There are many consulting companies and vendors that can help you with your community initiative or social network. But the more consulting companies that exist the more confusing your options are. There are basically 3 types of companies. Obviously the entire issue of partnering with a consulting company means you know what your social media objectives need to be in the first place. Lets assume (I know that’s a big assumption) you do know that.

1. The “Agency”: This company will provide an end-to-end service. They will manage your account, provide strategy, ongoing management and consulting for the initiative. This type of company believes its model is best suited for a client who believes the best work is done by experts. It is in their best interest to not mentor your internal resources (regardless of what they tell you). Use this option if you want to outsource your community or intend to get it going really quick or you believe you dont have time (maybe because your competition has beaten you to it) to do it yourself. Most PR agencies of yesterday now offer social media as an option in this list of services.

2. The “Specialists”: This type of company is good in one or more facets of community development. For example they are good at “developing your alpha members” or “viral marketing” of your community or “moderating” your user generated content. If you have one or more members of your team that have some experience with building a community and you only need additional “hands on deck” to complement a specific area of your exposure, this is the best type of company for you.

3. The boutique or “one woman bands”: These companies / individuals are best suited for very large companies who need deep expertise in an area or the very small (community is very small so we can have one person do it all). If you are a mid sized company, this is not the most suited option. This company is obviously risky since everything depends on one person.

Update: My friend Tac talks about Marketing vs. PR agencies.

Looking at all the various responses to Universal’s new take on ITunes. I actually love it. Competition is a good thing. I think Universals’ proposal this time might work. I love my Ipod, but competition should drive down prices, not up I think. If I were to put a perfect music consumption plan I would take the best of Apple iTunes, XM Satellite, Pandora and iTune.fm

1. Finding new music: XM is BEST for this. I keep listening to new music on some of their best channels. Only if I could get XM on my iPod, then I could record as soon as I want and delete the ones I really dislike.

2. Getting music collections of my existing CD’s – My iPod and iTunes (for CD Artwork) is best for this. No better way to get everything in one player than my iPod. Everthing – home stereo, car stereo and personal music system are driven with this.

3. Getting automatic music recommendations from friends and sharing with friends: I get a lot of recommendations on Facebook, on which iTune.fm is the best.

4. Getting “like” music – the best of “Get me more of this kind of music” is Pandora. Great service.

5. Keep me finding new and interesting artists – The proposed Morris plan (from Universal) sounds great for this.

What do you think?

Coming into this discussion late (thanks to Gartner ITExpo). Mashable talks about eBay’s social networking foray.

“eBay is getting ready to launch Neighborhoods,
which is a new feature that aggregates the many micro-communities that
are built around common interests. Neighborhoods should be officially
launched later this week.

The purpose is to give more users a place to connect, and further
express interest in those parts of their lives that revolve around
eBay.”

SF Chronicle says:
“Content for neighborhoods can be tapped from some other eBay features
including product listings, eBay blogs, guides, and reviews. At launch
time, there are 600 different neighborhoods covering everything from
Beyonce to Battlestar Gallactica.”

Techcrunch reports:
“Content from across eBay–including eBay blogs, guides, reviews, and
product search–is pulled into each eBay neighborhood and packaged into
widget-like modules. Members can join whatever neighborhoods they like,
and add to discussion boards there, post photos, invite friends, and
meet other people who share the same consumer obsessions.”

As does News.com“
“eBay Neighborhoods will
allow users to post photos and reviews and offer tips and feedback in a
beefed-up version of its text-based discussion forums. As of late
Tuesday, there were more than 600 groups, with topics ranging from the
Dallas Cowboys to crocheting to comic books. Users can also suggest new
neighborhoods for creation.”

I dont use eBay at all (another post). I can see how this can be of very good value: to enable people that collect or are interested in things “like you” to meet and talk about their passion.

I think you’ll find this like most other “social network on the side” as in “you want fries with that” initiatives. I think there might be opportunity for eBay to collectively gain more by letting like-minded folks connect with one another on their network, but as an experiment this is a good start.

“Evil marketing” in me thinks – the key value for eBay will be:

1. Collecting the “universe” target market of people, so they can know their target audience in cases of promotions. I think it would be VERY cool to see if everyone collecting Beyonce CD’s can be given first opportunity to buy tickets to her concert with StubHub.

2. Cross-selling opportunity. I can sure you can get information at some point that would be very valuable about “everyone that is in Atlanta that buys Beyonce CD’s also is now starting to bid on Oasis music”.

3. Adding value to the community: How about putting together regional events so community members can meet face to face? – That’s going to be something the community will love.

I view my feeds on google reader about 50% of the time from my Blackberry. Unlike several others, I prefer to read online than a physical paper. I also try and catch up my reading on the plane (physical books most times). So I have been eyeing the Sony Reader for a long time. But it struck me when I was reading the iPod touch now running mail, etc. on engadget.

With coverflow technology why can’t I “read” any book on my iPhone, instead of listening to it on my iPhone?

I think the Sony Reader is doomed. If Apple can do a licensing deal with the book companies, I would prefer to use my iPhone as a book reader than buy a new Sony Reader.

As part of the 3rd party developer announcement, I would think this would be one of the first application extensions (support of ebook reading).

What do you think?

At the Gartner ITExpo in Orlando, we had Anthony and Tom talk about Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 technologies. It was a good presentation talking about definition of Enterprise 2.0, who are the key vendors and best practices.

Key themes:

1. Its not a fad, a trend and so dont ignore Enterprise 2.0.

2. In an informal poll over 80% of the audience has implemented or has some adoption of Web 2.0 (Blogs, Wikis, etc.) at their companies

3. There are many vendors so there are not any best practices yet.

Bidirectional, mass collaboration is the key.

It used to be climbing the corporate ladder required a huge investment
to gain an MBA. Evidence is mounting that the ROI on an MBA is showing a
considerable shortfall. 

Shivonee
Byrne’s article summarizes a recent
Brazen Careerist post (which we’ll get to in a moment) with these items
concerning current devaluation of an MBA.

1.   
Not
all rising stars go to business school these days. Hotshots are too busy making money,
so what’s the point?

2.   
Only
the top-tier MBA schools deliver the “Big Job.” The time and
expense of an MBA from a 2^nd or 3^rd tier school could be
better spent elsewhere to advance your career.

We tracked down additional posts from Penelope
Trunk to learn more. She offers 5 more situations where an MBA doesn’t
make sense. 

1.   
A
humanities PhD could make you less
employable not more employable. Getting a doctorate is good for
teaching, but doesn’t help climb the Fortune 500 ladders.

2.    You can shift careers by enrolling in
a night-class. Many fields require some knowledge, but not a degree.

3.   
Grad
school is a bad way to deal with uncertainty. It’s too
expensive as a back-up plan.

4.   
People
who love to learn don’t need a degree for it. Consider the real
qualitative reasons to get an advanced degree.

5.   
Use
LinkedIn instead of an MBA. If you’re going to grad school to
make connections, you might be better served networking yourself. With the
growth of social & business
networking communities, this might be the
best advice of all.

 We determined further investigation into calculating
the MBA ROI was needed. An economic analysis is one way to decide between
spending tens of thousands of dollars, while losing two or more years of
salary, to pursue an MBA.

The information below was gleaned from MBA Podcaster transcriptions featuring Janet Nakano, Anthony Davies, Assistant Professor of Economics at
Duquesne University, Thomas
Cline, an Associate Professor at St. Vincent’s College, and Toby
Hemmerling, admission consultant from Dream MBA. 

Davies
says start with the internal rate of return. “If I look at the tuition that I’m paying for the MBA as
an investment and the extra money I’m earning over the course of my career as
return on that investment, what’s the effective interest rate I’m getting? And
that’s the internal rate of return.”

They found
the internal rate of return—on average using figures ’93-2001—is on a par with
the NASDAQ and better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average—hovering around
18%.  

• For every dollar invested in
  tuition for an MBA degree, you can expect a return of $1.18.

Consider
net present value of your investment.
Consider all the money required to get an MBA compared to the lifetime expected
return. How much would the check have to be to forego an MBA today?  

• They found the net present value
  is significantly more than $500,000.

Consider
your break-even point.
How long until your initial investment is paid off? The average pay back period
is about nine years—down one year from what it was 15 years ago. Although
tuition is increasing, starting salaries are also increasing.  

• The growth rate for professional
  degrees is about 2% better than inflation vs. 1% for Bachelor’s degrees.

School
rankings can be another consideration when calculating your ROI. The less-established schools, Davies
says, are the ones that may not add as much economic value. But top-50 schools
can be just as competitive says Anthony Davies.  

• Top-20 schools will, typically,
  earn a better ROI.

Their final
analysis is an MBA is a safe bet, and there is nothing wrong with an MBA that
hasn’t made the top 50. But if you can get into a top-50 school, you should go.
And if you can get into a top-20 school, go even if you have to borrow.   

The Bottom Line:
Professional educators and recruiters agree that investment in education will
provide a good return. Penelope Trunks asserts you might want to reconsider
unless you get in a 1^st tier school. Also, consider qualitative
factors. An advanced degree may substantially enhance self-esteem, and if money
is not an issue, then an exercise in ROI isn’t even necessary.

My good friend Mario talks about a NYTimes article on Fakebook generation.

First relevant quotes: from NYTimes:

Facebook did not become popular because it was a functional tool —
after all, most college students live in close quarters with the
majority of their Facebook friends and have no need for social
networking. Instead, we log into the Web site because it’s entertaining
to watch a constantly evolving narrative starring the other people in
the library.

Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it’s made us more wary of real human confrontation.

For young people, Facebook is yet another form of escapism; we can turn
our lives into stage dramas and relationships into comedy routines.
Make believe is not part of the postgraduate Facebook user’s agenda. As
more and more older users try to turn Facebook into a legitimate social
reference guide, younger people may follow suit and stop treating it as
a circus ring. But let’s hope not.

And Mario:

To me Facebook or any other social network is about expressing your
personal side, your social side and your fun side, but it’s never going
to be cool to share my party pics with my team at work (for obvious
reasons). I enjoy the social narrative and on a separate level love to
see my professional network updates on LinkedIn, which in my opinion
heralded the coming of the mini-feed, which many faithful & typical
Facebook users hated at the time of its launch (Just ask Danah Boyd about the “Privacy trainwreck”).

I have an account at both Facebook and LinkedIn. I add friends very slowly and only those I know at facebook. Whereas use linkedin for anyone who sends me a request – why? I use linkedin ONLY as an online contact manager.

I know they have a lot more capabilities and features, but none of those matter to me. I spend about 15 min either helping people connect with potential hires or adding new friends on linked in a month.

Facebook though is the best way to keep up with all my business contacts. What events and shows they are attending, what books they are reading and what they recommend.

In some senses, I dont use facebook as a social tool as much a business “communication and ongoing keep in touch” tool.

Navel gazing on Facebook never caught my attention. I dont turn people into Zombies or return beers because my other friends dont send those to me. That’s probably what Gen Y does. Which is why as a business tool Facebook is far move valuable than Linkedin will ever be to me.

Not a big fan of those $10.95 / month “identity theft protection” services, I view reputation management with that same skeptic’s view. I do realize that large companies are extremely paranoid of their “brand image” and so they do invest in these solutions / processes for their online presence. I would agree with #1, #4 but the rest are really waste of time.

This comes
from Jody Nimitz via seo-space.
It’s part of a series to develop an online reputation management strategy
within the SERPs
(Search Engine Results Pages) and improve online reputation with actionable
business tools.

He reports
keeping an eye on your online reputation is especially critical because
increased competition creates reactive instead of proactive situations for PR
firms dealing with their client’s reputation.  

Jody provides
five critical steps to provide proactive actionable intelligence to manage an
online reputation. They’re summarized here.

1. Monitor Your Existing Online
   Presence – In
   order to manage your online reputation, you need to know what is being
   said about your brand online. An easy way to do this is through tools such
   as Google Alerts and Yahoo! Alerts (which
   you can feed into your reader). 

2. Analyze Your Online Presence
   within the SERPs –
   Consumer generated content is increasing and a blogpost or negative
   article can surface in the first page of organic search results, so a keen
   understanding of your search engine environment is necessary.

3. Control Your Online Destiny with
   Optimization –
   Optimize your site and online properties to dominate the search results.  

4. Control Your Online Destiny with
   Participation –
   Be active in industry forums, social networks, and review & opinion
   sites. Participation within these areas can help change negative
   perceptions. Blogs are extremely popular for consumers and are often the
   first place they go to find information.

5. Repeat Steps One Through Four – Being proactive and
   understanding the customer’s perception of your brand and your
   organization is one of the best ways to begin with your online reputation
   management strategy.  

Whether it’s
B2C, or B2B, it’s important to participate in online forums and social networks
to gather actionable intelligence about what is being said, both positive and
negative, about your enterprise and brand.

Jody provides a link to his
downloadable PDF report: Online
Reputation Management

Matt Dickman
at Techno//Marketer
is helping deal with the overuse
of techno jargon. His ongoing series of instructional whiteboard sessions
offer techno marketing tutorials on software
industry acronyms and Web 2.0 buzzwords.

His
key takeaways from this session are:

• AJAX allows technology to get out of the way of the
  end user
• User experience is improved with dynamic,
  application-like interfaces
• AJAX is driving Web2.0
• Microsoft has their own version of AJAX called Atlas
  
• AJAX bridges the design/user interface field and the
  technical/integration field (ie: it makes users happier)
• Less pages to load means less impressions hence the
  death of the pageview
• Major companies are using AJAX to design more
  responsive interfaces

Here’s the video
link. 

As a side
note, there’s a very interesting article about the company’s CEO, Jonathan Swartz posted on BusinessWeek.