WOMMA Webinar with Mike Walsh

Word of Mouth Marketing Webinar - 7/8/09 with Mike Walsh (@mwalsh) CEO of Leverage Software (similar to Ning but based for consumer industries)
http://www.leveragesoftware.com/
http://www.wordofmouthbook.com/

Using GoToWebinar to connect: https://www2.gotowebinar.com/en_US/webinar/entry/entry.tmpl


LinkedIn -like a cocktail party, light discussion
Twitter-building small parties focused on what you need
*check out Guy Kawasaki...heard the name before and he mentioned it and follows him

LinkedIn-very professional

All very good, but not quite meet what our needs are. In comes internal social networks....

Internal Social Networks - about people working together

***remember TED (ted.com)

As Mike talks, I feel on top of most of these concepts and I am familiar with most tools.

Company intranet: (Sharepoint, Viniette, LDot from Microsoft ??check the last two as I've never heard of them)
-great for doc. storage/sharing
-not very social
-not often very usable
-often too clumsy for experienced users


ITS benefits
-security
-privacy (health care/banking)
-various levels of privacy (subgroups)

...pause for question: does gen. y demand this change and are they driving it?
A: of course...expounds upon it

Describes companies as being "Flat" (ref: Thomas Friedman) b/c all employees have the ability to add/subtract to the conversation

...pause for Q: is it helpful to have best practices (rules of conduct/guidelines) for these networks?
A: of course. most of our companies experiences say yes

Sharing and Collaboration provide ROI for everyone.

Q: What do you think about Ning for a ISN? Are they a competitor to you?
A: I think they are different as our networks (Global 2000 corporations) are based for consumers
Also we're very open/easy to integrate w/i other corporate systems (but he doesn't know about Ning)

90/9/1 rule: 1% extremely active 9% somewhat 90% not active
-their results show trends towards 10-15% active

-uses blogs to disseminate information from a management perspective

-seems Ning is a lot more affordable and can start you out before using Leverage
obviously depends on what your goals are