Visit Webjam Monday and Tuesday, March 15-16, at the Social Media World Forum Europe at Olympia Conference Center in London. The focus is on social media strategies for the enterprise - including CRM, enterprise bookmarking, communities, enterprise social software, knowledge management, and aligning the CIO's strategy with internal goals. Founder and CEO Yann Motte will present about: "Maximising employee engagement – measuring adoption and business value" on Monday, March 15, at 4.30pm. he will also sit on a panel forum at 3.10pm about "Social media as a sales & marketing platform". Please visit Webjam at booth 48 to receive a live demo of our solutions and meet our staff. For more information click here.

Written by: Marc Campman,Webjam Director of Marketing

Traditionally, companies kept their intranet behind the firewall, scared that any information would "leak" to the outside world. Intranets were primarily used as a top down communication tool or an internal network where each department could surface documents that they wanted to share with others in the organisation. In this traditional Intranet scenario, the success is based on "garbage in - garbage out". What you get out of it is as good as what you put in it. Often, departments didn't keep their information up to date, with the result that employees stopped using the Intranet. Companies went back to their directory on the corporate server to make information accessible to employees. After the initial experiences of using the internet behind the firewall, companies started to open their firewall in a controlled manner. Important clients or partners could access parts of the Intranet. This was a big improvement for companies in the way they interacted with their clients. But it was still limited, and driven by technology restrictions, not client requirements.

Then Web 2.0 arrived. All of a sudden, the traditional communication model was put upside down. Information was no longer one-directional. The medium of communication became less important, content became king. It was no longer about what the company said, but about where they listened. Various phases can be recognised how companies dealt with it:

Consumers (including employees) started to create their own channels of communication to talk about the company and share relevant knowledge. Employees started alumni groups on Linkedin because the company's intranet didn't allow for it. Clients and employees started to communicate via Twitter or Facebook. Employees started external blogs to discuss company related matters. 

Companies started to participate in these discussions, hesitantly. On a trial and error basis. Particularly when it came to engaging with clients. They still didn't know how to handle it internally. Companies even went as far as forbidding employees to use Facebook or Twitter internally. Not realising that they can access all major social media networks via their mobile phone.

Today, companies are at the stage that they are opening up their intranet for social media. Enabling employees to engage in conversations with management, sharing knowledge and best practices, and using the appropriate social media tools like blogging, micro blogging, forum discussions and webcasts to facilitate this.

So where will this take us? What is the next step?

The next thing we see emerging is that the discussions that are going on internally are being surfaced on the network and therefor will be accessible to all people in the organisation. By allowing people to rate content and reward top contributors the internal social media network becomes a centrifuge of ideas, knowledge, best practices and activities. The same concept can be applied to the online discussions that are going on outside the company. Companies will participate in these discussions and they will make them more and more transparent. Ultimately taking the customer on the engagement ladder from observer to contributor. Check this link on the latest research on social media inside the firewall.

Finally, the barriers between internal and external will disappear. Discussions that are taking place outside the company will surface internally and vice versa. Real conversations and connections will be made between employees and customers. And these discussions will surface on the client-centric enterprise social network. The hub of all the company's social media activities. Where it focuses on the client instead of the organisation. Where it focuses on the content, instead of the social media tools. We see this as a tremendous opportunity for companies to fundamentally change the way they build relationships with and between their employees and clients.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

The Vintage Reading Group community portal will offer new content and a place for discovery and discussions. Readers or reading groups can also create their own private social networks focused on specific topics or a group's physical location.

For more information, please read the Press Release

Denise is currently studying creative writing at the University of Kent, and is trying to turn a field into a garden. 

You can learn more about Denise by visiting her network: www.webjam.com/deniseturner

In our strategy to manage the inverted brand, we use the following model from Mike Arauz as the basis:

It is a model that puts the different types of friends you can have online in the context of the different phases you go through in developing a relationship. It replaces the "ancient" AICDA formula (Attention, Interest, Conviction, Desire, Action) with SEEC (Search, Exposure, Engagement, Collaboration). Mike's blogpost explains the model in more detail but I would like to look at the model from the "SEEC" perspective.

Search: Search happens before you start befriending people. In your online search you meet people and the connected experiences you have turn your anonymous search in a passive interest.

Exposure: Once the publisher of content has triggered your interest, you will search for more content and read more about his/her ideas. That person is not your friend yet, but there is a basis for developing a friendship. The key trigger is when you start bookmarking the site. You are then close to changing your passive interest into an active interest.

Engagement: The key trigger for active interest is when you start leaving comments or do retweets on posts from your new friends. Then they know that you are interested in friendship. Once you have shown your interest, the relationship starts to develop which will manifest itself by increased engagement through sharing information. You make references to your new friend on your own site, he/she starts responding to your comments in public and later maybe via email or IM.

Collaboration: The relationship is becoming more and more intense. You actually start to promote each others content and the relationship can ultimately lead to a WIN WIN situation where both you and your friend will benefit from working together.

So why is understanding this model so important? It is the core of your engagement strategy. It will help you in listening to your audiences, defining your communities, deciding on the type of content you have to create, the type of social media channels you have to use and finally, the type of data you have to collect and tools to use to measure the success of your social media outreach.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

Written by Yann Motte, Webjam CEO

Being a social media solutions provider, we live and breath social media ourselves. Using our own solution to interact with our clients is key in gaining first hand experience in social media engagement. Vital experience that we can pass on to our customers when we advise them on how to develop and implement their own social media strategy. There are public and a members only sections on the web site. The main public areas are Webjam Delight and Webjam Spread, our company blog and company newsletter. As well as a section about where to meet Webjam and conferences and exhbitions. The members only section has information about members only events like the Breakfast with Webjam briefings and also includes an area where members can lead and  engage in discussion forums.

We will formally launch the site in the first few weeks of 2010 by inviting our existing clients to join. But in the meantime, feel free to browse the site by going to www.webjam.com/connections and if you want to become a member, just click the "join network" button or send an email to marketing@webjam.com.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

First of all, it is about clearly defining why companies today are using social media and aligning our proposition with these requirements. In our dealings with our clients we have formulated our vision of the inverted brand and the notion that social media enables companies to open up their brand (Social Media update 5: the inverted brand). We see this as a key driver for social media in enterprises. To make this tangible we believe companies today are using social media for managing online reputation, building online communities or enhancing social engagement between employees or members within the company.

Approaching this segmentation from an application perspective brings an additional dimension to developing a social media offering. Our clients are not just buying a platform. For them, the platform is an enabler to help them achieving their social media goals. What they really need is guidance on how to turn the platform features into a successful community engagement experience that is robust, runs smoothly and on top of that is unique, engaging and visually attractive.

We have recognised this and developed the Webjam Social Media Framework. This consists of our social publishing platform to host the social media environment, the managed services to stay in control of the social media deployment and the creative services to translate the client’s requirements into a unique, engaging and visually attractive social media solution. In other words, in developing our business proposition we looked beyond the technology and tried to capture all the elements a client need for a successful social media deployment.

To see this all in action, check out www.webjam.com and if you want a short summary, do play the video on the home page.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

The reason behind the changes is to align our website with our new positioning as a social publishing and engagement solutions provider for companies to connect with their customers and employees. The pillars of our solution are the Webjam social publishing and engagement platform, our Managed Services and our Creative Services. The site has been structured in a way that you can easily find everything you need to know about our offering. In the About us section you find the latest news about our company as well as a dedicated Learning page to discover the benefits of social media.

For you, as our current user, there will not be any change to the network(s) you have created and the support you receive. You can continue to use Webjam as you currently do.

To whet your appetite for the gorgeous new pages we are launching, here is a screenshot of the homepage:

Watch this space!

On Wednesday, 18 November, Webjam held the first of our breakfast briefings for people interested in learning how businesses can benefit from social media & how Webjam can help. The theme for this briefing was ‘Social media and the Inverted Brand.'

We were delighted to have guest speaker Euan Semple, former Director of Knowledge Management Solutions at the BBC, speak to the gathering about social media and also touch on the Cluetrain manifesto, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. His presentation got conversations flowing and led into the presentation about the Inverted Brand by Marketing Director, Marc Campman. Further discussions enshewed about how social media is influencing the way companies build their brand and develop their reputation.

Thanks to Euan for presenting and our guests for attending. We look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Webjam’s platform provides host countries with editable site templates to create their own interactive network within the main site.  Host countries and their representative communities are then able to blog, promote events as well as post comments, pictures and videos creating, for the first time, a high-tech online community for the global event.  

Webjam is thrilled to be involved in such a global initiative. It illustrates how companies use Webjam to roll out multiple community sites while keeping brand consistency and full editorial control. By using the power of our social networking platforms, Make Your Mark is bringing the leaders of tomorrow together in one online community, allowing the finest young minds around the world to interact, engage and share content in relation to their common interests.

Visit Make Your Mark's Global Enterprise Week website

The “Strategies” editorial team is conducting with us a very interesting experiment, applying the principles of Social Media to the very people who keep talking about it, Marketing Directors. The basic idea is a free-flowing conversation between speakers and attendees to the conference during the few weeks leading to the conference to start sharing ideas on current marketing issues. A trade conference being mainly a hub for ideas and contacts, we are working on the product it-self, the ideas, and the contacts of course via on-line social networking before and during the conference. Beyond the traditional forums, each speaker gets their personalized blog page to which they can add content and functionalities from their own twitter feed to poll modules. One of the renown speakers for example, Sophie Callies  from SO’xperts is now polling the community about one of the most important issue facing (social) marketing today, which is about how to measure performance.

Generating discussions before and during a conference is not itself a new idea and has been common for a while already at blogging and tech conferences. But speakers and attendees there are usually prolific contributors on the web. Here the community, like the conference, is only accessible to members (speakers and attendees) so I unfortunately can’t show it here; but it will be interesting to see the level of conversations that a few dozen professionals from companies ranging from Orange to Toyota and Innocent are ready to generate about how marketing is likely to evolve, using the very tools they are trying to harness to engage their own clients & consumers.

Moving forward, the relationship we are forging with Reed is typical of a business we see growing fast at Webjam : advising and enabling our clients to foster conversations, often in closed communities, between their own clients, partners or employees. Like we have already done for the agency JWT (part of the WPP agency network) we keep improving on finding the perfect  blend between social media and enterprise social networks and solve an issue that is as important as engaging customers: engaging professionals.

Written by Yann Motte, Webjam CEO

The emergence of social media is about to change the internal landscape dramatically. As much as it changes the way companies communicate with their clients, the same benefits apply to communicating with your employees. Watch this video to see why:

Here's my take on why companies are using social media internally:

1. To inform employees. In its most straightforward way, social media can be just another medium to communicate and inform employees. Blogs in which departments inform their staff, a newsletter with options for employees to give comments, twitter as a micro instant communication channel to employees.

2. To create a shared vision. This takes internal communication to the next level. Using social media to engage with your employees with the objective to embed the company's mission, vision and values. A CEO internal blog in which he discusses the vision, seeks feedback for improvement and explains how staff can become internal brand ambassadors.

3. To increase productivity. This is all about using social media as a collaboration tool. Social media helps bringing documents, people and planning together. in the form of sharing documents, sharing feedback and synchronising project tasks.

4. To engage employees. Engaging in open conversations is the essence of social media. Like companies are opening themselves to their clients, with using social media for internal communications, management are opening themselves for their employees. Which means that employees are enabled to talk about how they feel, what they like to do and how they like to work together. Management has to actively engage in these discussions.

5. To support the strategy. Bringing all of the above together, using social media for internal communications should ultimately drive the implementation of the company's strategy. Which can be measured in terms of revenue, cost reduction, profit or market share. This means that implementation of an internal social media programme follows the same steps as an external programme. Who am I targeting, how can I group them, what content is relevant for them, what social media tools do I use, how do I engage with them and how do I measure the effectiveness.

By using social media internally, companies open up their brand as much as they use it externally. By engaging with their employees, management can make the mission, vision and brand values come to life. Which in turn transforms employees in brand ambassadors. A role which they will take when talking to stakeholders outside the company. That's why it is important to bring all social media activity together in the company's social media hub. An internal website, or network of web site, that employees can go to to share, publish and engage and giving them access to all the social media tools the company makes available.

Finally, by using social media internally, companies can start to learn the concepts of content creation, sharing and engagement, in a "protected" environment. And when they feel confident, they can then leverage their experiences externally and use social media to engage with their customers.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

This challenge of how to develop successful social media campaigns is high on my priority list in rolling out Webjam's marketing strategy. First, because its part of our advice we give to our clients when they implement the Webjam social publishing and engagement platform. Second, because we are rolling out our own social media programme and we want to make sure we hit the right buttons in engaging with our stakeholders. In further developing our strategy I came across this really useful social media strategy diagram, developed by David J. Carr. It groups the development and roll out of a social media strategy in 4 distinct phases.

click diagram to open high res version in new window.

Phase 1: LISTEN. In this phase you have to define your key stakeholders and listen to what they are doing on the web and social arena. Its just like real marketing. Who is your target market, and what do they need. The only difference now is that standard market research won't do the trick. You now have to find the online places where they are and listen to what they are saying. About you, your product, your service, the market etc.

Phase 2: UNDERSTAND. Again, marketing 101. But with a slight difference. Now that you have identified them and grouped them in what David calls tribes, you have to give them something they belong to. Something they can join. In social media terms this is called joining a community. Just like the real tribes do. And once you've done that you then feed the tribes with relevant and interesting objects. This is the content. This can be tools, widgets, apps, videos, photos, ideas, assets or any other content. As long as it is relevant to them.

Phase 3: ENGAGE. This is probably the most important phase of the roll out. Mingle with the tribes. Play their games, have conversations and connected experiences. But make sure you use their preferred platforms, their personalised pages, or the video and photo sharing sites they use. Even simple email can be effective in this stage. Its about enable, encourage and optimise for sharing the social objects created in the previous stage. If this is done properly, the content will be shared on Blogs and niche sites, will be replicated on other social networks and will ultimately drive the creation of communities and forums. In this phase, paid for media (Online ads, promo links or Google Adwords) can be used to stimulate further distribution of the content.

Phase 4: MEASURE, REACT & RESPOND. This phase is critical. This is where you measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Whether you achieve the anticipated results. In Webjam we do this in three levels of sophistication. REACH, ENGAGEMENT, BRAND. From very simple traffic analysis, to community engagement and ultimately to brand sentiment analysis. This data can then be used as input to finetune the strategy and this makes it a vicious circle.

I hope you share my enthousiasm on the usefulness of this diagram. Obviously, there are many web tools available that will help you in each stage of the diagram. This will be too much to cover in this blog entry but I will discuss this in a future blog entry.

Do give me your feedback on this innovative and clear approach on implementing social media campaigns.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing

notes:

See http://www.slideshare.net/kholzapfel/social-media-success-stories for samples of successful social media campaigns

see http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/09/21/5-social-media-disasters/ for social media disasters

Marketers should move to the next stage and actually purposely blend their official message with the informal conversations of their end-users or clients in what I would call Social Media Hubs. The reason is very simple: people now trust first “a person like me” above experts as highlighted in the Edelman Trust barometer. And with recommendations from these “people like me” (even though you may not know them) influencing more and more purchase decisions, getting your reputation right is paramount ... And reputation is not what you say about yourself on your site but what people say about you in their online conversations... And you are likely to be rewarded if you take this into account rather than hide it.

Too many companies are still creating Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to tick the “social media box” but they are missing the point if they don’t see these tools as a live giant feedback loop, which is what the internet has actually become from a marketing prospective. It is interesting that while Twitter still presents its philosophy as answering the question “what are you doing ?”, their new homepage now says “See what people are saying about...” The real opportunity now is to indeed listen to what people are saying about you there, import it on your “official site” which needs to become an anchor for your community, run there a poll about some of the issues raised and then export the results back in a facebook group for example. As fellow co-founder Alberto Barreiro said in the WOW 2.0 conference last week, “Activity is the new content” as conversations define reputations; the role of marketing today is less and less about controlling an agenda and more and more about fuelling these conversations.

As I said in a recent article about Climbing the social network ladder in Computer Business Review, “Companies need to make followers aware of the brand, not just the medium”. The issue is not to look cool by having a presence on the latest web2.0 sites but to show that you are actively listening and reacting. That won’t happen by keeping separate a “safe” official site and a few groups/feeds here and there. Both have to mingle and brands need to be comfortable with what they want to say about themselves sitting alongside what people say about them by :

• Creating a fully branded, customised  social media environment serving as the hub for their social media presence on the web;
• Aggregating the flow of conversations about themselves, putting them into context and re-sending these to key networks on the web;
• Managing and fostering communities, offering customers a destination to check out on buzz & reputation.

We facilitate that process on Webjam by enabling our clients to create such Social Media Hub(s) so as to generate the activity levels required for the collective construction of their brand identities.

Written by Yann Motte, Webjam CEO

Marc will be presenting a talk about 'Social Media - The Reputation Factor' explaining how companies can enhance their reputation and relationship with their customers. Marc's presentation will give insight in how social media can help close the gap between online reputation and brand reality. To read about Marc's thoughts building a brand and reputation you can read his posts: Social Media Experience no. 4 and Marketing 2.0 - The Inverted Brand.

Other presenters at the Social Media Marketing Conference include Thought Leader Euan Semple and representatives from Siemens, Penguin Digital, British Red Cross, GoViral and other digital agencies, service providers and companies.

Read more and register for Figaro Digital conference

Tomorrow, Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th September, Webjam will be taking part in WOW 2.0! - the sixth Annual Allegro 234 Meeting, held in Madrid and Barcelona. The topic of the conferences is 'Why and how to create a brand experience in Web 2.0'.

The conferences have been organised by Webjam reseller Cristián Saracco, creator and editor of Brand 3.0 on Webjam. There will be two presentations, one by Cristián who is the Founding Partner of Allegro 234 and the other by Webjam co-founder and Chief Product Officer; Alberto Barreiro. The anticipated audience will comprise of Marketing Directors, digital managers, representatives of Universities, branding and digital agencies and companies such as Acciona and Indra.

Alberto Barreiro will present on the topic 'Activity is the new Content'. He will explain why social media is critical for brands and how activity - shared content, comments, connections & conversations - are replacing centralised directional communication. Thus, in this new context, a brand's identity is constructed through conversations and experiences. Webjam provides the solution that gives brands, and their users, an interactive environment that allows them to easily generate the activity levels required for the collective construction of their identity.

More information on WOW 2.0!

In his Social Media Marketing Industry Report “How marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses” from March 2009 (http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/), Michael Stelzner quotes that the number-one benefit of social media marketing is gaining exposure. A significant 81% of all marketers interviewed indicated that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses.

Some companies feel exposed because of this and others see this as an opportunity to get closer to their customers. The question social media marketers have to ask is, “Am I willing to let others shape my brand or identity without my input?” More and more companies today don’t want to lose control of their brand so they open themselves up online.  They understand that if you interact with others on any level in the online world you involve them in shaping your brand or identity. For some this happens on a greater scale than others, but it is happening. Online communities are increasingly considered the norm for online interaction. The size of these communities is getting bigger and bigger and they simply cannot be ignored. And the tools they are using can make minor discussions become large events.

There is another dimension to this. Social media networks and tools spread perceptions of brand or reputation like wildfire. It gives a new meaning to “word of mouth”. This passing of information from person to person has been around for a long time but never really featured on the radar screen of marketing professionals in large organisations. It was more relevant for small companies, particularly operating on a local scale. But nowadays, word of mouth is different. The online publishing tools available to people today make the spread of information much easier and faster. Before companies realise, the idea of a perception has become a reality. If numerous people are sharing a feeling towards a company within their online social networks, their friends start to share this feeling in their network and the perception becomes reality at an exponential rate. And furthermore, with Social Media, public sentiment is documented, searchable and ubiquitous.  What is said today will be available today, tomorrow and 10 years from now.

Social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace and social media applications like blogging, micro blogging, forums etc. empower communities and individuals like companies have never seen before: Giving them the power of online conversations and connections, bringing a new dimension to “word of mouth”. Enabling them to influence the way companies build their brand and develop their reputation. I call this Brand Inversion.

Written by Marc Campman, Webjam Marketing Director

For the second-time running, Webjam was named last Monday a Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 company, topping some of the previous awards we had over the last two years and confirming our presence on the UK tech scene. This is great news for our clients and partners and of course a source of pride for all of us here, especially given the overall economic outlook.

What do we do now? Well we grow ! in uncertain times, a key reason why many of the companies in that list have been selected is that they have found the virtuous combination between the product, market and business model. What is paradoxical is that the market is not ready to finance anything these days, with VC funding in the whole of Europe  less than that of the Silicon Valley in Q2’09 according to Venture Source quoted by Guardian Richard Wray in the Guardian supplement.  It remains to be seen if banks  will be capable to lend and fund working capital requirements and long sales/partnership cycles: I find it amazing that our bank, HSBC, can only extend the corporate credit card limit to the amount we are ready to freeze on a separate account. We are actually lending money to our bank while they are collecting recurring monthly fees ! This is not a mundane issue for many of the companies mentioned here who usually have in common the need to finance the upfront development and commercial work required to continue gaining paying clients and subscribers.

In any case, I’d rather enjoy being on the side of the entrepreneur these days, with great new clients in the pipe and new business being brought by existing clients: these awards are a celebration of entrepreneurship and it is fitting that our relationship keeps growing with Make Your Mark, the organizer of the worldwide “Entrepreneur’s week” and whose communities across 77 countries are powered by Webjam. I would  definitely share the enthusiasm of Mike Butcher from Techcrunch that this is a good time to start a company, simply because the slump makes competition healthier with everybody zooming on providing real value to the client. It has never been easier to be focused !

As for Webjam, we will continue building on the three trends that make our industry so exciting :

• Social Media is a deep sociological change in human behaviour that is here to stay;
• That makes pro-active on-line reputation management the next big thing in marketing;
• The platforms and solutions that will win are the ones which can interconnect how users interact with brands and organisations across different networks.

Congratulations to all the companies in this Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 list where in many case we have friends and with whom we could end-up partnering at some point !

Written by Yann Motte, Webjam CEO

It showcases young entrepreneurial companies that are developing innovative new ways to serve business and consumers, and have the potential to radically change the shape of the technology and media industry.

We are very pleased with this listing and it confirms that Webjam is driving change in how companies bring interaction and trust in the way they communicate with their customers and use our technology as the fabric to shape their online presence.

Also see TechDigest where Webjam features as one of the key start ups.