Webjam site creation abilities combined with social networking and collaboration layers makes it easy for charities to not only extend their reach but also allows them to bring collaboration and advocacy in best practice.

Ideas spread across mass spectrum seldom relies on an individual – that is why social media strikes more success stories than traditional marketing approaches – the same shift is now growing among charities. According to Forbes Top 200 Charities surveyed, at least one form of Social Media is being used, a 3% increase over 2009 and 11% growth since 2008. Unlike product and service oriented brands, visibility and reach is not a winning formula for NFP’s, awareness and advocacy is what a charity benefits from.  This new development in social networking means that NFP's can take their marketing skills to a whole new level.

Social media is beginning to transform non-profits both in a way they work as well as their relationships with volunteers and donors. Webjam SaaS platform helps NFP organizations to increase awareness and advocate their causes.  For charities the impact is far greater when it comes to a shift from paid advertising strategies to social mobilization which helps them to have real time understanding of their causes. This is where Webjam platform helps them to use one centralized location to indulge in information sharing and at the same time enabling them to collaborate with their donors and activists on different projects.

Webjam easy creation of sites bundled with social media marketing and collaboration layers transforms non-profits both in a way they work as well as their relationships with their constituents.  According to 2011 research survey more than half (52% respondents) of nonprofits have no formal budgets for commercial social Networks. A lack of staff or budget or concerns about privacy and control are major pitfalls for non profits.  This is where Webjam solution adds the advantage of having a branded in-house social network without having any technical knowledge. All a creator need is to drag and drop readymade modules and next moment they are live.  Webjam’s flexible and easy-to-use content publishing and moderation tools ensure excellent conversations.  Creators can easily set privacy at page and module levels. Creators can also control who is allowed to edit, they can even set permissions for specific users and limit functionality to specific communities.

 How Webjam Can Help NFP’s

 Since Social Media tends to be more immediate, informal and personal forms of communication, Nonprofits organization have a strong opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with their donors. According to a survey Sixty one percent of those aged 30-49 trust social networks and blogs to provide important information. Using Webjam platform can get fast and honest feedback.   Think of Webjam as an investment in the future to reflect the cause and reach to preferred donors.  Here is how Webjam can help charities.

Act as digital printing press:  NFP’s can spread their message with Webjam’s readymade modules for Blogs, forums, Articles, Newsletters, photos, videos.

Advocacy and Outreach: NFP organizations can create their own advocacy groups, get advocacy from all around the world and grow themselves around issues that reflects their cause.

Socialize and Collaborate:  Apart from Social Media platform Webjam provides the right Collaboration tools for activists to organize and run all strategic efforts from one centralized place.

Engagement: With Webjam NFP’s can expand their reach, engage with stakeholders, recruit volunteers and raise funds.

Crowd sourcing:  With Webjam Non Profit sector can connect with their Potential audience, and use them to research their surveys and share their stories.

Knowledge Sharing:  Knowledge sharing is a key to improving efficiency, but it’s also a challenge to put this widely-recognized theory into practice. Webjam Solution for capturing and exchanging insights from observations and experiences empower charities to interact with their audience directly across different projects and geographic locations.

Each year nfp technology exhibition highlights amazing new technology concepts for membership and donor-dependent organisations. The 2011 exhibition brings unrivalled visionaries who will showcase their products with varied technical concepts that can help NFP and membership organisations to increase their visibility and reach. Webjam the leader in affordable social networks for business will exhibit in nfp technology Exhibition to emphasize the use of right social media channels in order to lead, support and manage the social semantics. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to network with our existing and future clients at Stand 10 (just opposite the seminar entrance) and share Webjam’s approach towards branded social media environment. 

For visitors, the exhibition holds unique opportunity to attend seminars on latest technology trends and current social media landscape. You can also attend our seminar on Caught in a Social Media War; Facebook vs. Google. Build Your Own Private Social Networks . John Eikenberry will deliver his speech from 10:15am to 11am in Theatre B. Please note that seminar is scheduled to last 45 minutes.  The entry to the exhibition and seminars is free.

Apart from all exhibition happenings you can also meet our expert advisor Michael Mann at Table 3 and discuss your social space strategy during 1100 Networking Sessions. Would you like to book an appointment with us?  Please email us, to ensure a more practical fruitful discussion.

The Exhibition will take place on Thursday 29^th September at the Business Design Centre, London. For more information please visit nfp Technology 2011 website. Please note exhibition details:

nfp technology Exhibition 2011 Details.

Date: Thursday 29^th September, 2011

Venue: Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, London N1.

Our Stand Location:  Webjam Stand 10 (opposite the seminar entrance).

Seminar: 'Caught in a Social Media War; Facebook vs. Google. Build Your Own Private Social Networks' in Theatre B - Time: 10:15am - 11am

Our very own intranet 'JamJar' has won the gold prize in Communicate Magazine's Digital Impact Awards 2010 for 'Best Intranet'. We won in the category "Best Use of Digital to an Internal Audience: Best intranet". This award requires companies to demonstrate how their Intranet has successfully tackled specific challenges, to deliver tangible results, as well as the strategy driving the implementation.

The awards were created by Communicate Magazine to “recognise excellence in digital stakeholder communications” and to bring greater attention to issues of online reputation and brand management.

We are very proud of this award. There were over 300 entries and we competed in the shortlist against other high-profile enterprises such as Credit Suisse and Royal Mail. As a provider of solutions for social publishing and engagement, we applied our knowledge and experience in implementing Enterprise 2.0 solutions to our own internal community: enhancing engagement between Webjam employees and improving understanding of our own company and offerings via an interactive and stimulating platform. 

By using JamJar regularly, our employees also get to experience the company’s social engagement offering first-hand.  Everyone within Webjam becomes an expert in the product, which encourages feedback and helps with product development.  New starters find it particularly useful as an introduction to the company and to other staff. Since its launch in April, Webjam has seen a drop in internal email traffic of 57 per cent, as ongoing discussions move onto the internal social network as conversations.  So far, the company has seen 100 ideas and 25 projects generated from the platform in the past three months, and most of them were inspired by simple, informal dialogues driven by staff within the organisation.

Next week we will hear if we win the The DigiAwards 2010 organised by CorpComms. Now in its fifth year, this award recognises the best use of digital media in communication strategies.  Webjam has been shortlisted along with three other entries out of 12 submissions, for the Best Use of Digital Media in the Internal Communications category.

Back from the summer holiday – we have even more great news to share with you! 

The entire team here is extremely proud to be listed as a top 100 company in Tech Media Invest again this year. 

The Tech Media Invest Top 100 (TMI) is in association with The Guardian, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Kemp Little.  It is a list of today’s hottest and most innovative emerging companies in the ever converging tech and media industries. 

As Yann (our co-founder and CEO) said, “Our innovative and pragmatic approach to enterprise social media have brought measurable benefits to many organisations, and I’m glad that our team effort has been recognised by the Tech Media Invest (TMI) Advisory Board – which consists of some of the UK’s most experienced investors in modern technology and media.”

The Tech Media Invest 100 aims to showcase high-growth companies that are developing innovative ways to serve business and consumers, and have the potential to radically change the shape of the technology and media industry.

For more information about Tech Media Invest Top 100, please see our full press release.

Marketing has never been more exciting throughout the 15 years of my career as a marketer, thanks to the wide-spread use of Web 2.0, user-generated content and social media.  Marketing professionals can now directly engage with consumers and receive instant feedback on their brand, campaigns and products.

The idea of crowdsourcing is having a revolutionary impact on the communications industry, and has rapidly become an effective way to create content for consumers – let them decide on what they want to see…

For example, Tipp-Ex’s latest digital campaign has raised the bar for ads on YouTube.  By embarking on a choose-your-own-adventure game online, viewers can determine what the hunter should do with the bear.  Views can replace ‘shoot’ with other actions such as ‘hugs’, ‘washes’ or ‘dances with’ by typing in any word that comes to mind.  The choices are unlimited and depend on users’ imagination.

Other offline campaigns are also taking advantage of the crowdsourcing concept, for example, BT has been inviting audiences to vote for the storyline for its ongoing series of above-the-line (TV) commercials.  The result has led to pregnancy of the leading female character.

Unilever has taken an even more radical approach by getting rid of its long-standing ad agency and has since aired a TV ad for Peperami created by the winner of its 1,200-entry crowdsourcing competition.

Social media helps organisations open up their brand, and at the same time encourages consumers to speak up about what they want.  To me, it marks the end of patronising, one-way marketing communications approaches, as consumers continue to demand active participation in what they want and how they want it.

If you are aware of any other interesting crowdsourcing campaigns, feel free to add them to the comments section of the blog.

Written by: Marc Campman,Webjam Director of Marketing

If social media is like word-of-mouth on steroids, why not make the most of it?

The Internet is full of information, and since the rise of social networks and micro-blogging, many brands and organisations have turned to social media for quantitave data such as the number of ‘likes’ a product has or the number of ‘followers’ accumulated over a period of time.

Although these figures might be good indicators of people’s initial feeling towards a product, service or even a brand, there’s a much greater mine of insight hidden among thousands of casual but honest online conversations everyday between friends or members of communities.

Social media has given individuals the power to speak-up and comment on what they like or dislike; one’s opinions being heard is no-longer the privilege of experts or authorities.  Whilst consumers are enjoying being listened to, marketers should optimise this opportunity to harness opinions and turn them into valuable market intelligence.  

As social networks become an ideal platform to conduct fast and effective research on customer behaviour and community patterns, netnography is now the key to faster, better and more cost-effective qualitative research on a massive scale.

Netnography is the branch of ethnography that analyses the free behaviour of individuals on the internet. The term is believed to be firstly employed by Professor Robert Kozinets in 1997. The concept has evolved with the advancement of the Internet as well as the way people consume and exchange information on the net.

Nowadays netnography allows organisations to gain customer insight through both a passive and an active approach.  For example, companies can easily observe what their customers think of their offerings and study their behaviour towards brands, through listening to their social media conversations or reading users’ comments on blogs or in forums.  

Of course, there are also plenty of channels for organisations to respond or proactively engage with their customers directly using a range of social media tools.  A successful sales channel set up by Dell on Twitter, for instance, has brought the technology company an impressive return on investment through simple but direct interaction with their customers on social networks.  Organisations can also design highly targeted netnography tools to fine-tune their interaction strategy with specific groups of key customers and brand advocates.  

I believe marketers would be pleasantly surprised to re-discover the idea of netnography together with social media.  Do you have any experience or success stories to share on using netnography?  If so, we would love to hear from you either via email (marketing@webjam.com) or through comments. 

Written by: Marc Campman,Webjam Director of Marketing

Contrary to a certain belief that social networks (either internal or external) are for time-wasters, they can be excellent time management and productivity tools. I am not just saying it for the effect; let me show you some evidence.

If you have experience attending any time management seminars or workshops, you are likely to be familiar with Stephen Covey’s quadrant of urgency and importance – a key feature in one of his many successful books First Things First.

As stated by Covey, the idea of breaking our daily tasks or to-do lists into four key categories (see diagram below) helps improve efficiency. However, the challenge lies with separating urgent tasks that required immediate attention from important ones which has big impact but are not necessarily time sensitive. 

Whilst this is a useful tip, it’s not always easy to put the theory into practice without the right tool and support from within the company.

In April this year, we started applying this theory and putting it into practice with our own internal social network called JamJar, and I am pleased (although not surprised) to see the results.

To begin with, we encouraged our staff to add all important tasks or information to the collaboration network, so everyone can schedule in time to think and respond properly, and at their own pace.  This separates all the non-urgent, but important messages from the urgent ones, which go into the email inbox of the relevant parties, who can then respond in a timely manner (see highlighted second quadrant in yellow).

That way, important but non-urgent discussions are no longer distracting employees from the urgent ones that arrive in their inbox.  In addition, important but not urgent discussions are now getting the attention they deserve.  This is particularly important for keeping business objectives on track and ensuring that all the actions are taken care of and in the right order, without getting bogged down by other non time sensitive items.

In addition, our email traffic has dropped by 57 per cent since implementation and our staff are no longer receiving hundreds of emails that were mixed with tasks of all degrees of urgency and importance.  From a filing and storage point of view, all important information that needs to be shared is now all in one interactive network within our company.

A sensible internal network brings multiple benefits, and enhancing employee’s time management skills is a simple and straightforward capability that can be easily achieved.  I am more than happy to share our JamJar experience with you if you would like to drop me an email, you can email me at lexie (at) webjam-ltd.com or leave me a comment below.

Written by: Lexie Mendelson,Webjam Business Development Director

Despite the traditionally quiet summer period in August, we have some exciting news at Webjam to share with you.

Our very own social Intranet ‘JamJar’ has been nominated not only once but twice in two major industry awards: CorpComms’ Digi Awards 2010 and Communicate magazine’s Digital Impact Awards 2010.

The entire team is very proud to be shortlisted alongside some high-profile brands including Bupa, DHL and Hyder Consulting for the Best use of digital media internal communications category of the Digi Awards, as well as Credit Suisse and Royal Mail for the Best use of digital to an internal audience: best intranet category at the Digital Impact Awards.

JamJar is a result of our enterprise 2.0 approach to improving internal communications and engagement through effective use of digital media.  Since its launch in April, we’ve seen a significant drop in internal email traffic of 57 per cent, as ongoing discussions move onto the internal social network as conversations.  So far, we have seen 100 ideas and 25 projects generated from the platform in the past three months.

If you want to hear more about social Intranet, or if you’re looking for ideas to help employees generate and share ideas and information through lively conversations, leave us a comment below or drop us an email: bizdev(at)webjam.com

Results for both awards will be presented in September, so wish us luck!

View the full press release

Social Media Marketing aka SMM is one of the hottest buzz words in the world of online advertising, however what does it mean to the average Joe...probably not a lot?

I've recently started working on a project with the aim of raising thousands of pounds within a relatively short period of time. My client needs to raise this money in order to produce a  product and is trusting that social media marketing is a route to generating these funds.

The internet we use today is known to tech geeks as web 2.0. It's far removed from the internet of the past. No longer are advertisers, brands and products pushing adverts to the viewer. The viewer now has the power to voice their opinion. They can tell the brand exactly what they like, It's now a two way relationship.

Imagine reading this comment below the product that you're about to spend thousands of pounds on:

"I hate your product, it breaks all the time and it was made by a three year old child in a sweat shop, I demand you remove this product and send me my money back!"

If I was about to spend thousands of pounds on your product and I saw this it would defiantly alter my view on parting with my money in exchange for your dodgy product.

Last week I attended the Figaro Digital SEO & PPC conference at the Hospital Club, London. Martin Dinham, Director of Guava presented "Trends and Spends in Search Marketing". This survey otherwise know as the 'UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2010' represented the UK's marketing industry over the past year. To cut to the point Social Media Marketing aka SMM has:

• Increased by 35% in the past year.
• 57% of companies spend less than £5000 per year running their social networks.
  
• 65% of companies plan to increase their spend on SMM in the next year.

The main reason why companies hesitate with SMM is the inability to measure what they get out of SMM,...what is their ROI aka Return On Investment from using Social Media?

Measuring social media is tough, however there is more to Social Media Marketing than just converting your 'likes' into sales. The survey summarised why companies use social media:

1. Brand Awareness
2. Increase Traffic to their website
3. Increase the volume of leads
4. Increase volume of sales.

Brand Awareness is paramount when it comes to marketing. What do your customers think of you? What are they saying about your products? Who are they reccomending your products to? These type of questions are essential to selling your product, you have to know what people want, so you can sell them what they want!

By simply setting up a Facebook like page and Twitter account you are one step closer to your customers, you are opening up your brand, they can get a little closer to what you do, they can even become brand ambassadors helping promote and distribute your products and news!

However you need to keep them plump by feeding them a little bit at a time. We're not talking supersize, all you need to do is keep it simple, what would you like to see, read or click on if you were a fan of your brand?

Ultimately if you are a brand with no social media presence, how on earth do you expect to develop your product? Sooner or later you'll have to set up these various channels, so what are you waiting for, get off your ass and do it!

DOWNLOAD: UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2010

Written by: Tom Durston, Webjam Online Marketing Executive

You've got your venue, hired the band and now it's time to start promoting.

Posting an event on Facebook shouldn't be the end of your promotion activity.

As more and more people become familiar with creating events on Facebook there seems to be less and less personal activity when it comes to being a host. Posting on Facebook is a good start, but it shouldn't be the end of your campaign. People are losing track of how to interact with their peers which is culminating in less packed events.

Not even a year ago it was a requirement of being a promoter to print flyers to go with the show. Flyers around town mean heads in the door and thus more cash at the bar for the venue. Whether venues are more lax these days is a different question. The promoter wants a successful night and should promote to the best of their ability.

And how about your friends. They should be the linchpin on the successes of events. So by being impersonal and thinking that they will react warmingly to an invite on Facebook would be a mistake. Facebook is getting older (in the sense that your mum is on it), and with 500m people on the platform there are more and more are birthday parties, gigs and events being hosted and as a result of this, your event can become lost.

So what do you do? 100 people saying "yes I'll come to your event" is all very well, but how do you convert that into people through the door?

One way is to incentivise ticket sales. Give money off for people buying in advance. We Got Tickets is especially good for smaller events and you can keep track of sales easily. Keep people on their toes by releasing small amounts of tickets at once - if there are only 20 tickets left on sale people are more likely to buy. They are excited that the event will be packed and also worried they might not get tickets.

Like Facebook, Twitter holds great potential when it comes to promotion. Connect with the right people and get them to spread the word. By having people RT your event you get a further reach in a short space of time.

The final and most important thing is based offline. Posters. Put them up everywhere - especially in the venue that is hosting the event. Cafes, Student Unions, bars and so on are the ideal space. Don't be perturbed if you get turned away from a place. Keep calm and carry on.

Finally, keep in mind all the time the personal aspect of an event. Make people feel wanted and not just part of a list.

Written by: Sam Lassman,Webjam Engagement Team