Content Management Matters ™

Attending a lot of conferences on Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 lately? Sure you've come away with some great information, probably a ton of potential vendor solutions and more consulting business cards then you've ever dreamed of having in your roledex. But are you still wondering how to implement social media on your website?

1to1 Media is having a Webinar that will be of interest to you: Get Past the Social Media Hype: Here`s how to create real value from online interactions. The free webinar will be held on Wednesday, July 16 at 2PM EST and is designed to teach you how to increase customer engagement and loyalty and drive up your marketing and sales metrics using the latest social media technologies:

• Understand how to apply the basic of social media to your business
• Learn how to select the right options and set objectives for your initiatives
• Define how each social media technology will contribute to your success
• Learn how to use these technologies to drive bottom line results.

This is not a webinar about a specific social media technology or vendor. It is business focused showing you to take advantage of these new technologies that have become essential elements of any website design today.

So if you still aren't sure how social media is helping drive your bottom line and bringing you in more customers, sign up and learn a little.

The Gilbane Group has delivered a new report on the use of Social Media in the Enterprise. The report, called Collaboration and Social Media 2008- Taking Stock of Today's Experiences and Tomorrow's Opportunities includes a survey of medium and large American organizations, case studies and a vendor catalog.

What we learn from reading the report is that social media applications are slowly supplementing the existing collaboration technologies -- email, websites and shared workspaces -- within organizations today and that vertical social media solutions are emerging to help them work smarter.

We Web users are an interesting bunch. Inclined to support a bloggers' code of conduct while becoming more ruthless and selfish online -- it's easy to understand why it's hard to figure out exactly what we want.

Case in point, a recent survey by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), an independent British organization which deals with complaints from members of the public about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines, indicated that almost 80 percent of social networking site users would be more careful about the details they put online if they knew the media might use them.

Fresh, original content is a website's most valuable asset. It keeps users coming back, and most importantly, gives a website a higher search ranking and more ad sales. So when a service promises to add tons of fresh, user-generated content with only a few lines of code -- for free -- you can see why a lot of heads have been turning -- many of which have money to invest.

Wetpaint, a Seattle-based wiki provider whose technology is used in almost a million social communities, has announced $25 million in venture capital funding for its new embeddable social publishing platform, Injected. The deal, which includes major investors like DAG Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Accel Partners, brings total funding to around US $40 million.

Matchbin is touted as the world’s first ecommerce platform as a service that specializes in both product and service matching. They've created something called the Community Marketplace Multimedia Edition. This technical wonder bundle is a fully fledged social media system, web content management system and ecommerce marketplace rolled-up in one.

Local television stations need revenue, too. More and more they find themselves in a situation similar to local newspapers -- they are losing money as people continue to stream to the Internet for their news.

So they have begun taking measures into their own hands by enlisting KickApps' application and WorldNow's consulting to boost their online revenue via user-generated venues and targeting traffic to local businesses.

The people have spoken and what they have told us is that they love online video. But besides that one friend we all seem to have who loves to send us link after link, what are the other ways people have of finding their latest cute pet video?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Enterprise 2.0 is a hot topic these days and organizations across the globe are scrambling to implement some aspect of it -- when they can actually figure out what it means.

Forrester analysts could now be adding to that frenzy with their newest report that states that Enterprise 2.0 will become a $US 4.6 billion dollar industry by 2013.

Oh social marketing. The golden child whose power cannot be harnessed nor can its effect be substantially understood. Or so says a report issued by the Society for New Communications Research.

The good news is that social media tools are popular, with blogs and online video being the most with 78 percent and 63 percent of marketers having used them, respectively. Close behind are social networks (56 percent) and podcasts (49 percent).

Is user-generated content all that it is cracked up to be?

Sure, some organizations have been very quick to exploit its appeal in an effort to adapt to the newest and hippest Web technology trends. While others (newspapers, for instance) linger, hesitant and skeptical of the benefit and subsequent outcome that adding wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 prospects, will bring.

For some time now, the jury has been vague is determining the impact -- good or bad -- that user-generated content (UGC) has had on social media and even more importantly, if it's lived up to the hype of being the great equalizer, democracy-laden technology of the Web.

Non-profit organizations are usually hard-pressed to find a software solution that is affordable, practical and meets all their needs from grassroots coalition building to fundraising to content management.

Enter Convio, a software and services company, providing online Constituent Relationship Management (eCRM) solutions to more than 1200 nonprofit organizations.

As non-profits try to stay afloat in these Web 2.0 times, they often find themselves trying to discern between the benefits of blogs, wikis and other social media communications.

Enter ThePort Social Media Suite.

New York based Kickapps, provider of on demand social media software, has released the latest version of its SaaS application suite. Kickapps 3.0 is designed to ease the deployment of features such as social networking, user generated content (UGC), and programmable video players and widgets.

eCirkit, the newest social media webtop to hit the market, has officially gone live. Mashable.com describes the technology as "a new take on social browsing".

With this announcement also came the announcement of it's newest application, "The Social Penetrator", a way to make your social media and data portable.

Nobody should be surprised that with the beginning of a new year comes a whole lotta predictions about how 2008 will role out in the big wide world of the Internet. These ones are all about Enterprise 2.0 and are from Dion Hinchcliffe, the guy with the really nice Enterprise 2.0 graphics. Here's an overview of what he thinks will happen this year

The above claim is gleaned from Wave II of the IT Social Media Index put together by, go figure, ITtoolbox (an IT-oriented social networking site) and PJA Advertising + Marketing.

Read a quick synopsis of what they've got to say before calling BS.