Learning #1: Links are Powerful, enriching your content: Deeper and Dynamic

“In the networked web era, influentials may not be people with a particularly connected temperament or Rolodex, or people who control and influence monopoly distribution channels (e.g. newspapers), but rather people who influence the network by leveraging the most powerful force on the web — the link.” Read More Here

Another article from Scott on Linking here called “Reinventing journalism on the web, as reporting”, discusses making news articles dynamic and deeper by adding links. “Reorient newsrooms from a resource-rich, monopoly distribution approach to reporting, where a newsroom could reasonably aim to do it all themselves, to a resource-constrained, networked media reality, where newsrooms must focus on original reporting that matters most — SUPPLEMENTED by links to other original reporting done by other newsrooms — and by individuals.” Read more of this article of how to take this one step further and make links not just “A fundamental element of reporting, but to be the reporting.”

Learning #2: Traditional performance Metrics are no longer applicable for the social web

What has changed? Users are submitting and generating content, not just consuming/downloading and clicking on it. There is a growing expectation that everything should be free and as a result business models are changing..

It has been said that the discussion needs to move from the economics of page impressions to the economics of communities. The Digital Podcast said “In the social web, I think there is a recursive process of users, engagement, user contribution, viral impact, visitors, and conversion spawning more users as the cycle continues over and over again in a recursive manner. In addition, I think that the units of revenue measurement will shift from CPM to RPU (revenue per user) because we are now not just getting paid for advertising, but also for lead generation, potential direct sales and other ways of monetizing users.”

Why should we care?

“I believe that once we embrace these kinds of measures and embed them into our management processes we will see social media marketing shift from being a stream of fun (and maybe expensive) experiments into a community based business model that will result in more deeply committed fans, increased brand strength, better sell through, new revenue sources and higher ROI.”
Learning #3: Stay on top of changing online media business models.
There is a lot of stats, research and commentary coming out on this topic on a daily actually hourly basis. If you are looking at revenue options through online media channels - stay up to date. There is no point in making someone else’s mistakes in a silo and not taking onboard their teachings when they are widely on offer to you.

There are wide range of monetised media business models that do not require the user to pay a cent. A few are listed here, but if you are interested I would recommend reading the entire “The Long Tail” post and accompanying comments Here

• CPM ads (”cost per thousand views”; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
• CPC ads (”cost per click”; think Google ads)
• CPT ads (”cost per transaction”; you pay only if the customer brought to you from a media sites becomes a paying customer. Here’s an example.)
• Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
• Subscription revenues
• Affiliate revenues (think: Amazon Associates)
• Rental of subscriber lists
• Sale of information (selling data about users–aggregate/statistical or individual–to third parties)
• Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
• Licensing of content (syndication)
• Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it

I read an interesting article recently in Mashable! on this topic titled “The problem with Podcasting isn’t the downloads.” The premise of this article is that it is not the media (podcast) itself that has issues (growth is huge) but the business model itself. From Mark Hopkins Wizzard Media: “The growth of the medium is going strong, and will probably continue to do so. The advertising world needs to catch up to this fact, and actually put some work into making money off it. I’m not the only one facing this problem, too. Of those I’m acquainted with in audio podcasting that are in it to make money, they’ve reported similar experiences. Sure, it is exciting that another download milestone has been passed. Let’s work on getting some milestones in monetization passed, and then you’ll see me getting excited about podcasting again.” Read the whole article Here

Some other Social Media developments applicable to a business setting.

The verdicts: Time to invest in both in web technologies and web people. Read more Here

Jim Balsillie believes that 2009 will be the year of the enterprise adopting social networks.. This is best communicated in the words of Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School who said… (In this presentation)

“We need to keep in mind that most E2.0 tools are new, and that their acceptance depends on shifts in perspective on the part of business leaders and decision makers, shifts for which the word ‘seismic’ might not be an overstatement. Enterprise 2.0 tools have no inherent respect for organizational boundaries, hierarchies, or job titles. They facilitate self-organization and emergent rather than imposed structure. They require line managers, compliance officers, and other stewards to trust that users will not deliberately or inadvertently use them inappropriately. They require these stewards to become comfortable with collaboration environments that “practice the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them” as Jimmy Wales has said. They require, in short, the re-examination and often the reversal of many longstanding assumptions and practices. It is not in the least disrespectful or contemptuous of today’s managers to say that it will take them some time to get used to this.”

A Forrester survey recently showed that larger enterprises are “almost twice as likely to pilot or deploy Web 2.0 technologies in 2008 compared to the small and medium flavors.” Which makes sense, but adoption will be impossible to avoid, and why not when in a marketing sense is free monetary investment wise, although time and attention investment is key.

I found this interesting, a description of an emerging role titled “Community Manager”, the role involves managing a firms social networks.

As a Community Manager, my main task is to make sure people are happy—this includes my client as well as my community members. Each day we’re actively in our communities, reading posts, replying to messages, and noticing trends.

“Among the most important aspect of this role is doing just that—noticing trends or patterns. That’s how we make this work. By listening to what customers have to say and streamlining this information into a series of more digestible community “sound bites” we’re able to bridge the gap between what the customer wants and is talking about, and, what the client wants and is also talking about.” Read more here

So here I was about to type out my favourite webstock presentations and I was sent this link…..
Rest to follow.