We have seen the extraordinary value a well planned and executed program can deliver. As the article The Maturation of Social Media ROI by Brian Solis shows, it is imperative to clearly outline your community business objective and establish measurable goals for your community.

“The debate over measuring social media investment inspired many brands to cannonball into popular social networks and join the proverbial conversation without a plan or strategic objectives defined. At the same time, the lack of ROI standards unnerved many executives, preventing any form of experimentation until their questions and concerns were addressed. In 2010, we’re entering a new era of social media marketing — one based on information, rationalization, and resolve.

For many businesses, the case for new metrics can’t be made until we have an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level. It’s not as simple as counting subscribers, followers, fans, conversation volume, reach, or traffic. While the size of the corporate social graph is a reflection of our participation behavior, it is not symbolic of brand stature, resonance, loyalty, advocacy, nor is it an indicator of business performance.’”

As a social networking expert, Conenza will establish a formal marketing strategy to plan and grow your corporate alumni community. We are passionate about providing companies with strategic guidance and support through every phase of the community life-cycle. Are you launching an alumni community or corporate social network? Get in touch with Conenza to set up a free 30 minute strategy session.

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.

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 agrees with Econsultancy’s article regarding corporate social networking success factors. Conenza provides corporate strategic planning and social networking software.

Most major brands are hip to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. And many have built up an impressive presence on the web’s most popular social hangouts.

But some of the more adventurous brands have also experimented with self-hosted communities of their own. Unfortunately, a large portion of them fail. Amongst the causalities are communities started by some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart.

But failure isn’t inevitable for brands looking to build their own communities outside of the Facebook and Twitters of the world. According to BrandWeek, a number of diet firms are finding success with their own online communities. Atkins Nutritionals, for instance, only has 3,714 fans on Facebook but its own online community at Atkins.com has plenty of activity. It reportedly reaches millions of people and appears to have over 400,000 registered members.

While a community dedicated to dieting, for example, has obvious advantages over a community for teenagers run by Wal-Mart, that doesn’t mean that brands can’t develop thriving online communities of their own if they consider the following.

* Focus. Communities develop around subjects that are important to people. That should go without saying. Unfortunately, many brands that launch online communities seem to forget that consumers aren’t interested in interacting around their brands 24/7. Instead, brands should identify how they relate to the lives of their customers. With that, they can focus in on building communities around subjects that are relevant to both their brands and their customers’ lives.

* Branding. Branded communities need to be branded. But the brand can’t be the experience; it has to be integrated into the experience.

* Functionality. Brands looking to reach consumers can’t be lazy and simply throw up a vanilla community with standard social networking functionality. Profiles, photo sharing, forums, etc. are all commoditized. To win, brands have to build functionality relevant to the community’s focus that differentiates the community and gives members a good reason to keep coming back on a regular basis.

* Participation/moderation. Communities don’t run themselves and brands can’t start them successfully with a hands-off approach. Instead, brands should make sure that they’re actively involved in the communities they run. While the level of involvement can vary, at a minimum brands should be prepared to ensure that their communities aren’t overrun with spam and bad behavior.

* Creativity. Brands often have incredible assets that can be used to create compelling community experiences. Contests, exclusive content, special events and rewards programs can all be employed in creative ways to entice consumers to join and participate. Unfortunately, many brands seem downright uninspired when it comes to using their corporate resources with their online communities.

Obviously, branded communities aren’t for every company and there are many advantages to tapping into the existing audiences on popular services like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. But that doesn’t mean that brands don’t have the opportunity to build something successful that they own and control. By keeping these five success factors in mind, that opportunity is easier realized.

Get in touch with Conenza to discuss your own employee social networking and business social networking software.

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.

We recently came across a report that highlights some of the key drivers and barriers for adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies. The AIIM Report “Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0” was published earlier this summer. The report is based on an annual survey the AIIM membership base.

Here are some highlights from the report:

Awareness is Growing: Corporate understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is and how it could help the business has doubled in the last year, with only 17% of those surveyed saying they did not know what Enterprise 2.0 is.

External Tools Increasing Internal Expectations: Increasing usage of external Web 2.0 tools, like Twitter and Facebook, is driving demand with employees who want and expect to use them internally, especially among younger generation.

Increasing Importance: Increasing drastically over 2008 survey results, “54% of organizations consider Enterprise 2.0 to be important or very important to their business goals and success, up from 44% last year.”

Key Drivers: The survey emphasized the key business drivers behind enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, achieving heightened collaboration, using internal knowledge more efficiently, and enhancing communication.  

Biggest Barriers to Adoption: The two biggest barriers to adoption cited in the survey are lack of understanding and corporate culture.

You can download the complete report here:
http://www.aiim.org/Research/Collaboration-Enterprise20-Research.aspx