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Social Media Wave 3 - Impacts, Trends, Context

2008-11-17T09:36:23-08:00

Just reading Kyle Lacy's post on 20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media. He outlines the importance of understanding the impact and importance of social media in reach and engagement opportunity and references Universal McCann's latest research on Social Media Wave 3.

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia research)

FLF 11.14.2008 - Focusing on Good Customer Experience

2008-11-14T10:40:52-08:00

Happy Friday! We thought this was a great animated short on creating the perfect customer experience. Mr. Lux exemplifies a customer-centric approach in service.

Continued Growth of U.S. Blog Readers Estimated

2008-11-14T10:31:58-08:00

eMarketer reports that by 2012, more than 145 million people—or 67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once per month. In eMarketer's latest report, The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement from Grass Roots, eMarketer analyzes the growing social and economic impact of this once niche-communications channel.

Learn More >>

Celebrating World Usability Day Today

2008-11-13T00:05:00-08:00

This year, World Usability Day focuses on exploring and creating awareness for global transportation -- making lower carbon travel changes easy.

According to UPA, "transportation means moving products and people in its broadest sense. Usability in transportation speaks to the interaction of people and the vehicles, the challenges and issues infrastructure and modes for moving around in our environment. . We spend time repeatedly, everyday getting our things and ourselves from point A to point B. It varies by day, by location, by time and by need and requires us to utilize many forms of transport."

Check out the latest information and events that have lead up today from around the world in recognition of World Usability Day! Consider every element of transportation and how usability plays an important role from road signs to safety and security or infrastructure design

World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.

iMediaConnection: The art of self defense against brand-jacking

2008-11-11T19:17:31-08:00

As a follow up to our earlier post today, we came across another good article further emphasizing the need to actively monitor and protect your brand.

Tim Lynch, senior experience design specialist at Molecular, explores the concept of brand-jacking. "If your brand is online, it's susceptible to consumer influence -- both benign and malicious. See what steps your company can take to mitigate the risks."

Economist: Companies & Social Networks - Losing Face

2008-11-11T10:02:15-08:00

The Economist tells a cautionary tale of companies who find out after the fact that their employees are revealing or misrepresenting their employers' brand online with their own posted indiscretions, gossip or exchanges on community sites like myspace, Facebook and Twitter.

It's a must read for organizations who currently have not addressed social networks usage policies - not only "at work" usage policies, but also "general usage guidelines" that are highly recommended to manage your brand and online reputation. The article has three important recommendations to consider:

[Create] and reiterate online guidelines frequently
Monitor online activity closely to ensure that rules are respected
Frequent “online watering holes” where people exchange gossip and views [to be fully aware of what is being posted directly by employees or through their affiliation with the organization].

Read on>>

Why Email Starts Fights

2008-10-24T15:05:49-07:00

BNET has a great video on how email needs to be used appropriately for communication. Words, tone and visual cues are very important in 1x1 and group communications. With ninety-three percent of communication being nonverbal, email is not always the optimal medium for effective interpersonal communication.

Injecting "Agility" into the UX

2008-10-23T18:54:09-07:00

This is a very interesting presentation by Declan Whelan, software developer and agile coach, about how to integrate user experience with agile development processes. This 2007 presentation is a great overview of the fundamental challenges in designing, developing and managing the user experience upgrade path and how to apply agile practices to improve the process and the UX.

His latest post, Adopting or Adapting Agility is excellent and describes how agile practices require a strategy that aligns development goals with overall business goals. Excellent!

View Whelan's latest white paper on Agile Adoption & Adaption Framework for more information.

Deloitte: The Future of Collaborative Government & Web 2.0

2008-10-23T18:02:59-07:00

As a strategic marketing and communications firm providing services to the State of California, we have the privilege of working with many innovative and progressive state departments, public and local agencies, who are driving inventive strategies to meet the demand of processing business, delivering program services, responding to ongoing State and Federal legislation, adapting to election and State budget cycles, as well as supporting the rapidly increasing activity and demand to stay competitive (compatible, connected, integrated) with "sister" agencies, business partners (vendors and suppliers), citizens, and other reliant stakeholders.

Deloitte currently has an excellent report out on e-government that addresses the challenges "conventional government" is facing and will continue to face with emerging risk - Change Your World or the World Will Change You - The future of collaborative government and Web 2.0.

Premise for eGovernments in the Era of Web 2.0
Deloitte writes, "Today’s tech-savvy world demands tech-savvy government. Increasingly connected citizens and stakeholders are asking governments to deliver services more rapidly and efficiently. Yet the public service bureaucracies that form the governmental backbone often take a conservative approach to adopting the latest Internet-based technologies to accelerate service delivery.

Developing a “Government 2.0” culture is more involved than simply setting up a wiki or a blog. It requires leadership, investments in technology, organizational change, and risk-taking to overcome cultural, process, technology and policy hurdles.

In the end, increased levels of collaboration will result in enhanced service delivery through all operational and policy-making functions of government. This culture will allow tomorrow’s government to do more with less."

Download Deloitte's Report >>

Forrester Reports: The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption

2008-10-23T17:09:28-07:00

Today, Forrester Research released its report on The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, which includes 2008 data from around the world. Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell writes a great follow on post on this report and his findings in, New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption. He writes, "Data is my secret weapon. ...But data gets old, especially in the rapidly changing social world."

With extraordinary tools like the Social Technographics Profile, Bernoff's team from Forrester Research were able to get data from 11 countries by age and gender.

"Looking at the US data, the big news in 2008 is that, not unexpectedly, social technology participation has grown rapidly. Inactives -- people untouched by social technologies -- have shriveled from 44% down to 25% of the online population. Spectators -- those who read, watch, or consumer social content -- have ballooned from 48% to 69%. If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence," Bernoff writes.

Bernhoff outlines this migration from inactives to creators in the Social Technographics Ladder. This visual representation clearly shows the evolution in the human experience today online.

"As you can see, there was also a nice healthy jump in Joiners (social network participants), Critics (those who react to social content they see), and especially Collectors (those who organize social content). None of these are quite as popular as being a Spectator, but I think there’s plenty of growth ahead for these groups. (If it’s bothering you that the numbers add up to more than 100%, remember that these groups overlap – this is not a segmentation.)," say Bernoff.

A great point, Bernoff makes in summary notes that not everyone must/will work up the ladder to become a "creator" to engage with social utilities. There's room for all levels of participation.

Be sure to check out Groundswell's blog where Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff share great research and insight on how the world is being transformed by social technologies.

The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption - Executive Summary
Social technology adoption increased tremendously this year. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other compared with just 56% in 2007. What else changed? Ratings and reviews, "voting" for Web sites, and peer-generated video experienced the largest growth, while blogs and tagging closely followed. Older adults are now also more likely to participate socially as Spectators and Critics, placing them in the active rungs of our Social Technographics® ladder. Marketers have to get on board with social now — more advanced marketers will speed up customer-driven innovation, sharpen metrics, and improve customer experience. Those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.