Posts Tagged "Web 2.0"

Web 2.0 Expo: The Social Media Trilogy: Three Vital Components for Building a Successful Online Strategy

Posted on Apr 22, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: It’s time to look at the big picture – beyond starting a blog or getting your team on Twitter. To survive in these trying economic times, enterprises must adopt a trilogy of Web 2.0 fundamentals as part of their long-term communications objectives. This session leverages the experiences of some of the world’s most successful communities to help you develop a strategic vision for enterprise-oriented social media. Also included are several use cases that demonstrate the success of having organization-wide Web 2.0 technology and information on how Vignette is helping the world’s leading brands with their social media efforts. Takeaways include how Web 2.0 intersects with a broader online strategy, the social media success trilogy and how to integrate these fundamentals into your organization’s DNA. Sponsored by Vignette.

This session took place Thursday, April 2, 2009. The speaker:

• Gerardo Dada, Vignette

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this session was good.

Bullet Point Review!

• Only 12% rate their web 2.0 efforts as effective.
• Measurement is key.
• 40% of businesses have no real strategy.
• Web 2.0 is viewed as an immature medium.
• 2008 was the year of Trying, 2009 is the year of Embracing.
• How do you build a strategy?
  • You don’t; web 2.0 supports a strategy.  It’s a tool.  Marketing, Customer Service, Human Resources, Corporate Communications, PR, product development, knowledge management, etc.
  • People are looking for answers and information.  They don’t care as much where it comes from.
  • Social is integrated part of the web.
• How do you build a community?
  • You can only foster a community.
  • Participate in a community.
  • People have persona’s and want to keep them separate.
  • There’s nothing wrong with integrating technology buy you have to ask permission.
  • Strategy has to be flexible enough to work with what’s coming next.
  • Understand what people are saying.
• How do you succeed in Social Media?
  • It’s about the people.
  • Fundamentally change the company mindset.
  • There’s a resurgence of the personal brand.
  • Requires a mind shift and a new culture.
    • Be Passionate!
    • Develop a Strategy (set milestones).
    • Have clear goals and metrics
    • Without metrics you won’t get support from executives.
• Resourcing
  • Needs to be on top of mind
• Promotion
  • Marketing lead it, IT is jumping in now.

I didn’t write anything down from the Q&A portion, though I remember there being one.  I think it was a lot of people asking specific questions that really didn’t have any kind of broad appeal to my readers here, but overall it was a good session.

Slideshow Presentation:

Web 2.0 Expo: Optimize Your Organic Search Results Leveraging Social Media & Blogging

Posted on Apr 21, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: I’m all a Twitter ‘Cause your MySpace hurts my Facebook when I’m Linked-in – Learn how to leverage social media and your current website to DOMINATE search engine results and improve your organic rankings! Sponsored by Verio.

Industry expert and published author Heather Lutze gives you the rundown on her social media strategies from her new book, The Findability Formula. This breakout will give you actionable tactics you can implement immediately to get your website ranked higher in search engine results. Social media is HOT and delivers results if you know how to use them to their fullest potential. Learn how to use keywords effectively with Twitter, Linked-In, Youtube, Facebook, as well as your own company website to increase your search engine rankings. It is all about knowing and understanding the Findability Formula – and that is what you’ll learn in this workshop!

This session took place Thursday, April 2, 2009. The speaker:

• Heather Lutze, Lutze Consulting

Heather had a lot of great things to say; it was a shame that she didn’t have enough time to really go over it because of such a long pitch by Verio, the sponsor of the session.  One thing Verio did that was annoying but I can’t really fault them for, was parking someone at the door and using the leads scanner to scan the name badges of the people coming in.  Annoying, but since they were sponsoring the session, I can’t really fault them for it.

Bullet Point Review!

• Social media gives you a platform to position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Strategy:
  • Connect with the right search keywords.
  • Edit your social media profiles and elements with keywords.
  • Track the results in Google search results.
• Know how users search:
  • 15.2% are 1 word search phrases
  • 31.9% are 2 word
  • 27% are 3 word
  • 14.8% are 4 word
  • 6.5% are 5+ words
• The longer the keyword, the faster you’ll show up.
• Longer search terms are looking more to purchase, less informational or shopping.
• Resources: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
• Tool: Google External Keyword Tool
• Tool: Keyword Discovery
• Connect with the customer when they’re ready to take decisive action.
• Misspellings can rank highly (sometimes they convert higher).
• Look at the pages and be sure you actually want to show up amongst that company.
• Anything over 100 searches, long tail.
• Open tool, whats most targeted keyword, then write blog post (put the keyword at the front).
• Recommends All in One SEO Pack, ShareThis for WordPress.
• On LinkedIn, when you put your last name in put a dash and your keyword.
• Start on the long tail and work your way backward.
• Do it for your name, do it for misspellings, rank the whole page to push out the “sucks” terms.

Because of the 20 minute pitch for Verio at the beginning of the session, there was zero time for questions, which was a shame.  I was hoping for some more real-world examples that weren’t just about Heather.  There was time for one where a woman who is a voice-over talent was looking at it from her standpoint and Heather walked through the practical application, which was pretty cool.

Overall it was a good session once Verio was done talking, and I wish she’d shared her slides with the Web 2.0 Expo folks, but alas it’s not on their website.

Web 2.0 Expo: Smart Work: Embrace Change & Empower Your Teams to Drive Growth and Innovation

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: In today’s global business environment, the only constant is change. Organizations who can respond quickly by leveraging agile business models and dynamic business processes are uniquely positioned to win. IBM Web2.0 software can help your organization be more effective and innovate in challenging times. IBM also understands first-hand that connecting with customers takes personalization, collaboration, community and co-creation. Come learn from and ask questions of our IBM experts that support enterprise mashups, social media software and Web 2.0 application development and learn how you can provide a truly collaborative real-time working environment for your employees, partners and suppliers and leverage your customer community. Sponsored by IBM.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009. The speakers were all from IBM:

• Kathy Mandelstein
• Ryan Boyles
• Brendan Crotty
• Tom Deutch

Okay, usually I think of myself as a smart cookie.  But this session was way over my head, probably since I’m not an IT person or developer.  I walked away with some interesting factoids, but no way to apply this to what I do.  Maybe this will help you more than it helped me.

Bullet Point Review!

• 1 billion transistors for each person on earth.
• $11.5 billion worth of produce is wasted in India because of outdated post harvest infrastructure.
• US health care system loses more than $100 billion per year due to fraud.
• Up to 22% percent of total port volume is empty containers in North America.
• Cost optimization + agility = success.
• CxOs confirmed priorities:
  • Processes
  • Collaboration
  • SOA Adoption (Service Oriented Architecture)
  • Business Model
• Lotus live web conferencing, collaboration, and email.
• Jazz is an open collaborative environment.
• A mashup is a light application.
• IBM mashup center WebSphre sMash.
• Resources: Lotus Greenhouse, ibm.com/web20, Project Zero, Jazz Community Site (developers).

Developers will probably be better for reading this, so check out the slide presentation and I hope it’ll benefit you.

Web 2.0 Expo: Darwinism on the Web- Surviving and Thriving in a Web 2.0 World

Posted on Apr 8, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: Keeping up with what’s new is enough of a challenge, learning what to embrace and adopt, and how to do so cost effectively is the key to leading the pack. Learn how to prepare your organization up to keep pace with the new speed of innovation. Sponsored by CoreMedia.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009. The speaker:

• Sören Stamer, CoreMedia

This was one of my favorite sessions.  Sören was a wonderful, engaging speaker, and his accent was not a hindrance in the least.  While the other sponsored sessions were often big commercials for the sponsored company, I really appreciated that Sören left the CoreMedia plug for the end and kept it relatively short.  I enjoyed sitting through this session!

Bullet Point Review!

• You need to remain agile in this environment.
• Example: RateMyCop.com
• Cirsis is much bigger.  Some say we get collectively smarter, but we probably get collectively dumber.
• Web 2.0 is fundamental change.
• 10 patterns that might be useful:
  • Websites Evolve: Content used to be king but it’s all about engaging people
    • Harley Davidson did a good job of creating a tribe.
    • The feedback loops rule.
  • Engage in Conversations
  • Be Personal
  • Make Your Ideas More Contagious
    • Personal resonance counts
    • iPhone is an example – you touch what you like
  • Use Established Paradigms
    • Open & focused wins (Amazon)
  • Open Up and Do Less
    • Evolution is hard to predict
  • Let It Go
    • People pay for attention
  • Provide Ways to Earn Attention
    • Yelp is a good example.
    • The web withough websites
  • Enable Multiple Touch Points for your Service
    • Making money because of… (because of search, not with search)
    • As soon as you start charging, it’s a barrier of entry and people will go to a free verion
  • Find Smart Ways to Offer a Great Service for Free
    • Skype
    • Don’t be surprised that some things change dramatically

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Video will be the next big thing.

All in all this was great.  Rather high level, and left some people questioning at the end, but I really enjoyed it.  It was almost more of an entertainment piece than an educational piece.  Bravo.

Web 2.0 Expo: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing

Posted on Apr 7, 2009 in Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: Running your business in the Cloud is becoming mainstream and offers enormous advantages. Hear how companies are taking advantage of the Cloud to increase IT output while simultaneously reducing infrastructure, application development and deployment costs. Learn how this new approach is enabling IT to do more with less by focusing on innovation, not infrastructure.

This session took place Wednesday, April 1, 2009.  The speaker:

• Trae Chancellor, CIO,  Salesforce.com

Unfortunately a lot of this kind of went over my head.  I guess the term IT in the title didn’t signal to me that this might not be the best session for me to attend.  The notes are kind of short since I didn’t really get a lot of value myself out of this.  Sorry!

Bullet Point Review!

• This transformation will touch the entire organization; everything has to be rethought.
• Gives you a competitive advantage.
• Cloud computing is able to deliver true innovation.
• Goals: improve productivity and innovation, improve efficiency, reduce costs.
• Implement CRM>customize>extend>commit>iterate
• Created their own dashboard and integrated that into their client offerings.
• Gets the whole business involved.
• Leverage the cloud.

There wasn’t really any useful Q&A time, and in reality most of this session was an advertisement for Salesforce, which is to be expected considering it was a sponsored session.  The presentation was more tailored towards being a case study rather than a how-to.

They didn’t share the presentation on SlideShare.net so I can embed it, but you can download it here: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing (PPT).

CJU Course: Web 2.0 Affiliate Marketing in Practice

Posted on Oct 9, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

This session was September 18th and promised to tell publishers and advertisers alike how to embrace web 2.0 in their marketing campaigns and get in on the discussion about upcoming trends for emerging markets, Commission Junction, and the industry as a whole. The panel consisted of:

• Angela Mihalakopoulos, Associate Business Development Manager, Commission Junction (Moderator)
• Shergul Arshad,Vice President Business Development, Stylefeeder
• Melissa D. Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• David Silverman, Director Business Development, Aggregate Knowledge

Other than a stray weird comment about user generated content being the primary technology of web 2.0 (it’s not a technology), the panel was pretty good.  Lots of good ideas, but I apologize in advance if my notes are a big fragmented.

Bullet Point Review!

• The piece of the pie this represents is still small.
• Common tie for web 2.0 is UGC (user generated content).
• UGC drives social interaction.
• Collaborate, engage, interaction, control.
• You don’t have to do everything, do what’s right for your business.
• Web 2.0 allows the ability to grow rapidly.
• Open source software is your friend.
• Modules: RSS, blogs, video, podcasts, forums, chat rooms.
• Bookmarks integrated with advertisers RSS feeds.
• Many technologies can work together without developers to alter them.
• How do you measure?
• -> Increase in conversions/revenue.
• -> Ask for reviews.
• -> Brand awareness can’t always be measured.
• -> For video, how long did viewers watch
• -> Natural search
• -> Test & improve.
• CJ has “emerging markets” team.
• Advanced link section works well with web 2.0 technologies.
• Market to individuals instead of segments.
• -> Use personalization and customization whenever possible.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Try using the CRM angle when approaching management about embracing these web 2.0 avenues.
• Create your benchmarks at the beginning so you know your goals.

I was a bit ahead of the curve in terms of web 2.0 so I heard a lot of stuff I’d heard before, but hopefully this is new for you!