Jon Samsel

The Company Profiles feature on LinkedIn is a cool research and networking tool (in BETA) that helps users gain some keen insights into what companies are all about, what’s happening within those firms, and who within these companies you should consider connecting to. Since LinkedIn tracks so many types of inter-related pieces of information on their system, they are in a unique position to find trends in the work history of users and identifying connections between companies. According to LinkedIn, “[Company Profiles] information was aggregated from non-personally identifiable data of LinkedIn users who are currently employed by this company. This data only reflects estimates about this company’s employees and is not endorsed or provided by the company.”

Getting to the tool is easy. In the top navigation bar on LinkedIn, click on the ‘Companies’ tab. You can locate companies by keyword, country, zip code, by name or browse by industry. Once you’ve located a company you are interested in (in my case, eBay) you are ready to start spelunking all that Company Profiles has to offer.

So what’s so great about Company Profiles? LinkedIn quickly calls out the social movers and shakers within any given firm, how far away these people are from you—2nd degree, 3rd degree, and who they are likely to be employed by next (aka their extended career path). Company Profiles shows you the names of people who recently joined a company, what type of positions are most common with that company, and the gender mix of employees at that firm. LinkedIn’s Company Profiles feature can be leveraged to locate these data sets, and more.

It is true that some data in Company Profiles is not 100% accurate from a research point of view (the feature relies on members and partners for some of its data). But as a social networking tool, the interconnected data trends that LinkedIn provides are robust in and of themselves. Plus, the information is free for you to leverage as you see fit.

Company Profiles Can Help You Network in Five Easy Ways

Company Profiles helps you better leverage your most valuable LinkedIn asset: your personal connections. Through Company Profiles, your former, current, and potential colleagues and their connections can become valuable access points for you to capitalize on. Company Profiles can help you:

1. Find a new job
2. Secure new clients or assignments
3. Conduct competitive research
4. Identify business partnership opportunities
5. Spot the most socially connected employees at any given firm (the influencers)

Find a New Job

Company Profiles provides a list of all the LinkedIn users in your network (up to 3 degrees away from you) who currently work at a given company. LinkedIn users who have recently joined a given company are also displayed. Recent promotions or changes to positions are listed, along with the most popular positions held across the company. If you are a job hunter, what a great resource this is tap into!

For example, let’s say you are seeking a project manager position at eBay. By using the Company Profiles feature on LinkedIn, today you would discover:

• 2% of eBay’s 10,000+ employees have jobs relating to project management (so this company does need your services)
• Most people at eBay work out of San Francisco (if you live in the Bay Area, this would be a good company to consider working for)
• The number of current eBay employees you know or are connected to (they may know eBay managers who are hiring, and perhaps they can even recommend you for a job)
• There are 7 divisions within eBay that might also be hiring project managers (PayPal, Shopping.com, Half.com, StubHub, mobile.de & eBay Motors GmbH, ProStores and Skype).

Landing a new job is never easy—and it helps if you are searching while still gainfully employed. LinkedIn should be considered as one of your first job hunting resources. It’s not a job search and resume submission site per se, but by utilizing its social networking tools, you can read about new positions being offered and who you might know that can open a door or two for you. The rest is up to you.

Secure New Clients or Assignments

Okay, so you are a graphic designer, freelance writer, salesperson or perhaps you’re a technology consultant trolling LinkedIn looking to drum up new business. Where do you start? How can you harness Company Profiles to secure an assignment or a new client without being perceived as a networking marketing leech?

Two words: Research wisely. The one thing Company Profiles does well is help users sort and search for relevant data, quickly and easily.

Here are a few suggested next steps:

• Use Company Profiles to search the industries you’re most interested in working with
• Locate the employers, experts and customers you most want to talk to
• See who you know at your target companies, or who in your network can introduce you to them
• Ask questions or exchange ideas with like-minded people (join a group and participate in a discussion). By tapping into a broad network on what you can offer and what you are looking for, you may be impressed by the number and quality of replies/referrals

Conduct Competitive Research

The company descriptions within Company Profiles are provided to LinkedIn by Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor’s, a company that provides financial research and analytical solutions to over 2,400 investment banks, fund managers, and corporations. Besides a company overview section, key statistics such as headquarter locations, industry type, type of company, size, revenue, year founded and a link to their website is also included.

The above-mentioned fields of information are valuable in their own right, but combined with some of the related social networking information provided, the context of this research data can be exploited to achieve your desired goals.

Identify Business Partnership Opportunities

LinkedIn is a business person’s best friend. It takes your personal business network online, giving you access to people, jobs and opportunities like never before. It’s your 24/7 electronic rolodex!

LinkedIn’s motto is clear: Connect the world’s professionals to accelerate their success. Built upon trusted connections and relationships, LinkedIn has established the world’s largest and most powerful business network. Currently, over 34 million professionals are on LinkedIn, representing all five hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as a wide range of brands across dozens of industries.

So how does one go about leveraging Company Profiles to partner and do business with other firms? The key is to be proactive, but smart about approaching potential business partners. One of the big misconceptions about LinkedIn is that it takes too much time to master and that it’s ineffective. Wrong! LinkedIn really works. The key is not waiting around for others to come to you—you need to reach out to others in a classy, respectful and compelling way. Don’t be a business wallflower. Introduce yourself to those you don’t already know, or ask people to introduce you to contacts of theirs that can assist you. You’ll be glad you did, as most LinkedIn users are members for the same reason—to accelerate their business careers.

Let’s take my profile for example. As of January 27, 2009, I had 437 connections linking me to 4,577,100+ professionals on LinkedIn. That’s a pretty large pool of potential business partners to reach out to. I might start my prospecting efforts by searching Company Profiles for companies in need of my products and services, then look to see how many current and ex employees are in my connected network. I would start with those I know directly (1st), then move on to those I know indirectly (2nd, 3rd, etc). I would have my hands full with prospective partner contacts in no time. Then it would be up to me own pitch and follow through as a means to secure new business.

Spot the Influencers

Popular profiles can be found in the Company Profiles section of LinkedIn. These are users who are spotlighted because they are actively updating their profile, being referenced in Q&A’s, getting email solicitations, participating in industry groups, using embedded tools, and/or frequently the result of searches and other activities within the LinkedIn network. According to LinkedIn, “users who appear on this list have the most profile views at their company.”

Why is important to identify and communicate with the key influencers related to your line of work or interest? Influencers can create buzz around your product or service, and they can open up unforeseen opportunities for you. By tapping into their social equity and by engaging in word of mouth marketing on your behalf, social influencers can boost awareness and transfer some of their social capital to you.

Brand advocacy fuels business growth—and it can be more important and effective than brand awareness or satisfaction. Influencers can help influence the business decisions, and the purchase decisions of others because what influencers have to say is generally trusted more than other sources.

Some assertive social influencers such as TopLinked LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) have figured out how to harness The Hawthorne Effect, which involves getting others to participate in trialing, testing, reviewing and suggesting improvements to whatever they are working on—a product, business concept, website design, media plan, start-up venture, and the like. The theory goes that collaborative participation inevitably makes everyone positively disposed to the subject at hand, and those with whom you engage end up among its biggest champions. LIONs and other social media influencers have figured out how to tap into, exploit and share this new form of network marketing—hypertext magnetism so to speak.

Now that you can start to see the benefit of following, communicating and befriending the most socially connected employees at any given firm—it’s time to network with them. Keep in mind that first impressions are everything. Don’t contact an influencer until you are sure you have something worthy to talk about—and to offer. Poor first impressions could have a lasting negative impact…so be careful.

Terry Borst is a terrific writer of new media and motion picture screenplays. I met Terry in the mid-1990’s when I was working as a multimedia publisher. With a college major in English and an impressive resume of writing credits to his name, I thought it would be fun to touch base with Terry again after so many years to see what he’s been up to. If you’re a fan of interactive stories, Hollywood movies, or educational simulations, you’ll enjoy what Terry had to share. Read on!

Q: What types of writing projects are you working on these days?

A: Books!  I’m currently co-writing my second book for Focal Press, on the topic of serious game and simulation development and production (from an independent game/low budget perspective).  The book will probably be published in late 2009 or early 2010, and follows up on my earlier co-written book, Story and Simulations for Serious Games.  (See the Amazon listing, or go to my LinkedIn page or terryborst.com to find out more).

The 2 books derive from several of the projects I’ve worked on the last few years:  scripting videogame simulations for the military and first responders.  These are pretty exciting because, as a writer, you get to enter new worlds and then see if you can build a convincing enough replica for professionals to test out tactical and strategic decision-making.  You’re quite involved with the design of the experience from the ground up, which is very creatively satisfying.

Q: Tell us about some of your previous projects.

A: For 20+ years, I’ve worked as a professional screenwriter and scriptwriter.  I co-wrote a sequel to the feature film MIDNIGHT RUN, and for years wrote episodes of a BBC action-adventure series syndicated in dozens of countries (which I still receive royalties for).  I scripted other independent and TV films, and got paid to write a lot of feature screenplays and pilot scripts that didn’t get produced.  And more than a decade ago, I got hired to co-write scripts for one of the most popular videogames in the ’90s:  WING COMMANDER.  I’ve written scripts for other entertainment videogames since then, before the recent migration to the simulations mentioned previously.  (You can find out much more about these titles on my website).

Q: What inspires you as an artist?

A: I think it’s impossible to answer this without lapsing into gauzy sorts of cliches.  Life inspires me; great art inspires me; all those moments when “a terrible beauty is born” (to quote Yeats).

Q: What creative mediums do you prefer to work in–and why?

A: While I may aspire to art, I pride myself on being a professional writer – and so I prefer to work in creative mediums where I get paid!  That said, there’s nothing like executing a feature screenplay really well:  creating a great story arc within a contained world is an incredible challenge.  I believe in art that takes us on a journey and provides closure:  a great painting or sculpture or piece of music can do this, and a feature screenplay is a kind of sculpture through time and space.

Q: Briefly describe your creative process–how do you get your ideas…how to you develop that idea…what steps do you take to bring that idea to lifeﾅwhat tools do you use?

A: Ideas are everywhere:  the trick (for new, original work) is to find the ones you’re willing to obsess about.  If I’ve got an obsession, then I keep thinking about it, and start to think about the kind of journey that can be taken within this obsession.  If necessary, I’ll do research, and I’ll start writing down ideas about scenes, parts of scenes, and characters.  You build something like this over time, and eventually you try to find some dramatic structure for the story that’s been accreting.

I’ve been fortunate that most of the work I’ve been doing the last 15 years has been work for hire.  So the initial concept for the project might not start with me.  Still, I have to brainstorm how to get into and get out of a scene.  Or, I might know that I want a videogame player to undertake a new mission.  But what’s the setup for the mission?  And what obstacles will confront the player on the mission?  Ideas are then frequently found by 1) figuring out the obvious way to reach my goal in a scene or sequence, and 2) then throwing out the obvious way and looking for the surprising way to reach my goal.

As to tools: At a very early stage, I still use 3×5 index cards to capture story beats, scenes, moments, etc.  But I’ve also used StoryView to construct outlines, and I’ll use Word for other outlines.  Then it’s on to Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter, or sometimes other tools for more interactive projects.  These days, you could use a tool like Google Notes and use your cellphone to outline acts or missions or scenes.

Q: Do stories really need to be told interactively? What’s the advantage of this medium?

A: Interactive storytelling offers us (as creators) a new way to engage the “receiver”.  We can create new kinds of immersive narratives, and entertain and teach in ways we never could before.  WORLD OF WARCRAFT, BIOSHOCK and GUITAR HERO all create unique and even profound experiences for players, just as The Canterbury Tales, Dream of the Red Chamber, Middlemarch, Waiting for Godot and 2001: A Space Odyssey created unforgettable experiences for earlier generations.

Q: Looking back on all that you have accomplished throughout your career, what are you most proud of working on? Would you do anything differently if you could? What was your greatest lesson learned?

A: Most proud of working on: 1) The WING COMMANDER series, because we really did break some new ground; 2) a screenplay for a historical novel called The War Train, which sadly went unproduced to a regime change at Paramount.

Would I do anything differently? Probably lots, but all of this is about career management decisions, and hindsight is always 20-20.

Greatest lesson(s) learned:  1) You can’t write too much.  2) Plan for a career:  always consider where you want to go, and what can get you there.  3) Be entrepreneurial.

Q: Any advice you’d like to provide to people hoping to find work as a digital storyteller?

A: I think you have to find your own work.  The tools are within everyone’s reach now.  You should know how to shoot video, edit media, and work in Flash.  If you’re a good enough creator, you can launch your own YouTube channel and wind up making money.  If you’re just starting out, you need to wear multiple hats to succeed.

Q: Do you know of any useful online resources for budding digital storytellers?

A: Interestingly, my wife (Carolyn Handler Miller) actually wrote the book (literally!) on digital storytelling, titling it Digital Storytelling.  You’ll find a lot of references to it online.  That might be a start.

Game Developer magazine has most of its content online; gamestudies.org gets into the more esoteric side of videogame theory.

Assuming we’re really talking about interactive storytelling, then the novice creator needs to immerse him- or herself in interactive experiences.  Play games, spend time in Second Life, study webisodics.  You should discover what’s unique about interactivity when married to narrative (whether structured or post-hoc).

As a college English major, I always knew that reading the Cliff’s Notes was no substitute for reading the book.  Get in the game! as the console advertisement used to go.

Links:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tborst
http://www.terryborst.com

The Internet and its colossal impact on businesses worldwide is something I like to refer to as the Web Effect, a precept that Laurie Windham and I first postulated nine years ago in our book, “Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business.” The Web Effect loosely plays on Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory principle known as The Butterfly Effect.  The Butterfly Effect has become a popular metaphor for describing the chaos theory, the notion that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China can send ripples of effects throughout larger and more complex systems, causing say –– a hurricane in Florida.

Following this analogy, the Web is a true “phenomenon” that has impacted nearly everyone.  The “complex system” that’s been impacted by the Web is our global economy.  Much like the ripples in a pond which repel from a center point and then move outward, the Web effects businesses in ways that cannot be entirely predicted, and that will continue to impact organizations in this unsettling way for many years to come.

The ripples in the Web Effect demonstrate the various stages of impact:

• The Web Effect begins with access.  People with access to the Web quickly develop a preference for the Web as a vehicle for performing many business and leisure tasks.
• This access quickly led to preference to do business and expand relationships on the Web in every market.
• As consumers and business customers develop a preference for using the Web, they now demand that all companies service them online.

The result of the Web Effect is that it has created an empowered customer. Control of the transaction has shifted from the seller to the buyer, from the vendor to the customer.

Now that there has been this monumental shift in control to an online user, that control cannot easily be taken away.  More than a demand––it can be said that the Web has become a prerequisite to doing business with a company.

After several requests, I have decided to publish my eight stage website planning process. If you are a web designer or developer tasked with building a new website, or if you are a web executive contemplating a redesign of your corporate site, think of this outline as a handy checklist for each stage in the web planning process–from discovery through optimization.

I have also included a PowerPoint version of the 8 stage website planning process here.

Stage 1: Discover
Purpose of site
Top 5 business goals
Top 5 user goals
Approximate page count
Style, tone & brand positioning
Top 5 unique features
Traffic sources
Onsite advertising
Calls to action / lead routing
Domain name / URL
How site complements current strategy
How site augments current strategy
Websites this site might emulate
Competitive sites
Timeline / launch date(s)
Definition of successful launch

Stage 2: Plan
Project team & roles
Financial overview
Marketing overview
Communications overview
Project management process
Key project phases
Content requirements
Assumptions & dependencies
Visitor personas & task paths
Major site features & functionality
Design, navigation & architecture
Publishing platform/CMS
Databases, integration & technologies
Tracking & reporting
Natural search & ADA requirements
Hosting & service level agreements

Stage 3: Build
Wireframes & design mock-ups
New content / rights clearance
API’s and RSS feeds
Prototype pages
Usability testing
Searchability testing
Source codes & phone #’s
Landing pages / transactive pages
Legal & compliance
Change control process
Quality control
Staging & user acceptance testing

Stage 4: Publish
Article creation / RSS feeds
Asset management
Publishing sign off process
Syndication
Publishing calendar
Subject matter experts / moderators
User generated content
Multimedia publishing
Publishing platform/CMS
Legal & compliance sign off

Stage 5: Maintain
Up-time requirements
System administration
Software/hardware upgrades
Hosting/security
Documentation
Capacity
Page load times
System performance tuning
Back-up/archiving

Stage 6: Market
Paid campaigns
Natural campaigns
Inbound link building
Landing page overflow
Inter/Intra site linking
Syndication of content
Campaign tracking & reporting
Integrated / stand alone
URL promotion

Stage 7: Measure
Analytic packages
Tagging, tracking & reporting
Cookies & logic
Campaign set up / mods
Natural vs. paid breakout
Tracking to goals
Social / delayed response
Banner performance
LP funnel performance
Site load time / up time

Stage 8: Optimize
Direct response testing
Multivariate testing
Landing page testing
Banner ad testing
Best practice sharing

You’ve heard of the hot dog on a stick, right? Well, an entire website crammed on to a homepage is just as juicy and delicious. Check out TheRichKids.com or click on the image to the left. Hard to stomach, ain’t it?

Usually relegated to the design bowels of those annoying vitamin cures and weight loss scams, websites like this somehow manage to cram every direct response cliché into a single never-ending, vertically scrolling page.

I suppose some of these websites must be making money or else they would not be live for very long. Perhaps this type of site design is proof positive that direct response marketing really does work. Thank you Ronco!

Even though websites on a stick defy every rule of good web design, visitors must surely find themselves mousing down the elongated home page much like a driver caught in a traffic jam, rubbernecking a crash scene. Gotta…see…the…carnage.

Go direct response!

So you need to create, design or develop a landing page that converts  visits into sales–where do you begin?

First, let’s define what a landing page is. Typically, a landing page is a web page that supports an online marketing campaign and is designed to capture leads or convert visitors into sales. Often, landing pages are separate and distinct from a main website, have unique website addresses, and allow for end-to-end campaign tracking (via unique phone numbers and/or source code tracking appended to the URL).

Typical landing page elements are:

1. Header masthead (logo, tagline, phone number)
2. Hero shot (a graphic representation of the benefit of the product or service you are selling)
3. Headline text and supporting text
4. An offer (50% off your first order, free shipping)
5. A time ticker (limited time offer with an expiration date) to create a sense of urgency
6. Calls to action (call now with a phone number, fill out this form with a form on the page, engage in live chat with a link to start a chat session)
7. Direct response elements (red arrow that directs the eye to a specific action, yellow highlighter effect that draws the eye to an offer of benefit, big bold 1-800 number, etc)
8. Customer testimonials or product reviews (to build trust and re-enforce visitor’s purchase decision)
9. Trust marks such as BBB, McAfee or VeriSign
10. Product or service comparisons

Studying your competitor’s landing pages may seem like a logical place to start, but keep in mind that other companies may have created their landing pages with entirely different goals in mind. This may not be a simple apples to apples comparison, as your goals may be different than those of competing firms. It can’t hurt to know what your competitors are doing, just don’t copy them.

Additionally, competitive landing pages you identify may not be performing very well. The visit-to-lead ratios, for example, on company Y’s landing page may be 2%, far below your target goal of 7%, so copying what others are doing in not always the smartest move.

When you are ready to start a new landing page design and development process, I recommend you start by identifying of few important elements having to do with your goals and objectives.

10 step landing page development process:

1. Identify the baseline visit-to-lead ratio you are trying to beat (ie: 3%)
2. Spell out the desired mix of lead transaction type you want (ie: 70% phone, 30% form)
3. Name the optimal product mix (ie: 50% premium brand dogfood, 30% animal toys, 20% grooming products)
4. Recognize your desired customer mix (ie: 90% repeat/existing customers, 10% once-and-gone customers)
5. List the source of the traffic to your landing page (ie: paid search, banner ads, etc)
6. Identify the time of year this landing page will be used (to gauge whether or not this could/should impact the design)
7. Name your color choices such as background, accent, fonts, images, etc (evaluate brand must-have colors vs. those colors that we know stimulate user response online and consider new combinations)
8. Form placement: Place the entire form on the page vs. a multi-part form vs. a form that is one click away (any combination of which can radically impact results)
9. Smart forms & on-site help: Certain form elements, for example, are known to impact conversions
10. Think of additional ancillary elements you may need, such as live chat, audio, flash animation, video, calculators, click to call, collapsible design elements using AJAX or the like–which are all elements that can impact landing page performance

Once each of these steps is performed, design several new landing pages, varying the tone, style and layout. Then test your new pages. Only testing with a live audience will reveal the winning landing page design. Online visitors are a funny breed. Often, the ‘best’ design perform poorly and ‘ugly’ designs yield great results. From a brand perspective, try to find a landing page that you are proud to display to the world, yet one that fulfills your sales goals.

I encourage you to consider a wildcard design now and again that breaks all the rules. This is one way to radically out-perform, or lose to your control landing page. But breakthrough landing page designs often come about by trying something different. Good luck and happy testing!

Let’s Make a Deal - The social network for venture investors. DealHorizon.com is new, but it’s yet another intriguing web concept from Aussy, John Sharp (CEO of Authentium.com, creators of Safe Central, an amazing end-to-end secure web browsing solution).

Live Video - Flixwagon provides a network for the live broadcasting of video feeds. Whenever I am on this site, I find myself refreshing my homepage every few minutes. There is something exciting about not knowing what’s going to steam across my laptop screen next.

Percentage Calculator - A simple site where you can calculate percentages and percentage increases. I use this all the time.

Spin Your Own - Make your own discs. Yeah, physcial CD’s are a dying medium, but there’s still nothing like burning a fresh disc packed with mp3’s favs and sharing it with friends.

SEO Tool - A nice SEO tool for seeing how well your website is doing in four key areas: 1) Inbound links (especially .edu and .gov links), 2) Number of indexed pages, 3) Site age (via Wayback machine), 4) DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory listing.

Need a Rhyme? - A rhyming dictionary every writer should have in their bag of bookmarks.

Free Translation - What’s not to like about Babel Fish, a quick and easy tool that translates online text and web page language into over 30 languages?

The Future of Search? - Ms. Dewey is an experimental Microsoft video search engine launched in 2006 with a touch of humor that plays prerecorded clips of Janina Gavankar, an actress who entertains you with her witty commentary based on your searches.

Poem Power - Selected poetry of e.e.cummings, a modern American poetry icon. Need I say more?

Do-It-Yourself Videos - A fun video search site. I especially like Revver’s how to section. So many magic trick reveals and Photoshop how-to’s. Sweet.

Twitter is often described as a free micro-blogging and social networking service that you can use to send quick text messages or ‘tweets’ to friends and followers, no more than 140 characters long. While this may be a factually correct description, it only scratches the surface of how Twitter is being utilized as a revolutionary communications platform.

Since Twitter is hardware agnostic, you can access Twitter using hundreds of different devices. This flexibility is just one of the reasons the use of Twitter is spreading so fast. Anytime, anywhere accessibility means that users can tweet from anywhere–and they are! From the front lines of war zones, to sporting events, family vacations, the local conference event–anywhere you can see or do you can tweet about.

Recently a colleague of mine asked me about Twitter. He heard I was using it to conduct research, promote my blog, and provide assistance to others. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would anyone use Twitter? Especially a Fortune 100 company? I just don’t see how it’s useful or effective.”

I could relate to her. You see, I felt the same way only a month or so ago when I first joined Twitter. I posted a few comments, followed a few people, conducted a couple of advanced searches on topics of interest. Yawn. You mean to tell me people are tweeting about taking their children to soccer practice? Tweeting about what they are eating? Posting on topics such as gastronomical pains? Here are three sample tweets (actual Twitter posts):

• I ate donuts all weekend
• last day of skiing. I went crazy and shredded some mogul
• Lunch with the new employee. I’m officially The Man now

Why on earth would I spend my valuable time sorting through thousands of comments like these concerning the mundane happenings of so many ordinary lives?

Then I started noticing other tweets like these:

• FREE widget creation tool. http://tinyurl.com/8jplw4
• New report shows Flash is poor choice for navigation design: http://tinyurl.com/7bp2je PS: Real world testing shows search engines can’t see the keyword buckets
• Nice viral marketing campaign. Click through the site till you see the surprise ending! http://tinyurl.com/3bp1ju

Hmmm. Links to resources, collaborative research findings, online marketing case studies. I searched deeper and found tweets like these:

• Wholefoods So far, we have not identified any products that contain the implicated peanut butter. We will post more details in The Whole Story shortly
• LanceArmstrong Kicked off the LS Global Campaign today at Royal Adelaide Hospital with Premier Rann, Federal Treasurer Swann and many others. Here we go
• DellOutlet Coupons coming for select Dell Outlet laptops & desktops! Not combinable w/ other coupons. Online only. Limit 2 PCs/customer. Expire 1/19/ 09
• Zappos CES attendees: Intel party. For non-VIP entry say passwd “goat” at door
• JetBlue Winter weather in the Northeast may cause delays or cancellations. Check your flight’s status at http://www.jetblue.com/flig…

Wow! Official tweets from companies, celebrities, CEO’s and even politicians. Tweets on a wide range of topics such as crisis management, news & event coverage, product discounts, networking opportunities, and even proactive customer service! With my online marketing noggin now fully engaged, I started thinking about Twitter as a strategy for a businesses or individuals looking to build their brand, increase sales, and/or create awareness. The possibilities are endless (and exciting).

As an outreach strategy, I identified eight obvious areas of focus that any person or organization could capitalize on by using Twitter:

1. Sales & marketing
2. Reputation management
3. Social advocacy
4. Crisis management
5. Customer care / help
6. News & event coverage
7. Networking / employment
8. Research & development

And how to utilize Twitter in each of the above eight areas? Here are four simple ways to engage with the Twitter.com site:

1. Search - Use Twitter to find people, topics of interest, companies to follow, etc.
2. Follow - Use Twitter to track all those you deem worthy of following (anytime they post, it’s added to your Twitter home page
3. Post - Try contributing content (give advice, insights, tips, special offers, research links, event coverage, rebuttal to negative news, etc.) by either posting one tweet at a time, or better yet, tie in your blog posts and your other online contributions to Twitter automatically using FriendFeed or any number of feed services available online
4. Interact - Customize the design of your Twitter profile, send direct messages to people and form new relationships, interact with the official Twitter blog, connect all your devices (like your Blackberry, iPhone, etc), and more!

So what are you waiting for? The best way to see for yourself how Twitter can ‘benetweet’ your company, website, blog, product or service is to dive right in and start tweeting today.

In their 1993 editorial essay “Where are the Theories for the New Organizational Forms?,” R.L. Daft and A.Y. Lewin forewarned us about technology’s impact on the corporation when they wrote “Computer-mediated communication technology is becoming the backbone of many organizations, supplanting the formal hierarchical structure to achieve coordination and manage relationships within and between organizations.”1  These writers were speaking to the impact technology has had on businesses prior to the pervasive adoption of the Internet.  The Web further compounds the complexities of these new organizational dynamics.

Many businesses will face an uphill battle in their attempt to alter the status quo.  That’s because existing organizations are stitched together like fine tapestries –– every piece of thread is unique, yet each holds its place in relation to the whole.  If a thread were to come loose, there is a real threat that the fabric will unravel.  That’s one of the reasons why executive management is so indecisive about the Web.  They are not quite sure what to make it –– is it a thread, a tapestry, a sewing machine or textile factory?  But businesses do know one thing:  the Web will have an impact on their business and their organization which must be dealt with.

Businesses aspiring to “webify” their efforts will face tough decisions about how far they want to integrate the Web into their companies.  Fundamentally there are five key components to webifying an organization:

1. Empowering, educating, and energizing executive management to lead the Web initiative
2. Transforming the hierarchical organizational structure to a system of multi-directional, interconnected alliances
3. Developing employee skills sets to be Web savvy
4. Changing the way programs are funded
5. Measuring performance based on new metrics