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.

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’s passion is Enterprise Employee and Alumni Communities. We love this article by Dr. John Sullivan.

Economic downturns, mergers, and acquisitions all place pressure on organizations to curb labor costs. No time in the last decade has that tenet been more apparent than right now. Layoffs, large or small, force organizations to cut loose the talent in which they have invested salary and training dollars. While talent released during a layoff today may seem like little more than an expense, tomorrow it could be the difference between success and failure.

World-class organizations need to develop a process that will allow the organization to quickly and easily “re-recruit” alumni with proven track records of success when economic conditions warrant hiring.

The solution that makes re-recruiting possible is a corporate alumni program. Alumni programs allow you to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with former employees who may someday provide significant value again, providing you with an excuse to remain in contact and a mechanism to recruit them back quickly when needed.

Corporate Alumni Programs Can Also Increase Revenues
While the primary reason organizations develop alumni programs is recruiting-related, lots of research demonstrates that investing in corporate alumni programs increases the sales lead generation and deal closing capability of the organization.

Program Goals and Benefits
Well-designed corporate alumni programs can benefit the organization in many ways. Some of the possible goals of corporate alumni programs include:

HR-related goals:
* To improve the quality of hires by rehiring top performers and innovators (boomerang rehires are low-cost, typically have higher retention rates and reach minimum productivity much more quickly than most external hires).
* To increase the number and quality of employee referrals by expanding the program to include alumni.
* To strengthen the employer brand image throughout the industry.
* To increase retention rates among current employees by developing a stronger positive image.
* To increase the number of mentors available to current employees.

Business-related goals:
* To generate direct sales by making alumni customers.
* To increase the number of leads generated (customer referrals).
* To capture ideas and innovations from alumni.
* To get product assessment help.
* To get benchmarking help and to learn about industry best practices.
* To gather competitive intelligence.
* To get help from alumni in building strategic partnerships.

Get in touch with Conenza to discuss corporate social networking and the benefits of a Corporate Alumni Program.

PR firm Burson-Marsteller studied the 100 largest companies in the Fortune 500 list and found that 79% of then use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs to communicate with customers and other stakeholders. The firm broke its findings down by region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America) and network.

Twitter is the most popular platform that the companies use; two-thirds of the Fortune 100 have at least one Twitter account. Actually, they have an average of 4.2 Twitter accounts. Fifty-four percent have at least one Facebook fan page, 50% have at least one YouTube channel, and 33% have at least one corporate blog. Twenty percent of the companies use all four social media platforms.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are mostly West-oriented; Asia-Pacific companies don’t use them as much, instead preferring corporate blogs. When they do use Twitter or Facebook, it’s usually to engage consumers in Europe and North America.

There are a bunch of other interesting stats in the study — including proof that consumers actually do like to engage with companies via social media, making all those channels worthwhile. We’ve embedded Burson-Marsteller’s presentation below. Read the full article here.

Global Social Media Checkup

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.

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

Conenza is passionate about business social networking and loves this article by Don Tapscott, “Top 10 Themes from 2010 Davos”.  Below are a few highlights that we have pulled from the article that relate to corporate social networking:

The World Economic Forum has wrapped up and the small, Swiss town of Davos has been returned to the skiers. Among top concerns at the World Economic Forum: fix the global economy, sort out executive pay, create sustainability, and enhance collaboration

The state of the world is not good.
The theme of Davos was “Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild,” which may have sounded a bit grandiose to some people. I doubt many attendees think this now. The world clearly needs fixing.

Figures cited at the Forum show we’re a long way from being out of the woods on the global recession. Jobs are and will continue to be a huge issue. It is estimated that unemployment in the world jumped by 50 million during the recession, and that the number of working poor increased by 200 million.

Everywhere new collaborative models are emerging to solve global problems.
Our systems of global cooperation are not rising to the many challenges we face. The global humanitarian response to the Haitian earthquake is showing us what is possible. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake isn’t just a Caribbean island crisis, but a world crisis. Millions of people and thousands of institutions have responded in nontraditional ways, donating time, money, goods, and services via new technologies such as texting, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Social media have become the preeminent tools to connect people around the world, empowering them to become active participants in relief efforts.

There are 100 million people on Facebook Causes—the biggest application on Facebook. These are not just people talking to each other. They are organizing activities in the physical world. I heard of dozens of examples at Davos.

It turns out that the Internet does change everything.
The much-discredited phrase from the dot-com period is not just geek speak. The Internet and social networks were central to many discussions here. The digital age seems to be coming of age.

I  participated with CEOs of most of the important social networks in a session called The Power of Social Networks. A few minutes into it, we solicited questions from Facebook. In the first two minutes, 6,000 questions appeared.

New business models are emerging in every industry and throughout society. I’ve argued that social networking is becoming social production and that a new mode of production is emerging—changing not only how we make software or encyclopedias but physical goods like motorcycles, too.

I was also a panelist at a private session asking the provocative question: “Will social networks replace the nation state?” Of course the answer is no, but it’s significant that we can ask the question. If Facebook were a country, it would be more populous than Russia. Nation states have based their authority on control of individual identity, association, and currency within territorial boundaries. Now social networks operating across geographical frontiers have the potential to offer all these things. They also offer the potential for power divorced from traditional political systems. What are the prerequisites for the emergence of the first digital nation-state?

Event Archive: The Application of Enterprise Social Networking to Talent Acquisition and Management
Speaker: Katherine James Schuitemaker , Chief Marketing Officer , Conenza, Inc.

Every day global organizations are adopting social networking technologies to increase collaboration and improve organizational efficiencies. These collective workforce communities can enable large companies to tap into the knowledge and connections of current and former employees to drive significant business impact. Successful implementations report enhanced collaboration and communication, increased recruiting and talent management efficiency, and retained access of valuable intellectual capital.

How can talent acquisition leaders leverage this and apply to talent management and recruitment efforts? We will walk through the different types of communities that are being adopted within the enterprise, and the impact they can have on talent management programs.

To view this webinar or for more information on Conenza’s corporate social networking solution or getting started with the Conenza Community Core, please visit 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.

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.

During an economic downturn companies need to be creative in order to continue to innovate. We recently came across another great piece of research on the benefits of Enteprise 2.0 technologies. The article, “How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” provides a summary of a recent executive survey by McKinsey & Company and demonstrates how companies are effectively leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to maximize their current resources, drive innovation, and realize measureable business benefits.

Here are some of the key findings:
- Of the 1695 executives surveyed, 69% said they had gained measurable benefits from Web 2.0 technologies.

- The strongest areas of measurable benefits “were more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.”

- Companies using Web 2.0 are evolving and benefiting from increased connectivity and greater access to knowledge. This is true for both internal and external business interaction.

- The benefits of using Web 2.0 span multiple industries.

- Web 2.0 is changing the way companies work.  The survey suggests the “networked company” is emerging as a highly-effective model with measurable benefits.

Read the complete article here.