DC Insights

Another Top 10 for Better Blogging

I'm inspired to write this post after reading other recent "top 10" lists for blogging. . . an online medium that may seem old hat but actually requires tactics to evolve as the web evolves. I had a checklist for blogging and realized I should take the time to update it. While the original form was stronger than George's here, there is always room for improvement. So here's a good checklist for others to start with – by all means personalize it as needed. I'd be interested in knowing what's on your checklist that I missed?

Start with the content:

1. Is my post on topic and is it a concise subject matter: First, is my subject matter concise enough that it can resonate with a specific audience. Then, have I shared a complete thought and does it add value to the reader and overall conversation. In simple terms, is this worth being published?
2. Do I make a Call to Action: Perhaps the most important point, what is the objective of the post and my blog strategy and how does this post facilitate that objective. Do I want to gather information or simply enable a conversation and generate engagement? Does this tie into my blogging editorial calendar? Thanks George for reminding me of this.

Now some basics:

3. Do I have a compelling headline and intro: To improve the chances of being read, does my title pull the audience in and will my intro engage them further? Keep in mind blog summary listings only capture the first 100 or so characters. Make them count.
4. Have I included relevant media and/or visuals: Media is always better for engaging an audience. Video is best, images are good. Or, does you blog cover strategy or a process that can be represented in a compelling diagram? Are there financials involved that can be best illustrated in table format.
5. Is it a professional publication: Before I hit 'Publish', have I checked my spelling and grammar? Do all of my links work?
6. Have I included SEO data: While this won't generate 1000's of readers upon publication, it is a disservice not to include basic SEO elements, including a meta title, description, and key words/tags.

And finally, connect it:

7. Have I connected to the greater conversation: The key is for my post to add to and expand on an already existing conversation online. Have I linked to sourced /cited sites? Are there applicable community conversations that I should reference? Who can benefit from any relevant traffic I can drive through my readership? Can I tweet using a conversation relevant # marks?
8. Is my post integration with my broader strategic presentation: Assuming the post is not standalone from my previous material, have I linked to a previous, applicable blog entry or resources that I uploaded to http://www.slideshare.net/ or other social resource platforms?
9. Have I integration with my broader communication strategy: I want to ensure my post contributes to my overall goals and objectives. To ensure this, I want to integrate with the rest of my presence and material That being said, have I:
   1. Linked to relevant content on my website?
   2. Updated my website with new learning covered in the blog post?
   3. Included a teaser tie-in on my social platform forum (e.g., Facebook wall, LinkedIn status or Group, Merchant Circle account)

And just when you thought you were done:

10. Do I know what's next: My addition to the greater conversation will only gain and maintain relevance through consistency. Do I already know what's next. . . because time catches up faster than anything else. . . so keep on point and be sure to keep blogging (I've got some work to do in this category)!

Now that you've seen my checklist, what additional items do you have on yours?

Thanks goes out to Zubin Kutar for blog thoughts here, George Passwater for another top 10 here, and Josh Catone for the Mashable contribution on 5 business blogging mistakes.

[Quick 11/20/10 Update]  Ran across this post, and thought it necessary to include a not on metrics here.  Be sure to recognize the purpose of your blog and be sure to identify metrics to measure the success of your blogging strategy.  Thanks Jason!

Social Media Myths and Reality for Investing

I recently finished some consulting work with a great group of critical thinkers at The Devil's Advocate Group. We looked at the impact of social media on the worlds of investing, investor relations and corporate governance. I primarily helped with the study portion of 30 major financial Web sites – here's more info on my competitive assessment of social media sites.

What came out of the work was a surprising number of misconceptions–but also a huge amount of opportunity. In this public report, Chunka Mui and Paul Carroll highlight 5 Misconceptions that could contribute to ill conceived initiatives, or to missed opportunities in social media for investing. The report also lists 6 ways it will, in fact, be powerful in the long run in this industry.

They also identify significant questions that remain even if one skirts the misconceptions and focuses on the real drivers of social: timing, reputation management, regulations and compliance, and privacy/security.

Here are the 3 concluding recommendations for folks pioneering the social media space in investing:

1. Understand Your Doomsday Scenario: Getting a clear inventory of threats and how they might play out across your business lines and customer segments is necessary to steer the right course in a very complicated, emerging world.
2. Build a Common Perspective: By getting doomsday scenarios on the table, management teams come to a real consensus on timing and can move forward in more unified fashion. It's also valuable to maintain a tracking mechanism so that, as the months and quarters go by, it's possible to see whether change is coming faster or more slowly than anticipated.
3. Win with a robust innovation process: Once everyone is on the same page in terms of the forecasted environment, determine how to innovate by thinking big, starting small, and using the nature of social media to learn fast and scale. I'm always happy to help you with that!

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Be sure to download and read the PDF and add your own additions and challenges to this thinking - we'd love to hear from you!

My props to Chuck Callan and Bob Schifellite of Broadridge and Janey Place and Tom Waite of the Devil's Advocate Group who I had the pleasure of working with on this.

Customer Feedback Monitoring 101

As a follow up to last weeks post on using customers as a marketing resource, I want to provide some guidelines on how a company might take advantage of this great resource they have – their customers. Customer feedback on products and services, as a part of a company's online reputation, can be hugely beneficial in marketing those products and services. Best part is customer feedback monitoring does not require a large budget or resource allocations; just a set strategy, consistent processes, and the heart of customer service that makes businesses successful.

First, if you question whether customer reviews make a difference, consider:

• 70% of online customers say they trust posted customer opinions
• 24% of small businesses say an online review had a positive impact while only 4% reported a negative impact
• 88% of consumers perform internet research before they buy a product online

You also get to directly identify happy customers who can become primary influencers. As for negative reviews, ask yourself about some of the more confrontational consumer or business experiences you've had that were resolved to your liking – did that solidify a longer term commitment for you?

Policies and Procedures: To make this manageable and successful, be sure to establish a procedure for addressing feedback. First, be consistent with customer service across the enterprise (online and offline), i.e., leverage what already exists internally as a starting point. Just make sure to keep the customer experience and the goal of converting a repeat customer in mind.

Also, given the power/cost of 'space' on the web, be sure to publish customer-centric feedback policies for customers to see. Let them know you are listening/engaging to help them. Just make sure that you keep it KISS (keep is simple sam) for employees and customers. This is what a process could look like at the highest level:

If you still need to be sold, consider these benefit bullets and then contact me – there is so much unlocked potential in your customers:

• Converting unhappy customers creates repeat business and advocates for recruiting new customers
• Working through resolution processes allows companies to learn about and prevent issues from happening in the future
• While not all issues can be resolved – a few negative reviews will make positive reviews look more realistic

Have folks out there initiated similar strategies? How have initial or long term results looked? Any improvement suggestions for the high level process?

Recognizing Customers as Best Social Marketing Resource

Small to medium sized businesses ("SMB") can and should leverage their customer base to effectively promote business at a low cost through social marketing. I love sharing this concept with SMB owners, many of whom are too busy to have their companies engaged at any level of social media. Some owners are not even engaged personally (i.e., Facebook with friends and family – the simple stuff), making the term 'social media' even more foreign. Once the conversation converges on where people go to inform purchase decisions or find service professionals – the web – these folks know they miss out by not having space on that virtual billboard.

I recognize three key tenets that make this concept viable, effective, and usually low cost:

People want to contribute: It's funny, but we do. Here are some talking points. . .

• "users love to talk and listen to each other," as Bryant Shea puts it
• eMarketer predicts that 114.5 million internet users generate content by 2013 (note: eMarketer also challenges the benefit– see 'success' note below, and let me help you be successful)
• It's not always positive. . . so be sure to monitor the buzz; ReadWriteWeb speaks a bit to this

User generated content ("UGC") drives business (sales and development):

• Here's a slew of case studies from Bazaarvoice on their clients' success
• I use the term business because the initial outcome might not be direct sales, but design concepts, marketing content, and product improvements, as noted by Publishing Trends
• Through positive customer service elements in there as well

Here's that 'success' note – the right focus on social marketing is required for success

Plenty of opportunity to leverage the customer's voice: Here are some options. . .

• Company website, while a given, may seem technically difficult; here's a few starting points:
• • Start off with Vangie Beal's Five Tips for Soliciting Product Reviews
  • And even consider accessible, inexpensive tools like PowerRewviewsExpress's Customer Reviews Solution

• But the richest source - public sites (sans Angies) that folks are going to already (with a local plumber example, zip 60657):
• • bing Local: http://tinyurl.com/ybqxzuj
  • dexknows: http://tinyurl.com/yexe9y2
  • Google Local: http://tinyurl.com/yc8a8oa
  • Kudzu: http://tinyurl.com/yk3zvt3
  • Yahoo Local: http://tinyurl.com/yblq257
  • Yelp: http://tinyurl.com/yaets8f
  • Wildcards exist: servicemagic, Angie's List (I'm not a fan)

What is key about these public sites is the placement, and sorting implications, of customer ratings and comments. That's the free, UGC that people like to give. And it is the free social marketing that SMBs can take advantage of. FYI, if you want to know which one's above you should focus on, try a quick evaluation using my previously mentioned framework.

With the above, free resources being used by SMB customers to find the best products or services based on ratings and comments – it's just a matter of these businesses engaging with their customers to ensure the SMB image is positive and proactive for driving traffic. If that sound's like a hard feat to accomplish, you'd be surprised at just how easy it is.

What do you think? Have you tried this successfully? Are you intrigued but less then optimistic?

Competitive Assessments of Social Media Sites

Completing a competitive landscape analysis is valuable when exploring the social media environment – personally or professionally.  I completed a similar exercise for clients in multiple environments.  Social media’s dynamic, infancy provides a unique challenge and opportunity, though.  So, besides applying my learning to date, I also leveraged insights from the blogosphere.   Here are my insights on assessing social media sites through a high-level framework, some details included.  Paying clients and close friends get to see under the hood ;-)

To begin, identify objectives for the analysis and what stakeholders are involved.  Be sure to always keep these in mind; they will ground thinking and scope the work.  Once identified, we can build an initial list of relevant sites and a site element inventory to assess each with.  These two parameters, the scope of the project, may change as we execute the assessment work.  80/20 suggests we’ll have a good ballpark.

The initial site list should be quick to build:  known platforms, search engine results, generic category competition, and comparables in investment or industry reports.

The site element inventory is the primary focus of this post.  Just how do we assess a social media site?  Optimally, I want to provide a quantitative assessment, size and relativity, to ensure the information ‘means’ something and is ultimately actionable.

I must also recognize the [obvious] qualitative elements of social media, though.  A high quantity of blog posts and readership engagement mean nothing if the blog tone is negative and the readers are (1) not the target segment or (2) not any more enticed to act in a way that fulfills the blogger’s/site’s objectives.  This is the key conundrum of this exercise, and the primary reason why a “Social Media Site Assessment Framework” Google search doesn’t give you the same type of results as “Porter’s five forces.”  The unknown causes 39% of respondents to PR Week’s 2009 social media survey to cite “Not convinced about the value/ROI” as a primary barrier to using social media.

One relevant framework is Avinash Kaushik’s Trinity model from his Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, a must read.  The framework builds on Actionable Insights and Metrics, broken down into three components; I postulate social media-esque twists to each:

-          Behavior analysis:  Click stream analysis for him

o   Think engagement for this (i.e., who’s interacting where at what frequency)

-          Outcomes analysis:  Orders/Leads for him

o   Orders/leads tied to social media elements is important, but also think. . .

o   Expansion of the social media environment – creation of new/additional UGC

-          Experience:  Customer research for him

o   Similarly, think community opinion or voice of the crowd

I have not completely distilled the Trinity model as it pertains to assessing a social media site; that’s this weekend’s assignment and a future post.  I did use it as a reality check for the more granular Social Media Site Assessment Framework I lay out below.

The framework starts with 5 element categories that contain 4 to 46 elements for a total of 77 site elements.  This is a long list and could be considered boiling the ocean.  That’s where the identified objective and stakeholders come in - to help filter the list and appropriately scope the work required.  I’ve provided a few example elements in each category to communicate my perspective.  Here’s the framework:

-          Strategic:  Qualitative elements communicating the site’s market positioning, economics, and business operations related to site management and integration with other business activities, including:

o   Target market / Stakeholder:  Whom the site's benefits are most specifically directed, examples include:  general public, customers, vendors, industry regulators

o   Ad Placement:  Presence by volume, placement relative to site layout, and personalization based on user profile or behavior

-          Usability:  Qualitative elements on ease of use when accessing the site, including:

o   Responsiveness:  Judgment on user ability to navigate across site features (define a range)

o   Browser Compatibility:   Support of multiple browsers (e.g., IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)

-          Web Metric:  Quantitative elements to measure the sites prevalence on popularity, often requiring comparisons for relevancy, including:

o   Critical Cass:  Site traffic measured in amount of and frequency of interactions (leverage Kaushik’s principles)

o   Mentions:  Site chatter measured through platforms/technology like TrackUR with and assessment of their polarity (positive v negative)

-          Feature and Function:  User capabilities for personalizing experiences, engaging with the community, and expanding the experience beyond the URL

o   Community Contests:  Presence of engaging promotional contests that build community stickiness

o   Personalized Dashboard:  Robustness of personal dashboard development (i.e., flexibility in aggregating general and personalized social site content)

-          Extensions:  Qualitative and quantitative elements related to a sites extension beyond the URL through stakeholders' social media and complimentary activities on and off the web

o   Facebook Connect:  Integration of Facebook Connect

o   Twitter Presence:  Twitter handle and tweet interaction

With the framework in place, the process becomes standard:  (1) identify initial site list and (2) applicable elements in prioritized tiers, (3) research. . . (4) refine list and iterate on element research.  In the end you should have a solid layout of an environment with data you can use to inform competitive strategy, internal development, or even purchase/partner decisions.  This type of assessment is key for informing any social relationship management work I do.  It is also the type of work that just might define someone as an expert in the space ;-).

I’d be interested in knowing if someone else has put together a similar framework.  If so, how do they compare?  Or, have I simply not mastered my use of The Google, and there are a plethora of standard social media site assessment frameworks out there already?  You’ll have to let me know ;-)

Cheers - easiegmann

Considering the Consumer Objectives of Social Media

In talking with a client on customer objectives of social media, I realized the need for a light, flexible framework to guide that conversation. I also knew a similar framework could help guide more specific strategy development conversations, like my earlier "What is Social Media. . ." material. But. . . the social media environment is always changing and business objectives are diverse and must change to adapt. So, I developed an initial framework that can:

1. Guide conversations on social media objectives / strategy
2. Remain flexible across multiple clients
3. and Stand the test of time/change inherent to social media

Here are the framework objective categories and related activities – from a customer perspective:

• Connect:
  • Reach family, friends, customers or retailers
  • Network across affiliations
  • Share connections across groups and networks
• Learn:
  • Become informed on issues, products and services, or people along side network dialog
  • Stay informed asynchronously during one's own schedule
• Consume:
  • Sample products, services, or trial info with network guidance
  • Purchase items of interest
  • Access subscription items along side network comments
• Converse:
  • Engage in asynchronous conversations with network
  • Collaborate on products and services, issues, and activities
  • Expand the reach of conversation

With this, and a sexy PPT layout (only a true consultant can find slides sexy ;-) ) one quickly can initiate valuable conversations on strategy development. This is how I laid out Connect for conversations with a local service company (with other 3 objective categories following):

With a legend for the site symbols and site profiles in the appendix, you also have a great lead in to 'Next Step' conversations.

Looking through others' thoughts on 'social media objectives,' this framework is (1) high level and (2) from the consumer perspective. Everything else I found is from the client perspective – the Implications column and next step in conversation. Here are some good sources:

• Douglas Walker at webwalker presents a longer list of 10
• Beth Kanter's six listed objectives
• Forrester's five social computing objectives may be seen as even broader: Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting, and Embracing (post reference).

When I look at concepts that come from Groundswell (Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting, Embracing) based on Michael Brito's post, I wonder if there is a consumer side to Energize within the broader context of primary influencers in a network. I'll have to think more on that.

I like how Dosh Dosh lays out some general social media marketing goals and feel confident that the above objectives framework is a good starting point before even getting to a goals conversation (thnx Dosh Dosh!).

Tell me if you think this light framework is worth the start! Cheers

Do Social Media Experts Even Exist?

I was presented with the following query:  Do small and medium sized businesses ("SMBs") need a specific social media expert on their marketing teams. If they do, how can they tell if the expert is qualified?  It reminded me of a comment a social media presenter said to Booth Business School alumni - if someone claims to be a social media expert, they are lying!  The notion:  the environment is so new and is changing so rapidly that mature expertise is simply unobtainable.

My opinion is a bit more optimistic, and certainly self-serving (laugh track please).  So, here's my  response:

SMBs must allocate specific resources with social media expertise if the SMBs hope to appropriately engage with customers, B2B or B2C.  Two social media environment characteristics stipulate this expert resource allocation.  First, social media is a one to many, two-way engagement between a business and its customer base.  It is a fundamental shift from the one-way communications of traditional marketing and advertising and requires a broader communication skill set then one to one communications that occur at a physical location.  The required skill set can only be developed from personal and professional social media experience across a broad spectrum of sites and through multiple tools.  Time spent in the blogosphere, as a reader and possibly writer, will define a further well rounded social media skill set.

Change is the second social media environment characteristic that requires expert resource allocation.  Specifically, the engagement between a business and its customer base is always in flux with the focus shifting across products, campaign materials, culture, or even the off-time activities of employees.  Staying engaged, and sometimes above this conversation is a learned skill.  Then, even more broadly, the social media environment’s structure and MO constantly change with the evolution of sites, tools and channels participants use.  Change is so rapid, one might argue that social media ‘experts’ can’t exist, only individuals comfortable with the flux who also have the right skill set to adapt quickly and successfully engage in ambiguity.

That leads into how SMBs can recognize social media ‘expertise.’ Expertise will come from a history of personal, and possibly professional, social media engagement-3 years of heavy participation is valuable.  This engagement should span multiple sites and tools and be facilitated through web and mobile channels.  An expert should also have a footprint in the blogosphere from comments on posts read and-bonus-a blog of their own.  Past that, a manager should assess the individual’s comfort level when interacting in a rapidly changing environment.  One might suggest this characteristic and a history of social media engagement go hand in hand.

What do you think?  Is 3 years experience a good target?  Should the term 'expert' even be used?  Please enjoy digressing as you enjoy the holiday season!

Cheers

 

The ROI from Social Media – email Marketing

I want to frame this social media ROI discussion with thoughts of Francois Gossieaux who I listened to on Social Media Today's panel. Francois feels ROI is a poor indicator for social media because it is a trailing indicator that does not tell us enough about future benefits. He identified a few more valuable measures like customer equity. I am a firm believer in this position - business benefits from social media need to be measured through a new lens, not traditional ROI. But. . . slow to change companies will be managing participation and measuring benefits of social media via ROI initially. I start laying those benefits out in this first post:

Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com follows this logic stating, "While the definition of ROI is evolving to better fit the world of relationships and networks, the ability to demonstrate ROI in hard numbers -- not in followers or fans -- will become a baseline business requirement in 2010."

My initial research immediately identified linking email marketing and social media as a means to tie ROI directly to social media efforts. Email marketing can be valuable; the DMA's October '09 Power of Direct Marketing report shows commercial email returns of $43.62 for every dollar spent. The argument will be that if we can accurately tie social media involvement to an uptick in email marketing benefits, then we can start quantifying social media ROI.

Interestingly enough, consumers have clearly indicated their current preference for email marketing over social media - they overwhelming choose email over social media to share marketing offers and overall communications with businesses; a MarketingSherpa study showed that 78% of consumers share online information via email, versus 22% who prefer social media. A Harris Interactive poll found that an even higher percentage of consumers choose email to communicate with marketers over social media. Thanks Kara and Kristin for sharing this email marketing info.

But, a recent Nielsen study found that the more people use social media, the more time they also spend with email. Sure, there is a shift in the quality/content of these emails as more social media sites use email to keep members updated of new content updates and other changes. The key is that company marketing information continues to proliferate – just establish metrics that tie the sharing activity back to an e-mail database record. Then activity can be tracked across social engagement sites and back to the consumer that posted, e-mailed or tweeted about your brand. Tied with enterprise data on that customer, companies can measure ROI associated with the social media activities. I used Ryan Deutsch's notes for thinking about these metrics:

• Invitations shared: Solutions that allow sharing within a campaign offer the ability to track invitations distributed via social engagement; companies can measure the value of each social engagement site.
• Invitations accepted: Of the invitations sent out on a company's behalf, the company can identify the portion that drives actual participation.
• Conversions: Whether defined as a sale or a subscription, track conversions at the customer/recipient level to enable contribution scores at the individual and social engagement site level.
• Contacts: Social media sharing tools may cite the number of contacts per customer; companies can go one step further to establish a customer's influencer potential.

Case Study: StrongMail, a provider of online marketing solutions for email and social media, worked with CSN Stores, the third-largest online retailer of home furnishings and housewares in the U.S., to improve the performance of an existing email referral program by three times using email, blogs and popular social networks. For every 1.8 customers initially engaged, one new CSN Rewards account was created, and one in ten of those new members went on to complete a purchase. CSN believes the success of the program was due to StrongMail's technology that enable customers to easily control how and when to share CSN with their friends and family via their favorite social networks. Their approach included:

• Encourage customers to invite their friends to join the CSN Rewards loyalty program and shop with CSN
• Incentivize current Rewards members with a Reward credit for each friend that enrolled in the program and made a subsequent purchase
  • Referred friends were also rewarded with a credit for extending the offer to their networks
• Identify "Super Influencers" within recipient lists (customers who already have a defined web presence within a specific vertical like "Discount Bloggers" and already have a following relevant to a specific space with people looking for new content or the next great deal) for an optimized campaign; the targeting impact was off the charts. Here is what the CSN Stores saw:
  • 420% Increase in loyalty member subscriptions from the initial campaign
  • 326% Increase in purchase conversions from the initial campaign
  • Thousands of additional subscribers and hundreds of new purchases

WOW!

But on the other side of the argument, StrongMail survey conducted by Zoomerang this November reflects a more moderate view. The survey captured the attitudes of more than 1,000 business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, preferred marketing channels, social media adoption and anticipated customer revenue in 2010. Reflecting on 2009, only 28% have seen a 5% or greater lift in email marketing campaigns through integration with social media. Even lsee optimistic, 23% were not sure or able to measure the lift and 35% say they saw no lift through social media integration.

Maybe to Francois point above, though, the survey respondents did identify "Integrating social media and email marketing," as the 4^th most important email marketing initiative. For 2010, 69% plan to integrate social media into their email marketing campaigns with 51% already having a strategy to do so.

So, seems like there is some value here that requires deeper analysis – especially around the metrics and measuring of direct ROI. And this is just one potential area of measurement. As I continue to seek out the best, I'd love to hear more from you – how can we best tie social media efforts to traditional ROI or new metrics of business benefits?

Cheers

Social Web Running. . .

Literally that, Running. Staying true to the more entertaining weekend blogs, and to share a bit about myself besides my professional pursuits, I wanted to write about running. . . via social media. I've been a big running for about 10 years now with 8 marathons under my belt and hopefully plenty more to follow. My last was the 5^th of December, a trail marathon in Indiana – check out this elevation profile! Lots of fun ;-)

I first thought about putting a top 5 or 10 list together but quickly realized I should leave that to Carol and her Top running websites list or the Healthcare Administration Degree's 100 list. Thanks for the thorough lists, folks!

Then, I thought about a site I used with some frequency before, Athletic Minded Traveler . . . but then I found out they went to a pay-for-service model since I last used them. As a traveling consultant, I found it to be a valuable resource when it was free. . . $20 a year now, but I don't have a need. So I moved on. . . .

For a community to gain serious momentum, it might just need to be on Facebook these days, right? Well I went looking and quickly found:

• Running: The largest running associated group associated with http://www.runningnews.gr/, and I don't have a marathon planned for Greece. . . yet
• Running: The second largest, and this appears to be out of New Zealand. . . perhaps
• Running: The third largest, somehow associated with http://running-shoe-coupons.110mb.com/, but with Chicago based photos. . .

So, if you are looking to become mayor of something that could be major, try aggregating the online running community. . . somewhere (for when they aren't out running, I suppose) There is Runners Lounge, but, and this is possibly horrible to say, can any social site be legitimate without use of Facebook Connect?

I did happen upon traineo, an awesome site for someone who is looking to get seriously motivated about weight loss and fitness. Watch the quick 1:41 min video to understand. Basically, you set up goals, they use analytics to guide and motivate you. But, most importantly, you join in on a community of motivators who all help each other – that's huge. A resource like this should be used in any/all preventative health programs! I wrote about this back in June. FYI, fitlink has a similar model.

traineo in under 2 mins from traineo on Vimeo.

So there you go. . . I have not been missing too much online while I've been out running ;-) BTW, Today's run along the lake was amazing!

Did I miss any amazing online running gems that you know of?

UPDATE:  Want to give mention to Weight Loss Buddy at http://tinyurl.com/ybkqpcj with features similar to traineo.  And, it appears the site is halfway to perfection.  They are on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. . . but I want to see them (1) using Facebook Connect and (2) allowing users to share their ongoing successes via Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace.  Thanks for the reference Stacy!

Microsoft LookingGlass – A Social Media Business Tool Assessment

I've been researching how a company can engage in social media (or should) and I written blog entries on how companies have used platforms like Facebook effectively and how they might be tracking the success of their engagement. But as a company's social media engagement increases in complexity (e.g., increasing number of platforms, deeper relationships across a broader spectrum of clients) the job of management can be daunting. Then there is the higher function of integrating social media content and learning with other business areas (e.g., marketing, service, R&D). Then I happened upon Mel's blog entry on Microsoft LookingGlass (and an update). This blog entry is an assessment of Microsoft's LookingGlass based on what's currently available.

Tagline: "make social media actionable for businesses"

Description: LookingGlass lets companies listen to, participate in, and analyze social media. This includes mining social media sites for information and applying a 'sentiment' measure (created by Microsoft Research (MSR) and is based on a "machine-learned" model so it doesn't use any manually created rules or heuristics) - LookingGlass automatically rates each posting as positive or negative (sounds like a tough order - Chris Dannen agrees). These efforts are taken to the next level as they are integrated into other systems to put social media to use for advertising, sales, support, and other key business areas.

Example benefits include:

1. Seeing a spike in activity to pinpoint how campaigns are being received
2. Helping internal product teams quickly become aware of, and respond to, bugs in the products
3. Comparing internal customer data with corresponding user sentiment on Twitter or other social networking sites
4. Leveraging new layers of information to target investments in social media (i.e., discover new customer segments)

Implementation: Microsoft will engage an external SI (system integrator) to help with the deployment, training, and support. The estimated time is a one-day pre-installation training, one-day installation, and one-day post-installation training.

Strengths:

• Enables entire marketing teams to access a portfolio of social media profiles from one central platform
• Includes plans for partner development capabilities . . . we'll see how open it really is
• Available as a software-plus-service for both PCs and Macs

Challenges:

• I'll note, and comments to Mel's blog site this: social media is theoretically based on engagement, not a dashboard that aggregates tweets and Facebook comments for a marketing team to then analyze and respond to. I believe a social media team (with marketing, support, and R&D roots to start) that stays true to their MO can greatly benefit from tools like this to:
  • Manage individuals' activities across the group to make a company's presence more uniform, and
  • Better integrate their efforts with company efforts and business metrics to better validate the overall social media approach
• The product's functionality may be limited for a business that not using Microsoft's enterprise suite (thanks Leena Rao)
• Timing: Only 50 slots for the 2010 incubation period with select marketers and agencies; general release around end of 2010 or beginning of 2011

Open Question: Can this platform compete against freemium startups like Viralheat, PeopleBrowsr, Socialseek and more that offer aggregating platforms. Additionally, Salesforce.com's Service Cloud is beginning to integrate social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Barb Mosher believes Microsoft will likely be successful in their efforts to make LookingGlass used by their customers - that it integrates with SharePoint will be a key part of that success.

If you want to watch some video, I've embedded a good YouTube vid below, or check out the full 42 min show, a 4 min preview, or a 2 min preview.

Be sure to let me know if I missed something. . . and additional business tool assessments to come - Cheers