Techpaulogy

Twitter Tools - Google Analytics and Favorite Tracking

I just ran across some cool tools for Twitter while doing a sweep through my Tweetstream:

[1] Google Analytics + Twitalyzer = Twitter Analytics

Want to turn Google Analytics onto your inbound Twitter traffic? Eric Peterson (@erictpeterson) of Web Analytics Demystified fame, and other local PDXers, have done just that. Pretty cool. Try it yourself here.

[2] Has anyone "favorited" any of your tweets?

Ever wonder if people have starred/favourited any of your Tweets? Here's a quick Google hack to see. Just replace 'jivesoftware' with your handle:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:twitter.com/*/favourites+%40[jivesoftware]
(thanks to Justin Parks for the tip).

Analyst Report Hits the Wires - Congrats to Jive!

Forrester Research recently released its 2009 Wave report on enterprise-class Community Platform vendors, and look at where Jive is positioned - a market Leader!

I am so excited for the team here at Jive - everyone has been working around the clock like madmen, and it's great to get this kind of recognition from top-tier analyst firms. In this research, Jive won on 2 out of 3 categories: Current Offering, based on our software and services; and Strategy, based on our strategic vision and leaderhsip team. You can grab the report on our website.

Economic Downturn Boosts Reliance on Social Media Marketing Tactics

Marketing Sherpa just released the results of a survey they recorded, detailing Marketers' response to the current economic downturn:

SUMMARY: Every marketing tactic gets more scrutiny when budgets face the sting of a struggling economy. Here is a glance at how marketers expect to tailor their investments in digital tactics during a downturn.



...Not surprisingly, house email and Web 2.0 are getting high attention; both are relatively low-cost and the former, at least, has proven ROI. Web 2.0 is seen as having the same virtue, although it doesn’t have email’s well-documented ROI...

(Full article can be found on Marketing Sherpa here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30925)

Is this how my fellow marketers are reacting to the downturn? We're certainly tightening up marketing budgets here, and focusing on our programs with the best lead gen results (tied back to pipeline and closed deals). Less $$$ allocated to branding/awareness initiatives in the broader sense. We're putting down the shotgun and getting out the rifle, digging in our beachhead more around live customer webcasts, search (paid and organic), and community building... the later 2 are deeply rooted in social media marketing. For example, online communities can have a big impact on organic search/SEO. We did a webcast with Anvil Media about it recently: Boost SEO with an Online Community

Want to Get More Involved in the PDX Tech Community? Get Elected!

Interested in getting more deeply involved in Portland's tech community? Now's your chance: the Legion of Tech elections were just announced. There are 2 different LoT positions up for grabs, involving differing levels of responsibility:

• Legion of Tech Board of Directors - nominations are due November 1st.
• Legion of Tech Advisory Committee - nominations are due December 1st.

See the LoT blog post for details on the positions' day-to-day expectations and activities.

If you are interested in running for the Board or the Advisory Committee, please contact one of the current Legion of Tech Board members (e.g. me!) and express your interest in a nomination.

Back From Burning Man - What an Adventure!

10 of us (Erin, Mike, Jesse, Jon, Mo, Jen, Daniel, Pete, Chad, and I) set out to Black Rock City in Nevada to experience Burning Man. Wow. I can't really explain it in words... in a sentence: a survivalist camping trip in the desert surrounded by fabulous art, wild people, all-night raves, and lots and lots of sand. Everywhere.

I took a ton of photos, which might explain it better. They are all up on Flickr in my Burning Man 2008 photo set. Here is a quick overview:

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We had to unpack and setup camp in a 6-hour dust storm/whiteout when we go there... But that didn't stop us from exploring the community:

 

 

Black Rock City and the Playa are soooo expansive:

 

 

There were crazy parties and costumes:

 

 

And the pyrotechnics were ridiculous:

 

So this just the beginning... next year, there will be more to explore. In the meantime, see my full Burning Man 2008 photo set.

 

Clearspace just took enterprise collaboration to a whole new level - hello 2.5

I am so excited. Hunkered down here at the Jive HQ (Club Fed), our whole team has been cranking like never before. Engineering, Marketing, Product, Sales, you name it -- everyone has been heads down building, testing, re-mixing, and giving feedback on our Clearspace platform. We've been sitting on the 2.5 beta here for a month or two, and it is hands-down our best release ever. You can tell by how pumped everyone is here internally. We are so excited we literally bumped launch from September into August, effectively taking our launch runway from 5+ weeks to 2 (kind of a masochistic move). We just want to get it out there for everyone to get their hands on. I honestly can't imagine ever working for a company that doesn't have some kind platform like this to add a "social productivity" layer to its business underpinnings.

Ok, so what is so cool? Here's some highlights:

• Brand new text editor that can handle images and streaming video like butter. Drag, drop, re-size, publish. Never been easier (and you know that's what it takes to drive user adoption).
• Dynamic search that guesses what you are after as you type (broken out by Content, People, and Spaces). I barely need to even go to a search results page anymore.
• Social networking all over the place, including status updates, friends, groups, people search, etc. I mean really, Facebook for the enterprise. But a lot less spammy.
• Theming console for dummies. Now you don't need to know java or struts or freemarker (or whatever you needed to know) -- there's just a UI in the admin console, like popular consumer CMS/blogging platforms. And if you want to get ninja, there's an example CSS kit that you download, modify, and re-upload. Smooooth.

Anyway, go and check it out for yourself:

• Clearspace - connect employees with a comprehensive social productivity collaboration solution
• Clearspace Community - build customer communities and integrate your other online marketing channels (like SEO).

P.S. Props to the SWEET videos by Kalani (and edited in part by Sigler). And Sam is shaking things up at Go Big Always...

Connecting Online Communities to SEO Strategy

There's no question that Search Engine Optimization is BIG on marketers' minds these days -- it's a great way to engage potential customers in all stages of the sales cycle. Both researchers and decision-makers use search to make purchasing decisions for software, services, etc.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how online communities tie into search. I'll evolve this conversation as we go, but wanted to start putting it on the radar now so the general community can help move it forward. At a high level, how does a community fit into a company's SEO strategy? This slideshow demonstrates it:

SEO - Where Online Communities Fit In from Paul Biggs on Vimeo.

In short, the 80/20 rule applies here -- a Marketing team can focus on the 20% of core keywords that drive most search engine traffic from the likes of Google and Yahoo, and the community take care of the rest of the keywords. A company is, in essence, capturing the "long tail" of search by outsourcing niche SEO content to users, that the main site (run by Marketing) doesn't have the resources to cover.

I'll be doing some research in this vein, and present my findings in a webcast: http://www.jivesoftware.com/news/webcasts. There will also be more conversations over on Jive's social software best-practices community: http://www.jivesoftware.com/clearstep/