Gamification at Vlab: buzzword or real business driver? – #blogbus

The MIT Stanford lab was founded 22 years ago. Orange is a sponsor of VLAB and we attended a meeting on Sept 19 on the Stanford campus on the subject of gamification. Vlab had gathered a unique bunch of top international experts from Silicon Valley in order to debate this concept. Despite the fact that many think badly of Gamification, our users have explained that gamification isn’t about games but bringing gaming mechanism in business activities and this was all about rewarding and creating a great experience.

[this post was originally written on behalf of the live.orange.com blog]

1. Margaret Wallace(below)introduced the session. Margaret is the CEO and founder of Playmatics. She began her pitch by saying that games have been around for thousands of years. Her definition of gamification is “the application of games mechanisms in non gaming situations, it’s not about angry birds and such like” she said. Why bother gamification? there are a lot of detractors of gamification Margaret said; the Gartner hype cycle is placing gamification at the very top of the Gartner hype cycle “so you are here at the right moment” she added. There are many ways that games can be inserted in business, such as Nike running, Ford’s mobile app, energy orb (an orb which changes colour according to the status of the electricity grid) … even political groups are using gamification to recruit people Wallace said; Pdt Obama has a Foursquare account for instance. From then on she handed the floor to the other panellists.

Margaret Wallace (above)

2. Courtney Guertin (above), Co-founder of Kiip was next on the stage and he presented the concept that he and his partner have designed. The idea was to reward users, through mobile apps and disrupt the mobile app space. In July 2010 they built a demo and started sharing this idea around them. They ended up raising $ 300 k. But “raising money is the easy part he said; the difficult thing is building the business”. They then built the platform for rewards (thanks & acknowledgements). They also wanted to avoid building something “intrusive or annoying”. The business model is simple. They charge brands and users are rewarded for their engagement. Among his advice were to understand that the team is everything, and to be prepared for difficult days too. He added that brands, at the outset, didn’t realise that people of all ages were playing games. Not just kids but middle aged mothers and even people above 50 he said. Brands are now, after a few years, very knowledgeable about that and this is why gamification has got a bad name. What you really need to do is how you can create a great experience like this company that decided to change an escalator which no-one wanted to use, by turning it into a living piano; instantly people started to use this escalator for the sake of the experience that it was providing.

3. Andrew Trader (above), venture partner at Maveron was next. He has been part of the gamification world on both side: as part of the family team at Zynga and from the investment side too.  The value of gamification in his mind starts with the value of relationship capital. This is what – in his mind – makes farmville so relevant. One has to try and incentivise users to engage more deeply; gamification mechanisms are similar in games like Farmville and business gamification he said.

4. Joshua Williams  (above) from Microsoft jumped in the conversation at that time. The idea of gamification according to Joshua is “how we can get a task done in a more engaging and fun way, and less painful. To him there are a lot of challenges with gamification which are overlooked. It’s a double-edged sword but he think that it’s worth looking into.

5. Amy Jo Kim (above), founder and CEO of Shufflebrain said that a lot of her practice recently has been to tune reputation systems to make them more engaging. “We could call that gamification” she said. Her perspective, is that what makes games compelling is in the design; people are getting smarter faster she said. You have to design systems which have the dynamics of games she said. You have to look at the “large word of zero sum gaming” she said. She predicted we would see a lot of innovation in that space in the future.

3. Rajat Pahsaria (above) was last. Rajat is the founder and chief officer of Bunchball. Beyond the buzzword he said there are values to gamification such as rewarding users, enhancing the experience etc. “We have a wealth of big data which is telling us what our users are doing” he said. And this is what gamification does” he said, using these techniques which have been going for years, i.e. rewarding users.

Dailymotion to bloggers: what if you earned money from others’ content?–#blogbus

Luc Dumont, SVP international Business Development Manager, demoed the most recent developments at Dailymotion from their Redwood Calif. office on day 2 of our blog tour, in front of our blogger bus bloggers on the second day of the tour. Dailymotion is a video hosting platform which was created in 2005 in France. It can boast 100 million daily users per month and 25-30 million videos are hosted on the platform. There are 220 million unique viewers a month even though the company is only 113 employee big. It also now part of the France Telecom- Orange group (disclosure: I work for the Group). Dailymotion is the 2nd largest video platform behind Youtube and 80% of its audience is coming from outside France. Whereas the head-office is in Paris, US operations are based in NYC and International operations are managed from Redwood, Calif. [this post was originally composed on behalf of Orange for the http://live.orange.com blog]

the most exciting segment in digital

“This is the most exciting segment within the online business” Luc Dumont said by way of an introduction. The premium aspect of video is very visible in the US with very aggressive players like Netflix, Google and Amazon. “Increasingly, our business can be summarised by its player” Dumont said. This player runs on various platforms and works, obviously, with content. Dumont described all the developments initiated by Dailymotion and namely what they call the Dailymotion Publisher network. In essence, this is a service which enables content providers (websites/bloggers) to create video portals automatically or manually and earn money from other’s content. Applications are submitted directly to Dailymotion who screen them and validate them (in order to ensure that the platform is valid and compliant). Content can come from either other users or well established content providers like Reuters or the Wall Street Journal. Already 1,000 users and websites like msn or Starmedia (owned by Orange) are using the service. “There is still space for a second video platform player” Dumont said, and Dailymotion is determined to be that one. The Redwood office was opened in November 2011 and the California based headquarter is working on the international development of the French start-up which has already stopped being French.

Luc Dumont today at Dailymotion’s headquarter

Here are my notes (taken on the spot) from that meeting …

the various platforms that Dailymotion is running on:

• Everything was built from the inside and it resulted in the Dailymotion.com. It’s a very large site now (see above numbers). Curators are preparing videos for users.
• Social networks is the second platform. Social has been part of the DNA from day one and accounts for 1/3 of our traffic, Luc Dumont added. “It’s a great tool and there is space for a second or third player” he said. “People don’t care about who runs the video, they just consume video”
• Dailymotion Publisher networks: is a new product whereby a special relationship is struck with publishers like Yahoo!, msn and the Huffington Post
• mobiles and tablets (15-20% of traffic as of today)
• connected TVs: partnerships with as many manufacturers as possible
• consoles: ditto

learn from the savviest European social media practitioners … and save £ 100 on ticket price

I will be taking part in the oncoming Social Media B2C Marketing Summit due to take place in London, on June 25th and 26th and as I am preparing for the event, I took a few moments to dig my teeth into the programme and I realised it’s not a conference but the conference on European Social Media … absolutely packed with extremely high profile social media managers from some of the most prominent European brands. It was high time something was done to catch up with the likes of Blogwell in the USA, and here it is, right at our door, so it’s an event you shouldn’t miss.

the pitch

The Social Media Marketing Summit (25-26 June, London UK)
Social media represents a growing marketing opportunity for business to directly engage with their consumers. The phenomenal growth of social media activity has meant consumers are now interacting with their favourite brands and regularly checking for the latest updates online.

Orange, Heineken, Unilever and KLM are a selection of brands which have embedded social media throughout their marketing campaigns. Join these leading brands on the 25-26th June at the 2012 Social Media Marketing Summit, London.

Learn how to deliver engaging and interactive marketing tactics to entice your consumers to engage with your brand. O2, Honda, Tom Tom, Barclaycard and many more will share exclusive case studies, their everyday experiences and best practice, so you can improve your social media marketing efforts.

£100 off ticket price

Quote YG12 and save an £100 you register at http://bitly.com/Socialreg

about my presentation at the summit

Orange has been very active in the Social Media space since early 2008 and now has an online fanbase of over 3 million fans. With a presence on Twitter,
Google+ and Dailymotion – in which Orange has a stake – Orange has experience in using multiple networks – and insight on which networks are best for different kinds of marketing. Hear how this telecoms giant chooses different social platforms to engage with their community and meet marketing goals.

• how to decide which tools work for you : hear how Orange decides which social network works best for them and how you can decide depending on your organisations goals.
• learn which social platforms are most effective to market your brand and build brand awareness:  Orange will share which worked best for them and why
• hear why Orange doesn’t just rely on Facebook and Twitter: discover which other social networks you should be using and how these can help your online marketing.

blog writing: the slow and subtle art of pondering

Or how not to jump to hasty conclusions in just one step

A few days ago, I came across a piece on Bnet on which there was a mention of Sun Tzu‘s “the Art of War” in not very favourable terms. I therefore asked the Vincent Berthelot, who is very well versed in Oriental culture (he is even fluent in Tai), to write something up for us. Here is his comment, 100% devoid of political correctness.

By Vincent Berthelot, translated by visionary marketing

photo cc (some rights reserved) by AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker)

Very often, I have been annoyed by the tendency to superficially squeeze management tips into constrained lists such as “five key marketing techniques”, or even “how to succeed in social media in 12 steps”. Alas, this is a gimmick which has being quickly imported from America by many a Continental blogger. Let’s admit we all wrote at least one piece in that manner, but abusing this method leads to stereotypes and facile conclusions.

When Yann asked me to review a BNET article which falls into that category, I could not resist the urge to stop everything I was doing in order to write something up on that subject. The incriminated piece is won by Geoffrey James, subtly entitled “seven vastly overrated business books”.

In that blog post, James puts together in the same basket, some of the bestselling US management books of the past 20 years and celebrated writings such as Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. This very list shows the seriousness and hindsight behind the author’s methodology.

Reading that piece online will force you to click on as many internal links as possible so as to maximise traffic; after all, this is serious marketing stuff, don’t get mistaken! Geoffrey James also adds profound comments such as that Adam Smith could not possibly surmise the invention of the modern multinational or of computers and that Sun Tzu’s book is mostly useful if you are planning to play computer or board games only.

Of course, I admit that business and war, at least on the surface of it, have little in common and that Sun Tzu’s advice belong to another time.

I would in fact recommend that James’s list be updated to include his point of view on Marcus Aurelius, Clausewitz, Machiavelli and a few others. Books such as Sun Tzu’s are not meant to be utilitarian, just like your average management book, and they have to be read with different eyes too. They aren’t meant to deliver “recipes”, and since his words cannot be directly applied to your marketing strategy either.

Zscaler: “we want to be the Salesforce.com of Internet security!”

this piece was originally written for the Orange Business Live blog

On November 15, I was invited with a group of journalist to a press tour in the Silicon Valley (a sequel to our June 2010 press tour in the Valley). Our first presentation took place in Sunnyvale, Calif. at the main office of Zscaler, a ground-breaking cloud security provider, which is also a partner of Orange Business Services.

The landscape has evolved

The security landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. Whereas most security threats (apart from social engineering) used to come from outside devices like floppy disks or the more recent usb keys, the vast majority of threats are now directly coming from the Internet. This has forced enterprises to equip themselves with a flurry of protection devices and software which have, over the years, generated  staggering complexity; and now, this complexity is increasingly getting out of hand. Traffic and policy management have become so important that the very dissemination of such rules and policies are a major pain-point for CIOs, not to mention the fact that simple techniques such as url filtering for instance are not always proving very effective. Besides, traditional security measures generate humongous log files. Something had to be done, mostly in that age of cloud computing, in which all clients are now seeking to rent their IT instead of buying it. Zscaler’s approach is therefore not to compete in the same market as traditional players, but to redefine the game plan by providing security in the cloud.

The Zscaler blog

The company is security savvy and dedicated to the Web community. To that intent Zscaler have developed a R&D blog available at http://research.zscaler.com: the blog is packed with information about Web security and you are mostly advised to download their own blacksheep firefox plug-in, a security device which will protect your device from the firesheep wifi sniffing plug-in so as to avoid that your facebook details be stolen by malicious people.

The Future?

What will be the future for Zscaler? Will the company sell itself to a bigger company? Zscaler is getting so many calls from VCs throughout the week that it would be an option if its CEO didn’t think that this isn’t one of his objectives. Zscaler is now performing so well that they think they are in a position “to build the salesforce.com of Internet Security”.

So far, the security market is a $1.2bn market dominated by a few players and then there are small players in the background. But the market is growing 30% year on year and Zscaler’s CEO think that it is still new and that “noone had ever done it properly so far”. This is why Zscaler thinks it can be a major player in that market by disrupting it and changing the ball game.

Below is a transcript of the presentation as it was delivered on November 15 in Sunnyvale, Calif. (the presentation was delivered by Shrey Bhatia, Zscaler’s head of worldwide field management and its CEO, Jay Chaudhry)

overview of Zscaler and its products

• largest standalone cloud security company protecting 800 companies in 140 countries, millions of users
• manage a cloud deployed across 40+ data centres globally
• r&d over 3 continents and own 30 patents on cloud security technologies
• with offices in 15 countries, US, Europe and APA
• positioned as the “most visionary” company by Gartner
• growing revenue by 50%
• clients include LVMH, Allianz, VW, Coca Cola, Wipro etc.
• “anyone who uses the Internet is a potential client of ours”
• in France, there are already  many clients (see slide)already, and Orange Business Services is a partner of Zscaler’s (some of the French clients quoted on that slide were closed with Orange Business Services)

market overview: examples of how security is evolving on the Internet

• Web (http protocol) has become main attack vector
• over 80% of threats coming from the Web from 5% in 2000
• It’s no longer USB disks or floppy disks
• 85% of all traffic coming in and out of all companies (all types, small or large) is Web-based, this is why threats are coming from there too

Challenges facing the world in terms of Internet security

• all content is active, live with Flash and Java, and this is what is making security threats more challenging
• filtering: most companies want to control where employees are going. But the old list-based url is not working anymore. Facebook, wikipedia have evolving urls and it’s changing all the time. Besides blocking Facebook is an issue if the same company is launching multi million dollar advertising campaigns on Facebook!
• Web 1.0 sites were read-only whereas Web 2.0 sites are now a cause for iinformation leaks: webmail, blogs, IM …
• bandwidth is a real issue. Video is 20 times more exacting than text and companies are very concerned about the amount of bandwidth which is being used by video
• Road warriers are new challenge too: people go to salesforce.com and so many online applications that the Web has become so critical. So it is of paramount importance to protect the road warriers
• the last and one of the biggest challenge is cost and complexity: CEOs impose CIOs to do 20% more with a flat or even decreased budget

What Zscaler does and how they do it

• Zscaler sits between the user and the Internet anywhere in the world, whereever they are, and whatever device they use. User goes to the Zscaler cloud, and Zscaler is the trusted third party and is termiinating the transaction to the Internet.
• This is done with no hardware, no software, no plug-in, nothing!
• This is why very international companies choose Zscaler.
• How is it done?
  • in the browser, one has proxy settings, and one has to change the proxy setting, it’s all you have to do and it can be done remotely
  • can be done at device or office level, from the firewall or router
  • Zscaler’s cloud is the most global cloud in the industry
  • The “policies” are kept in the cloud and are moved around as companies and users are moving by moving the policies to the closest data centre. This is what is called “shadow policies”
  • Latency is important, and this is why data centres have to be as close to users as possible
  • In the past 6-7 years, companies have deployed MPLS networks: the biggest benefit is that bandwidth is divided by 2 and that latency is also improved. But network topologies are changing slowly because enterprises have spent a lot of time putting all their network topology together and they are naturally reluctant to throw everything away now. Hence it’s best to let them be more comfident with the service before they change their network infrastructure and re-engineer it.

• cost-effectiveness
  • for all French customers, Zscaler is managing tens of thousands of users with just two boxes, and this is a lot easier and more cost effective than managing the complexity of myriad CPE’s (Customer Premises Equipment)
• Will it slow things down?
  • Traditional security devices are firewall devices which weren’t designed to scale
  • Zscaler had to build new boxes which are very scalable
  • Standard costs to open 1 data centre is $1m, whereas Zscaler is able to open one for a fraction of that, with 2 boxes and can serve half a million users for that price
  • nanolog technology is a special technology which compresses logs and speeds up transactions, it has been developed by Zscaler (traditional logs for an average large company are going to generate 50-100GB of data every day. none of that information can be searched or used)
• If everything is centralised how do minimise threats?
  • the goal of a cracker is to get to the user’s machine an monetise information or turn it into a bot
  • Zscaler is just a conduit, hence it’s just a bridge, and there is not much value in accessing Zscaler’s boxes
  • Zscaler spends an awful lot of time and R&D to protect their servers and make the service safe

Zscaler services

• 4 types of Services come on top of that infrastructure:
  • Web security: Antivirus and Advanced threats browser contro, E-mail security
  • Web control: url filtering, web 2.0, limiting bandwidth (i.e. ensuring that YouTube for instance will not take up more than 30% of the total bandwidth)
  • Web DLP (data leaks/loss prevention)
  • Web analytics

Benefits

• save money and time, best security and policy management, real time reporting, easy to deploy data loss protection mechanism, near-zero latency (high performance proxy and breadth of cloud), integrated email & web
• What Zscaler isn’t: Zscaler isn’t playing in the Wan optimisation space

What does a “trusted advisor” really mean?

You may not yet be familiar with Cisco and its ‘trusted advisor’ approach – in which the equipment provider is raising the bar and advising its clients rather than just selling to them. But what is a ‘trusted advisor’ and how do you achieve that status? Professor Lee Schlenker from EmLyon’s Chair of Emerging Economies and Technologies reports:

What does a “trusted advisor” really mean?

I recently had the opportunity during a CIO Conference in Zurich to ask Chris Hughes, one of the three founders of Facebook, if he saw a link between “trust” and “truth” in the practice of business today. Chris responded “no there probably isn’t… at least not in the media industry”. I followed up with the question in that case who does he trust? After a few moments thought, he replied, “I guess those that open up to me.”

The notion of the “trusted advisor” has become a key theme in the IT industry today. IBM, Microsoft Oracle, and a myriad of other firms are claiming that the development of trusted advisors constitutes a powerful value lever inside their companies and in their eco-systems. But what exactly is a “trusted advisor”, what does it mean in the context of the IT industry, and what lessons can be learned for the CIO?

Information systems have long provided a mirror of how management sees their employees, their customers, and their working environment. This image of work today is cloudy at best: most employees, not to mention their own managers, have increasing trouble in defining the contours of their professions, their job requirements, and even the foundations of trust in their organizations. As Daniel Goleman reminds us, workplace realities today are shaped by the absence of job security, the preference of “portable skills” over “technical competencies”, and a form of managerialism based as much mistrust as on trust.

Most CIOs readily admit that the truth isn’t in the figures, but in what the figures represent. Information systems vehiculate competing visions of how managers can shape professional behaviour in today’s workplace. On one hand IT systems are developed to reinforce the traditional concept of control, which suggests that information systems provide a coordinating mechanism based on asymmetric relations of power to guide behaviour for the good of the corporation. . One the other, IT systems are expected to enhance trust, which contrastingly refers to a coordinating mechanism based on shared values and norms used to deal with uncertainty. The multiple sources of uncertainty today in the market, in the corporation, and in the meaning of work have pushed managers to look beyond the limits of control to the potential value of trust.

How can the CIO and his team work to build trust in this context? Vanessa Hall, author of The Truth About Trust in Business, suggests that in our virtual world the task is more daunting than ever: “seeing is believing” doesn’t convey the same meaning when information technology replaces face to face interactions. Blind trust based on accumulated experience proves difficult where physical meetings with our customers and our own managers are increasingly rare. Trustworthiness, based a personal or product based reputation doesn’t hold up much better in an environment in which everything is marketed. In a technologically intermediated world, Hall argues that we are left to focus either on contextual trust – understanding what will work in a special context or referred trust – relying on the opinions of those we admire. In contrast to blind trust, contextual and referred trust are finite resources that can be progressively nurtured or rapidly consumed by managerial practice

Our recent “Journey to Value” workshops[1] with Microsoft’s European Operations Centers have underlined both the challenges and the opportunities of building trust in the organization and in its relationships with its business partners. Kees Pronk, Senior Director Partner & Field Operations for Microsoft EMEA, opened the workshops with the challenge that “trust is built on a clean track record of reliability, credibility and a well-developed interpersonal awareness.” Although most of the participants agreed that trust should be a key ingredient of good management –, one manager argued passionately that trust had nothing to do with their jobs – employees “just needed to get on with it”. “Getting on with it” proved a challenge in itself, for most of the group felt quite uneasy, if not frustrated, by the lack of corporate directives on how to reach the group’s ambitious goals for the fiscal year. The complexity of the challenges proved a third issue, for few of the customer and organizational challenges at hand could be solved by traditional top-down command and control processes.

The workshops’ exercises and outputs proved quite informative. The discussions on “truth ” and “trust” demonstrated to many the importance of personal engagement in reaching organizational objectives. The discussions on “getting on with it” brought to light both where existing practices and experiences could be channeled to get work done, and where top management needed to provide more input to move the team forward . The exercises around the ladder of trust demonstrated how the group could use the wisdom of their peers in building operational value levers one step at a time to meet financial objectives. Finally, the group’s conclusion that truth was less about storing the facts in a database and then archiving them for posterity, than about building and strengthening relationships inside work and out.

A few potential experiments that can help CIOs and their teams build trust within their organizations and with their business partners include:

Open up your communication challenges. Extend your information systems to address not only formal institutional communication, but to capture and air the information communication once reserved to talk around the coffee table. Encourage management to go beyond the facts to document the rationale behind the decisions that have already been made, and the tough choices that lay ahead.

Develop information systems that encourage bottom up input . Compare the benefits and risks of “unbounding” the enterprise systems that mirror organizational truths. To what extent can 2.0 technologies break down the barriers around data to shed light on the stories behind the facts?

Encourage management to explore the nature of organizational issues. Which problems are well documented and can be solved by optimizing processes or applying best practices. Which problems elude organizational answers that have been answered by experts.

Note: Editorial published in CIO Connect, April 2010

The Chair of Emerging Economies and Technologies at the EMLyon focuses on how the interplay between innovative technologies and business models is transforming management teams, organizations and markets. I am publishing thereafter a pre-release of the first edition of CEET InFocus for your information and potential suggestions. Your comments are invaluable and would enable us to improve our newsletter has been designed by our Chair to foster conversation around our customer value propositions for students, faculty and business partners.

Should you want to be included in the distribution list of the CEET InFocus newsletter, please contact Professor Lee SCHLENKER, ChairEET

A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) survival guide for marketing managers (part 2) – unabridged

note: this is part 2 of 2 in a series of articles on the subject of SEO and marketing, originally published at Bnet.co.uk. This piece is the unabridged version of the article.

10 steps for improving your SEO dramatically and simply

including a slideshare pictorial guide for SEO marketers (see bottom of article)

Important notice: it is reminded that this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to SEO. All steps have been voluntarily simplified in order to help marketing managers, not to turn them into bespectacled anoraks. My method described here is simple, it is certainly not scientific, it is bound to make any SEO guru scream in dismay I’m sure, but I’ve tried it and it worked time and time again, so I believe there must be something good in it.

Step 1: define your SEO niche

Trying to be all things to all people is a bad thing in Marketing in general, but in web page optimisation it is a lethal mistake. First and foremost, one has to target a so-called SEO niche in order to be well positioned in search engines. Reaching number one rank is a nice to have but can rarely be achieved from day one. On the contrary, it is easier and more effective to aim at niches, one at a time for each page you want to index, and eventually, your ranking will improve.

1.       Target 3 keywords (or combination of). I don’t mean that one cannot index a page for more than 3 keywords, I have seen counterexamples. What I mean is

a.       It’s difficult to target more than 3 keywords from a resource viewpoint,

b.      If you want to be consistent, these keywords will have to be repeated all over your text, so imagine if you have 10 of them!

c.       Your website has probably more than one page so do use other pages to target other keywords, based on relevance (the more the keywords are repeated in the page the more relevant because it means that this page really is about that),

d.      Don’t try and spam search engines, their designers are really shrewd, so spamming a page with repeated keywords may sound very clever but I assure you it’s not plus your readers might not appreciate your style.

2.       Analyse popularity AND competition and focus on that KEI

a.       keyword popularity will tell you how much a keyword combination is sought after,

b.      competition will tell you how often your competitors have tried to use this combination of keywords for their own SEO,

c.       the right combination between a & b is called the Key Efficiency Indicator index (aka KEI), a very effective way of balancing the two factors,

d.      bringing realism using personal judgement is also advised. Some of the numbers given by some keyword generation tools (see last section about useful tools) will not make much sense unless you interpret them properly and eliminate irrelevant keywords. For instance, networks appears as if it were a relevant keyword for telcos but in fact it’s not because it’s too vague as it mostly refers to social networks. A simple search engine query will prove the point very quickly and therefore, the ambiguity can be removed by qualifying the keyword better (network security is more relevant for instance, etc.)

e.      each page can/must be indexed with a different strategy in mind. This is how you can ensure that different targets are reached from the same website.

note: “The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) was developed by search engine guru Sumantra Roy. it compares the daily searches with the number of competing Web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are good enough so you can use them while optimizing your site.” (source: sitepoint)

Step 2: fine tune your page title

As said in our previous post about Internet content, good content shows in the title. Good SEO too, and this is rather obvious so I won’t expatiate.

Step 3: implement keywords in the URL

Adding your keywords to your URL is also very effective as it will improve the search engine friendliness of your website. It also means generic keywords. Business people are always obsessed with their brand – and this is natural to an extent – but Internet visitors aren’t forcibly. What you have to do is get them to associate your brand with the good content that you are providing. It’s just the same objective but it works the other way round.

Enterprise 2.0 fear factor: Overcoming risks, uncertainties and doubts

There are risks associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers. While these technologies and other social networking softwares are facilitating knowledge sharing, accelerating team communications, fostering increased collaboration and online communities creation, many executives are recognising their value but worry about losing control of information, compromising sensitive data, opening their networks to security breaches or even exposing employees to time-killing “network noise”.

Liability for potentially illegal activity involving workers, risk of malware infections, bandwidth constraints and other drop-offs in employee productivity are obvious reasons why the “open social Internet” just goes against the instincts of many Chief Information Officers.

It is also true that employees using these systems for group collaboration, usually operate outside the approved IT applications, meaning they aren’t actually subject to enterprise policies governing compliance and information protection. It is obviously a challenge for any IT professional to give up control over the IT systems they depend on. As Enterprise 2.0 is decentralised and ad hoc, control is in the hands of users rather than the IT department …

Changing your marketing mindset: 12 steps to the interactive future

We recently touched on the subjects of the many forms of web marketing tactics that could potentially be utilised as part of your digital marketing arsenal as well as the effectiveness and increased use of these online tools. So while we are on the topic of integrating innovative techniques into your marketing plan, let’s consider this from a broader, more strategic perspective, rather than a pure tactical point of view.

Today, marketing is exploding with possibilities but also complexities as it reaches out into new forms of communication channels and increasingly engaging media. Marketers have an exceptional opportunity to use these new tools to reach their audience, even in a fragmented world. It is becoming essential for marketers to understand the context of the “new marketing”, and prioritise what they need to do to develop customer engagement, build communities and maximise profit in a time of marketing confusion. Online and interactive marketing initiatives should indeed be considered as an effective divergence from traditional marketing mediums as marketers have the opportunity to engage customers in a “conversation” that is not just steered toward standardised product messaging.

I echo Larry Weber, global communications entrepreneur, that “The customer is in control” or “Web 2.0 will change marketing as we know it” could be considered as neo-platitudes. I would simply argue that few marketing professionals, even if growing by the day, embrace these new concepts and adapt their marketing approach accordingly.

An excellent excerpt from his recent book “Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business” is highlighting 12 steps to the interactive future that marketers should take to recalibrate their efforts and change their mindsets on how to improve their marketing effectiveness. This 12-step approach is a great way to organise your thinking about the differences between the traditional marketing of yesterday and the new marketing of today and tomorrow, and includes the following recommendations …

How are companies marketing online?

The evolution under way in digital marketing reflects fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour. Leveraging the digital universe now requires marketers to look beyond traditional tactics. As the Internet gains influence and online techniques take on a larger role in strategies, digital marketing may well be the next frontier for consumer engagement and marketing effectiveness.

Although there are many online tactics available to supercharge your digital marketing plan, not all of them deliver the same effectiveness or even are appropriate. It is obviously highly depending on the target audience you are trying to reach and develop relationship with, the products and services you are promoting as well as the marketing objectives you are trying to achieve.

A McKinsey Global Survey of marketing executives from around the world entitled “How companies are marketing online” offers some solid insights into the future of digital marketing together with an excellent synopsis of Web 2.0 and online tools effectiveness as well as how they are increasingly being used to develop customer engagement …

36 online techniques to supercharge your 2008 digital marketing plan

Got your marketing plan ready for 2008?

Let me first ask you this simple question since you would be surprised (or not) to discover that a startling 40% of marketing professionals don’t even have a formal marketing plan. Surprisingly, not everyone develops a plan – even though most will agree that it is the foundation to successful and effective marketing.

If, on the other hand, you are not among that 40%, you and your team likely have a 2008 digital marketing plan devised by now. But are you confident that this plan can boost your sales and exceed your goals? Did you organize your marketing efforts to deliver maximum results quickly and efficiently? Have you actually developed the roadmap enabling you to leverage online marketing techniques in order to supercharge your sales and marketing efforts in 2008?

In many instances, your product and services will lend themselves to a variety of online marketing tactics, many of which are extremely well suited to reach your intended audience and highlight the value of your offer. One of the key advantages of online marketing is indeed the ability to utilise effective low-cost techniques that are typically easy to implement and are highly effective at producing, capturing, and capitalising on inbound traffic in a very cost-effective manner …

Predictions for 2008 … Eight business technology trends to watch

While every day seems to bring a whole bunch of predictions and thoughts for this new year (and the decade to come!), I have selected this excellent article from The McKinsey Quarterly entitled “Eight business technology trends to watch“. In a Nutshell, this article provides an extremely interesting overview of emerging technology-enabled trends that will shape businesses and the economy in coming years.

These trends fall within three broad categories, namely managing relationships, managing capital & assets and leveraging information in new ways, and include …

New Year’s top resolution: Managing your online reputation!

Now that we’re on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies’ top priorities – and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.

Managing online reputation is fast becoming a growing problem for businesses. With the rise of social media and user-generated content, the Internet has quickly become a complex ecosystem where public opinion can be created and disseminated within seconds. Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media can be a daunting task for any company. Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious and managing your business’s online reputation is key to owning your brand.

So now is the time to take control of your online reputation!

Discover how to maintain, enhance & protect your brand identity …

Which consumer 2.0 are you?

Almost every demographic group is engrossed in the Web, even if with different levels of participation depending on their profile. Whether they can be considered as creators, critics, collectors, joiners or just spectators, users are getting smarter about the Web 2.0 tools.

Many companies approach Web 2.0 as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is required. Social strategy indeed starts with an understanding of your target audience’s Social Technographics profile. It is then a matter of mapping out how users will participate and how relationships with your target audience will change over time in order to implement technologies accordingly. You will also need to make sure that your organisation is prepared for greater levels of participation and engagement.

It’s time to shift your focus and home in on your customers! Discover how …

The Shifting Balance of Power: When CRM becomes CMR

Many organisations aspire to be customer-centric, yet few have figured out the recipe for successfully transforming their business. It seems like it was just yesterday that companies were discovering the importance of implementing CRM technologies and strategies aimed at acquiring new customers, managing effectively customer interactions, selling more to current customers, analysing the effectiveness of marketing activities and providing better customer service. All in the name of building stronger, longer lasting business relationships. Well, today is a new day, and the customers now decide who they do business with, as well as how and when they will do so.

 

“CMR” – or “Customer Managed Relationships” started to be spoken about 2 years ago but still gets little airplay despite Web 2.0 gaining increased traction as a full-fledged platform fostering collaboration, participation and community building. Companies will only achieve improved results in this “customer managed world” if marketers are quickly understanding and embracing this new concept, and are changing the way they define customer centricity accordingly.

 

So what does implementing a CMR initiative really entail?

Word-of-Mouth or when the unbiased opinion is trusted around the globe

All recent studies demonstrate that word-of-mouth (“WOM”) has more of an impact than any other traditional forms of communication. Having a word-of-mouth and social marketing strategy is therefore becoming essential and marketers will have to quickly learn how to effectively target consumer influencers. They should focus as much attention on what consumers are saying about their brands online as they do on any other form of communication.

Word-of-mouth marketing may be the oldest form of advertising but, as a marketing discipline, is a relatively new and increasingly important phenomenon that should be considered as a double-edged sword by marketers. Indeed, the more companies try to control or direct word-of-mouth, the greater their risk of failure. Inspiring consumers to “spread the word” is challenging, and clumsy attempts at it can do more harm than good. Marketers therefore need an authentic approach to make word-of-mouth work well. On the other hand, properly executed, WOM marketing is an incredibly effective weapon in the marketing arsenal, because the message comes from a trusted source.

Giving consumers a reason to talk about you, making it easy for them to share information, engaging and energising them to spread the good word are key ingredients of any word-of-mouth marketing campaign. Here are a couple of tips & tactics to start reaping the benefits of effective WOM marketing …

Sales 2.0: Taking sales to another level

Yes, the ’2.0′ hype is getting somehow out of hand and the moniker now comes to Sales … There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘Sales 2.0′ and how companies can benefit from adopting Web 2.0 concepts and technologies in sales. The movement is under way to classify and clarify this latest version of sales-related technology. So before we dismiss Sales 2.0 as yet another buzz word, let’s try and identify what ‘Sales 2.0′ really means for the sales and marketing disciplines.

It seems that Sales 2.0 truly merges sales and marketing into a seamless effort to target buyers more effectively using innovative and integrated tactics with an objective to bring in a lot more business at a lower cost. It is also about making anything and everything in the sales and marketing lifecycle measurable, so that you can take that information and resulting analysis to further optimise your sales process. More streamlined processes, together with the technologies to carry out smarter approaches, can immediately help organisations that are committed to moving their sales and marketing efforts to the next level of performance and dramatically accelerate their sales cycle.

More than a collection of technologies that help sales professionals personalize information for customers and interact with them rapidly, Sales 2.0 should be considered as the synthesis of new technologies, models, processes and mindsets.