Along with Google, Digg, and other websites out there, YouTube has joined the steady and inexorable march towards an internet devoid of Internet Explorer 6. Developers and web-types dislike IE6, so this move is generally applauded by the masses. It does, however, put many businesses that rely on the outdated browser in a tight spot.

Why? Well, it’s complicated. For most people, happily, upgrading is a simple matter of clicking a button and downloading the new version (then grumbling a bit and going for a coffee refill when they have to restart their browsers). But what happens to all the companies that use software and intranet apps that are incompatible with the newer versions? Upgrading isn’t as simple as clicking a button, it’s a matter of upgrading extensive and sometimes expensive dependent software, some of which is not upgradeable (necessitating purchasing/writing new programs). You can therefore understand that this is a more complex issue. The companion side to this same issue is that many companies, especially large ones, do not allow individual users to install anything on their own machines. So, as you can imagine, updating an entire company with thousands of employees and computers means tens of thousands of man hours to get the upgrade completed.

But what are the implications of this expanding movement to bury IE6 once and for all?

Developers and Designers Rejoice
While not a rioting-and-drinking-in- the-street kind of revolution, I imagine the collective sigh of relief and happiness across the US might well exceed wind speeds of 15-20 mph.

New Jobs
Like the Y2K software glitches and eventual switch, I imagine companies and freelancing contractors will pop up who specialize in updating IE6-reliant code, and go to work trying to make the old software compatible with newer versions of IE or other browsers. Though quite an undertaking, and expensive to boot, it’s an option (and frankly, a fairly likely eventuality).

New Permissions
Part of the problem for some companies is that individual users do not have permission to download anything—anything—on their work computers, including the new versions of Internet Explorer. This means that any time a user needs an upgrade, an IT employee must go to every single station. In reality, this draconian shackling of employees is simply not necessary. If you’re worried about people Facebooking or Tweeting on company time—or surfing proscribed websites—it’s time to face the fact that they’re doing it anyway via smart phones. A little thing like strict permission filtering is hardly going to stop the die-hard Farmville player or Twitterer.

Browser Wars
It is entirely possible that this move will force—or at the very least encourage—corporations to look into allowing users to install and operate some of the open source browser programs like Chrome and Firefox, using IE6 to only support whatever programs or applications still rely on it.

Buying New Computers
Some users, especially individuals, might opt to simply buy a new computer that will have the newer IE versions already loaded. It might be a good niche marketing campaign to target those non-savvy IE6 users in this demographic and help them choose the right new machine.

Viva la Browser Revolución
Let’s face it: this was inevitable. The internet is a living, evolving technology, and renouncing (and then thoroughly abusing) worn-out and outdated software is just part of the internet landscape. The time is ripe to step into the twenty-first century and embrace a better, more secure and efficient way to browse with any of the newer software options out there. Complaining will solve nothing, and even finding work-around solutions is probably more trouble than it’s worth in the end (especially as they might well become just as quickly outdated, leaving it all to do over again).

Embrace your destiny and join the Revolution!

Written by Courtney Steen, and David Lee

How Can I Tell if I Need an Enterprise Collaboration Platform?
Written by Courtney Steen, Brad Warren, and David Lee

As enchanting as using enterprise collaboration software is, it is a fact that these platforms support some types of companies and missions better and more effectively than others. The very nature of enterprise collaboration is that it supports a few activities very well:
• managing and archiving vast quantities of information,
• progressive collaboration, and
• progressive dialog and communication.

If your company engages in such activities as SOP, enterprise collaboration is worth investigating. Below are some specific company and industry types we’ve identified for which these platforms have demonstrated benefits.

1. Companies with a large customer base. If you sell or produce anything, or provide a service directly to clients, chances are you employ people to handle customer service. Happily, enterprise collaboration has proven extremely effective in reducing the strain on call-in customer service. Enabling people to sign in to a community and get answers to their questions and resolutions for their issues mitigates the need for them to call and get answers to the same questions the last 40 callers had, too. Less wasted time for both the customer and your employees—everybody wins!
2. Large companies that employ a lot of personnel. EC 2.0 makes communication, knowledge management, training, supporting company culture, and achieving the organization’s mission easier and more efficient.
3. Companies with different locales. Companies that operate on different coasts—or different countries, even—can find collaborating and communicating not just a hassle, but expensive and terribly time consuming. Enterprise collaboration software helps close the gaps in the workforce no matter where they live and work.
4. Mobile work forces. The same argument holds true for mobile work forces made up of personnel who do not park themselves at a desk 40 hours a week.
5. Marketing- and sales-driven organizations. One of the most critical relationships to maintain contact, and one that sometimes goes unhappily awry, is that between marketing and sales. Coordinating those efforts is far easier when the information exists in a place where everyone sees the same thing and can communicate either one-on-one or broadcast messages and collaborate on goals and campaigns.
6. Companies that produce a great deal of creative work / assets. The key to exceptional creativity is progressive collaboration practices. Enterprise communities provide a place to load and catalog and archive creative work, collaborate on designs and campaigns, and plan and execute common creative goals and campaigns.
7. Education. Institutions of higher learning have been exploring EC 2.0 and similar e-learning technologies with programs like Blackboard and Desire2Learn for some time, and know the benefits these applications offer students who have grown up using the internet as a learning tool. There are applications for collaboration in elementary and secondary schools as well, though, especially on district-wide levels. Teachers can collaborate on methods, curriculum, dealing with students, special needs, all manner of subjects. There can even be a student area for homework assignments, turning in papers, collaborating on projects, and school events. Parents can get in on the action, too, staying informed about schedules, having more hands-on interaction with teachers and lessons, and knowing all about the schedules and events taking place in the school communities.
8. News and reporting. Some news organizations are already playing with ideas for communities: for example, CNN’s iReport.com. This is a community where users load viewer-generated content that CNN has the option of picking up (in cases of breaking news) or leaving on the community forum. As a hub for collecting and disseminating information, news and reporting seem like industries that would naturally rely on enterprise collaboration. Reporters and copywriters can collaborate on stories, research, and sources; different markets can coordinate news efforts; and smaller communities without a dedicated local news station (think bedroom communities and suburbs) can load and share information about local matters without having to rely on local weekly newspapers or visit local bulletin boards.

The possibilities for government and community services are nearly endless, but we’re getting away from the idea of “enterprise” collaboration a little too much with those ideas. Nevertheless, enterprise collaboration technology is certainly an important and beneficial tool to help connect specific groups of people.

There are bound to be general company types and industries that we missed in this list. Leave a comment and let us know about your company and how enterprise collaboration has made life easier for you.

How does it work?  
In the previous post, I have briefly talked about LinkedIn direct ads and what it does. Since then, few have asked me how to set up and run the ads. Below, I have created step-by-step guide to create your first LinkedIn direct ads which will take you less than 10 minutes to create. However, it takes up to one business day since LinkedIn reviews the content.

 
 

 
 
What did we do?  
So during our thought leadership campaign, we have decided to place couple banner ads on LinkedIn to generate leads. Since there wasn’t LinkedIn best practices nor white paper, we decided to keep the marketing budget at the minimum (LinkedIn requires you to deposit at least $50)
After we witnessed a miserable outcome with the first ad, which I had discussed in the previous post, we decided to create three different banner ads to see which one works the best. All three ads had similar message and the same destination.
 
 
Who did we target?

Targeted to anyone who works for a company with number of employees from 1001 – 10001+
Jon Function : Creative – Marketing
Seniority: Vice President, Director, Chief X Officer, Manager

 
 
What is the result?  

 

#3 even with the disappointing low CTR, it was a clear winner in this study.
Looks like pirate is always a good choice.

Out of 24 visitors, none of them have filled the contact form, which where we consider the conversion happens.

Out of 24 visitors, only 5 people decided to navigate the website. Bounce rate was at 79%.

What does this all mean?  
I still believe the conversion is the most important metric we are measuring. Number of clicks does not mean much if no conversion happen. In the B2B industry like we are in, it only takes one conversion to make up for the entire campaign. Before I start tweaking the ads and worry about the placement of the ad, I believe we should spend more time tweaking the landing page and our website and see if we are ready to convert a visitor to a qualified lead.
 
 
LinkedIn Direct Ads – CPC is at $2 minimum and CPM is at $3 minimum. What does this mean? With quick calculation, it tells us that you should not go with the CPM model unless your banner can constantly achieve CTR at 0.15%.
Let’s say you spend $12 on CPM model and achieved CTR at 0.15%. This means that your ad was shown 4000 times and generated 6 clicks.
This is equal to 6 clicks with CPC at $2 = $12. Pretty simple huh?
Of course, this study disregard the value of impression and the sole focus of the study was based on the number of clicks the ads generated.

 
Community Managers are all the rage these days. If you’re online (and you SHOULD be online!) you want one to represent you on your own external community and the most utilized social networks. If you have an internal enterprise collaboration platform, you need one to help facilitate and promote your community’s interactions.
 
So just what do community managers do? It really breaks down to which bailiwick they govern—external or internal community (or both).
 

 
External
 
Describing the core tenets of this job is a well-traveled path, for the most part, as most companies have at least entertained the idea of hiring a person whose sole responsibility is to manage their online community interactions. External community managers are chiefly responsible for
 
1) Responding to and interacting with community users. This role ideally carries with it a great deal of trust in the manager’s ability to react quickly and diplomatically to any and all commentary, whether positive or negative, without having to go through an involved message approval process. The manager needs to both advocate for the organization and gather feedback from the users, both in a way that promotes the community itself as much as the organization.

2) Listening. This cannot be over-emphasized. Too many community managers are so focused on creating a certain arbitrary amount of content that they fail to listen to the individuals in the community. Let’s face it, one of the reasons people join and interact in communities is to get their voices heard, and giving them the satisfaction is just good politics.

3) Shaping the direction and tone of the organization’s community content.
4) Sifting through the feedback and conversations to see what customers and users want in the future from the organization, whether a product or service.
5) Promoting the organization, the organization’s news and events, and generally engaging in more traditional and targeted marketing efforts on behalf of the organization.

Internal
 
1) Replace “organization” with “internal community” in the above list.
Yes, I am aware it’s not quite as simple as that, but as it’s the same job title there were bound to be similarities. You expected this, yes? There are some other differences, naturally:

2) The end goal is to promote adoption and facilitate use and interaction, not necessarily increase a bottom line somewhere (at least, not as directly) or directly evangelize the organization.

3) They often engage in knowledge collection, management, and distribution. Internal communities can easily turn into quagmires of forgotten posts and blogs, necessitating a manager with a fine and critical eye to keeping collateral both peaceful and orderly so that items are accessible when people need to find them.
4) Internal managers are often involved more in both supporting adoption activities and mediation pursuits than their externally focused counterparts. It’s a finer line to walk, and necessitates sometimes more gentle encouragement and appropriate responses than external community managers. The key difference is that, for the most part, users in external communities are generally there because they choose to be, but that’s not always the case in internal communities where management insists on adoption and users may not be as comfortable with the expectations, applications, and responsibilities.
5) These managers are in the trenches, so to speak, and know the people, keeping a finger on the pulse of the community. They know who the experts are, they know the weak areas, they know the groups, and know who does what and how and how often. The ideal manager will use this keen extra sense to help cultivate the passions of the users to promote adoption and use organically, making suggestions and offering advice when needed and getting the heck out of the way when that’s called for, too.

Community managers are often uniquely situated to be anything from a powerhouse of brand promotion to a counselor to a leading-edge researcher, all with a deft personal touch and a rich personal network. These employees wield a lot of power, and their position necessitates a great deal of autonomy and trust to make them effective.

TRUST and AUTONOMY. I can’t emphasize them enough. A community manager can function without them, barely, but his or her efforts will be more or less completely futile.

I strongly believe that LinkedIn has the most potential for B2B lead generation. Of course Twitter and Facebook have their share of advantages over LinkedIn, but neither of them have the ability to target the audience as effectively as LinkedIn, in my opinion. After research advertising opportunities on LinkedIn, I have come across an advertising program call Linkedin Direct Ads. Basically, it works like Google Adwords, but uses LinkedIn profile information to target a specific audience, whereas Google uses searched keyword information for targeting.

Our first version generated less than 0.01% Click-Through Ratio and we weren’t, of course, very happy with it. Well, it was a good thing we were running a Pay per Click model; CPM would have been a disaster. After a week of analysis, we came up with three different versions of the banner ad that we are going to test for the next couple weeks (A/B/C testing!). Before I reveal the final result of the campaign, I would like to see what you think. Which version do you think is going to yield the highest CTR? All three banners are targeting people in the same demographic.

First of all, I need to apologize for the delay on the PDF files I have promised. My excuse is that I first created this file for the online view purpose and I wanted to provide a format that looks good in prints. So here is the link to the user interaction diagram I have promised earlier. I hope this document can help you to do grow your internal community and use it to catalyze the adoption within your company.
Download PDF Here.

Some of you have asked me what I do at FGSQUARED. I am currently involved in several community development projects as a user experience designer. I often create wireframes, prototypes, and come up with intuitive interaction design solutions for the users and the community. Lately I have worked in enterprise collaboration environment where I customized the platform to meet the needs of the companies and the users. Currently we are using Jive SBS for our internal collaboration tool, and we also have customized Jive SBS for several of our clients. It was interesting to see how the users of these communities were so familiar with the social media and they wanted to see similar implementation in their internal spaces. One of the examples would be LinkedIn’s profile completeness module which is documented in the power point slide I provided below.

In this power point I have documented three examples of the custom modules that enhance the community experience. There are other two custom widgets / interaction we have created that I have not included in this slide: single sign on capability and Jive SBS photo gallery. We are currently working on other custom interactive widgets you have seen on Twitter and Facebook. How about internal March Madness Pick em widget and American Idol widget? Internal community does not have to be all about work. Right?