Since 2005 and the rise of the “Web 2.0″ term from O’Reilly, technology has been leading the Internet with new opportunities with companies charging into content streaming and download (Youtube, Joost, FFWD, iTunes, Vuze for example) and social networks (Bebo, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Second Life, Habbo Hotel, …). But for about 1 year another groundswell has started. Thanks to or due to, the fact is social media has kicked off a new way of thinking for the Internet, and more globally has set up a new way of working for companies. Stepping back a moment to get the big picture, here are some takeaways from the web 2.0 thing for marketing and communication. Read More

From emerging tech trends that would matter for marketing, investment in digital media going down in Q3, to Zappos’ 10 communication principles (based on WOM), and a list of reason to use social media as a CRM Tool. Here are the links. Read More

Inbound marketing vs. Outbound marketing. Said differently: Appealing people vs. Interrupting people. That is the core challenge of the Internet. Internet users are active users, they don’t wait for companies to show their products but they’re looking for stuff they need. Interrupting them while they’re searching won’t change anything because they don’t care about you online; worse, if you manage to catch their attention they feel bothered you do it and you should have a really interesting thing to say otherwise you would have spent money to get negative image. Read More

Engagement isn’t the real value of social media. Loyalty, increase of product purchase, and reputation are the objectives of social media. Aiming at these objectives generate stickiness when you achieve them. That’s what OfficeMax may achieve if they leverage well the video EepyBird, the creative team that had the idea of the Trevise fountain using Mentos and Coke, produced for them. Read More

I’ve been walking around the Mashable! post “How to measure social media ROI for Business” for 2 days, being irritated by the fact people say we can’t measure ROI of social media efforts. Aaron Uhrmacher, author of that post, is telling (you should be reading that post if not done already) there’s no accepted metrics, statistics-based ones, to measure social media ROI. How can it be possible there’s no accepted metrics? Return on investment concept is clear: for $1 I invest, how many comes up? Applied to social media efforts, for $1 I invest how much do I earn? or maybe a better way to say, how can I measure impact of social media on my company bottom line, directly or indirectly? Which then is possible. Read More

Social Media is about connecting people and sharing thoughts, ideas, feedbacks, and information. CRM is about connecting and creating stickiness to the brand. You measure CRM programs efficiency checking the returning visitors, time spent, evolution of the customer average shopping cart, % of subscription cancelled, % of new members recruited, … Social Media is a different tool to lead people to CRM programs. There’s then no discussion about how to measure impact of engagement with social media. Read More