forrester analyst Peter Burris he pointed out to me that this customer is not a customer of sales but a “customer of marketing”! Which is an interesting notion if you stop and think about it?

Perhaps this accounts for some of the Not Invented Here feeling we can sometimes get from our sales team on these leads. But love them or not they are still interest and much warmer than any cold call a sales person could ever have.

How are you bringing in new customers?

 

Does your definition of "interactive" make the top 3?

Sharon McCarthy recently conducted an interesting survey of MENG members

Executive Summary –

Here are the top definitions for the word “interactive”, although if you look through the entire list, you could probably group more of the items together….but for our purposes it worked.

Just a couple of observations:

1. It's amazing how rich this word is – it generated more than 75 different responses…(In her research she only asked for 3 definitions per person, but ended up getting more and having to do more grouping by attributes because is was clear by the “explanation” that some had the same meaning).

2. Just when you think you understand what a person means by a word, they define it for you, and you find out that you really didn’t know what they meant.

3. On the other hand, if you use this word in your written or verbal communication, many people will see or hear this word differently therefore interpret it differently.

4. For the most part, all of the responses were positive.

5. The marketing research people in the MENG group might be saying, “snore, I could have told you so!

Methodology of the research: Sharon used the MENG email response system to ping the membership which is made up of Senior Marketing Executives and received 58 responses within the course of a few hours then she compiled these results. Please feel free to comment and add to the definition as you see fit.

Primary
• Two Way dialogue, 2 way communication/bi-directional – 27
• Online/internet/web solution -- 16
• Immediate, Real time, 24x7, Speed, quick paced timing -- 9
• Participative, user involvement - 7
• Customized to me/flexible/personalized -- 7
• Requires consumer input – 6
• Easy to Use -- 6
• Engaging/Compelling – something hooks me in -- 6
• Feedback -- 5
• Responsive – take an action, get a reaction -- 5
• Fun/Entertaining -- 5
• Dialogue or conversation, not necessarily by voice – 4
• Possibly Useful, adds value to my life, something in it for me – 3
• Involving – 3
• Multi forms of communication and engagement/Multi-media - 3
• Involving – leads to a relationship 2
• Self directed, consumer controls – 3
• Targeted – 2
• Collaborative -- 2
• Democratic/Equality – 2
• Dynamic, constantly changing - 2
• High tech -- 2
• Non-human -- 2
• Low cpm – 2
• Time Consuming – 2
• Kid Oriented - 2

Other
• A forum where people can express ideas in a mutually respectful way
• A path to an answer
• Ability to comment on others words, or pictures
• Ability to communicate with others in a conversation
• Access/involvement
• Action
• Action/Results – you end up with a different question or issues that may lead to more issues, questions
• Anonymous
• App that is smart enough to ask the right questions
• Both parties care about a relationship
• Click fraud
• Complicated
• Current = tangible information that I will find involving
• Database – collect data and use in relationship building
• Digital
• Digital media
• Direct Marketing oriented
• Electronic
• Electronic games
• Email generating
• Engineers
• Flash Images
• Flexible – content and design modified in real time
• Group activity
• Hands on – simple minded
• Information growth
• Instructive – you end up in a surprising place and learn something new
• Lazy – make the consumer do all the work
• Maleable – changeable
• Mobile
• New
• Non-linear
• Non-static
• Path to an answer
• Process
• Relevant – allows me to navigate to what is important to me
• Requires caller interaction
• Responsive – there are different choices and each results in a different response
• Self adjusting, adds to body of knowledge
• Silo’d
• Social, as in social network
• Sponsor company is sophisticated
• Structured, logically organized
• Technologically savvy
• Teleservice
• Viral
• Voice, sound dialog
• Voluntary

 

Using FriendFeed for Aggregating Conversations – a podcast with Jesse Stay

Sometimes I have to admit it is hard to keep up with all the new advances in Social technologies. And when I hear the buzz about certain technologies getting louder and louder it often times prompts me to seek out the help of a trusted source.

Enter Jesse Stay – Facebook developer and guru, a recent author of FBML essentials, blogger of Stay-n-Alive and social media junkie like myself.

I sought Jesse’s help in further understanding how he was using FriendFeed for tracking and commenting on all the conversations that were happening at the recent F8, Facebook developer conference.

Here his thoughts and excuse my ignorance on any of these topics for those of you more social advanced.



Link to Original Audio Source

Signup for this Podcast Series

About Jesse

Jesse is a Social Media technologies expert. He specializes in Facebook and other technologies that enable you as a business to better reach your customers in a viral manner, leading to more targeted ad and marketing positions, leading to faster adaptation of your brand through the social networks.

Through his company, Stay N' Alive Productions, he has firm experience developing and providing quality applications that have already had strong successes. He has both developed and consulted for successful social networking applications, some of those which currently have over a million users (the top 90 on Facebook!).