There is no question; this is the age of social media and social networking. We know that by creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. We know that consumers actually do like to engage with companies via social media outlets, making all of those channels worthwhile. Still, many have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement in social media and corporate social networking can deliver.

A recent study conducted by White Horse helped revealed the following:

“Forty percent of B2B companies devote one or more full-time marketers to social media marketing, as compared to 54% of B2C companies, according to the results of “B2B Marketing Goes Social.” However, say that given the relatively smaller size of marketing departments in B2B organizations, this level of representation is significant and underscores the maturing role of social media as a core component of B2B marketers’ arsenal.”

The report continues:

“Only 10% of B2B companies have engaged an agency for help with social media, as compared to 28% for B2C companies. White Horse analysts indicate this is consistent with B2B companies’ overall lower rates of agency engagement across all marketing activity, but say it demonstrates that agencies offering social media services need to work harder to define their value to B2B organizations.”

Conenza’s Alumni Community Software is unique and stands alone from other social media efforts, by efficiently retaining previous users and keeping them available for future needs. Corporate social networking is a long term investment, requiring expert account management, vision and strategy in order to be profitably executed. Conenza provides that account governance from start to finish.

We’ve seen the value a well planned and well executed program can deliver. Have you?

“Amid a string of privacy snarls this spring by Facebook, Google, AT&T and others, and the phenomenal adoption of online social networks not just by the most computer-savvy but by the rest of society, privacy advocates say it is time to set out a basic set of common principles that consumers could expect social websites to honor.”

The Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy has taken up a “bill of rights” for social-network users. The Bill includes the following items and the full article can be read here.

Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.
Clarity: Ensure that policies and terms of service are easy to understand.
Empowerment: Support privacy-enhancing and assistive technologies.
Security: Treat my data as securely as your own, and notify me if it is compromised.
Control: Let me control my data, and don’t share it with others unless I agree first.

These are the cornerstones of our corporate social networking solution. Creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. This delivers real value back to your business.

We are passionate about these values and they permeate everything we do from product planning to UI design to how we engage in supporting clients and community members. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution enables employees to securely share knowledge, develop closer connections, and drive significant business impact.

Ever since Facebook revealed Facebook Open Graph, a platform for personalizing the web browsing experience on third-party websites, the world’s largest social network has been at the center of the privacy debate. Even getting scrutiny from the senate, Senator Charles Schumer of New York wrote a letter to the FTC, urging them to create privacy guidelines for Facebook and other social networking sites. Compromised user privacy is a serious concern in today’s internet world. The web itself is designed to share information and the core issue, identity authentication, is one that we have done a tremendous amount of work around at Conenza.

Identity authentication is critical to creating trusted online communities. Over the last decade, as Conenza has built and managed online communities for Global 2000 enterprises who need to carefully manage their brands, we have seen how identity-authentication is essential to vibrant, value-creating communities.

Secure member authentication is a baseline requirement for a private corporate talent community. The level of trust influences freedom of information sharing. In most online communities or corporate social networks, when there is a mixture of people, such as personal and business acquaintances, the level of trust will vary across the community.

Privacy settings and permissions controls can help create an environment of trust in an online community. Understanding how people connect and share in different environments helps us determine the granularity of privacy settings and the depth of permissions-controls we offer to our clients and community members in our corporate social networking platform. The safer community members feel about sharing information, the higher the level of trust and ultimately engagement will be.

Building that foundation of trust is the cornerstone of our communities and our corporate social networking solution.

Omowale Casselle examined the pros and cons of using social networking and social media tools for recruiting in her blog post "Social Recruiting Is Only Cheap Right Now ." Here at Conenza we are focused on building lifelong relationships with  employees to increase business development opportunities and recruiting efficiency.

Employee Time/Energy Is A Real Cost

"Social Recruiting is not cheap from the perspective of resources expended. Unless your recruiting team is filled with volunteers, Social Recruiting is not free or cheap. The main reason being the amount of time it takes to properly define, get buy-in, execute, measure, and repeat a campaign. Much of the time it takes to conduct these initiatives is because of the existing fragmentation of social media tools. From maintaining a Facebook fan page, tweeting on Twitter, writing blog posts, searching for candidates on LinkedIn, and monitoring Google Analytics; the recruiting team can spend a significant amount of time  and energy on these free tools. Individual company recruiting teams that are taking a leadership role in this new space are developing solutions that don’t necessarily scale well. In fact, one could argue that it is in their best interest not to share strategic elements which are most beneficial to recruiting top talent via social media."

Discover why the world’s leading Global 2000 enterprises rely on Conenza’s corporate social networking software and expert community-building services to build and manage their employee and alumni communities .  It hurts when you lose employees, especially star performers, but this does not have to be the end of the relationship or the value that they create for your organization. Smart organizations are actually reframing how they look at the departure of an employee, maintaining connections and continuing to tap into their knowledge, connections, and commitment to do great work.

Conenza builds and manages trusted online communities where global enterprises and knowledge workers actively engage to collaboratively create and deliver value. Conenza’s brand values distinguish our company and its solutions from other social and corporate networks.

Trust:
The foundation of relationship and the assurance that those in your community are who they say they are and have a shared set of experiences that create a common bond. Once trust is established, we’re willing to listen, help each other and collaborate on things that matter to us.

Community:
More than a mere “network,” a community works together to draw upon the strengths each other brings to help create our respective and oft-times shared futures.

Creating value:
This is the reason we’re all here—creating compelling value for members, whether enterprises, employees or alumni. It’s the magnet that draws smart professionals back again and again, as they draw upon their pasts to help co-create the future.

“Human” touch:
While the community is an online experience, what makes it work is knowing there are real people behind it who care about helping each member—and the enterprise—achieve their objectives.

We are passionate about these values and they permeate everything we do from product planning to UI design to how we engage in supporting clients and community members. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution enables employees to share knowledge, develop closer connections, and drive significant business impact. For more information please visit our site at http://conenza.com.

New Statesman Article
Published 08 February 2010

In four years, social networking services will replace e-mail for about 20 per cent of business users, according to Gartner, the information technology research and advisory firm. By 2012, over 50 per cent of businesses will be using microblogging to share quick updates with consumers and colleagues and to get quick answers to questions.

“However, it will be difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice-president for Gartner.

In five years, 70 per cent of communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after smartphone collaboration applications. Cell phones will replace desk phones, and most collaboration tools will be integrated with them, according to Gartner.

Through 2015, about 25 per cent of businesses will use social network analysis to improve performance and productivity. Such analysis allows companies to study communication patterns and information flow that occurs between staff and customers.

Get in touch with Conenza to discuss their business social network solution and discover the benefits of corporate social networking.

The Conenza Community Platform integrates the best of social networking functionality to give your company a vibrant online community that drives engagement and interaction with the site. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution provides your company with the technology and resources it needs to deliver a highly rewarding employee and alumni community with minimal impact on your internal resources.

Connections
Your employees and alumni will be able to create networks of trusted personal and professional connections that enable enhanced dialogue and active tracking of people and topics of interest. Connections also drive increased frequency of use—drawing members back to the site to accept invitations to connect with their colleagues, learn what’s new, and stay to explore what’s been added to the site. Connections also serve a powerful role in contributing to the viral growth of your community.

Groups
Your company, employees, and alumni members can gather, compare notes, post resources, and collaborate around shared interests via Groups. Groups can be set up to be open or private, visible or hidden. Groups facilitate deeper connections within the community and create new ways for members to interact, engage, and create value together.

Messaging
Conenza’s social networking platform features an embedded internal messaging system and the ability for members to opt to have messages sent to their personal email address.

Document and Rich Media Sharing
Your company, employees, and alumni can share documents, photos, and video files enhancing the depth of information exchange and collaboration within the community.

Discover additional features of Conenza’s corporate social networking platform and learn how Conenza’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution is the product of more than a decade of experience building and managing the corporate communities of Global 2000 enterprises such as Microsoft. For more information please visit our site at http://www.conenza.com

By David Coursey
Article link

In telling priests to become more web and social network savvy, Pope Benedict XVI is offering valuable advice for businesses, too. And if His Holiness thinks Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are good ways to spread his message, maybe his advice can help your company, too.

If you’re having trouble getting your bosses to adopt a social networking or some other online strategy for your business, the Pope may be your ally. Here’s what he has to say, and with a few word substitutions the advice would be at home in a business magazine:

“The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts,” wrote the Pope in his message for the 44th World Day of Communications, to be held May 16.

The Vatican already has a multilingual Web site, but has recently launched the “Pope2you” portal, offering a Facebook app, iPhone app, YouTube channel, and Papal videos. But, don’t let the cool “Pope2You” name and URL fool you. Like, like all good CEOs, Pope Benedict warned his managers that they can’t just talk the talk of social networking.

Connect and engage a global workforce and transform corporate alumni into strategic assets with Conenza’s corporate social networking platform. For more information visit http://conenza.com

Conenza’s corporate social networking software, deeply experienced insight and comprehensive consulting services enable you to foster meaningful relationships with your corporate alumni to fully realize the business value they represent.

When alumni can make valuable career and business connections, collaborate and exchange ideas with their peers, find out about exciting events, and enjoy privileged discounts and benefits on things that matter, you can count on them to be enthusiastic champions and brand advocates for your organization. Conenza has more than a decade of hands-on expertise in what it takes to engage and grow alumni communities with a combination of world-class technology and unique benefits and services.

The Conenza Community Platform provides a compelling member experience that keeps your alumni coming back to the site to:

* Make and renew trusted, personal and professional connections with former colleagues and friends

* Uncover hidden career and business development opportunities

* Connect, collaborate and innovate with peers on topics of shared interest

* Contribute to a community effort to create positive change in the world through corporate and collective philanthropy

* Take advantage of cost-effective individual and small business insurances, benefits and services, as well as other privileged-access perks

If you are looking to accelerate the successful launch of a new corporate alumni community, Conenza offers expert professional services to support every phase of the community lifecycle.

For more information please visit our site at http://conenza.com.

In today’s challenging economic environment, companies are looking for ways to increase efficiency and cut costs. A corporate alumni and employee social network can enable companies to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with exiting, retiring, and former employees, and provide a compelling source of competitive advantage for global organizations in strategic outplacement, recruiting/re-recruiting, retained access to domain expertise, business development, and high-value marketing.

“The business case for a private alumni and employee community in normal economic times is one that is extremely compelling; in an economic downturn it becomes a strategic imperative. The Conenza Community Core provides corporations with a simple and affordable way to maintain valuable connections with their people, past and present, in a branded, secure environment,” said Tony Audino, Conenza CEO. “For more than a decade, our technology and support services have enabled some of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies, like Microsoft, to build and grow vibrant online communities that deliver real benefits to the members and positively impact both the top and bottom line.”

The Conenza Community Core 3.0 includes:

* Community Building Blocks: The Conenza Community Core includes the quintessential building blocks of a community: secure member registration and authentication, directories, profiles, news, and administration and reporting.
* Social Computing Features: The Conenza Community Core includes social computing features such as groups, connections, messaging, wikis, blogs, activity feeds, and document sharing.
* Strategic Support Services: Conenza’s Software-as-a-Service solution licensing fee includes expert consulting services to help clients develop their community strategy, provide day-to-day support, and quickly realize the full financial benefits of their initiatives.
* Customization to Meet Business and Brand Requirements: The Conenza Community Core is configurable to comply with corporate brand standards and features content moderation and permissioning capabilities to meet the robust needs of various audiences inside and outside the enterprise.
* Modular Upgrades: Value-enhancing modules can be easily added to the Conenza Community Core to improve the effectiveness of critical human resources, sales and marketing initiatives, and increase the business value derived from a private, branded alumni and employee community. Add-on modules include the Opportunity Center, Events, and Marketplaces.

For more information on Conenza’s corporate social networking solution or getting started with the Conenza Community Core, visit http://conenza.com.