The perplexing question for businesses is “how can we make money using the social web?”

Most view the social web as a playground, a place where people connect, converse and businesses view the economic game as purely one of advertising.

For years businesses have continuously tried to develop metrics to measure their return on advertising and marketing initiatives. Public relations and marketing firms have responded with a variety of models all designed to justify the huge expense firms spend on advertising and marketing. In the old days it was about eye balls and impressions, clicks and finally correlations of efforts vs. actual sales gains and value in branding.

These models and measures have been used by the gurus of marketing for years and the Fortune 500, and those wishing to be a Fortune 500, have taken the bait and adopted “the “trick of the trade” all aimed at getting our attention hoping to entice us to a call for action, buy something.

Consider the spending on the recent Super Bowl Ads. Millions for seconds of our attention but one must wonder what were the actual results gained by those advertisers. Data will be collected to justify the cost and spin will be used to demonstrate the proposed value gained. There is an old saying, figures don’t lie but liars figure.

GoDaddy’s Super Bowl Ad used sex ( the oldest game in the book) to draw peoples attention to their web site The ad cost GoDaddy millions to run. Subsequently GoDaddy’s video will be freely distributed throughout the web as more and more people engage in discussions, both the good and bad about the ad, the method and of course the brand.

Conversations Are Free But Will The Impact Help or Hurt Revenue?.

Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy reports: Our Web site has never been busier! Before the game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors. Traffic to our Web site today is up over 4 times normal levels. But the real test concerning any ad’s effectiveness is simply this: did it generate sales?

Before the ad aired Go Daddy’s worldwide market share of new domain name registrations was 25%. The following week this number catapulted to 32% and held there.

More than 160,000 customers took our survey after viewing the ad on GoDaddy.com’s Web site. 75% were male and 17% were female. The vast majorities of viewers liked “Exposure.” But here’s the surprise, 17.1% of males and 16.5% of females disliked the commercial – there was virtually no difference between the sexes! So you see, both ads not only worked, they were incredibly effective

Just How Effective Was the Ad?

There were 97.5 million viewers who watched the Super Bowl. According to GoDaddy they received 2 million visitors to their site or roughly 2% of the viewers. Of the 2 million visitors GoDaddy reports that 160,000 filled out a survey, or 8% of the visitors of which roughly 17% expressed a negative opinion of the ad. Wonder what the other 98% of the viewers thought about the ad?

GoDaddy reported the short term economic gains received as a result of their ad. GoDaddy used sex to stir traffic and attention. How well that translates to establishing customer relations and brand value to their core offering and subsequent earnings is yet to be seen.

Relationships have a long term effect and decisions based on short term traffic and results don’t always tell the full story. One wonders what the hidden effect of 96 million people who were exposed to the ad but didn’t go to GoDaddy’s web site and voice an opinion or make a purchase will be. One also wonders what the conversational rivers from the 96 million who did not visit the GoDaddy web site will produce and how many million others will be influenced by these conversations over time.

GoDaddy, and your advertising firm, you’ll have to go figure what relationships you really gained or lost over time.

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

“You’ll have ten minutes to explain the virtual world of social networks.” That was the instructions from a global corporation who asked us to dial into the proverbial Monday morning executive meeting and discuss social networks.So how does one educate business executives about the value of conversational relationships with a ten minute limit set on the conversation? You can’t!In another example, a Fortune 500 company had engaged us to research their specific niche market as it relates to what the market was doing with social networks and what opportunities could they pursue to create market differential as well as improve customer and employee satisfaction.

Upon finishing the research we began to write the report and send drafts to the appointed project manager within the company. Our first draft was ten pages long. The appointed project managers first response was “we have a rule around here and that is our executives will not read anything longer than two pages.” The essence of the message was “we don’t need to know why and how to do something rather simply tell us what to do and do so quickly.”

Does the “how and why” impact what the final results will be?

Many, if not all, employees of any corporation will relate to the two examples above. Pressed by deadlines and an abundance of task businesses thirst for the “one minute answers” and then when the answers are implemented but do not produce the expected results the blame game begins. Subsequently “pointing fingers at who is to blame” becomes a cultural norm when the “what” answers contained in the two page summaries or ten minute presentations do not produce expected results.

Dr. Charles (Kalev) Ehin, Professor of Management Emeritus and the former Dean of the Gore School of Business at Westminster College writes: ” Have you ever wondered how things actually get accomplished in most organizations despite all the obstacles continuously encountered by the people who perform the day-to-day activities? I’m sure you have unless, of course, you are one of those rare individuals who is independently wealthy and has never worked for someone else. Not surprisingly, all of us have our own individual theories about why businesses survive in spite of the seemingly unworkable systems and processes they frequently employ. Just in case you may have, for a moment, forgotten what those obstacles are let me list just a few of the most common:”

• Unclear goals and objectives
• Ambiguous or unexplained policies and procedures
• Unrealistic deadlines and budgets
• Pressure to do more with less
• Lack of cooperation and teamwork
• Poor and uninspiring leadership
• Lack of open communications and trust

“Can you imagine what gains in wealth, creativity, and social responsibility could be realized if enterprises discovered how to leverage the hidden but powerful attributes that allow firms to make a profit in spite of these barriers? The possibilities are boundless. And think as well about how much more successful mergers and change initiatives in general would be if they could tap into these attributes. Essentially, my focus will be on the nature of the emergent systems or informal networks present in all social entities and what leaders must do to “allow” the tremendous energy and creativity inherent in these systems to support the overall organizational vision and objectives.”

Successful Social Networks are more about the How and Why

The innate power of relationships is the learning element that we adults seem to have forgotten. Part of the element of learning is conversational and without taking time to have a conversation learning is being limited. Half of a conversational process is listening and maybe it is the most important part. If business leaders don’t have time to listen or engage in conversations how will they learn the inherent power of social networks?

I have a five year old son whose constant response to any conversation is “why” which is indicative of human natures desire to learn. Even when you respond to his first “why” he’ll naturally follow up with another “why” until he thinks he’s gained an understanding of the subject matter being discussed. Ironically when he thinks he truly understands something he’ll be the first to correct his father in future conversations relative to whatever he thinks he now understands. Sound familiar?

Business thinking and subsequent institutional behavior has created deficits in learning capacities and capabilities. Finding quick answers to market movements, short term profit pressures and institutional maladies is a repetitive process that robs peoples ability to learn the how and why. Do business leaders really think they have learned enough to simply ask for what without understanding why and how? If we truly found time to have conversations with employees, suppliers and customers what would we learn?

A ten minute presentation or a two page summary may not be enough to understand the power behind a major social movement. Are we so connected to business that our relationships have become disconnected?

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

There is an old saying, “if you stay in this world you will never learn another one.”Learning the dynamics, the art and the science of the new world created by the social web is one of the foremost challenges for businesses.

Current business theories are correct in their own world, but the problem is that the theory may not make contact with the new world.

For businesses to succeed in the new world a transformation in leadership thinking will be required.

Back to the Future

Imagine if business leaders were able to go forward in time and see what needs to change today in order to create a better future. Most business leaders would jump at the opportunity to be able to see the future in order to better manage today’s decisions. Well here are 10 Points of Business Transformation required to survive and thrive in a new world:

1. Management practices of the past have smothered the individual and tried to contain and manage individual expression. The social web brings back the individual and enables individual freedom of expression.
2. The social web is not a thing, rather it is a movement accelerated by the art of self expression, the reach of relationships and fueled by the science of advanced technology. This combination of art and science has created a new world with new markets fueled by conversations, one to one to millions individually.
3. Economic activity takes place within social relations. People create economic gains by what they buy and recommend and how many others with whom they share their preferences. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people.
4. If you destroy the people of a company, you do not have much left for the future. People drive all business processes, products and services. People influence customer and supplier relations. If your cultural robs expression what are you customers and suppliers hearing and feeling about your business
5. Fear and lack of trust can make economic growth impossible. Don’t fear the social web, embrace it. Distrust destroys relationships
6. The social web gives businesses reach and richness in finding innovative answers to perplexing business problems.
7. Businesses are social networks. If you didn’t know this you are in denial about the power of people conversing with other people.
8. Human Resource Management is no longer a rules game. People don’t resist change–they resist being changed. The traditional approach to human resource practices needs to be transformed to practices that empower people.
9. People have conversations with people, not things. Customers will connect with customers and employees will connect with employees. What are these conversations producing? What can a business learn from these conversations?
10. Remove the barriers to relationships. Lead the transformation or be transformed by it.

Much of our day to day life, personal and professional, is interaction with other people and the patterns of interaction influence so much of the events around us and before us. The social web is creating new patterns of interaction which in turn is creating a new world of social exchanges about everything, anything and between everyone everywhere.

For businesses to survive and thrive in this new world they will need to go back to the future and adopt the 10 Points for Business Transformation required to thrive in the new world. We will cover each point in greater detail in the future.

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Social Tools are changing the way business gets done.IBM, Toyota, even Wells-Fargo Bank, have invested serious money in Second Life and are using blogs to engage customers, people; many corporations are building their own social networks to serve employees and to create commerce amongst customers; major law firms encourage their employees to blog; wikis are often far more powerful and useful than standard resources and have replaced intranets in many instances as invaluable sources of information and communication throughout the enterprise. RSS Feeds, Instant Messaging, Video - all can deliver greater involvement and transparency.

Originators become real, human and influential, and for the new generation of techno-savvy professionals, the opportunities and applications are unbounded.

One of the key challenges for businesses is how they integrate these new technologies within the enterprise and figure out which best suit their needs and the needs of their customers. Another challenge is how to facilitate ecommerce into these social exchanges thus enabling participates to exchange products and services for economic gains.

Economic activity takes place within social relations. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people. More importantly businesses need to understand “how” to reach people.

The Dividing Factors between People and Businesses

Today people use the social web for a variety of reasons but the primary aim is relational. Relational in the sense that people connect to people to find affinities, to learn, to share and with the freedom of expression. All the activity that drives the social web today is not represented by a collective strategy of the people rather the activities are a process of discovery fueled by the intrigue of finding, knowing and conversing with people you’ve never met physically. The discovery process for people follows a common framework which includes:

1. What does one person have in common with another
2. What does one person know that another may want to know
3. Who does one person know that another may want to know
4. Where, in life, in location, in stature is one person compared to another
5. What possible opportunities could develop out of a relationship between one person and another

All five of these discoveries are facilitated through the information people present about themselves in profiles, in their past communications with others and in the subsequent conversational threads exchanged one to one to millions. From these “virtual conversations” people create an emotional and intellectual profile of others and it is from these profiles that people begin to form active relationship and engaging conversations between themselves and others of like profiles. These relationships are driven by emotional and intellectual profiles formed by virtual conversations. It is the emotional and intellectual profiles which create individual gauges of trust within the virtual world.

Business leaders are just now beginning to engage in the social web however much of what we see today demonstrates a disconnect in purpose and methodology. Businesses approach the social web with a common objective of gaining relationships and converting those relationships into economic gains. The strategic approach to the social web by business follows a common framework including:

1. How can we market ourselves effectively within the social web
2. What positioning can we gain from use of the social web
3. What products and services can we sell through the social web
4. What gains would we get from setting up our own social network
5. What is our competition doing and what do we need to do better

A business is driven by the need to produce revenue and subsequent profits for its stakeholders. Progress in management practices and technological advances have shaped the mindset of business leaders to focus on productivity, profitability. market share and capital; results. In one hand this progress has delivered the results and on the other hand it has deteriorated relationships with employees, customers and suppliers. The trust factors between people and corporations continue to decline. Corporate actions of the recent past have only reinforced the distrust factor.

As many business leaders rush into the social web intrigued by a new fertile ground for business opportunity the fundamental factors of success will be learning how to go back and connect with people.

Which comes first, the business or the people? What drives business success, the people or management methods? Just look at the differences in framework between why and how people approach the social web and why and how businesses approach the social web. Do you see the differences?

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Jupiter Research just released a report titled, “Networked Media: Thriving In An Intermediated World.” The report points out that 57% of 18- to-24-year-old Internet users get their news from portals versus 21% from cable news sites–and online users now trust portals nearly as much as traditional news media. “To thrive on the Web, news sites must become more network-focused and aggregate content from other sources while distributing their own content through intermediaries,” said David Schatsky, president of Jupiter Research. “By paying closer attention to the tendencies of the end user, these sites will be able to evolve and meet the needs of a wider online audience.” “Not only must content producers embrace intermediaries to serve their own audiences and reach out to new ones” explained JupiterResearch analyst Barry Parr, but “they should exploit opportunities to become intermediaries for their core audiences.”

The researchers again seem to be missing a major shift occurring in the world of social networks.  The end user is in fact the intermediary, not the traditional portals of content.  As social networks mature individual will become their own portals of information, news and media.  Individuals first have affinities to other individuals so the tendency is for people to check in on people and see what is going on in their lives. 

The medium of social networks enables the individual to become the broadcast portal, one to one then to millions. David Schatsky, president of Jupiter Research one comment speaks volumes if we put it into context of the emerging market. He says “By paying closer attention to the tendencies of the end user, these sites will be able to evolve and meet the needs of a wider online audience.”

The emerging market portals are the individuals personal networking portals currently dispersed throughout numerous social networks.  Soon the individual will be aggregating all their profiles and activities within numerous networks into their own network portal.  Thus creating the means for what we’re calling The Relationship Economy.

This shift will be significant and disruptive and turning researchers and media on their heads.  Individual allegiance moves away from portals, firms and toward networks and network platforms where individuals create collective affinities.  What seems obvious to those outside an existing system is not seen by those within existing systems.  Systemic change comes from the outside and it is the individual who has been left out of established systems.

What say you?

WWW.RELATIONSHIP-ECONOMY.COM

I had a client come to me the other day and he told me that he’s had his business blog up for the last 6 months, but he wasn’t getting much traffic and there were even fewer repeat visitors. I checked out John’s business blog and I noticed quite a few things that he was doing wrong in marketing and writing for the blog. There were many things that he had to update on the backend of the blog and I’ll get to that in another post, but what really caught my eye was what he was “writing” on the blog.

Business blogs are a form of communication with your readers. Your writing style needs to be welcoming and friendly with the readers and motivate them to come back. What I noticed on his company’s blog was that it was filled with press releases and product updates. Don’t get me wrong, there is a strategy to incorporate these into your corporate blog, but if that’s all you are posting on the blog, it will certainly fail.

Readers don’t just want to hear about what your company is doing, but they do want to know what the people in the company are doing. Share their stories in your blog. Did you just hire a new associate? Did someone get a promotion within your company? Did someone just have a baby? If so, tell your readers about it! Share the story of Joe in accounting buying his first house or the party that the company had for Susan’s 10 year anniversary at the company. These are the types of stories that your readers will appreciate. Remember, there’s always a line where too much is too much, but you get the idea.

The more personal you get on your blog, the more comments readers will leave. If you touch the hearts of your readers with personal stories, they will feel more involved and want to be more involved by leaving feedback and comments.

This is just one way that John was able to turn his company’s blog into a better communication tool with his clients. Not only will the readers be more involved in the blog, but so will the employees. Start adding personal content into your business blog and start to see your community grow.

One of the strategies that businesses use to create and maintain a blog is to solicit ideas from their current clients and potential customers.

Dell recently announced that they are going to use their blog Direct2Dell to receive topics and ideas from the Linux community on Red Hat.

Dell started offering Linux on the computer systems and they want the users of Linux to share information and ideas so they can tailor their offerings to them. This is great for their business because they get to hear from the people who use Linux each and every day.

This type of direct feedback will allow Dell to stay one step ahead of their competition and allow them to penetrate the market in a very unique way.

If you’re using a blog for your business, this is an extremely effective way to communicate with your audience and provide the products or services that they need. It reduces market study and focus groups dramatically because these people volunteer their personal experience and knowledge.

Using this strategy of soliciting ideas will put your company one step ahead of the competition as well.

Jermey Wright, the author of Blog Marketing, recently had an interview with Business Line. The interview went into where business blogging is today, and where it will go into the future in regards if businesses should keep their blog writing in-house or outsource it.

Keeping the blog in-house will allow a more personal touch to their clients, however, just like with many other business activities it can easily be outsourced.

The reason you would want it to be kept in-house is to give your clients the authenticity of communicating with them. This is because the blog allows the personality of the company to shine through in their writing style and corporate culture.

Because of this same reason, many companies will be looking to outsource their corporate blog writing. If you allow your team in-house to do it, it can cause the corporate culture to change and most businesses don’t want that to happen. Also, it provides a arms length from the business itself to the media, regulators, and investors.

When you sit down with a blog consultant, they will be able to guide you through your options and help you decide which is the right choice for you.

All blogs are not made the same. Many personal blogs and business blogs do not create an atmosphere that warrants others to post a comment to your blog posting.

One strategy to receive more comments is remove the rel=”nofollow” attribute within your blog comments. Many people who responded to my blog postings don’t include their website in the “website” field when making a comment. That is fine. Maybe they don’t have a website or they want to remain anonymous in the comment.

Others however do leave their website. This is fine too. If someone takes the time to read my post, want to leave a comment, I’ll let them put in their website address. However, the default setting in most blog software is the rel=”nofollow” attribute. That means if a search engine spider index’s your page they are not going to follow the link to the person who posted the comment. This is done because there IS a lot of spam comments on blogs.

If you are going to remove the rel=”nofollow” attribute, you will need to download a widget that will disable it. I use wordpress for my blogging software and the widget can be found at Kimmo Suominen’s website.

If you are going to allow your links to be followed, it is important that you moderate your comments. You want to make sure no spammy comments are coming through to increase someone else’s page rank on their website.

Having your links followed will achieve two things for you:

1. When a commenter sees that your site has a link to theirs, they are going to be more likely to come back and comment again. This creates more discussion and interaction on your blog.

2. When others see that there are more comments, they are going to want to voice their opinion as well. This will create lively discussion on your blog topic and create more of a community. This community will drive your traffic up and increase awareness of your website.

So, if you’re going to allow comments on your blog, go one step further and download a widget which removes the rel=”nofollow” attribute in your comments section. Your readers will appreciate it as there will be more comments and discussions on your blog.

What do you think? Do you have other suggestions? Leave a comment below ;)

We are now providing professional blogging services for businesses that want to incorporate a coporate blog to their marketing plan.

We specialize in the creation and marketing of blogs for businesses providing professional blogging to increase the awareness of your company, products, and services.

Blogs are an emerging marketing tool for your company’s advertising effort. They help you attract new clients, build your relationship and loyalty with current clients, and demonstrate your expertise in your industry.

-Set up a blog to integrate into your existing site

-Write blog posts to keep you communication up-to-date

-Ghost blogging and article writing for busy executives

-Viral marketing to increase your blog’s awareness and traffic

We are business people and we understand how to build value through corporate blogs and corporate blogging for your target audience. We specialize in business products, business services, and the energy field (oil, natural gas, alternative energies)

A business blog will allow you to connect directly with your audience quickly and friendly. Business blogging is an effect marketing technique used by CEO’s, executives, management, and marketing companies.

Call me today at (512) 589-0920 for a free consultation.

Or email me at damon @ ceoconsultant.com

You can view all the services we offer here at CEOConsultant.com