The quote below from Harris Diamond reflects a few things.

While most brands are implementing social communications programs using one or two social platforms, only a handful are thinking holistically about managing communications across all media and touch points.

1. PR is increasingly taking the reins of interactive media strategies. Their DNA is founded in communications..social media is online media and the latter requires the same best practices as the offline world.

2. The touch points Diamond refers to stress how organizations are hard-pressed to scale engagement. Right now, brands are bulking up customer service teams just to respond..and they’re learning as they go along.

3. There’s a tug of war going on between the best way for brands to harness and reach customers. Do you build a hub. Do you fish where the fish are? Because the answer is of course a resounding yes to both, it becomes a question of who can lead the charge long-term. You have to wear customers down (with substance) with the value you provide and that takes time.

Too many see the “social” elements of media as a quick fix.

Image via Wikipedia

How can anyone really think using community and curation tools won’t be a boon to media companies and publishers? The ones that get it are already committed to establishing better ways of sharing and collaborating, baking that mindset into every part of the business.

Not so long ago every pundit preached “community” this and “community” that (me included).  Sure that’s a part of it, but in less than a few years, things like Twitter, Google Buzz and a newsier Facebook have forced private and public institutions alike to look outside of their comfy websites and community hubs.  Brands and online publishers realize the conversations happening in other online environments and niches can often overshadow much of the activity taking place on their own web properties.

The BBC’s recent statements underscore much of the shift taking place not only in media outfits but in corporations, where internal and external teams are scrambling for the right mix of engagement and listening.

"For BBC news editors, Twitter and RSS readers are to become essential tools, says Horrocks. Aggregating and curating content with attribution should become part of a BBC journalist’s assignment; and BBC’s journalists have to integrate and listen to feedback for a better understanding of how the audience is relating to the BBC brand."

Image via CrunchBase

• Tech trends for 2010 — a Netscape moment coming up [Bernard Moon on VentureBeat]
  (tags: trends 2010 media startups venturebeat online online+media)
• CMOs Want Measurable Results From Social Media [MarketingProfs]
  (tags: marketing+profs c-suite CMO social+media marketing socialmedia roi)
• Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2009 [Decker Blog]
  (tags: communications pr media Decker+Communications)
• How to use Facebook with a feed reader [jwz]
  (tags: socialmedia facebook socialnetworking howto feeds)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

• Year of Mobile? How about the Year of Now [The eMarketer Blog]
  "The NPD Group noted this week that more US consumers have mobile data subscriptions than last year, and the Yankee Group’s “Mobile Commerce for the Holidays” webinar likewise indicated strong consumer demand for multimedia smartphones with data plans."
  (tags: mobile emarketer admob mobile+computing wireless research analysts)
• CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too [Forbes]
  Agree with this: "CMOs should appoint dedicated staffers to coordinate efforts"
  (tags: CMO c-suite social+media digital+strategy)

  

• Social Media Users Really Are More Social [AdWeek]
  " RSCG-commissioned white paper yesterday stated that 27.6 percent of American social media users said that their offline relationships are actually benefiting from online interaction via social media."
  (tags: adweek EURO+RSCG research socialmedia digital+strategy marketing)
• Teaching the Facebook Generation [BusinessWeek]
  (tags: socialmedia business facebook social digital culture teaching education)
• Mobile Social Networking Grows; Top 10 SocNets
  (tags: mobile research social+networking)

There’s a bunch of old business adages related to when to spend or not. And if you’ve spent any time in marketing or advertising, you know there’s a marketing tie-in to a lot of them. Ronald W. Stampfl posed a good argument on AdAge recently on the real costs of cutting back. I embedded a Friendfeed post in case anyone wants to comment using that thread.

 The reports from CMS Watch are consistently thorough, but usually geared for more technical tire-kickers. Some of the highlights in the press release echo some of what I’m seeing in the marketplace. (Full disclosure: I work at Telligent)

I agree with part of this one:

"Vendors’ growing emphasis on specific solutions in lieu of feature creep."

Yes, solutions are clearly a trend, but a big differentiator here is the partner ecosystem. If you ask most vendors for specific solutions, most of the time you’ll get partial pieces of the solution. It’s very difficult for most pure-plays to have the horsepower to deliver end-to-end. Make sure you understand your vendor’s alliance model.

There’s loads of inevitability around this one.

"Near total absence of the kind of significant M&A activity that has created significant upheaval for some customers in the ECM and Portals marketplaces, among others"

I think the interesting part is noticing which vendors have a heavy reliance on the biggest enterprise software vendors. That should tell you who’s gonna buy who. I’d also expect a potential merger of pure-play peers. For a few, that may be the only way to survive.

The last one alludes to some of the open source activity.

Maturation of key private vendors and open source projects, whose increasingly influential customer bases play a stabilizing role with respect to backwards’ compatibility and future directions

Between Dion Hinchcliffe’s recent marketplace chart and this one (CMS Watch), Drupal seems to have entrenched itself in the social software sector. While I won’t discount Drupal’s presence, I will say the C-Suite conversations I’ve had are devoid of any Drupal references. But I’m a business guy, not someone running a dev shop or IT organization.

And yes, I’ve used the platform to perform what Drupal evangelists call "Social Publishing." I think part of Drupal’s newsworthiness is a couple of things. It’s quickly captured mind share as it’s moved from one space (CMS) to another. That tells me that not only are things still early, there’s also a lot of confusion. The other thing I think it shows is open source can (and no doubt will) coexist in enterprise environments with more traditional platforms. If you think one tool set vendor can single-handedly move you to social, you need to reset your expectations.

And Byrne ends with a bit of captain obvious, but duly notes the importance of the right implementation strategy.

"In the meantime, buyers should assess each vendor individually. "You can’t just select any one vendor and succeed automatically," concludes Byrne. "But the collective risk profile among the leading two-dozen players is definitely lower than a year ago, which means enterprises can spend more effort focused on implementation success."

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• Video Interview: Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD
  ".., he talks about another new moniker–a smart book–which is not a netbook and not a smart phone, but essentially a smart phone that runs like a low-powered, always-on laptop computer."
  (tags: qualcomm smartbooks c-suite digital kara+swisher)

• Full Disclosure: Sponsored Conversations on Twitter Raise Concerns, Prompt Standards | PR2.0
  Solis frames the discussion well but it’s just a matter of time before "Sponsored Conversations" takes hold. Hashtags and descriptors may solve some of it but it’ll be widespread before the FTC mandates anything.
  (tags: sponsored+conversations pay+per+tweet microblogging twitter advertising trends FTC)

  

• FT.com / Management – Twitter do’s and don’ts for brands
  "If last year’s must-have accessory for the clued-in marketing manager was a Facebook page, in 2009 Twitter is the place for brands to see and be seen. While it remains some way behind Facebook in total members, Twitter has recorded stratospheric growth since the start of the year. It has more than 32m monthly unique users, according to comScore, an agency that measures web traffic."
  (tags: twitter marketing socialmedia media social brands socialnetworking branding casestudies)

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• Marketing: True Efficiency Requires More Than Cutting Costs – Advertising Age – CMO Strategy
  "Marketers must also determine whether, in terms of generating ideas and strategy, it would be helpful to include external partners. For example, P&G drives a significant amount of new-product innovations by third parties. And many marketers partner with marketing-mix-modeling firms to better understand the right marketing mix."
  (tags: CMO business+strategy marketing innovation technology)

  

• Texas A&M Takes an Active Approach to Social Media Marketing [Campus Technology]
  "Diane McDonald, associate director of marketing at Texas A&M University, explained that reaching these prospects via social media takes more than a static institutional Facebook page; it takes an active approach to engage them."
  (tags: universities social+media marketing facebook social+networking)

Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

Brainstorming for Better Business – BusinessWeek

Looks like a good series from BusinessWeek on innovation.

(tags: innovation howto businessweek strategy business+strategy)

Twitter’s Ten Rules For Radical Innovators – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org
“Simplicity beats complexity.”
(tags: innovation twitter networks socialnetworks hbr)

Optimistic CMOs: Budgets & Jobs Stable, Need More Digital Focus
“50% Say Budgets Holding Firm”
(tags: CMO+Council CMO c-suite marketing+strategy marketing business+strategy)

 The CMO’s DNA
Good chart from CMO Council.
(tags: c-suite CMO digital+marketing marketing business+strategy CMO+Council)

Why Everyone’s Talking about Twitter – TIME

"And if you don’t like it, well, in the words of one Twit from San Francisco, "I’m so sick to death of Twitter-haters. If you don’t like it, why waste your time writing, reading, or talking about it? Sheesh."

(tags: twitter twitter+bashing social+media)

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• You Can’t Build a Business Case for Social Software
  You build a business case by having clear-cut goals and defining the right set of metrics to measure against. Mistakes are made when gearing business processes around toolsets.
  (tags: enterprise2.0 collaboration socialsoftware roi strategy gartner metrics casestudies)

  

• ‘IT is the central nervous system of the company’ – Intel CIO | John Johnson
  Johnson mentions Intel’s social networking efforts and how it looks to younger workers for input as experimentation begins.
  (tags: Intel social+networking business+strategy john+johnson CIO c-suite)
• Questions To Ask When Evaluating Online Media
  Good to see online metrics leading the pack.
  (tags: online+media media+strategy media+buying advertising marketing content+strategies)
• How Facebook Will Upend Advertising – BusinessWeek
  Jonathan Yarmis argues advertising needs a 2.0 facelift more than any industry.
  (tags: advertising+2.0 facebook advertising social+networking social+computing)
• Social Networking Media ROI Calculator
  Pulled from the TweetStream of course thanks to Chis Geier and Telligent colleague Lawrence Liu.
  (tags: tools marketing socialmedia roi measurement metrics)
• The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online
  Pretty good read on the digital shifts taking place in society.
  (tags: social+networking wired socialmedia digital+socialism collaboration)

  

• Bringing Order to the Chaos of Notes – NYTimes.com
  Evernote is ahead of most I think. OneNote offers too much IMHO.
  (tags: evernote digital NYT GTD)

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The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation — New York Magazine

"Information rains down faster and thicker every day, and there are plenty of non-moronic reasons for it to do so. The question, now, is how successfully we can adapt."

(tags: internet productivity technology culture distraction)

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• The ROI From Twitter: "Don’t bother" telling your CFO, O’Reilly says

  "It’s very difficult to quantify the return on investment of Twitter, to an organization, he said. Instead, he takes a Nike stance on it: “Just use it.” (quoting Tim O’Reilly)

  (tags: ROI social+media twitter microblogging communications microsharing zdnet)

• Millennial Media releases U.S. mobile advertising data for brands – Mobile Marketer
  "As for devices, iPhone and iPod touch impressions grew 8 percent month over month and set a new network-wide record."
  (tags: mobile+computing mobile+applications iphone mobile+stats)

• Web 2.0: Managing Corporate Reputations – BusinessWeek
  A lot of this is common sense but you’re seeing a SWAT team focus from companies as guidelines & best practices for social networking continue to evolve.
  (tags: social+networking business+week)

• Embracing Transformative Content Creation Models | MediaPost
  It’s the continuing struggle= mixing UGC & editorial content – then finding the right distribution/syndication strategy.
  (tags: media+strategy online+advertising media digital+publishing)

Image via CrunchBase

• CEOs Who Use Twitter: Tweets from the Chiefs
  "how Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Zappos.com’s Tony Hsieh, and dozens more CEOs harness the simple powers of Twitter."
  (tags: c-suite CEO twitter microblogging microsharing)

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• Brains On Fire Blog » I’m a Thought Leader, Too! Do You Believe Me?
  "I’d rather gather around the campfire and listen to the warriors. Those that speak from experience."
  (tags: buzzwords consultants strategy digital+shops interactive+agencies)
• Newspapers Build Digital Portfolios – Ad Age
  "Gannett is trying to harness technologies so that it can emerge from this chaos as a hybrid digital company," — Ken Doctor, news analyst at research firm Outsell.
  (tags: newspapers digital+media outsell gannett)
• CMOs: Digital Data Without a Clear Vision Is Empty – Advertising Age
  "Lots of the successes promoted as cases to emulate are nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecies for selling digital services.."
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