six ways to make Web 2.0 work for your business

Six ways to effectively use the five main groups of Web 2.0 and social media tools in business have been detailed in a report by McKinsey.

A bit dry and jargon-heavy to read but full of good, informative stuff.

For example: appeal to people’s egos and needs—not just their wallets!

Boost the reputation of participants in relevant communities, reward enthusiasm and acknowledge the quality and usefulness of contributions. Research has found that when prizes for contributions were handed out at prominent company meetings, contributions were far higher than when the awards were given in less-public forums.

how to – the social media guide

Here’s a great set of ‘how to’ guides for all things social media.

How to do almost anything Web 2.0; plus some useful but decidely non-social media others: including how to raise money in  a recession; and how to simplify your business.

A good information resource for businesses to browse through. Thanks Mashable!

web-working for businesses

An informative story here on how two businesses are using the web and online tools for internal communications, project and product management, HR and marketing.

how to find valuable social media conversations

Frustrated trying to join social media conversations relevant to your industry but not sure where or how to look for them — here’s some mighty tips from the guys at ReadWriteWeb.

It shows how to identify the top blogs on any topic; how to find their most popular recent posts and their best blog archives; and how to find where else they are having conversations online.

A little bit techie but easy enough to follow and worth its weight in gold.

free web conferencing product

Need to talk to customers or clients overseas or around the country – here’s a free web conferencing tool (for up to 20 people) that lets you share voice, video, webpages, presentations and whiteboards, live over the internet. It’s called Dimdim, but it looks anything but.

social media mistakes – a superlist

Yesterday,  we brought you a superlist of social media initiatives and ideas;  today we bring you a superlist of social media no-nos! (As with yesterday’s list, this list is from the knowledgeable folk at US social media consultancy Interactive Insights.)

social media case studies by the truckload!

Looking for social media ideas and inspiration — here’s a super-useful superlist  of 18 other lists containing  tons of examples of social media initiatives.

NZ tourism’s online marketing push

A marketing drive from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) will see personal messages from visitors to New Zealand recorded for them and then posted to social media sites to be played by the tourists’ friends and family back home.

It’s a plan to capture global attention for the country using social media strategies.

TNZ has a fully-equipped mobile recording studio inside a van to enable tourists to “rave” on camera about their New Zealand experience, add their own photos and video footage  and then post the messages online to influential social media sites such as Facebook.

TNZ plans to capture around 3000 video diary clips over the next four months in a tour around New Zealand.

The clips will be published immediately into unpaid media channels, including a YouTube ‘Have Your Say’ channel which is then fed on to Tourism New Zealand’s consumer website – www.newzealand.com. Visitors will also be able to post video directly onto their Facebook profile pages. The clips will also be used in future advertising campaigns.

“If every clip is viewed by 10 friends and family back home, and if 3000 clips are filmed that’s 30,000 messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets  a very cost-effective form of marketing,” says TNZ boss George Hickton.

I reckon that if the messages can be kept authentic, the videos do not reek of corporate marketing or shine too much with ad-man polish and the advertising use of the messages does not overwhelm the ‘real’ nature of the messages, this plan could get good results.

It’s something we’ll follow with interest as a real-life case study. There’s more information about the initiative here.

young, single but not so hi-tech

A day or so after posting that it’s the kids who know their way around social media comes this survey out of New Zealand’s Waikato University that says 80 percent of students have not heard of social bookmarking (storing and organising bookmarks of web pages).

Too busy socialising online to be worrying about learning online, huh!

young, single and online

No, this is not a post about dating websites! Just some quick info about social media demographics.

Half of the web’s most frequent contributors to social media are under the age of 22. Are you communicating the right stuff,  in the right way and using the right tone on your site!?

The web’s most frequent contributors are also more likely to be ethnically diverse, more technically skilled, single and working in technology, entertainment, or communication companies … just thought you’d like to know that.

More hints about communicating online to these guys are in this useful overview report.