Thursday, July 31, 2008

Business is embracing Web 2.0

Mike Preston

More and more businesses around the globe are using web 2.0 tools, with firms in our region leading the world in their adoption of blogs and podcasts, a new McKinsey report reveals.

While most businesses now have some web presence, web 2.0 goes beyond the humble website to include things like online sales and communication software, social networking, blogs and RSS.

According to a survey of more than 1600 executives around the world by the consulting firm, in 2008 the average business now uses 2.5 web 2.0 tools, up from 2.2 last year.

For businesses in Australia and the Asia Pacific, the blog is the web 2.0 tool of choice. Just on 48% of executives in the region say blogs make the biggest difference to their company – more than in any other part of the world.

Podcasts are also popular in the Asia Pacific, with only Indian business placing more value on the audio downloads.

The Europeans are particularly keen on web services such as online software, with 62% saying it is important, while executives in the US and Canada are most likely to say social networks are the most useful aspect web 2.0.

Managing knowledge, improving customer service and achieving better integration with suppliers are three most common tasks web 2.0 technologies are used for.

It appears the local preference for blogs and podcasts must be working, with the executives in the Asia-Pacific reporting by far the highest satisfaction level with their web 2.0 tools.

Around the world, just 21% of managers says they are satisfied web 2.0 is working for them, behind the 22% that report dissatisfaction. In the Asia Pacific, by contrast, satisfaction is at 40% and dissatisfaction at just 8%.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080731-Business-is-embracing-web-20-McKinsey.html (Published by SmartCompany)

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Big business ignoring online enquiries

July 30, 2008

FORGET the "Contact Us" link — 59 per cent of large Australian organisations don't care about your online enquiry, according to a new survey.

The online contacts for 460 Australian organisations – those that employ 100 or more people – were tested by researchers for contact centre company Strike Force Sales.

Specific product queries were manually entered into every organisation's web form or email to simulate a genuine customer enquiry. After seven days, the researchers had not received responses from 59 per cent of the businesses.

On average, those that did respond took an average of one day and 8.5 hours to get back to the "customer". Only six per cent responded with a phone call an average three days after being contacted.

Almost half of the automated email responses promising a real reply were never followed up.

The survey, conducted across a range of organisations, found the least-responsive industries were in construction and retail.

"Given the importance of the internet to the modern economy it verges on negligence for any business not to respond to web-generated enquiries,” said Chris Moriarty, managing director of Strike Force Sales.

"They're not taking it seriously."

Mr Moriarty said the poor response rate could not be blamed on spam, as the results were similar between email and online forms with verification systems.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24097558-5014239,00.html (Published by News.com.au)

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

21 Considerations Before Your Business Starts A Social Network

Social networks are all the rage and are recommend social tools for businesses. However, there are potential pitfalls to consider before you facilitate interaction between customers and your business.

Here are 21 things your business should consider before starting a social network:

Internal (Your Business Capabilities)

1. Can you invest the necessary resources to run a social network properly? Can you afford the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to properly create and staff this resource?

2. What is the role of marketing, sales, IT, customer service, advertising, HR, etc.? Social networks often delve into all of these departments and more. Make sure all of your teams are engaged, enthused, and prepared.

3. While the potential ROI of a social network is proven, is this the best investment of your time? If you don’t have a unique product or your customers aren’t enthused (or your product isn’t any good), don’t look to a social network to solve your problems.

4. What are your expectations - number of members, amount of content, etc - on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis? Create little benchmarks to ensure you do not go far off course.

5. Will your employees have their own voice on the network? Will they use their full names? This transparency can be daunting, but it can also provide high emotional buy-in from employees.

6. Is the correct employee in charge of the social network? This is often not the highest paid or the most experienced.

7. Which came first: customer need, company strategy, or cool technology? If it’s anything besides customer need, reconsider everything.

External (The World You Compete In)

8. Are your audience Joiners? You should read Li and Bernoff’s book of the same name, but at the very least check out the free Groundswell tool from Forrester. If your audience isn’t likely to join any social network, it’s highly unlikely they will join your social network.

9. What value does the community offer your customer? Do not think of the social network as a marketing tool - its primary existence is for the good of your customer.

10. Who are your network’s competitors? If someone is already offering the service you want to provide, don’t spend time trying to re-invent the wheel.

11. What does your network do better than anyone else? Use that strength to separate your network from imitators and provide a quality service to your customers. If you cannot identify that unique quality, consider piggy-backing on someone else’s network.

Before The Launch

12. Who approves interaction or content? What is the chain of command? Is your process streamlined to react to breaking news or is it clogged with a bunch of red tape?

13. How will negative comments be handled? Have you prepared a code of conduct for participants? Will constructive criticism be considered honestly and without pride?

14. How does the social network affect the priorities of your business? In other words, is it clear to your employees when they should opt to work on the social network as opposed to their other tasks?

15. How will you promote the network? Will there be a URL on your print advertising? Should customer service mention the website? Use existing channels to promote this new one.

16. What capabilities will members have? Can they speak to each other, create profiles, or upload files? All of these aspects have their complications.

17. Are there different levels of engagement? For instance, could a member of your social network take on an administrative or editorial role? What are possible levels of engagement and how do members move up?

18. What motivation do people have to participate? What is their incentive?

19. Is your network “sticky”? Is there a reason for participants to tell their friends?

After The Launch

20. What will you do with the community once you have it? Will you have the infrastructure set up to benefit from customer insights, free market research, justified criticisms, helpful customers, etc.?

21. How will you gauge success? While the potential ROI of social networks is great, it is rarely as cut-and-dry as most other marketing. Are visitors more important than commenters? How is beneficial engagement quantified?

http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/07/22/21-considerations-before-your-business-starts-a-social-network/ (Published by Online Marketer Blog)

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research (Wave 3)


Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

From: mickstravellin, 3 months ago





This is the Social Media Research done by Universal Mccann including 17,000 people in 29 countries


SlideShare Link

Websites stretch truth over page hits

Simon Canning | July 24, 2008

WEBSITE operators are bringing online audience measurement figures into disrepute by using tricks to boost traffic numbers in the eyes of advertisers, at a time when the industry is trying to clean up its image.

As online content has grown to become part of the media mainstream, operators have been battling to find ways to boost the raw data used by less sophisticated advertisers to measure traffic.

Industry experts say that one of the most popular methods of boosting click counts is stretching news stories across multiple pages, rather than presenting the story as a single page. The method was developed in the era of dial-up internet as a way to reduce page download times when website visitors were restricted by the capabilities of 56K modems.

But the practice remains a common one in the era of broadband, with publishers such as Fairfax Digital still spreading even short stories across several pages.

Patty Keegan, from the Internet Advertising Bureau, says the increasing sophistication of the technology makes such tricks more difficult to get away with, but they still exist. "There are things like news sites that rotate new ads in as news is updated," Keegan says.

"Perhaps the most nefarious thing I saw was in another country where two newspapers were competing evenly for the same market.

"Overnight one of the newspapers suddenly doubled its page impressions, and it turned out they had split their national news page into two pages."

Online advertising experts have remained largely tight-lipped about some of the tricks of the trade.

The IAB is undertaking a concerted review with the aim of developing a new, more accurate audience measurement system.

Meanwhile, key buyers of online advertising privately admit to disregarding many of the numbers websites claim.

"They are just not believable," one online ad agency founder says.

"I have spoken to a number of media buyers out there and they say the same thing."

Another element that many websites offered has been pop-up advertising, which helped increase impression numbers. The value of such ads to website operators, both in terms of revenue and data, has plummeted with the widespread adoption of pop-up blocking software.

Sandra Hanchard, an analyst with online monitoring company Hitwise, says the adoption of tricks to drive traffic is being countered by companies seeking to offer best practice to advertisers.

"The first trend we're seeing is an increasing use of pay-per-click search marketing by publishers to drive website traffic on news items," Hanchard says.

"This is important because search engines account for more than one in five visits to news and media print websites."

More important, she sees news publishers utilising social networking sites as a growing tool for boosting traffic.

"News and media print websites are receiving more traffic from Web 2.0 properties," she says.

"Social networking websites increased their referrals to news and media print websites by 148.6 per cent, comparing May 2007 to May 2008."

With search such a vital part of the online advertising engine, news operators are also battling to pick up on the news keywords of the day as they try to get their sites to appear at the top of search results from engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Simon Van Wyck, founder of web advertising company Hothouse, says a number of web publishers and portals count visitors to allied sites, but do not necessarily have the right to claim such traffic.

"I think you can look at other things, such as claiming traffic that is not theirs," Van Wyck says.

Examples include Ninemsn, which claims Hotmail and Yahoo.

Recently the Internet Advertising Bureau began looking at the issue of automatic refreshes of pages -- a common element used by news publishers to keep late-breaking stories at the top of lists.

Keegan says the problem occurs when ads are refreshed along with the stories, creating the impression of more traffic.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24068103-26077,00.html (Published by The Australian)

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

China is Every Internet Company's Wet Dream



by Stan Schroeder

According to the latest government data, China now has 253 million Internet users, due to recent sharp growth - 56 percent from last year. The inevitable has happened: China now has more Internet users than the USA, which is at 223.1 million with 71% online penetration. The fact that the Chinese government is exercising very strict control and censorship over internet use has immensely slowed down the growth of Internet use in this country, but when you’ve got a population of over 1.3 billion, even a relatively small fraction of it is enough to become a global leader.

Yes, the really amazing thing is the fact that the online penetration is China is mere 19.1 percent, way, way lower than the USA and most European countries. Financial facts are even more revealing: total revenues for all of China’s internet companies was $5.9 billion in 2007 while in the U.S. online advertising revenues alone in that same year were $21.2 billion. For companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other giants, this means two words: untapped potential.

Research firm BDA China Ltd. estimates that China’s online population will keep growing by 18 percent annually - a modest estimation, considering that this growth was 56% this year - and reach 490 million by 2012. The US online market suddenly seems small in comparison. Due to strict Chinese government regulation of the Internet, financially the Chinese market will not catch up as fast as it could, but with a little (inevitable) westernization and a little globalization it’ll get there, and every online firm will want a slice of the pie. This one growing market might be more important than most other world’s markets put together.

http://mashable.com/2008/07/25/china-internet-users/ (Published by Mashable.com)

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Social Networking: Rules of Engagement

It is important when entering into a social network space that rules and guidelines are in place.

This was adapted from the Channel 9 (MSNBC) doctrine incorporating user comments. It provides a template to where rules can be made to make the most out of brands social network presence.
  1. Social networks are all about the conversation. It should inspire the brand and it's customers to talk in an honest and human voice.
  2. Be a human being. Social networks is a place for us to be ourselves, to share who we are, and for us to learn who our customers are.
  3. Learn by listening. When our customers speak, learn from them. Don't get defensive, don't argue for the sake of argument. Listen and take what benefits you to heart.
  4. Be smart. Think before you speak, there are some conversations which have no benefit other than to reinforce stereotypes or create negative situations.
  5. Don't shock the system. Lasting change only happens in baby steps.
  6. Know when to turn the mic off. There are some topics which will only result in problems when you discuss them. This has nothing to do with censorship, but with working within the reality of the system that exists in our world today. You will not change anything by taking on legal or financial issues, you will only shock the system, spook the passengers, and create a negative situation.
  7. Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes mean people.
  8. Commit to the conversation. Don't stop listening just because you are busy. Don't stop participating because you don't agree with someone. Relationships are not built in a day, be in it for the long haul and we will all reap the benefits as an industry.
  9. You should set goals before you can determine your strategy. Increase awareness, raise positive sentiment with your brand?
  10. Define who you want to target. Also find out where they hang out and what tools they use to communicate.
  11. Don't just use tools that everyone else is using, choose tools that best align with your goals and technologies that your target audience use.
For more information visit http://channel9.msdn.com/About/ to see the original.

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

How to develop a social media plan for your business

Social media can be an incredible tool for your business, providing you with more customer insight, direct communication channels and the ability to measure the effectiveness of these conversations very closely.

But as the proliferation of social media platforms grow, participating can turn into little more than a giant time suck without some sort of structure behind it. With that in mind, we’ve put together a 5 step plan for kickstarting your company’s social media participation:

Step 1: Listen

Social media is a term we use to to discuss the tools that facilitate conversations. Before your company can be a part of those conversations, you need to know what people are already talking about so you can determine how you can best contribute.

Setting up some tools to monitor conversations is easy. The difficult part is choosing the keywords that will return the most usable results.

Here are some tools to get you started:

Social Media Firehose: Kingsley Joseph used Yahoo Pipes to create one RSS feed that aggregates results from Flickr, Digg, YouTube, FriendFeed and other social media sites.

Latest Blog Mentions Pipe: This is another Yahoo Pipe that will aggregate brand references across several major blog search engines, including Technorati, Icerocket and Google Blog Search.

Alltop: This website aggregates the top posts from the top blogs around the world. Because it divides the blogs into categories by topic, it’s also a great place to begin building your list of relevant blogs to read.

Be as specific as possible so that your searches return fewer results more relevant to your brand. This will take some time, but once you’ve discovered which keywords yield the results you’re looking for, you will discover a host of blogs, twitter profiles and videos relevant to your industry. We’ll use those results in step two below as we develop an internal social media strategy.

Step 2: Prepare

Social media platforms help facilitate conversations between individuals, not companies. Once you have a sense of what people are talking about, it’s time to identify the appropriate people inside your organization to participate.

Find the People

People want to have conversations with company representatives who are experts in their area, who are passionate about their work and who are empowered to act on the feedback they receive from the community. If you want to focus on the marketing vertical, then look to your marketing team. The same is true if you want to participate in social media platforms devoted to product development, engineering or package design. Part of this process should be to provide the proper training for these employees on social media participation.

Set Rules of Engagement

Make sure your company has a social media policy in place that offers guidelines to your employees on the appropriate way to engage in online conversations.

Define Your Strategy

Social media is comprised of many different platforms. Rather than trying to participate in all of them, begin with one or two that seem to make the most sense. Having an engagement strategy will help to determine how much time employees will devote to social media communications, what will be the focus areas for engagement and of course, it will help to measure success.

Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang posted a list of social media strategies from enterprise corporations that’s worth a look.

Step 3: Engage

This is the fun part! Start leaving comments on blogs, uploading images to Flickr, building a community on Twitter or FriendFeed or whatever else that strategy entails that helps further the discussion and illustrates your company’s commitment to developing these online relationships. It might also be useful for employees to create a social media editorial calendar so that it’s easier to structure time to participate. You never know what might happen, as this example from Blendtec illustrates.

Step 4: Go Offline

As stated in step one, social media is simply a group of tools that help facilitate conversations, but there’s really no replacement for face-to-face interaction. Use trade shows and other events as opportunities to build even stronger relationships with the members of your online community. This could be in the form of an exclusive session, an informal breakfast or even a group picture on the event floor.

Step 5: Measure Success

measure
Unlike other campaigns, measuring social media success begins by asking more questions:

– Did we learn something about our customers that we didn’t know before?
– Did our customers learn something about us?
– Were we able to engage our customers in new conversations?
– Do our employees have an effective new tool for external feedback and reputation management?

We also recommend using a tool like Trendpedia -a blog search engine that allows you to both track and graph topics as well as compare terms- to help benchmark your company against your competitors by running the exact same search and parameters before and after your engagement begins.

Conclusion

The potential payoff for corporate social media participation is enormous. These companies will have a better sense of how they are perceived by their target audiences, they will establish a two way dialog with key stakeholders and they will empower their customers to speak with them, not at them. But without a strategic approach to social media, it’s difficult to succeed. Hopefully this 5 step plan can help your company get started.

This insightful report was written by Aaron Uhrmacher from Mashable.

http://mashable.com/2008/07/10/how-to-develop-a-social-media-plan/

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Digital spend set to rise

Natalie Apostolou

Digital media spend remains on the rise and could replace some traditional marketing mediums within five years, a recent industry survey has claimed.

The research suggested that the number of companies spending between one quarter and half of their marketing budget on digital media will increase by more than 40% over the next five years.

Currently, 10% of organisations allocate funds to digital marketing, but that figure will increase to 51% by 2013, according to the results.

Dr Michael Valos, a senior lecturer in marketing at Deakin University said digital media was a significant opportunity for marketing strategists.

“While some are already experimenting with it, I think we will see over time that organisations will start to replace traditional media for digital alternatives,” he said.

He also claimed that social networking opportunities such as Facebook and MySpace were being underused by marketers. “There really needs to be a widespread shift of marketing understanding as we enter the digital media age,” he said.

Meanwhile, while the majority of survey respondents practiced search engine optimisation and search engine marketing, more than 20% percent of respondents did not.

He added: “There’s no doubt that digital media is a growing market. However, right now the riskiest approach for organisations would be to ignore it,” Dr Valos said.

http://www.digital-media.net.au/Article/Digital-spend-set-to-rise/200280.aspx

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Microsoft will spend $US1.5 billion a year to take on Google

Friday, 25 July 2008

James Thomson

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer says the company must work harder to compete with Google in the online advertising sector or risk missing out on winning a slice of the $US1 trillion media and communications market.

Microsoft, which is number three in search, has now abandoned attempts to buy the world’s second largest search engine, Yahoo. But despite investor concerns that Microsoft’s online services division lost $US1.23 billion last year, Ballmer says the software giant has to keep pushing into the sector.

“We don't have a lot of trillion-dollar markets that are being transformed. That's at least a big enough opportunity that at our size, our market cap, we have to go after those opportunities,” Ballmer told analysts.

“The amount of economic value we have the opportunity to create by pursuing this world in which everything goes digital is at least 40%, 50%, 60% more than our economic value today.”

But it ain’t going to be cheap. Ballmer says Google spends $US2.5 billion a year on research and development and Microsoft will need to spend $US1.2 billion to $US1.5 billion to keep pace.

In a separate announcement, Facebook says it will start running Microsoft search ads later this year. Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $US240 million in October 2007. The site already runs banner ads from Microsoft.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080725-Microsoft-will-spend-US15-billion-a-year-to-take-on-Google.html?source=cmailer

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Microsoft Scores Facebook Search Deal

Microsoft Scores Facebook Search Deal and May Get A Little Live.com Branding To Boot

Jason Kincaid

Microsoft SVP Satya Nadella has announced that the company has expanded its deal with Facebook to integrate Microsoft’s Live Search into the social network. There are few details at this point, but Microsoft will be serving up advertising (both traditional and sponsored search results) through Facebook by the end of the year. Microsoft previously bought a $240 million stake in Facebook at a massive $15 billion valuation, in exchange for global advertising rights.

The news parallels the search deal that Google signed with MySpace in 2006, when it won the rights to provide search and advertising to the News Corp-owned social network, with a minimum rev share agreement of $900 million. Microsoft was also clamoring for search rights on MySpace at the time, but Google managed to beat it out by forging a hasty deal.

Google has had a hard time monetizing the search deal with MySpace, but it blames the under performance on the difficulty with monetizing social networks in general. It’s probable that Microsoft will run into similar issues on Facebook, but it may be just as concerned with exposing users to Live search as it is with generating revenue, at least in the short term. Back in 2006 Michael speculated that Microsoft may have been taking a loss on its initial advertising deal with Facebook, simply to beat out Google and get some traction in the advertising space. It may be taking a similar approach here.

Microsoft is eager to expand its Live search, which has languished far behind Google and Yahoo for years. In May the company launched an apparently desperate move to actually pay users for using the site through its Live Search Cashback program. That initiative has proven to be a success, increasing search usage by 15%. But Live search still trails Google and Yahoo by huge margins, accounting for only 9% of all search queries (Yahoo and Google account for 21% and 62% respectively).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/24/microsoft-scores-facebook-search-deal-and-may-get-a-little-livecom-branding-to-boot/

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Australians like social networking

Australians like social networking, but they better not do it at work

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Social network sites such Facebook and MySpace are growing in popularity, but most Australian small businesses ban their employees from using them.

According to the Sensis 2008 e-business report, a survey of 1800 business and 1500 consumers, 41% of Australians currently use social networking sites, with that number lifting to 70% among people in their 20s.

They may be copping a bit of flack if they’re looking at them at work, however. Three in four small business respondents to the survey say they have banned workers from visiting the sites.

In most other respects small businesses are getting more tech savvy. The number of businesses with a website increased from 51% to 54%, with a majority of those saying they believe it increases business effectiveness.

More businesses say they order and pay for products online, up 8% to 67%, while the number of businesses that receive orders and payments online also increased to 54% and 63% respectively.

More business owners have also bought themselves a laptop to play with – 60% say they now have one, a 10% jump on last year.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/Trends/20080724-Australians-like-social-networking-but-they-better-not-do-it-at-work.html

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Businesses prefer Facebook

Businesses prefer Facebook

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Small and medium sized businesses are more likely to have a presence on Facebook than any other online social network, according to a poll conducted by web company Netregistry.

Almost 30% of the 1200 small business respondents polled said they use Facebook, ahead of 13% who use LinkedIn and 12% who use MySpace.

Other online communication tools were also popular, with 13% saying they use blogs, 12% internet forums and 11% YouTube.

But while many people associated with small businesses are using social networking, it seems very few are doing so with a business strategy in mind – 72% of people polled said they do not have a social media strategy in place.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/Trends/20080724-Businesses-prefer-Facebook.html

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Facebook Growth Explodes Globally

Comscore has just released the latest data on Facebook growth patterns, which clearly show that Facebook’s recent push to expand abroad has paid off. The site has seen extremely high growth rates across Latin America, The Middle East, and the Asia Pacific. Europe, which accounts for a much larger user base, continues to grow at a steady clip as well.

North America still accounts for nearly 40% of Facebook’s monthly growth, but its rate remains fairly constant, hovering at an increase of around 47,000 uniques over the last seven months.

Earlier this year Facebook finally managed to catch up to MySpace’s total unique visitors, largely on account of its rapid global expansion (MySpace continues to dominate in the US market).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/23/facebook-growth-explodes-globally-levels-off-in-the-us/

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

To view our work or to find out how XCOM Media can help your business contact us.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Broadband overtakes dial-up

Broadband overtakes dial-up

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter

July 23, 2008 02:06pm

Article from: NEWS.com.au

ALMOST two thirds of Australian households now have internet access, with broadband connections outnumbering dial-up two to one.

The number of households with access to the internet had soared from 16 per cent in 1998 to 64 per cent in 2006-07, the latest Australian Social Trends report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed.

Two-parent families with dependent children were more likely to have internet access than any other household type (86 per cent).

Single-parent families had significantly lower rates of access, with between half and two thirds reporting an internet connection, depending on age and children's status.

The number of broadband connections also skyrocketed in the last two years – from 16 per cent of households in 2004-05 to 43 per cent in 2006-07.

Broadband links accounted for between half and two-thirds of all internet connections in Australian homes, across all demographic groups and geographic areas, and more than doubled the number of dial-up connections.

Education and income remained a key factor in internet use, with fewer than one in two people (47 per cent) in the lowest income quintile having internet access.

Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people had lower rates of internet access at home in both urban and remote locations, ranging from 50 per cent in major cities to just 8 per cent in very remote areas.

Households without internet access reported their reasons for not getting a connection as having no use for or being uninterested in the internet more frequently than concerns over cost.

Rates of internet access were similar in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, and above average in the Australian Capital Territory. The figures were lower in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

There was a boom in older Australians using the internet, with a rise of 40 per cent in the number of 65-74 year olds using the web. However, the overall number of people in this age bracket using the internet remained fairly low (28 per cent).

The Australian Social Trends 2008 report drew on data collected in the 2006 census and 2006-07 Household Use Of Information Technology Survey.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24064928-29277,00.html

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

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Google In Final Negotiations to Acquire Digg

Michael Arrington


Google’s on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside of Google, and the two companies are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source.

We first wrote about the Google-Digg negotiations in March. Despite a vigorous denial by Digg CEO Jay Adelson the negotiations continued, although Google’s Marissa Mayer reportedly cooled on the company for a period of time.

The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources, although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes. And while the major deal points have been agreed on, the acquisition could still fall apart. Microsoft, which was previously interested in the company, may be willing to step back in at a much lower price.

Most of Digg’s revenue comes from a three year ad deal with Microsoft, which will be terminated on a sale to Google. Digg has raised $11.3 million in venture capital.

Meanwhile, Google’s fascination with the Digg voting concept continues.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiations-to-acquire-digg-for-around-200-million/

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Myspace To Join OpenID

MySpace To Join OpenID, Bringing Total Enabled Accounts to Over A Half Billion

Michael Arrington

MySpace will announce support for the OpenID single sign-on framework sometime this week, we’ve heard from multiple sources. This will be the second largest implementation ever and will bring the total number of OpenID-enabled accounts to over half a billion. MySpace’s 200 million user IDs join Yahoo’s 250 million or so accounts, plus accounts from a number of other large providers.

Like most large company integrations, MySpace is at first becoming an OpenID issuer only, and may integrate as a relying party down the road. We’ve argued that becoming an issuer is essentially a land grab for user identities. The integration work on accepting OpenIDs from others is harder, and the payoff is less.

MySpace may also be writing code to extend the OpenID spec and allow easy integration of their Data Availability product to sites that accept MySpace OpenIDs.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/myspace-to-join-openid-bringing-total-enabled-accounts-to-over-a-half-billion/

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Facebook's Beta Re-Design Officially Launches

Update (9:55PM PT): Facebook has issued a press release announcing the new design, indicating that “access to the new design will be limited at first and gradually become available to all.”

As expected, Facebook has officially rolled out the beta for its new design this evening. To get it, you can now to go www.new.facebook.com, which will convert the site to the new look. You can still roll back to the previous version by clicking a “Back to Old Facebook” link at the top of the site.

From top to bottom, the design is a lot cleaner than the current Facebook, and certainly is a big attempt to make the site less cluttered while placing an emphasis on a number of features – most notably the mini-feed and status updates. This is immediately noticeable in the homepage, where the new Facebook features just two columns versus the three in the old version, with requests, links, and other current homepage features consolidates on the right, with your News Feed on the left occupying the majority of the real estate.

Moving to the user profiles, as expected, user profiles are now tabbed, with the defaults being Wall (your feed and wall posts), Info (your profile info), Photos, and Boxes (applications). On your own profile, Facebook is clearly trying to push status updates, asking a variation of the very same question posed by Twitter “What are you doing right now?” Profiles are also now two columns, making more space for the mini-feed and the other new tabs.


So far, it’s unclear how Facebook plans to promote the new site to users and get them involved in the beta. While those of us in the tech blogosphere have been expecting the changes since early this year and been following each new twist and turn closely, it’s a major change in look and feel that will likely be dramatic for mainstream users.

Presumably Facebook has learned its lesson from previously poorly communicated roll outs like News Feed and Beacon, and so far has been doing an excellent job of keeping the developer community informed of the design changes. Meanwhile, keeping the option to revert to the old Facebook for a while should help Facebook weather what will surely be some confusion and anger from ever-fickle social networking users. There’s also a prominent link for users to submit their feedback on the new look.

Last week, when a preview of the new site was briefly available, our audience was decidedly split with their reviews, so it will be interesting to see your opinions now that the beta has officially arrived and working as expected. Let us know what you think in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2008/07/20/new-facebook-launches/

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Online social networking reaches mothers at home with their kids

Simon Canning | July 07, 2008

WEBSITES and advertisers targeting the parent market are embracing the latest online trend of social networking to further expand their reach.

Last week, one of the leading sites, Kidspot.com.au, had a soft launch of extensions to its site that aim to turn it into a social networking forum for mothers.

Children's product giant Huggies has also invested heavily in its own social networking and information portal, the Huggies Club.

That site has 160,000 members and Huggies has teamed with computer and printer company HP in an industry first to use HP's Snapfish photo technology so mothers can print photos, with revenue to be shared between HP and Huggies.

And just weeks ago, social networking site MySpace released research results that revealed more than 73,000 of its Australian users defined themselves as mothers and that marketers were beginning to home in on them as a distinct market.

About 80 per cent of them used the site as a way of taking a break from the kids and as a means of touching base with women in a similar situation, often using it as a support network.

Kidspot.com.au founder Katie May, who is a former marketing director at Seek.com.au, said the changes were aimed at getting people to spend even more time on their website.

"I think the important thing for the website will be to continue to be putting on traffic, but we are also looking at growing the relationship with our visitors," she said.

Ms May said the site, which was started three years ago, initially based its business model on being a directory for parenting services and products but had since grown to include forums, news and other information.

"A lot of the traffic comes for the directory but people then go on to use four more pages," she said.

"It is still a bit too directory focused. The soft launch will make it softer and warmer."

Kidspot now derives its revenue from a mix of paid search results and advertising, and Ms May said the sector was undervalued and had huge potential.

"There are about 2.5 million households with a child under 14 in Australia and these are the women we are trying to attract," Ms May said.

She compares the site's 500,000 unique users to the circulation of The Australian Woman's Weekly.

Fairfax Digital is in the market with its Essential Baby, while independent website Bubhub operates from Queensland.

Ms May estimated that directory advertising alone in the sector could be worth up to $47 million, with display advertising in the "hundreds of millions".

"But if we target them not just as mums but as women, then it is a very, very large market," she said.

Kidspot also recently launched its first above-the-line advertising campaign using billboards.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23977935-26077,00.html

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Techno Pope texts the faithful

Lara Sinclair | July 17, 2008

HE'S known in some circles as the "techno Pope", but not because of a love of dance music - his holiness is more of a Beethoven or Mozart fan.

Rather, it's Pope Benedict XVI's penchant for text-messaging the masses, his iPod (with the Papal coat of arms engraved on the back) and the Catholic church's increasing use of social networking media that have earned him the moniker, according to World Youth Day spokesman Father Mark Podesta.

An undisclosed number of WYD followers have opted to receive a text message about 10am each day.

Yesterday's message assured followers that "the Holy Spirit gave the Apostles and gives u the power boldly 2 proclaim that Christ is risen! -- BXVI".

"It's not the first SMS (Pope Benedict) has sent but it is the first time they've done it every day for a World Youth Day," Podesta says. "He composes them himself. In some circles he's known as the techno Pope."

As the Catholic church attempts to reach younger audiences in their preferred media, it has also launched an official World Youth Day social networking website, located at www.xt3.com.

The site -- whose web address is intended to signify Christ in the third millennium -- aims to give people the chance to participate in forums, groups and discussions about relevant issues.

Benedict XVI doesn't have a profile on the site but registered users can befriend Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney. It doesn't reveal how many friends he has amassed so far.

"People can ask a priest a question," Podesta says.

"They can say what they are praying for. They can add friends."

Telstra, the official telecommunications provider for WYD, is providing digital prayer walls, which allow people to send a text message that will then appear on giant screens around Sydney.

Advertisers including Telstra, Qantas, Mercedes-Benz and News Limited (publisher of The Australian) have helped the event raise $20 million in sponsorship funds.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24031122-26077,00.html

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

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Social Networking with no boring bits

The Australian Financial Review | Mon, 14 Jul 2008- Noelle Waugh

The local division of global packaged-good giant Unilever is considering ramping up its use of online social networking sites to promote its products after a successful trial with Cornetto ice cream.

Unilever Australasia's vice-president of marketing, David McNeil, said the company had doubled its digital marketing budget every year for the past three years. Digital would account for 10 per cent of its total marketing expenditure this year.

The campaign it ran for Cornetto over the 2007-08 summer was called "No boring bits". Developed by the Sydney interactive marketing agency Soap Creative, it marked the first time Unilever had run marketing in social networking sites such as MySpace, Flickr and blog forums.

The sites and blogs were used as part of an online seeding strategy ahead of the launch of a more traditional advertising campaign across old media including television.

Soap Creative produced a series of videos featuring a character called Terry, who was shown cutting in half Coca-Cola cans, mobile phones and other objects. The videos encouraged people to make their own videos and upload them to the sites.

Six weeks after the online campaign began, Unilever launched a TV commercial the showed Terry cutting a Cornetto in half.

The videos, which did not mention the Cornetto brand, have been viewed more than 1.4 million times since September. The TV commercial ran on websites such as ninemsn, reading more than 8.9 million browsers.

Nitin Mistry, digital creative director at ad agency The Campaign Palace, said Unilever was one of the many marketers that had increased their use of social media and user-generated content over the past year in the hope of creating "dialogues" with consumers.

"A couple of years ago you might have mentioned social media in passing as part of a marketing plan," he said.

"Now it has to be part of the plan for many clients. But there are inherent risks in using social media. People expect brands in the social media space to have an element of transparency."

As part of a promotion fro Smirnoff vodka, liquor marketers Diageo used blogs and social networking sites to give consumers clues to win tickets to the Smirnoff experience Secret Party, which took place last week.

Time Knight, director of digital business at digital ad agency Tequila, said social media was a cost-effective way of extending the massage of a broader online campaign. But he said some marketers were wary of the risks involved with using sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Tequila used social media as a part of online marketing campaigns for New Line Cinema to promote the movie Be Kind Rewind (which opened here in March) and the Nine Network. For the latter it created a Facebook profile for the TV series Underbelly.

Mr Knight said some marketers, such as those representing financial services companies, which relied on their customer service, credentials and a high level of trust with consumers to promote their brands, would not be willing to expose their brands to the potential criticism that came with an open dialogue with consumers.

Other risks for marketers included having less control over advertising messages and alienating user with overt branding in what most people considered a personal medium.

"There's a certain amount of courage they [marketers] need to have once they start dabbling in these social networks because it is so open," Mr Mistry said.

"If, for instance, something is seen as too obvious a marketing ploy it has the potential to back-fire and have an adverse affect on the overall campaign."

Tourism Queensland has been testing the use of social networking sites as part of its digital marketing strategy for the past year, including setting up a branded YouTube channel to promote its travel destinations and profiles on Facebook.

Chris Chambers, director of digital marketing at Tourism Queensland, said he was aware of the risks in using social media, particularly the difficulty of anticipating what people would say about a brand and the resource s required to deliver constant online updates.

But social networking sites were a good tool to promote Tourism Queensland's events and holiday packages to a broad audience.

"It can be cost-effective way to drive traffic to our website, but there's also a lot of hard work that has to go into developing content to make it interesting for people," Mr Chambers said.

XCOM Media helps brands achieve the nirvana of one-to-one communication through online strategy and consultancy, design, development, web 2.0 and social networking, email marketing, mobile marketing, viral marketing, campaign management, technology and tools and analytics, with lower costs and higher returns than all other forms of marketing.

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