Last week Reuters UK reported that Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) rejected the latest bid from WPP, the world’s second largest ad firm.
Sounds like they’re closer to becoming bedfellows with WPP’s German counterpart, GfK.

I thought WPP chieftain Martin Sorrell covered all the bases as he described his firm’s motivation:

“Growth is being driven by continuous pressure on clients to raise
their like-for-like revenue growth and to optimise their investment
against a backdrop of changing demographics, decreasing product
differentiation, intensifying global competition, the fragmentation of
the media and the impact of digital development.”

The forces at work here are disruptive to say the least. The big agencies are getting pressure from clients to move away from costly print and TV ads and move to more conversational forms of marketing and advertising. It’s not enough to just deploy a microsite and track page views. Customers want real-time information and they’re demanding it on their terms.

If I were a mid-market or large brand, I’d cut down on the one-off microsites and email-based newsletters and move the conversation to more interactive environments. Many companies have figured out that tapping the collective wisdom of their customer base provides huge value. Evidence of this is the large number of customer-driven communities and B2B networks getting sponsorship deals from consumer brands and software companies. It’s likely these communities are where your customers are lurking anyway or they’re building their own versions. Why not engage with them on their terms and in their environments?

I’m not calling for the death of traditional marketing techniques - unless there’s no infusion of 21st Century smarts.

SDL Tridion’s PR firm sent this to me last week and I couldn’t resist.
——————————————————————————————————

Web sites that are attractive but have no real substance – the “bimbos” of the Web world – are the most frustrating on line experience according to research carried out by SDL Tridion.

The top 5 online frustrations, as revealed by the research are:

1. Pop up ads: Like acne or ex-boyfriends – always appear at the wrong time and difficult to get rid of, 78 percent of respondents voted this the most frustrating aspect of the web.

2. Long intros you can’t click out of: Too much irrelevant information that wastes time; 56 percent of respondents were irked the most by this.

3. Hitting ‘back’ and losing all your information: Too much like hard work – 53 percent of people were driven to distraction when they had to repeat inputting their details.

4. Downloading new applications: Web sites are too flashy sometimes. If all you want is information, having to spend minutes downloading the latest version of an application to watch a video or read a document bothers 50 percent of people.

5. Asking for personal details: Why do you need to fill in your life story to get an answer out of some companies? 49 percent of people found this nosy neighbor attitude annoying.

“A company’s Web site is often the first thing visible to people when doing an on line search. First impressions count and all “fluff” and no content drives Web site users mad,” commented Erik Aeyelts Averink, president at SDL Tridion. “Don’t push customers away and annoy them for no reason.”

Also infuriating people are moving graphics that are difficult to click on (40 percent), a site without the usual options like contact us or about us (48 percent) and irrelevant information on overcrowded homepages (39 percent).

“These elements aren’t just annoying; they make up the Web site from hell,” continued Erik Aeyelts Averink. “Companies need to ensure they aren’t alienating Web users.

The Internet is often the first port of call for research and a Web site deserves the same time and effort spent on other marketing materials. If companies continue in this way they will lose not only customers, but their reputation.”

Here, Here.

Here’s the Flickr set.

This one’s spinning around the web, most recently seen in the Twitterverse.
Enjoy.

| View | Upload your own

It was a hectic June and I’m finally starting to distill some of my conversations and briefings. I was in Boston a few weeks back for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and while I definitely came back energized, the best part was the old-fashioned version of social networking — pressing the flesh as the saying goes.

I was there as media and while I would’ve liked to have blogged more about the show, I did manage to get some microblogging in courtesy of CoverItLive’s service. I realized early that I’d be attending a bunch of sessions with a crappy Wi-Fi connection in the backdrop, so I figured I’d cut my losses and get as much micro content in place as possible.

The widget below is the snapshot of my ad hoc meetings, session tracks, and a few hallway and bar conversations. Some of the latter were definitely the more interesting as I had several instances where I connected with folks I’d blogged with and collaborated with through Twitter and other channels.

I ran the CoveritLive widget on the Content Management Connection and ECM Blog after the show and noticed it had about 500 unique views over the course of a few days. How much of that had to do with the novelty of the service remains to be seen. Janet Lee Johnson thought it was cool enough to blog about it, and I noticed it had enough lift to light up Twitter with a few Tweets.

A few weeks back I tripped over Wordle.net on Twitter. It’s nothing terribly revolutionary as tagcloud creators and folksonomy generators go, but the implementation and design of the service is top-notch. Give it a del.icio.us username or plug in an RSS feed and watch the creation and compiling begin.

Before you get too Wordle-y on us,go here and make sure you have the latest JAVA software update.

My del.icio.us Wordle:

 My Marketing Blog Wordle:

Fun stuff.

I haven’t spoken to TauMed in a while, but I’ve been tracking their progress over the last year or so. Last month I got an email from CEO Tauseef Bashir telling me that MediaNews Group, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper company, has finalized a partnership with TauMed to launch a multimedia health vertical for all its newspapers and regional portals.  According TauMed, its content and social media services will be integrated into all of MediaNews Group’s Web sites.

This is a smart move by MediaNews Group, if for nothing else than realizing that the 1.0 stickiness so enviable at one time has now taken the form of socially-driven content, which brings a whole new meaning to the term pageviews. I think future iterations of the (web 3.0,etc) will revolve around the quality of the content being produced and delivered — or niche content if you like. And the big media companies are realizing that their newspapers alone just ain’t gonna pay the bills. In today’s media landscape, MediaNews can’t be satisfied with simply reaching your doorstep with yesterday’s news printed on dead trees.

They have to know you’re a pregnant mother on the north side of Dallas that’s interested not only in oil prices but bio-degradable diapers. I’ve heard the term hyper-local used on occasion and I think that says it all. The more targeted content MediaNews (and others) can deliver, and the more it can empower its users to deliver, the longer they’ll stay relevant. TauMed is a step in that direction.

You can see a few of the sites below.
http://connpost.taumed.com
http://chicoer.taumed.com
http://greenwichtime.taumed.com
http://stamfordadvocate.taumed.com

Enterprise 2.0 is here folks. If you’re here in Boston for the conference, you’re obviously already a big believer. And if you’re an oracle customer, you might already be well down the enterprise 2.0 path.

I caught up with Oracle VP and enterprise 2.0 evangelist Vince Casarez recently to get the scoop on how the world’s largest software company is ideally positioned to help customers transition to enterprise 2.0, a term describing the tools and processes companies are adopting to drive better collaboration among finicky knowledge workers. He says that while the enterprise 2.0 space is maturing rapidly, companies are figuring out that enterprise 1.0 fundamentals still apply.

“We think it makes more sense to inject best-of-breed Web 2.0 capabilities into your enterprise application environments,” said Casarez.

He says knowledge workers are more likely to adopt new ways of sharing information when they have a sense of familiarity or connectedness to existing applications or workflows. He’s got a point. An overused example of that comes from Oracle’s arch rival Microsoft. Think of all the applications that have lived and died by the Microsoft Outlook sword. Fact is, if you can thrive in the ecosystem of an existing enterprise application, you’ll get a chance to live, or be adopted, as the saying goes in software.

With Oracle’s line of business (LOB) applications so prevalent, does that mean all of its customers will adopt its software to join the e2.0 ranks? Of course not. There will always be customers that gravitate to the start-ups, hoping to get a few months of added capability tacked on to spur time-to-market and and potentially cut costs. After the best-of-breed sparkle fades however, most companies will come to the realization that enterprise 1.0 never really left us.

Things like IT governance, compliance pressures and vendor viability will rear their collective heads just as they always do. Couple that with the fact that CIOs are now realizing they can look to existing infrastructure to satisfy enterprise 2.0 requirements and you have a compelling business case to look to an Oracle.

“Large enterprises have invested millions of dollars in existing applications, not to mention the training that goes along with having to ensure large-scale adoption of that infrastructure,” added Casarez.

I also asked Casarez about the enterprise 2.0 activity within its channel of solution providers and integrators.

“We’re seeing some very sophisticated enterprise 2.0 use cases start to emerge from our channel partners.It’s clear our customers have moved past the experimental phases of enterprise 2.0,” he said.

If you’ve followed any of Oracles’ web 2.0 moves over the last year, you know that customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation are two areas ripe with current pilots and early implementations.On the CRM front, its move to create more social CRM capabilities has drawn some praise from industry observers and it (CRM) seems to a breeding ground for a lot of enterprise 2.0 pure plays.

Its dThree implementation has been a showcase for Oracle on the marketing services front. I spoke to dThree a while back and saw what the right web  2.0 “injection”, as Casarez says, can do to sometimes stale marketing platforms. dThree layered just the right amount of social computing features to its marketing platform, built from the ground up using things like Oracle WebCenter and Fusion middleware.

Who says the enterprise software guys are just enterprise 2.0 window dressing.

The Austin-based WCM guys at Vignette sent me a story discussing how NASA manages its information and technology infrastructure. It of course highlights Vignette’s involvement among other things, but more importantly it underscores the dynamic nature of content these days. In NASA’s case, they have multichannel publishing requirements that span everything from NASA TV, to its website, to Second Life.

“A key tool the team uses in-house to keep the content organized is Vignette 7.2 (specifically, Vignette Builder and Vignette Portal). Remember, the mission’s content is feeding to podcasts, NASA TV on the Web, Second Life, and elsewhere. We’re taking the same content and representing it in many different ways and by all means.”-Jeanne Holm, chief knowledge architect for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

I spoke with Matthew Greeley, CEO of Brightidea.com, recently and came away impressed with its approach to delivering real value with Web 2.0 sizzle. It just released WebStorm 5.0, which uses social networking elements to capture information that companies can use to drive innovation.

You could think of it as a Facebook-like application with just the right amount of administrative flexibility to keep the IT guys happy.

A marquee client for BrightIdea.com is Cisco, which uses the platform to create custom portals that spark collaboration with customers, employees, or partners. According to Greeley, Cisco has seen impressive results using the platform, generating more than 700 ideas from almost 1,500 members in 100 countries. Try to do that with some Web-based surveys and polling widgets.

Greeley told me that many companies lack business focus when deploying a social computing strategy.

“Deploying generic social networks without a specific business objective is like putting up playgrounds at the office; it may be fun for a while, but don’t expect it to improve the bottom line,” said Greeley.

What I really like about Brightidea is how it has honed in on a particular business driver. By looking at how a company can manage innovation, Brightidea takes the best-of-breed approach instead of trying to be all things to all people. Greeley says once it perfects that piece, it can move on, driving deeper into the enterprise and affecting other more traditional areas of collaboration.

That focus should certainly give WebStorm 5.0 a leg up in the battles to provide social computing infrastructure to large corporations over the next few years.

Companies are finally realizing the more you can apply the fundamentals of Web 2.0 to specific business objectives, the better the chance at ROI.

There’s no question that Mashups are hot right now. In fact, it’s a market that Forrester’s Oliver Young says could be worth nearly $700 million by 2013. Vendors in every sector are rushing to deliver these so-called “situational applications” to sophisticated business users everywhere in the hopes of improving collaboration and spiking productivity.

A vendor I covered recently and one that’s in the in the middle of Mashup mania is MindTouch, makers of Deki Wiki, Web 2.0 middleware that’s part content management system (CMS) and part Mashup maker.

Part of my inclination to cover MindTouch’s recent announcement was the results I was able to achieve on my own using Deki Wiki. Pointing and clicking through a hosted instance of its Pro version was a breeze recently. I was able to build a pretty extensive site with multiple pages, widgets and several other web services extensions in less than 30 minutes. Once you navigate through your own instance, you quickly get the sense of what all the fuss is about.

Apparently its latest “Jay Cooke” v8.05 release was good enough to turn the heads of  Mozilla, which selected MindTouch for the upcoming re-launch of its Developer Community. In a prepared statement, Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s Chief Evangelist, said the platform’s ease of use, architecture and feature set drove the decision after a lengthy evaluation.

One of the features MindTouch told InformationWeek about was what it touts as the first polyglot application on the Web.

That new capability is helping Mozilla host all languages as a single site, allowing Deki Wiki’s user interface to adapt to the particular requirements of each page. That’s big, especially if you’re like Mozilla, who previously had to managed 16 distinct multi-lingual sites before partnering up with MindTouch. 

You can see a quick demo of its polyglot feature below:

Similar to last week’s story on Alfresco and its vision of mashups, MindTouch is sometimes hard to pin down. But that’s also the beauty of what both companies do so well: they give the power of the platform back to the users.

Recently I’ve been pretty hard on content management vendors by pointing out some of the mistakes that can drive them out of business. While vendor elitism with customers can be a big problem, I can’t let content management clients completely off the hook. There’s a few mistakes that I’ve seen over and over in every vertical.

Hiring Resources Based On Price
Let’s take marketing, for example; it’s hard to show the clear ROI for a dollar invested. I’ve seen more companies that choose to hire a communications or marketing manager that’s inexperienced in the industry, but fairly cheap. This is the person controlling your content, your message to the outside world. If they don’t understand the dynamics of what it takes to manage a modern-day Web site, your brand will suffer. We can make a similar argument within the IT group — if the collaboration software is handled by a non-collaborator, you’re probably doomed to live out your collaborative existence in the meager confines of Outlook. The end result is the usually powerful combination of content and collaboration is deemed another shiny, new technology failure.

Choosing A Vendor Based On Personal Reasons, Not Technology
Similar to reason No. 1, choosing a vendor based on any reason not related to the ability to ensure you look like your own media company is unacceptable. In the past year, I’ve seen companies hand over their content strategies to the CEO’s brother-in-law, the founder’s nephew, the co-founder’s fraternity buddy, and more. I’m not saying some of those folks aren’t capable of providing value, it’s just that most of the time the expectations are unrealistic. Some of the results are actually really funny, in a sad, "how much did you pay them?" sort of way.

Using Technology That Dates From The Wrong Decade
So maybe your company has avoided the first two pitfalls; you picked a solid vendor that delivers good results, and you’ve got the right team in place. Don’t cripple them by refusing to invest in the right technology. Yes, the market moves fast and it might feel like just yesterday you spent a fortune updating your infrastructure. But the best jockey in the world won’t win the race on an old horse. Listen to the recommendations of your team; chances are they’ve already used other tools that might be complementary to what you’re trying to do.

And you know the routine: Send me your customer experiences and we’ll post them here periodically. Don’t worry, we won’t expose them or you unless you give us permission. All details will be removed to ensure everyone can return to their office without having to worry about the content management walk of shame.

• Report says enterprise mashups on the rise
  Forrester says business mashup market will reach $700 million by 2013
  (tags: mashups enterprise+social+platforms web+apps social+software+applications)

I read this PCWorld story and I couldn’t help but think how indicative it is of of the typical command and control mentality within enterprises. I know there’s a balance between fighting the external social network (SoNet) effect and creating a corporate one of your own. With all the technology horsepower and APIs gone wild, shouldn’t we be able to figure out how to create some harmony between the two? The quote from one of the Gap’s web engineers sums it up pretty well:

“Do you really want Facebook to manage it for you in the outside world, or do you want to do it yourself so you have control?”

Control. It’s a word I hear over and over: How will we maintain control of what’s being said by the community?

I’ve talked to more companies than I can count about social publishing, social media, and setting up communities. The enterprises that typically lead the charge tend to be the ones that want to sell software or services to setup the community. But like communities in the real world, who wants to pay for the roads that others will use? When we talk to the brands in the community cross hairs, well that’s when you see the cold sweat start to break out.

The big brands hire in teams of marketing folk from the best B-schools to manage their content. They pay the most expensive consultants to determine what color has which meaning for their brand; what word has which association in middle America vs. big cities; heck how does this kid think vs. that adult. It’s been done this way for years, decades, and now, that level of tight brand control is showing cracks.

For the last decade or more, people with passion for products are expressing their views over the web - the enterprise fear originates when the views aren’t all that rosy. With all of their collective experience, too many companies still have the fear of shelling out big bucks to develop a social publishing strategy. Do they really want to give the rest of the world a forum to say what they’re really thinking?

The bus has already left the station folks; the negative views are already finding their ways through other sites and locations. I try to encourage brands to embrace both the negative and positive discussions their consumers have, preaching that it’s important to learn from the negative and leverage the positive. 

But for all of those brands who don’t want to build the roads that provide more interaction with their consumers: your consumers are taking other roads already available. Enable them to speak freely with and about you.

That’s social publishing.

• SaaS, Web Services Top Software Priorities For Businesses | InformationWeek
  “The No. 1 ranked criteria for vendor selection of SaaS was deployment speed and ease of integration.”
  (tags: SaaS web+services technology+adoption collaborative+technologies cloud+computing)
• Intel® Mash Maker : Browser-based Mashups
  Pretty easy to use and has a nice Windows Media Player plugin.
  (tags: mashup plugin software web2.0 intel mashups mash+maker)
• So What Is an Enterprise Mashup, Anyway?
  Here’s some ROI for you too: “..It combined the service with its loan application system on its Web site. In the first two months, 80 percent of its 72,000 applicants used e-signatures, which cut its costs in this area by 75 percent.”
  (tags: mashups web+apps SOA web+2.0 APIs enterprise+2.0)

Last week I mentioned the danger to companies that disregard trends in the content management space. I’m going horizontal this time and taking a crack at one of my favorites lines of business — marketing.

Here’s some ways content management is changing marketing:

3: Killing direct mail. I learned years ago that a successful direct mail marketing campaign has a 2% response rate. That would mean that 98% of the papers cluttering our mailboxes are meant to be unused. Whether we consider this a junk mail issue, a snail-mail spam issue, or a green issue, does anyone really need to incur the costs associated with stacks of unread fliers anymore? Deliver your content over a more targeted electronic medium, and maybe you’ll have the added benefit of also annoying fewer potential customers.

2: Improving measurement and analytics. People get Ph.D.s studying and trying to generate ROI models for marketing. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to tie back exact dollar amounts to individual marketing campaigns. That said, many of the newer ways to deliver content to target markets allow for immediate and measurable responses. If you have the right content analytics in place to track clickstreams and other behaviors, marketing programs can be tracked immediately, something that helps marketers re-tool strategies in almost real time.

1: Marrying IT and marketing. Marketing always has held the creative types, while technology holds the rest of us geeks. If this split is maintained now, though, the best marketing content won’t be delivered over the latest platforms, and entire market segments may be missed. Mobile applications, targeted e-mails that make it through spam filters, optimized Web sites, and ad widgets weren’t part of marketing history, but are taking over the present and the future. Internal company departments need to work together now more than ever. The marketing types don’t always need to understand exactly how to set up a blog or track feedback, but if no one on the team does, well, what a shame to waste good content.

And BTW, if you like stuff like this, you might want to subscribe my blog at InformationWeek.

Several months ago a content management vendor told me that the oncoming recession was causing it problems with revenue generation. I said perhaps, but it’s also possible its problems were related to the fact that its customers were really angry and really vocal. It’s too easy to blame market conditions without taking a hard look in the mirror sometimes.

For this top 5 list I won’t name any names, but I encourage everyone to try to clean their own closets occasionally. Maybe these items will add up to survival in either a recession or peak market conditions. The top reasons a content management company will go out of business:

No. 5: You forgot to eat your own dog food. I’m amazed at the number of companies that offer content management options while their own Web content and marketing materials haven’t been updated since 1997. If you have the teams that can deliver for your customers, let them practice on your real estate first. Would you buy a suit from a man wearing rags? Maybe, but many people wouldn’t.

No. 4: Your customers hate you. The best technology in the world won’t save you if your own customers tell everyone that you’re a jerk. Please don’t ever tell your customers that it’s their fault if they can’t figure out how to use your products. Yes, content management is not rocket science, and yes, some people are amazingly nontechnical. That doesn’t excuse elitism, and if the words “The customer is just stupid” have ever come out of your mouth, you may deserve to go out of business. It sounds like I’m making this up. I’m not.

No. 3: You try to develop everything in-house. The market is moving fast, your R&D teams can’t always keep up. This isn’t necessarily a weakness — sometimes you need to pick your differentiators and source the other items. If you find that you’re missing release deadlines again and again on items readily available from other vendors or as open source, please evaluate your business model. You’re burning cash for fun, not profit.

No. 2: You disregard trends. I’ll say it again. The market moves fast and what’s on the horizon sometimes seems just plain silly at first. But we’ve all heard the famous miscalculation that the world only has need for about five computers — the smartest people have made mistakes. For those who have told me that “Green is just a fad” and “Blogs are overrated,” (both of those are direct, recent quotes) be careful of what you dismiss. Don’t fall behind your competitors because you personally drive a Hummer and wear polar bear fur earmuffs (that’s a green reference, people). Fads and trends have a way of catching on, becoming important, and filling real business needs. Be open to change, and maybe your revenue will grow.

No. 1: Your employees turn over faster than the toilet paper is changed in the corporate restroom. Whether the job market is tight or technology workers seem a dime a dozen, employees are the face of your company. If they’re leaving in droves, or you’re replacing them quarterly, it’s a morale killer and your customers sense it.

Send me your reasons for part two and we’ll post them next week.

Cross-posted on InformationWeek’s Content Management Blog.

• Google, Amazon Lead Disruptive Cloud Computing Wave, Microsoft Again Behind Curve
  Blodget comments on Microsoft’s SaaS strategy
  (tags: microsoft google trends SaaS cloud+computing amazon)
• Nokia CIO Aims for Enterprise Web 2.0 Balance
  “[Many Web 2.0 services] are good from a consumer point of view, but don’t lend themselves to corporate demands and rigor. If they were, why didn’t Microsoft and SAP go out of business overnight?”
  (tags: C-suite nokia web+2.0 business+strategy enterprise+2.0)

• SharePoint altering ECM landscape, survey says
  It has utility but lacks a user experience focus.
  (tags: sharepoint ecm ecm+vendors content+management collaboration microsoft)

• CIO - Web 2.0 - it may be social, but is it profitable?
  It’s still about traffic and how to monetize it.
  (tags: web2.0 CIO social+computing digg business+strategy startup social+web)
• Web 2.0 finally gets down to business - Fortune
  “If we hadn’t seen those Twitters, we might not have fixed that problem for six months.”
  (tags: technology trends twitter web2.0 networking facebook social+web linkedin)