The Squared Root - FG Squared's Blog

If you ever wondered what social commerce's impact is on business, then you will be very interested in Steve Guengerich's keynote presentation tomorrow at the Interactive Austin 2008 conference. Steve, who is the Chief Learning Office at nGenera, will be discussing the intricacies of social commerce and what it means for the companies of today.

Steve is going to take the audience through the “perfect storm” that is Web 2.0 as it brings together globalization, talent and technology. He also will bring into light the necessary redefinition of corporate marketing, as well as the trust that consumers and clients have in companies, brands and individuals.

According to Steve, Wikinomics is the model for leveraging social commerce. He will use case studies to show how early adopters of wikinomics have utilized this social commerce tool in their business and the major impact that it has had on corporate trust and marketing.

Finally, Steve will introduce Interactive Austin 2008 attendees to the next generation enterprise. With the next generation enterprise, companies will be able to source talent both inside and outside the enterprise, as well as allowing the customer to come inside the enterprise to co-innovate.

Mr. Guengerich’s keynote is sure to bring excitement into the audience as he delivers them to the cutting edge of social commerce.

Before joining the C-level ranks at nGenera, Steve was the Director of Information Technology for Bridgepoint Consulting, as well as the President of Perceptive Sciences Corporation. He began his career with Accenture and PriceWaterhouse-Cooper's consulting group where he specialized in advanced technologies.

Steve also is an award-winning writer and has authored eight computer books and articles for publications like Computerworld, eWeek and NetworkWorld.

I've come up with a bullet-proof social media metric: the rate at whcih Red Bull is replenished in marketing and integration firms. At FG SQUARED, the rate at which Red Bull disappears is rising. Fast.

As the number of social application requests grows -- ranging from a widget to a seminar (Interactive Austin is tomorrow...) to an extension of a platform like Clearspace -- the number of cans of Red Bull moving in the general direction of the Recycle Bin (it is Austin, after all) is rising. What's even better is that the Red Bull Index can be calculated globally -- up 73% across the company since April -- or locally: FG SQUARED's West unit consumes Red Bull at about an 8:1 ratio compared with the East unit where caffeine and diet soda rule.

So, the next time someone tells you social media isn't measurable, just smile and ask if they're looked at their Red Bull Index lately. Then grab your wings and get back to it. We've come to win.

Clickstream is defined as the recording of what a computer user clicks on while surfing the Internet. The data collected from clickstream shows what sites a user visited, what pages within the site they visited, what they clicked on and how long they were there.

The user’s clickstream data can be invaluable to marketers on determining what is of interest to their target demographic, what parts of a site seem to grab their attention, and their Internet habits in general.

During his keynote presentation at the Interactive Austin 2008 symposium, Pete Hayes will be teaching the audience about Clickstream as an alternative to driving traffic to their site and incorporating the data into overall marketing efforts.

As part of his keynote presentation, Hayes will present a Best Buy case study to show how corporations can insert content into consumer buying sites; he will also demonstrate how content can be syndicated into blogshere with a case study from GearLive; and finally, through a AMD game case study, he will show companies how they can intercept their own clickstreams and discover new uses for current visitors. With the AMD game, Hayes and his team were able to generate 3 million unique visitors per month in 90 days.

Not knowing a lot about the topic, I am looking forward to hearing Mr. Hayes' keynote presentation.

Hayes is the Vice President of Corporate Marketing & Communications for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Prior to his arrival at AMD in the summer of 2006, Hayes was with SicolaMartin for 11 years. During his time at SicolaMartin, Hayes worked in Business Development and general management roles of their interactive division His client experience includes 3M, AMD, Citrix, Compag, Dell, Freescale, Motorola and Novell.

Since FG SQUARED is sponsoring the Interactive Austin 2008 forum to bring together Central Texas area professionals well-versed in the application of social media and interactive services to business purposes, I was fascinated by an article that I read recently in Web 2.0 boot camp. The title was "Why traditionally minded execs need a little basic training to conquer their mistrust of social networking and document sharing." It sited the logistical advantages of social networks to get colleagues, employees and customers in touch. The article also acknowledged that Wikis as the answer to eliminating the long hours in email distributions.

With such obvious advantages, why is it that companies seem to freeze before they adopt these low-cost social media tools. The learning curve on such tools is simply not that great ... so why the hold up?

The article speculates on the mistrust of senior executives and that it may arise from the roots of social media - many of the tools were developed originally as "fun stuff" and now are being touted as business tools. The roots of social media may create a some disbelief with business professionals as to whether these clever tools are actually suitable for serious business purposes.

The article also pegs an even bigger concern. - the fear factor that Kathleen Gilroy, a Web 2.0 consultant with the Otter Group in Cambridge, MA, describes. Social media threatens the standard hierarchy structures in business. It has a flattening effect on organizations that engage. No longer is the information reserved just for those in the "pup tent"- but for a much larger group in the organization.

Understandably, many executives are afraid to give up control and to give everyone a voice. The new organizational structure (that results from the application of social media within an organization) and its effectiveness in communications are often unknown to many of executives at this point in time. There are concerns that inaccurate information will slip out online.

However, executive fear and procrastination will not necessarily stop the social media wave. Dion Hinchcliffe, president and CTO of Hinchcliffe & Co. with a track record training over 4,000 executives globally, has worked with many executives who decide to embrace social media corporate-wide - only to find that many of their departments were already using many of the Web 2.0 tools.

With more content now being produced through social media than traditional media, it seems clear that the social media wave is cresting and that companies need to prepare for the wake. Corporations need to find management approaches that create checks and balances to control the distribution of corporate information. Brand consistency is also crucial. Companies have to address these issues and challenges and then balance the additional work involved in the transition with the additional exposure available by going global and social online.