WHAT IS IT? Meetup.com uses mass ‘personalized’ emails to welcome new people to meetup.com groups.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS? The more personal the ‘welcome’ to your community, the better. If you are the founder of a small startup community, the welcome should come directly from you. If you are a large company, then mass ‘personalized’ emails is not a bad strategy.

PROS: Ability to make many new members feel welcome without having to manually send an email to each new member.

CONS: Still lacks true personalization, but it’s not bad for being an automated solution.

BOTTOM LINE: The simple act of adding a name to a welcome email is a strong strategy to increase the personal nature of a welcome email. Even though it may be automated. It’s a step above a ’standard’ email that does not address you by name or does not come from a named individual. You can take it even further by making the language of the email even more casual and friendly in nature.

I signed up to two meetup groups today with my work email. I’ve been in the groups already, but was not listed under my work email. These are the two emails that I received from Meetup.com shortly after. Notice that the came from different ‘names’, but then the template is the same. I’m assuming that these are ’stage’ names that go back to a general email box at Meetup.com.

First welcome email from ‘Arlene’:

Second welcome email from ‘Kerry’

James Key Lim

WHAT IS IT: I’d like to call it, ‘username branding’. Username branding relates to the creation and usage of a unique username that you can use across all social networking sites to build brand awareness.

HOW CAN IT HELP MY BUSINESS: By standardizing your username, you increase the ability to surface to the top of search engine results and build a recognizable brand online across various social networking sites.

PROS: Something simple to do, yet could be valuable in building online brand awareness.

CONS: It’s not easy to come up with a unique username that closely matches your branding and have it be available on all the various social networking sites.

BOTTOM LINE: More and more, your brand is only as good as its searchable. It’s very important to recognized that online search results are more and more a part of who you ARE to the world. Username branding is a simple yet highly effective practice that all businesses should follow.

Basic rules to coming up with a powerful username brand:

1. Make it unique so that it will more likely be available on all sites.
2. Be sure it’s a username that you think will be timeless for your branding. Example: Don’t use the username ‘likeits1999′.
3. Make sure it coincides with your company name or brand. If it’s identical, that’s obviously the best.

3 Simple steps:

1. Get Gmail invitation from Google. I can send you one if you don’t have access to one. Email me at jameskeylim [at] gmail [.] com.
2. Sign up to Gmail using your username. Example, username@gmail.com.
3. Sign up to the following websites:

Sites to sign up to:

• Yahoo (for Flickr and instant messaging, I don’t use their email anymore)
• Myspace (be sure to create the ‘MySpace URL)
• Facebook
• Delicious
• Digg
• MSN (for instant messaging)
• Skype
• Slideshare
• Youtube
• GizmoProject
• AOL (for instant messaging)

MORE LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• How Branding Scores Traffic from Social Media

WHAT IS IT?: Windows Live Writer is a new tool from Microsoft that allows you to write blog posts offline using a simple tool.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS?: Make blog writing easier and more efficient for you and your business.

PROS:

• Write your blog posts offline.
• I like how you don’t have to write blog posts in Word or another word processing document and pasting in Wordpress or trying to read your blog within that small Wordpress window.
• It’s simple to download and install and very simple to use. It’s compatible with most popular blog programs.
• Easy spell checker.
• I like to write a good deal of drafts and Live Writer handles it very simply.
• Cleanly synchronizes what you do within your blogging application and what you do in Live Writer.

CONS:

• Have not noticed any yet. I will let you know if I come across any.

BOTTOM LINE: This post was written using Windows Live Writer seconds after I installed it. I really like it so far. I would normally expect something this simple and valuable to come from a 2 person Gen-Y startup. I do have to give a hand of applause to Microsoft for really ‘getting it’ to create this application that’s useful to most bloggers rather than something that only helps bloggers that use Microsoft applications. Try it out. So far, I have not seen any down sides to using Live Writer.

Thank you to Connie Bensen for mentioning it to me.

Link to Connie’s blog post here.

WHAT IS IT?: Generation Y has very different needs in the work place.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS?: Depending upon your business staffing needs, recognize that the work environment you want can be different from the one you have today. If your business needs Gen Y (and even Gen X) employees then you’re going to have to change some things.

PROS: Gen Y workers can be a tremendous asset to move and keep your company in the leading entreprenuerial edge of our business times when those businesses that can be agile and evolve constantly are the ones that win. This is simply based upon the fact that Gen Y understands, uses, and lives the medium by which business is being changed today - the web.

CONS: There is a cultural challenge based upon what Gen Y would consider standard and what others may consider priveledges in the work place. There may be cultural clashes with existing employees and generally accepted business practices.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Your business needs will determine if you will need to adjust to the wants of Gen Y or if Gen Y will have to adjust to your company. In the end, as in all cultural changes in a business, it’s imperative that company leadership understands the implications of the choice they make in making a Gen Y friendly environment or not. Companies can also separate the differing generational work groups by teams or divisions based upon distinct differences in goals for the company to mitigate cultural clashes.

Notable workplace standards that Gen Y will expect as described by Ryan Healy:

• The ability to work wherever they like
• An identity that isn’t defined by a particular profession or role
• Flexible ways of experimenting with entrepreneurship even while benefiting from traditional employment

Link to blog post that inspired this discussion:

• What Gen Y Wants from Work by Ryan Healy

WHAT IS IT: Web strategy. In my own simple terms, web strategy can be defined as as ‘ways to reach company goals using the web’.

THE BOTTOM LINE: I had an art history teacher long ago who always, repeated the phrase, ‘If you look back far enough… nothing is new’. In many ways, it has been true. This is also true of business strategy and web strategy in general. Looking back at some posts on the definition of web strategy, I have to say one of my favorites is one from Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb. Even though it is from 2004, I think it’s worth revisiting as a reminder to the focus of our role and the history from which it came.

LINK: Napoleon’s Glance - the Art of Web Strategy by Richard MacManus

WHAT IS IT?: A widget. A widget is a small program that can be placed on any web page. They are often used to keep users updated with information. Examples of widgets include weather guides, stock lists, flight trackers, calendars, and search boxes for various websites.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS? Widgets are quickly becoming a leading edge practice to keep your company and information in front of your audience to increase interaction with your company.

PROS: Once installed, widgets keep your company upfront and center in your users daily usage of the web.

CONS: Requires users to ‘install’.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Going back to the rule of being ‘remarkable’, if you have remarkable or valuable content, then widgets are an excellent way to distribute that information and develop a dialog with your users. If you do not, then the barrier to entry required (that being the need for your user to ‘install’ the widget) is too high for widgets to be effective.

My friend, Esther Lim, sent me a good article on widgets today by David Berkowitz. In summary, here is what the article describes about widgets.

There are three key types of widgets:

• Desktop widgets: Users download the widget and may keep them running constantly in the background. Examples include WeatherBug, Southwest Airlines’ Ding! deal alert, and NBC’s “Heroes” countdown.
• Personal Web widgets: Users post the widgets to their personal homepages such as My Yahoo or iGoogle.
• Public Web widgets: A user posts a widget publicly to social network profiles, blogs, online communities, and other sites. For the best widgets (or the laziest users), they stay on those pages indefinitely.

Three ways to consider how to include Web widget optimization as part of your online marketing program:

• Develop links. Widgets offer promise of link development, but there are some inherent obstacles in how widgets are designed, with Flash being especially common.
• Increase search shelf space. For any query, the more links you have in the top ten natural search results, the more you own that term and gain a major competitive advantage.
• Support social media strategies. Reaching out to bloggers, community moderators, and other influential people online can pay dividends on a number of levels, including complementing search engine optimization programs.

Link that inspired this post:

• Web Widget Optimization by David Berkowitz

WHAT IS IT?: Wikipatterns.com. How to set up initial content. How to encourage people to contribute. How to deal with disruptive elements.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS?: Get a head start with tried and true practices and theories on wikis in the business world put together by wiki evangelist Stewart Mader of Atlassian (the makers of Confluence).

PRO: Great foundational information on setting up a wiki for your business. It’s unbiased, valuable information that is about sharing knowledge and not selling their company’s wiki.

CON: Can not take into account all of your own unique business requirements and processes, but nothing can do that.

BOTTOM LINE: Every business has it’s own unique workflow and processes, but this is a great foundational knowledge for developing a wiki program.

Categories of information found on the site:

• People patterns
• People anti-patterns
• Adoption
• Adoption anti-patterns

Stewart has also published a wiki book.

James Key Lim

WHAT IS IT?: A online community plan.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS? A online community plan is as important as sales goals or a marketing plan for your company. Too often, companies rely on technology to build an online community for them. It does not. Build it and they will not come.

PROS: Establishes the goals and tactics to drive the company and individuals towards online community success, enables channels and partners.

CONS: It takes time to build and buy-in from the top down. Most companies will not want to allocate the resources or the budget to create the plan but would rather spend significant dollars on technology.

BOTTOM LINE: To stay ahead, your company must have a strategic online community plan. This online plan should be developed by an individual who is able to gather requirements from all departments and gain buy in from them all as well.

Here are some questions that an online plan should answer:

• What is the main business goal that the online community is addressing?
• What is the roadmap for the community?
• How does the online community map back to the requirements of each company department?
• What are the informal rules of the community?
• How will issues be escalated and who are the owners of that escalation?
• How will community interest be grown over time?
• How will the community be moderated?
• How will influencers (top users) in the community be identified, motivated, and managed?
• What technology will be used and why?
• What features will be required?
• What types of metrics will be measured and used for ongoing guidance in the development of the community?

LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content Campaigns by Jake McKee (I highly respect Jake and his work)

WHAT IS IT?: More and more businesses are using YouTube in the form of contests and video distribution to generate marketing awareness. From big names to no names, YouTube appears to democratize marketing with low budget, world wide distribution.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS?: Done right, YouTube can be used as a powerful tool to build awareness for your company.

PROS: YouTube is no doubt a revolutionary distribution medium for video messaging as long as the message, product, or service just is as remarkable.

CONS: In a YouTube contest, entries can be far from what you had hoped to receive. Not only could it be irrelevant, it could be negative. And when it is negative, it’s even worse to remove those videos in our world of transparency. Also, it takes time and resources to sift through all of them. In addition, for most corporations there is also a huge marketing cost behind the grass roots videos on YouTube.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Due to the large budget to properly promote contests on YouTube and the resources to manage them and filter through submissions it sometimes is may not be worth the budget and effort to conduct a video contest on YouTube. On the other hand, if you produce a remarkable video, one that truly has people talking, then YouTube’s ability to inexpensively distribute your message worldwide is truly revolutionary. If you have a remarkable message, product, or service, YouTube away. Otherwise, it may not be the best place for Web 2.0 marketing.

YouTube strategy gone BAD:

“Heinz has said it will pick five of the entries and show them on television, though it has not committed to a channel or a time slot. One winner will get $57,000. But so far it’s safe to say that none of the entries has quite the resonance of, say, the classic Carly Simon “Anticipation” ad where the ketchup creeps oh-so-slowly out of the bottle” Source

YouTube strategy gone GOOD:

The “Here It Goes Again,” video debuted on YouTube on July 31, 2006 and, as of July 1, 2007, has been viewed over 19 million times making it the sixth most viewed video on the website of all time. It premiered on VH1’s Top 20 Countdown that same day. OK Go performed the dance routine live at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. The music video won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video and the 2006 YouTube awards for Most Creative Video. Source

LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• YouTube ad contest exposes a downside
• Top Google Results on “Chevy Tahoe” Net Negative Ads
• Example: www.southwestwannagetaway.com contest

WHAT IS IT?: Ben Edwards talks about how you no longer own your brand in our Web 2.0 age.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MY BUSINESS?: Ben is right. Get over it. You don’t own your brand any more. Let it go and it will come back. Resist and the audience may not be able to develop that trust that is so critical in brand development these days.

PROS: It’s actually kind of fun if you’re not a control freak to let it go a bit. With the right attitude it will mean stronger brands, better business, and a bit of serendipity as the audience guides.

CONS: The audience may not understand at all what you’re business is about.

THE BOTTOM LINE: I still believe there are times when control of your brand must be used, but then it must be complimented with a longer period of letting go. In the end, the imbalance will put the audience on your side.