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iMediaConnection: The art of self defense against brand-jacking

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."

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Economist: Companies & Social Networks - Losing Face

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

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.

Deloitte: The Future of Collaborative Government & Web 2.0

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

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.

Brand Friendly

As I ended my original post on My Friends, I realized there was a natural follow up for brands engaging in social media to connect with partners, consumers, fans, etc.

Within the context of social networking, the definition of friend comes with the responsibility of a trusted and  responsive relationship.

As brands and brand representatives are connecting more intimately with their followers, there has been much discussion about the appropriateness and community effort required to cultivate and sustain a conversation and trusted relationship. When you think about making a connection at this "friend" level from brand-to-consumer and/or consumer-to-brand - setting clear expectations of what this relationship means and how it is cared for, trusted and valued will reveal the true sincerity of transparency and authenticity in this relationship.

If there was one brand representative who completely excels at this naturally is @Comcastcares on Twitter. Frank Eliason, the "friend" at the heart of @Comcastcares lives and breaths a responsive, "we can help" presence on behalf of Comcast that to me is remarkable and the perfect case study in being "brand friendly" in social networking.

AIGA Initiative - Get Out the Vote 2008

AIGA, the professional association for design has taken the charge to "Get Out the Vote," by creating an outlet for AIGA members (to participate, you gotta join) to design around the simple message to vote on election day 2008.Through print posters and YouTube submissions, AIGA has welcomed designers to "create" around this important call to action.

Since 2000, the AIGA initiative has welcomed the design and distribution of videos, motion graphic pieces as well as print materials like Get out the Vote posters.

"AIGA invites its members to create nonpartisan videos and motion graphics pieces that inspire the American public to participate in the electoral process and vote for a presidential candidate in the 2008 general election."

This year, the Get Out the Vote 2008 posters reflect a wide variety of styles and treatments, including many familiar iconic pop culture influences.

As AIGA notes, "good design makes choices clear."

Be sure to view the rest at AIGA Get Out the Vote 2008 posters, including the set of 24 posters chosen for professional printing and national distribution.  You can also download any of them available on the AIGA Web site as PDFs to save and print, like this one!

Also, be sure to view and share the video of 50 selected posters as well as the AIGA YouTube channel for more info.

Track What's Mentioned on the Social Web with SocialMention

I read a great blog post by David Berkowitz today on Blog Search Stuck in Beta and it really captured a long-time complaint I've had about search engines, specifically for blogs and blog content. Whether you use Google or a micro-search specifically for blogs, overall they have been very ineffective in my experience.

Taking a look at the blog search landscape, Berkowitz finds there is a lot missing to the search experience, particularly "a sense of understanding a user’s purpose." (Big cheers! Smiles! Total agreement!)

 

Ending my day today, I learned of SocialMention, which I feel starts to address the Social Web and how blog and micro-blog content is out there and in the mix. Not unlike other cool search tools, like Lijit, SocialMention really does everything on my "nice to have" wish list for a Social Web search engine. SocialMention provides search results that are organized by blogs, micro-blogs (like Twitter mentions, Brightkite and Posterous posts, etc.), bookmarks, comments and so on.This is not just a search for blogs, but when we searched one of our own, Extraordinique we were so pleased with the immediacy and comprehensive return of results.

Our experience with SocialMention exceeds any results we've ever been able to extract from Google, Google Blog Search, Technorati and others.

In seconds, SocialMention had every post we've done on Extraordinique, all of our micro-blog conversations involving "Extraordinique," social bookmarks in Digg and Del.icio.us, comment threads, including FriendFeed, and the list goes on. It is the next great aggregator of numerous social media sources remixing it into a single stream of really useful and valuable information.

It is a thing of beauty to see all of this information indexed so quickly and so well organized. It will be such a useful tool for brand and community managers to keep up on all "SocialMentions."

Great idea. Great execution. Great results!

I imagine this will show up in SocialMention's "socialmention search query," so while I have your attention -- Thanks! You rock! And why no @SocialMention? Your fans and your critics want to include you in the conversation while they learn about you and endure some of the heavy loads. :)

A Historical Speech Captured in a Tag Cloud

Tonight's historical acceptance speech by Barack Obama for Democratic nomination for president has been captured in a word cloud by GraphicDesignr. It strikes me because of the meetings we had today covered everything from keyword optimization for search, the art and science of tagging, and then watching this evening's speech with iPhone in hand refreshing Twitteriffic to the max. I was able to experience a historical speech, and monitor as well as participate in the discussion on the back channel for #DNC08.

Experiencing the 2008 Summer Olympics and now this election in the era of Web 2.0, it's clear that we have more access, more organization, more ways to track, convey, collaborate and develop meaning for any given message, event, and opportunity.

I thought instantly, a historical speech captured in a tag cloud, the perfect conveyance of form and function!

User Experience: Context, Context, Context

Yesterday, I wrote about two new redesigns launched and realized I failed to really address the pros and cons of "context" included within the designs. ReadWriteWeb has a great article today on Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms, which places context (and what the user's value most") at the center of the user experience framework.

A long-standing mantra on the Web has been "Content is King." For most working in user experience, however, we've had to educate most that the richest content can't reign without a well-designed user experience.

Sound the horns and roll out the red carpet, user experience is now annointed king!
ReadWriteWeb notes that "user interface innovation is a major part of the ongoing web revolution" and outlines the emergence of contextual user interfaces in user experience design.

With posts this week on Personalization 2.0 and now this post, there is a major challenge to deliver a more streamlined experience that is based more intelligently on context. ReadWriteWeb states: "The new user experience is about fluidity."

As I wrote yesterday, "simplifying the experience improves the experience." Users cannot afford to be bombarded with too many options. They need an experience that allows them to be easily self-directed to find and select the information or services they need quickly and easily.

Side note:
To write this post, I ended up revisiting a 2005 post on Putting Context into Context by Jared Spool, which examines the fundamental importance of "context." Flashing forward to 2008, how context can be delivered now in 2008 and beyond is where things really gets interesting.

Related Post:
The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces