As we watch the economy do what economies do - have growing pains and adjust to challenges - it becomes ever more apparent that doing things the old way just won’t work anymore. That is true of many of the old ways, especially when it comes to how companies advertise and grow their business.

It is my opinion that the return on investment (ROI) for traditional advertising will continue to shrink, even as companies using traditional advertising methods continue to throw money at ads in hopes that their company will survive these choppy financial seas. Instead of panicking and clinging to the deflating lifeboat of old ideas, now is the time to stand firm and innovate.

Evaluating the Situation

Before a company can find success in branding and marketing through non-traditional means like social media, companies and entrepreneurs need to reevaluate how they define ROI. Sure, there is always investment, but instead of thinking of this investment solely as monetary, also consider the investment you can make in time, staff, creativity, participation, and other less tangible resources. In this economy “investment” could be replaced by innovation, inspiration, involvement, or interaction for a different and fresh form of ROI.

Social media is often accused of taking a “touchy feely” approach to advertising, marketing and brand management. In a sense this is true. The ways of measuring ROI in a social media campaign are much more indirect than a cost based traditional model. In part this is because the cost of social media to grow your company is relatively low and consists mainly of intangible things like proper use of your time.

If the company is large enough, it may entail the cost of hiring someone to manage your social media efforts. If the company is a small to medium business or an entrepreneur or sole proprietor, most will find that after an initial training session with a good social media guide they can use existing staff to manage social media campaigns. This is a huge cost saver that can be carried over into a reduction in traditional advertising expenses as well.

Measuring ROI

One of the most tangible ways to measure ROI is site analytics. If you have a site that is starting a social media campaign, make sure to get a good analytics program installed, like Google Analytics. As you start each campaign, make sure to associate it with tags and key words you can track in your analytics program.

You can do the same for on-site CPM advertising, like the ever popular Google Adsense. By associating each ad block with key words and campaigns, it makes it easier to measure where the money and visitors are coming in from. Coupled with a great stats program like Mint or similar, there is no reason you can’t develop your own in-house ROI study as you embark on your first social media campaign.

Enhancing ROI

One of the many ways to enhance your ROI from social media campaigns is to consider transparency. Since it is very hard to hide behind an image these days (go ahead and Google your company name plus the word “sucks” or “stinks” or other negative connotations and see if anything comes back), the more transparent a company and its top level staff can be without giving away company secrets, the better.

A fantastic example of transparency helping a company’s numbers is that of BuzzAgent. They were so invested in the idea of changing how they approached their brand they did a 90 day experiment that showed measurable gains (and other interesting data) through openness and interaction.

Additional Benefits

If you aren’t sold on the idea of fully embracing social advertising, consider the intangible benefits of a brand campaign as well, including how social media can save you money indirectly. By becoming more involved with your brand and embracing both the negative and the positive (realize you no longer control the conversation about your company) you can stop problems before they start.

By giving your customers access to you through social media and using it to channel everything from customer support to sales and hiring, you will find that you are gaining income and stopping some tradition areas of corporate monetary hemorrhaging. All without spending vast amounts of extra money on ads no one stops to watch, listen to or read anyway outside of Superbowl Sunday. I’d say that’s pretty good indirect ROI, wouldn’t you?

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Webjam, a platform that allows users to build customizable services on the Web, including publications, social networks, and various flavors in between, has unveiled a new layer directed at brand managers, called Branded Services. The company intends for this launch to enable organizations to “initiate a faster interactive discussion about their products or services amongst their audience.” WebJam explains that “by aggregating user-generated content and providing discovery tools, they can engage and empower their audience, thus spreading awareness and bringing a sense of purpose and community.”

Suppose those words might be translated into a “brand you can befriend” sort of scenario. Albeit one quite a bit more full-featured and adaptable than a social profile on Facebook. Webjam presented Mashable with a number of examples of the Branded Services effort, of which two stood out particularly strongly: The Other Side and Cosmo Wedding Communities. These showcase how the social components offered through Webjam enable those brands, both of which involve themselves in the publishing industry, to become more involved with readers and for those readers to familiarize themselves with one another, as Branded Services promise to do.

The implementation of Webjam services with The Other Side, a free paper circulated via London’s Tube, and Cosmo Wedding Communities, is well done, visually as well as structurally. Juxtaposed against one another, they show some similarities, of course, but remain very much their own domains. And the fact that users can involve themselves so thoroughly that they in turn establish sort of sub-communities, or “micro-communities,” as Webjam describes, is interesting indeed.

It is without question that many brands will have no need to tap the powers that be at Webjam, despite the platform’s projection that “businesses can no longer ignore social media and Web 2.0 trends.” That is a basic reality. It’s really entirely dependent on the purpose of an enterprise to its clients or customers, and whether such a connection could do with that added closeness of a so-called community.

Nevertheless, the supply of organizations big and small that might perhaps benefit from such engagement is large. Very large, in fact. So it is really to Webjam’s advantage to pitch the Branded Services option to prospective companies in need of or in search of an adaptive solution.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Webjam Launches - MySpace Plus Netvibes on SteroidsThe Social Networking Awards 2006 - Call for Sponsors and SuggestionsMySpace Launches Free, Ad-Supported Cellphone ServiceTokyo MX Launches Branded YouTube ChannelTakkle Launches America’s Best Branded GroupPredictify Platform Launches with FreakonomicsStumbleUpon-eBay “Integration” Begins (Screenshots)

Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? It’s an important question to ask yourself in diving into a report from Synovate (republished by eMarketer this morning) showing that 58% of adults worldwide don’t know “what social networking is.”

The survey of more than 13,000 people in 17 developed nations also asked if users were losing interest in social networks. According to the report, 36% said “yes,” with interest fading fastest in Japan, Slovakia, and Canada, with 45% of US users supposedly losing their appetite for social networking.

Yikes. But now for the good news. The report polled only users 18-65 in age, leaving out the teenagers that make up much of the current audience for social networks – especially the world’s two largest – Facebook and MySpace. Further, considering 58% of respondents have no idea what social networking is, the optimist says that there is still a huge untapped market.

Further, looking at penetration in individual countries where social networking usage is perceived as high – like the US and UK – less than 30% of those with regular access to the Internet are using a social networking site. Looking at other developing parts of the world like Brazil, Russia, and Mexico, penetration sits at less than 10%, indicating a potentially huge opportunity for Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and local competitors to expand.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:GlowDay’s Over-Indulged Survey WidgetsCompanies Can’t Stop Employees From PiratingTake a Survey about Video from MotionBox and Win a Sony HD CamcorderTrading Sex for the Web. Who Doesn’t?Illegal Music Downloading at an All Time HighDigital Media Use Increases 50% for Consumers. Time for New Ad Strategy?Hear Steve Wozniak Speak at the Social Networking Conference

Source:Mashable!

This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.

I’m a member of Generation X, and it seems to me that when I was young the character of Uncle Sam was still used on television, radio, and in common conversation. What’s our brand now? Sam’s getting a little old, invented in the early 1800’s as he was – What’s Sam 2.0?

The larger issue as it relates to social media and the government is, what’s your brand? Some parts of the government have very good branding – the Marines have handsome men in dress uniform with gleaming swords, the USDA has the food pyramid, the Federal Reserve Bank has paper currency. Even the CIA has branding – Jennifer Garner from the fictional show Alias was used as a recruiting tool. But what is the brand of perhaps more obscure parts of the federal government: the Library of Congress, or the Department of Education, or the President’s Council on Environmental Quality?

As Chris Anderson points out in The Long Tail, micro-niches are the future for most of us. Perhaps it used to be the case in the era of “blockbusters” that an entire company, or an entire government or agency, needed one overarching brand. No longer. Because the long tail hypothesis states that regardless of how far down the tail one goes, someone (however rare) is always interested in it, anything can be branded.

What does this mean for the federal government? It means that any component, regardless of how small or seemingly insignificant, can have a unique, visible, and useful brand. This might be the Army’s 82nd Airborne, foreign affairs analysts who study Russia, or an office at USDA that is responsible for inspecting imported food. And as such groups in Washington move closer and closer to a vision of Government 2.0, new social tools can and should be used to develop and maintain these brands.

The first thing that government employees need to know about PR 2.0 is that everything put out there – video, blogs, tweets – is open to interpretation, comment, sharing, and re-use. It all affects your brand, and while you can direct and define things to some extent, it is largely out of your control. Get comfortable with it. Jack Holt, the Chief of the Department of Defense’s New Media Office, compares this to the “telephone game” in which people sit in a room and each whispers a message to the next one, gradually distorting the message over time; you can’t control the message itself, but if you stay engaged in the conversation (in the game, interrupting periodically), you could control the ultimate effect and understanding.

Once you’ve acknowledged what Web 2.0 is, you can think about using it to build a brand for your government organization. First, you have to ask yourself, what is my goal? What message do I want to get across? Where is my audience? It may in fact be the case that using social software ineffectively could be worse than not using it at all. Find out using a wide variety of search tools (Google Alerts, Twitter Search) whether people are talking about your entity online. Where are they talking about it? What are they saying? Who are the thought leaders? Regarding adopting social tools that you might not be familiar with, one reasonable approach is to watch what other government entities are trying, and ask them if it is working or not. Another is to try to use social tools internally before using them in a public relations effort.

Second, once you start using social tools, you need to decide how to present your brand to the world. One important decision, as I noted in my last article is, do you present yourself as an Enterprise, a nameless, faceless entity – or as a collective of Empowered Individuals that represent your entity, much like advocates for presidential candidates currently do on television talk shows? Another important decision is whether to simply “push” messages out to people, or whether to engage in conversations with interested persons, whether they view your entity positively or negatively. Again, the answers to these questions will depend on your overall mission and the policies and laws pertaining to your agency.

Currently, there is a dichotomy in government Twitter usage. Of the roughly 50 Enterprise and 25 Empowered Individual government users I keep track of (data available here ), while on average each has been using Twitter for three months, they have opposite usage patterns. The median number of followers that an Enterprise has is 127, versus 57 for an Empowered Individual. Similarly, the median “grade” given at the new site Twitter Grader was 58 vs. 35 (scale of 0-100).

The true spirit of 2.0, however, is listening and engaging – and here the Enterprises fall short. The median number of people they follow is 8, versus 58 for Empowered Individuals. Similarly, while the median percent of @ replies for Empowered Individuals is 37, the median for Enterprises is zero. So, more than half of the Enterprises have never engaged with a single person on Twitter. As I discussed previously, Enterprises using Twitter but not listening or engaging is more like Government 1.4, so to speak.

[Side note regarding Twitter Grader: From a sample of about 80 Twitter users, the rank order of grades and number of followers was nearly identical, and there was no relationship between grades and measures of engagement; thus: (1) calculation of grades is strongly based on number of followers, (2) grades have no relation to engagement, and (3) Twitter Grader adds little to understanding Twitter usage. Indeed, one government user, @pharmasat, has 42 followers, 0 updates, and a grade of 27. Is that meaningful?]

Finally, down the road, if you are using social tools for branding and decide that they are working well for you, the ideal situation is to have influencers advocate on your behalf, integrate conversations happening in different parts of the Web by cross-references or aggregating, and tracking how memes from your organization flow through 2.0 space over time.

If you work in the government and are interested in social tools, but are not doing all of this – that’s okay! As Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out specifically with regard to Twitter, many large corporations are struggling with these very same questions. Comcast is probably one of the best examples of PR 2.0 from the corporate world, but they are at present the exception to the rule. And although private companies have less restrictions than the government, they have not figured everything out yet. It’s new to everyone.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. He can be reached at mark.d.drapeau@ugov.gov via email.

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Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a blog post to explain why the server hardware maker has changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA, emphasizing its Java programming language and software suite. Luckily, he left comments enabled on the post, leading to gems like this: “This is a move right out of the Dilbert school of management.” [Jonathan’s Blog via Fake Steve]

Sometime actor Andrew Shue, pictured left, is best known for playing Billy Campbell, the most boring character on ’90s nighttime soap opera Melrose Place. Less well known is his status as cofounder of CMI Marketing, the parent company of social networks ClubMom and CafeMom, the latter of which recently received $5 million in funding from VCs Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Highland Capital Partners. Moms or not, we have a great idea for how to get more traffic on the CafeMom site: Post pictures of Andrew Shue in his underwear. We bet he’ll pose for new ones in exchange for just a few extra stock options.

Source:Valleywag

Microsoft is allegedly demanding that startup XBux change its name to the far less hip XBucks, lest consumers be unable to distinguish between its Xbox 360 videogame console and a network that unites athletes with sponsors. Of course, we imagine Starbucks will then have grounds, as it were, to complain. [VentureBeat]

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

KickApps: KickApps is a fully hosted ASP platform that quickly enables any website with all the functionality typically found at portals like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr, including user-generated video, photos, personal pages, video blogging, tagging, rating, transcoding, video player customization, etc.

The KickApps platform deploys in a fast (hours, not months), highly customizable fashion by automatically generating custom media widgets with a number of unique viral features.

The KickApps platform allows websites to dramatically increase their page impressions and ad inventory and includes an administration, media management and reporting/data mining console. The platform also enables ad insertion including banner, pre-roll video and post-roll video.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

KickApps: KickApps deploys rich functionality on major media websites in just a few hours with very little engineering integration. AJAX, Flash and html elements blend into a robust, seamless experience on a highly stable and scalable JAVA-based platform (Spring Framework, Hibernate). There are a number of features unique to the KickApps platform, including user-generated content and social networking deployed simply by the platform’s instant widget generator. The platform is also supported by a sophisticated media management platform which allows websites to invite rich media user participation while protecting their brands and advertisers from pornography and inappropriate material. Media screening includes automatic removal of media flagged by users as inappropriate as well as a media management console that allows webmaster to pre-screen content, adjust meta-data and disable unruly members. Web services include single sign on, reporting and module support. While many platform support widgets, those widgets have minimal functionality and are generally skin deep. KickApps widgets click to deeper user experiences, all supported by an integrated platform.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

KickApps: Video, photo and audio file uploads, transcoding and hosting within a sophisticated media management system easily controlled by our affiliate websites in an efficient administration console. User personal pages are automatically generated and multi-media enabled thru a media management system that gives detailed control to both website visitors and webmasters. The platform also includes multi-media community boards and Flash video blogging that allows users to create and post videos instantly with an inexpensive webcam.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

KickApps: Major media and high traffic websites that currently have an audience but do not yet invite true user participation. Radio station websites, television show websites, talk show websites, gaming websites, reality show websites, major music artist and celebrity websites, record company websites, etc.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

KickApps: New features will allow websites to also use the KickApps platform to manage and play their premium with a selection of easily customizable and programmable video player widgets.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

KickApps: KickApps has launched as a platform that enables a wide array of highly integrated community and video features, but will evolve into a multipurpose platform that will provide webmasters with a complete range of hosted applications, deployable at their web properties in a number of ways (e.g. widgets, web services, other APIs). Integrated administration, media management, reporting and data mining services will continue to evolve and will be fully accessible in dynamic fashion. For major media websites our platform will be increasingly customizable and extensible to support almost any front-end implementation. For smaller websites our platform will continue to develop simple but effective turnkey solutions.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

KickApps: Very little thus far, however we have many requests for new features that for the most part will be added over the next few months.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

KickApps: Technology and budget limitations should not prevent webmasters from including state-of-the-art rich media and community functionality on their websites.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

KickApps: Impact thousands of websites, large and small, by solving difficult technical problems with simple, hosted solutions.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

KickApps: KickApps is a well-funded NYC-based venture backed by Spark Capital and Prism ventures. Board members include former NFL and MTV President Sara Levinson and former E! Entertainment founder/CEO and Liberty Digital CEO Jarl Mohn.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

KickApps: KickApps launched its first wide release product in the Fall of 2006.

FilmLoop: FilmLoop is the leading photocasting network. FilmLoop offers free software for Windows and Macintosh that lets users broadcast and share digital photo stories, and a content web site for displaying and promoting Loop creators’ work. FilmLoop users can post Loops to the new FilmLoop.com web site, as well as to their own Web site, social network profile pages, blogs, or share by email. For businesses, FilmLoop is a direct photo channel to users and a way to keep audiences engaged in a brand or product offering.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

FilmLoop: With FilmLoop, you can:

• Browse our huge library of Loops made by FilmLoopers worldwide
• Build your own Loop of photos, cartoons, drawings, artwork, text
• Jazz up your Loop with frames, tattoos, and collages
• Add click actions to allow images to click through to audio, video, web sites
• Collaborate on a Loop, allowing anyone to add their own submissions to your Loop
• Notify your Loop subscribers of your changes — every time you add or change something, everyone watching that Loop in FilmLoop finds out
• Comment on a Loop
• Share the Loop via email, so with one-click anyone can watch your Loop — no download required
• Integrate the Loop on your profile, web site, or blog
• Submit the Loop here on FilmLoop for the world to see and enjoy
• Make Loops public, by posting anywhere, including here on FilmLoop
• Make Loops private where you only share with people you know.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

FilmLoop: Everyone with a digital camera and a little creativity who wants to tell a story

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

FilmLoop: Just yesterday we launched our brand new web site — focused on showing off all the great Loop content that’s been created. We’re also launching great new contests to inspire content creation.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

FilmLoop: Hopefully upward and onward

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

FilmLoop: Biggest barrier to entry is the download. But it’s a small app. and very powerful and free. Once people use it, they realize it is hard to accomplish all that we do with a web based only service.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

FilmLoop: Keep listening to our users and watch what they are doing. Keep innovating. Have faith in what we are doing.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

FilmLoop: To put story telling tools in the hands of users and inspire their creativity to entertain, engage, inform and amuse their audiences.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

FilmLoop: We have received two rounds of v.c. funding — Series A and Series B.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date?

FilmLoop: Launched November 2005.