Avoid social media weapons of mass destruction

Aaron Twittken writes here about the damage done recently to Domino's Pizza by a mischievous YouTube video and how Twitter users turned on Motrin's online Pharamacy because of their viral advertising campaign. Useful tips on how a company can cope with these type of attacks.

Business research : Web 2.0 is not an option but a necessity

Karen Blakeman gave a presentation at The Online Exhibition in Olympia last week. It is a great series of slides showing the importance of using Web 2.0 technologies if you are in business. Will be useful to give ideas to students. Everything from Google Street View to flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, wikis, blogs, twitter, YouTube, RSS and NetVibes.

Business research: Web 2.0 is not an option but a necessity

View more presentations from Karen Blakeman.

Leverage your inner lemon

Entrepreneur Connect describes how to turn a negative image which a product might have into a postive. This type of branding can be called Brand judo. The branding of the VW Beetle car after the second world war is the classic example of how a car felt to be too small and ugly became a classic. Check out the article here.

Where can I find business statistics?

This entry on the intute blog gives the quick and short answer! It also reminds me to promote the idea of using intute for all your searching. Intute will always give you reliable up to date results. Intute is made from items which have been checked by subject experts. In this blog post they are also chatting to you about it.

More Top 10 Business search tips

Here is another collection of business search tips from Karen Blakeman. She says :

"A group of business information researchers gathered at the London Chamber of Commerce in Queen Street, London for the TFPL workshop – facilitated by yours truly – on key web business resources. The participants were from a variety of types of organisations but they all had a mission to find out what business information was available for free or on a pay-as-you-go basis. We covered not only business information sites but also how to make better use of the advanced search features of the likes of Google and Yahoo.

At the end of the day, the group was asked to come with a list of Top 10 Tips."

Take a look here

How to influence influencers, bloggers, tweeters etc.

Robin Broitman says "In this article, I’ve pulled together resources, tips and advice that can help you identify influential bloggers and other social media users and develop strategies to engage your targeted influencers in ways that will help you achieve your objectives. I’ve included a special section on Blogger outreach and relations as well. Finally, there’s a section on tools and lists to help you in your efforts."
Full of pratical advice which gives insights into how to get noticed.

10 small business social media marketing tips

Ross Kimbarovsky suggests we begin by outlining clear goals for social media marketing efforts and figuring out how we/ll measure sucess, Once we’ve outlined goals, he shows 10 ways to begin to leverage social media for our marketing efforts.
Includes discussion of Facebook, Twitter, company blog,LinkedIn, brand consistemcy etc.

10 ways you can use Twitter lists

Sarah Evans on Mashable blog gives some ideas on how lists on Twitter can be used :
Industry peers and professionals lists
Expert lists
Recognise and rewatd customers lists
Niche lists
Employee directory lists
Political campaign lists
Location based lists
Event attendees and live tweeter lists
Self-serving lists
Promote your affiliation lists

Do social media bans work?

This article in Edge Online ( from the Institute of Leadership Management) says that organisations are blocking access to social media sites at work for fear of unwanted employee distractions. Scott Beagrie looks at whether an outright ban makes management sense and talks to firm advocates of social networks in the workplace. Is it a good thing to ban Facebook? This is a useful little article which defends the use of social networking in business, and reckons that businesses must overcome their reluctance to get involved.

State of the Blogosphere 2009 report

Technorati have released their 2009 blogosphere report.Since 2004, the annual study has followed the growth and trends in the blogosphere. For the second time, they surveyed bloggers directly. They were generous with their thoughts and insights. The 2009 State of the Blogosphere survey demonstrates the growth of the blogosphere's influence on subjects ranging from business to politics to the way information travels through communities. In a year when revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, bloggers are blogging more than ever, and the State of the Blogosphere is strong. Includes a section on monetization, revenue generation and brands in the blogosphere.

Mobile to be social networking hub

Report says that recent Forrester Research believes mobiles have the potential to become the hub for all social computing activities, rather than just complement PCs and laptops.

Example of a personalised Business Page

Here is a link to Robert W. Fernekes personalised home page. He is using the free software package Netvibes to gather together lots of RSS feeds from newspapers, blogs. podcasts etc. I use Pageflakes to do a similar thing for my home page. I think it gives a glimpse of the fuure as we become more likely to create our own home pages to suit our own needs. Using these services means that we can access our home page wherever we require by going into Netvibes or the other services.

Fads of the future

If, as some predict, Twitter turns out to be a fad it will be in good company. According to a new book. The next big thing : a rough guide to things that seemed a good idea at the time these are the top 10 fads of all time :

1. Big Mouth Billy Bass (pictured)

2.Shell suits

3.Soda Streams

4.Boil in the bag dinners

5.Athena poster of man and baby

6.Knitted toilet roll covers

7.Tupperware parties

8.Macrame owls

9.Pogo sticks

10.Tamagotchis

Old Ads Digitised

I bet we'll see lots more sites like this, with old advertisements made available online

http://tinyurl.com/ndrfrc

I did particularly badly in the online quiz.

Thanks to Janine for pointing out the power of Corn Skin Powder ( shown )

World's most valuable brands

This site is excellent for material on strategies for online branding, and has recently published a list of the World's top brands. To see the criteria they used, check the site. Here's the list...

1.Coca Cola

2.IBM

3.Microsoft

4.GE

5.Nokia

6.McDonald's

7.Google

8.Toyota

9.Intel

10.Disney

Traditional Products go Web 2.0

One of the recent success stories of a business using social networking sites.

http://mln.lego.com

enables children to show off their creativity.

Users can also canvass their views on the product, and suggest new designs.

Lego profits are up 23% in the first half of 2009 on the previous year.

Relationship marketing and the Gorilla Advert

Cadbury experts and the famous Gorilla adverts in a series of video programmes (click here) about relationship marketing which show where marketing is going in the new world of social networking. Its in 10 chapters :
Withdrawing the Wispa brand
Bringing it back
Markey research - e-groups and social networks
Brand positioning
Customer reactions to the launch
Supporting the product relaunch
Financial and operational implications
Expectations on the consumer
Summary
Update

How to use Twitter for Business

At last there is an official guide from Twitter, called Twitter 101, aimed at businesses telling them how to get the best out of it.

"So what does Twitter do for businesses?

Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great--or disappointing--experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers."

Twitter best practice for brands

Michael Brito, social media strategist and community builder at Intel, has blogged on Mashable about 10 Twitter Best Practices for Brands. The article discusses the art of using Twitter effectively for a brand. Here are his top 5 recommendations. Check out the full post for more:
Do your research before engaging customers
Determine organizational goals
Utilize either a branded or personal profile
Build your Twitter equity and credibility
Track metrics and conversation trends

Twitter Search in Plain English

Get an insight into how to use twitter for your own or a business search, by taking a look at Twitter Search in Plain English in the latest excellent Common Craft video series. Only lasts just over 3 minutes.

How did they do that ?

Apparently a US based Global Language Monitor has recently decided that Web 2.0 is the millionth word to enter the English Language !

To be accepted a word ust be used at least 25,000 times across national boundaries and outside specialisms.

999,999th word was Jai Ho! ( a Hindi phrase signifying joy used in the film Slumdog Millionaire )
1,000,001st word was Financial Tsunami ( sudden financial restructuring )

There are probably several others by now.

But I wonder what the 1st word was ?

Wikis that work

Companies are letting wikis loose among employees and customers, and reaping the benefits. In this article from Informationweek J.Nicholas Hoover tells how.

Marketing and social engagement

Came across this post about the crossroads between traditional marketing, digital marketing and social engagement: "each has it's own set of properties, there is some overlap and there are also distinct characteristics." Its a short post with a whizzy diagram.

Does social networking endanger corporate security?

According to a new poll by anti-virus firm Sophos, 63% of system administrators in companies worry that employees put their companies' IT infrastructure at risk by sharing too much personal information on social networking sites. For more see article on ReadWriteWeb.

Domino's Pizza : case study on how a YouTube video can wreck a company

Domino's pizza had a good social online presence. It had a YouTube channel, Twitter account, MySpace and Facebook presence. However it did not allow for two rogue emplyees in a North Carolina franchise who posted a dodgy video where an employee farts and sneezes on a sandwich! Alas this video was viewed over 500,00 times and the company has had to work very hard to improve their image. See ReadWriteWeb for the full story.

Twitter in Business

There has been lots of press on the use of Twitter in business recently. Any students studying e-business should have no trouble finding a variety of articles in the press. Newsbank produced the following recent examples :

Small businesses find big value in Twitter (FT, March 25th), Small businesses are catching the Twitter bug ( Daily Telegraph, March 17th ), Does Twitter save money ? (PR Week, March 27th )

Social Media Industry Marketing Report

Michael A. Stelzner has published the Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses. The report, based on responses from nearly 900 marketers, is available free. Here is a sampling of the findings:

Marketers are mostly new to social media: 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT 72% have onlybeen doing so for a few months or less.
How much time does this take? 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly.
The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followedby increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.
The top social media tools: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
Social media tools marketers most want to learn about: Social bookmarkingsites were ranked of highest interest, followed closely by Twitter.

How to develop a Facebook site

Ever wonder how companies/organisations should maximise the potential of a facebook site?


"Over the past few years Facebook has witnessed a dramatic rise in new user adoption and with that rise has come the opportunity for brands to interact directly with existing customers and engage new ones. At the end of 2007, Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Pages and last week they launched a revised edition which includes a number of significant upgrades. This week, those pages will be going live for all. There are numerous ways for brands to leverage Facebook but the overall branded experience is becoming increasingly integrated into a single offering as the new Pages product highlights. So what are the primary benefits and changes for the new branded pages?"

Hee are the tricks, in a post called "How to develop a Facebook site", by Nick O'Neill. Gives 10 strategies every brand should know and take account of. Here are the top five :

Develop Custom Tabs for Custom Ads
Don’t Let New Users Land on the Wall
Create a Unique Page Image
Integrate Applications To Increase Engagement
Join the Conversation, It’s Not Optional Anymore

e-books in schools

e-book users are certainly looking younger....

Article from Times Educational Supplement ( 20.02.09 ) about their increasing use in the classroom....

Let's park this one for the time being..

Reading at the weekend ( Times Magazine 21st February p. 12 ) about a compilation of annoying phrases I feared that many web 2.0 expressions might have made the list. The compilation appears in a new book Damp Squid : the English Language Laid Bare by Jeremy Butterfield. Here are some highlights :

1 - At the end of the day 2 - Fairly unique3 - I personally4 - At this moment in time5 - With all due respect6 - Absolutely7 - It's a nightmare8 - Shouldn't of9 - 24/710 - It's not rocket science

I'm afraid I'm guilty as charged on a couple of these.....

Twitter : we all need to be in the loop

James Harkin ( author of Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That's Changing How We Live and Who We Are) writes an interesting article in today's Times.
He says :
"Twitter's coming of age, however, is generally dated to the Mumbai terror attacks at the end of November, when minute-by-minute updates of the unfolding chaos zipped around the world by eye-witnesses armed with Twitter on their laptops and mobile phones."
He's concerned that all this tweeting activity, after the initial boost in productivity and creativity, where we are learning to do many things at once, is affecting our brains and could slow us down in the longer run. Are we just tweeting because it is the thing to do?
There's also a little starter's guide to Twitter.

Open Source: Narrowing the Divides between Education, Business, and Community

This article from Educause Review by Jim Whitehurst speaks of the importance of open source.
"Open source is a collaborative software-development method that harnesses the power of peer review and transparency of process to develop code that is freely accessible. Open source draws on an ecosystem of thousands of developers and customers all over the world to drive innovation. "

Starbuck's Twitter Feed

Starkbucks recently used their Twitter Feed ( where more than 40,000 people follow the company) to deny the fact that they no longer served decaffinated coffee in the afternoon.

Apparently it was all a mix up - and another example of corporations keeping in touch with their customers using Web 2.0 technologies.

Guide to corporate blogging

In his Guide to Corporate Blogging, Reim Abeido looks at 13 steps Fortune 500 companies take to creatye corporate blogs.

"In order to maintain a competitive edge, corporations are increasingly looking for opportunities to make them stand out. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that disperses company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving. After some initial hesitancy, corporations are slowly starting to realize that it is important to jump on the virtual bandwagon of blogging. This medium represents the missing ingredient that traditional media lacks: the ability to directly connect a company to its customers."

Happy Birthday Facebook

Five years old. Belated happy birthday. If it wasn't for the Facebook petitions there would be no Wispa bars.

Facebook won the US election ( allegedly ) for Barack Obama. He has 5 millions friends.

Even I have 53.

And it all started at Harvard University

Withdrawn from Stock and Lost Forever ?

While withdrawing this valuable item from our Statistics collection my mind turned to Lynne Brindley's article in Observer ( 25th Jan 2009 ). Who is able to access this information now....?

Particularly the brillant cover....

Are they Pods or are they Caves ?

In the University our Social Learning Space contains pods, including interactive whiteboards, and many of the new technologies. Unfortunately the Business School's facilities, rather larger but including the same type of materials are also called pods...

We have therefore started to refer to our spaces as the caves.

Here are some students working happily in a cave.

Why Twitter matters

Article in BusinessWeek "Why Twitter matters"
Can the fledgling microblogging service become a social media powerhouse to rival giants like Facebook—or will it be gobbled up?

Six techniques rto get more from the Web than Google will tell you

As this site says "The Internet has changed research dramatically. Now, it’s hard to resist defaulting to search engines, especially Google, as its capabilities grow. But you miss opportunities to get valuable insights into IT topics if you rely only on search engines."
The six techniques mentioned are still useful and may save you time.

Marketing on the new Web

I'm linking here to an excellent set of articles from i-Librarian about how some businesses are using web 2.0 for marketing.

Information Literacy skills for business

This little video by Louise Klusek is very much about what your Business Librarians Peter, Alan and Sue are trying to get across to you! To succeed in business you have to leasrn to think critically, search efficiently and create material ethically!

Speaking from her own experience as a corporate librarian working on Wall Street, Professor Klusek stresses that "information literacy skills are very important for students who are going to enter the business world...investment bankers spend 80 and 90 percent of their time doing research...they are doing the same kind of research that students are doing here."
Only difference is they're making a lot more money! or atleast they were...(my comment)

LinkedIn or Facebook?

Confessions of a LinkedIn dropout Blogger Jeff Pulver quit the professional network in favor of Facebook and urged his friends to do the same. Here's why he's not looking back.

LinkedIn has long been accepted as the social network for professionals. However, since this article from BusinessWeek Facebook has become far more prevalent across all age groups and parts of society.

Guardian Unlimited Special Reports

On current topics as a starter you can try the Guardian which keeps good archived articles together. For example ethical business or supermarkets. However if you want to do a full search of the Guardian or any major UK newspaper you should always use our database NewsBank

Web 2.0 in business : a look back in time

I've been collecting selected stories for nearly two years on Web 2.0 and business so this one is quite old! Two views of Web 2.0 in business.However it shows that in 2007 there was a debate going on, which may be useful to know about.

Network citizens : power and responsibility at work

Network Citizens: Power And Responsibility At Work (a Demos report)free to download.

Humans are social animals, spinning intricate webs of relationships with friends, colleagues, neighbours and enemies. These networks have always been with us, but the advance of networking technologies, changes to our interconnected economy and an altering job market have super-charged the power of networking, catapulting it to the heart of organisational thinking.
Social networks are providing tremendous opportunities for people to collaborate. But until now, thinking has focused only on how organisations can respond to and capitalise on networks. This report argues that we have to look equally at how networks use organisations for their own ends. That is where the new contours of inequality and power lie that will shape the network world. We have to face networks’ dark side, as well as their very real potential.
Bringing together in-depth case studies of six organisations, Network Citizens maps the key fault-lines that people and organisations will have to address in the future world of work. Not doing so puts at risk the very qualities we had invested in them: openness, innovation, collaboration and meritocracy. Since networks can act for good or ill, incubating the talents and ideas of the many, or promoting the interests of the few, the need for a new set of responsibilities is growing. If we are network members, we must be network citizens, too.

Web 2.0 in the public sector

This is a useful introductory Powerpoint Presentation given by Karen Blakeman at Managing Information in the Public Sector - The Future - Relaunching ALGIS, Tuesday 18th November 2008.

All about Twitter and business

This article by Barry Hurd '101 Business Twitter ideas, tactics and strategies' contains a wealth of links to articles, including "Twitter in Plain English".

Business impacts of social networking

The way we undertake external and internal communication, marketing and advertising will shortly become inevitable, simply because the Internet and Web 2.0 have delivered new instruments and the audience – especially millennials – is expecting corporations to use them. AT&T has produced a Trends White Paper on The Business Impacts of Social Networking.
Social networking fosters collective intelligence, collaborative work and support communities. Tools and behaviors from the consumer world are now making the transition to the corporate world, with diverse implications for changing the way businesses operate. This paper explores 10 opportunities presented by social networking, along with 10 associated challenges.

Business in Second Life

In this article Sheila Webber talks about business uses for Second Life (SL) and give some tips for working in SL. Business uses include promotion and relationship management, training and professional development,cross selling and building brand, product testing etc. It's a short and excellent introductory article written by a distinguished former business librarian.
SL is a virtual world (VW). VWs provide digital environments in which you can explore and interact.
At the moment, SL is the publicly available virtual world most used for business and education. Its distinguishing feature is that whilst the ‘land' in SL is leased from the owning company, Linden Labs, nearly everything else within SL has been created by SL users. This includes houses, clothes, cars, educational tools, art, trees, giant models of DNA or body parts, recreations of famous places and many other virtual things.

How companies use Twitter to bolster their brands

Twitter is becoming far more than a way of trackiong what your fiends are doing. See this article in Business Week. Microblogging lets an airline, for instance, monitor customers' gripes—and tweet back.

The Wall Street Journal interviews 30 business executives to find out the best ways to use 2.0 technologies for marketing an organization. These managers who are experimenting with social media tools have identified a set of principles for engaging consumers through these applications. The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World is a multimedia article chock full of relevant tips such as:
Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
Give consumers a reason to participate.
Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
Don’t control, let it go.