1. The project leader may not be able to assess project tasks as this would require more special expertise.
2. The project leader may not be able to assign tasks as he may only know WHAT has to be done but may not know HOW a task has to be done. The project team, consisting of specialists, should divide and assign tasks as they are better aware of the strengths of each team member.

Furthermore is hierarchy in software development to some extend outmoded, inflexible and static. Unmotivated employees and frustration impede creativity and flexibility.

What is project management 2.0 and what are the benefits?

Similar to the principles of Enterprise 2.0, new agile software development methods require a rethinking of classical structures and is defined by the following elements:

1. Self organisation of project teams
2. Team work and collaboration
3. Transparency of intermediate results
4. Decentralisation of coordination

A good and emerging example of (social) agile software development is SCRUM. SCRUM is an agile software development framework and has emerged as the most successful agile development process for organizations, developers and executives alike and is used by more than 500 companies worldwide. Work is structured in cycles of work called sprints, iterations of work that are typically two to four weeks in duration.

Scrum process

During each sprint, teams pull from a prioritized list of customer requirements, called user stories, so that the features that are developed first are of the highest value to the customer. At the end of each sprint, a potentially shippable product is delivered.

SCRUM has three roles, the SCRUM Master, the product owner and the team. The team organises itself. No project manager is needed anymore, as the team is responsible to achieve project goals collaboratively. Thus, tasks have to be assigned and finished by the responsible team member. This requires appropriate collaboration tools to support the team to be up to date, to collaborate and to share knowledge.

The SRUM for you blog has a list of SCRUM tools available, updated regularly.

Scrumy is web based and provides the basis version for free. The tool is very easy to use, contains a backlog and user stories can be moved from one sprint to the next. Scrumy posts program updates regularly on Twitter and has a company blog.

SpiraPlan is a complete Agile Project Management System in one package, that manages project’s requirements, releases, iterations, tasks and bugs/issues. In addition, SpiraPlan provides reporting dashboards of key project progress and risk indicators – task progress, effort slippage, project velocity, task burndown/burnup, top risk and issues – in one consolidated view. Since it is web based, teams can collaborate in real time had have up to the minute visibility of the project status. The web application provides the complete picture of a project accessible for all stakeholders and has an integrated documentation management. Tasks can be allocated and estimated and the dashboard contains all key information.

Screen SpiraPlan

There are much more interesting SCRUM tools and SCRUM for you has evaluated many of them. The descriptions available can provide good support for finding the right software for SCRUM projects.

“The use of emergent social software platforms within companies or between companies and their partner or customers.”

Enterprise 2.0 gives people the capability to create, modify and mange information with ease. Using simple web-based tools, relevant and up-to-date the knowledge within the organisation can be found and shared efficiently. It increases innovation, team productivity and agility.

Enterprise 2.0 is not just about technology, however there are many technologies that are enablers for the Enterprise 2.0 approach. Below are descriptions of the most popular, and how they can be used within businesses.

2.0 Platforms

* Blog
A personal or corporate website in the form of an online journal. Blogs are used to distribute frequently changing information or ideas and opinions, often incorporating links to other articles. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs, forming a place for people to discuss ideas and share opinions.

Examples of Blogs used in business:
- Project updates / Product updates
- Corporate communications
- Idea generation/discussion/Innovation

* Wiki
A collaborative website that can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. Collaborative authoring and information sharing can provide affordable and effective Knowledge Management platforms. Wikipedia is probably the best known example of an Internet-based Wiki.

Examples of Wikis used in business:
- Corporate intranet
- Documentation repository
- Knowledge sharing
- Team authoring

* Social (or Shared) Bookmarking
Social bookmarking systems are used to organize, and manage web-browser bookmarks. Bookmarks can be organised with informal tags. The combination of sharing and tags enables people with similar interests to uncover websites that they may have otherwise missed. This enables a far greater number of bookmarks to be effectively managed than the traditional browser-based folders approach.

Examples of Social Bookmarking used in business:
- Tracking and sharing for research groups
- Marketing analysis including SEO/SEM research
- Individual bookmark management

* Social Networking
Social Networking is the building of online communities (or networks) of people who share similar interests and activities. These services provide a collection ways for people to connect and interact, such as chat, messaging, file/photo sharing, or discussion groups.

Examples of Social Networking used in business:
- Find experts via profiles and searching
- Form teams with the right skill sets

* Mashups
Mashups are methods of combining multiple data-sources to deliver rich web-based content. Content used in mashups is often sourced from a third party via a public interface, RSS feed or API. The use of Google-Maps is probably the best known example of an Internet-based mashup, where websites display an embedded map on the same web-page as their location/address details.

Examples of Social Networking used in business:
- Combine data from new and legacy systems
- Enable end-user to combine information for analysis

Benefits for organisations to use corporate web 2.0 technologies are not easily quantifiable. Below some benefits are listed from a qualitative point of view, together with three case studies of successful Enterprise 2.0 companies.

* Openness encourages participation
The Enterprise 2.0 approach promotes open communications that encourage respect and participation, even across geographic and cultural boundaries. Access to knowledge empowers and motivates people to strive towards common goals together.

* Greater knowledge capture and sharing
Unlike information locked-up in email and discrete documents, centrally captured knowledge is easier to find and use when people actually need it. It is more likely to be up to date, and it can be fully searched by all who have access.

* Transparency
Data redundancies can be avoided as the data are centralised and accessible for all relevant stakeholders. This approach avoides that employee create their own, local data that may be obsolete in the meantime.

* Recruit and keep talented employees
High calibre people are attracted to companies using cutting edge technology. This is especially true for ‘Generation Y’ (today’s 18–25 year olds) who already use these technologies in their everyday lives and expect to be able to use them in the workplace too.

* Greater efficiency and less duplication
Diverse, distributed workforce is able to work together efficiently on projects. Information is more accessible, and subject-matter-experts can be found quickly. This avoids duplicated effort and saves time, leading to greater efficiency and improved productivity.

* Information sharing for corporate knowledge management
Information are web-based and accessible from all over the world. Employees on business trips can use them as well as field staff with home office.

The following three case studies demonstrate examples of organisations which have adopted Enterprise 2.0 principles and technologies successfully:

Intrawest case study
In April 2006, Intrawest Placemaking undertook a bold technical initiative focused on empowering individual employees. Using OpenRoad Communication’s ThoughtFarmer social software, they built a democratic, collaborative communication platform that could capture the company’s intellectual capital and strengthen the workplace community. The result was a read/ write, employee-maintained internal web site that has permanently changed the way the company interacts.
OpenRoad’s primary goal with ThoughtFarmer is simple: turn all users into authors. All employees at Placemaking can add, edit and annotate content on the ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet. With the exception of a few policy documents, Placemaking’s intranet is a completely open, malleable, living collection of current thoughts, processes and key learnings.

By turning every user into a contributor, OpenRoad envisioned several benefits for Intrawest Placemaking:

Fewer barriers to knowledge sharing. By letting users publish their own content with only a few clicks, they would be less likely to hoard knowledge and more likely to share it.

No distortion in knowledge transfer. Ideas would be exchanged person-to-person, in one step, eliminating distortion and filtering.

An increase in employee engagement. Users that could add and edit content would feel a sense of ownership over their intranet. Because the leadership of Placemaking would be putting considerable trust in employees, employees would, in turn, be more likely to trust the company and its leaders.

Self-healing content. If a user saw an error, he or she would be able to fix it immediately, reducing inaccuracies.

No excessive burden on a couple of administrators. The users would be the editors. Content maintenance would no longer require a dedicated team.

Placemaking has six regional offices in Canada, the United States, and Europe in addition to the Corporate Home Office. Most of the over 250 employees at these offices have never met face to face. But ThoughtFarmer has brought these people together and helped them to feel like part of a community, rather than just employees of the same organization.
As employees upload photos, amusing anecdotes, and reveal more of their individuality and personality, the popularity of the intranet continues to build.

General Motors Case study
General Motors FastLane was one of the first blogs personally written by a senior executive. On FastLane, GM’s Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz and others share their thoughts and opinions about the automaker’s product line. Recently, GM has used its blogs to correct biased or inaccurate reporting in the mainstream media. The primary goal of the blog is discussing GM products and a team of 6 people – all with other responsibilities – work on the blog.

But it’s also important to set expectations in corporate blogging. The blog is a product blog, and it had to be clear that the blog was not going to respond to other issues such as policies or customer service issues. Once that was clear, readers understood that GM is keeping on topic, but doesn’t ignore inquiries. If a reader posts an issue for customer service, it is forwarded, but not posted.

Results of creating and maintaining the blog: In line with the overall goal, GM is now more responsive to customers. Instead of acting on hunches, they are more in touch with people. In addition, the company has opened up more internally, and there is more interest in experimenting with new media.

Casio case study
To improve the way Casio Ltd. employees and departments communicated with each other, and to provide a faster way to make content changes, a flexible communications platform was required. After researching various CMS tools, blogs seemed to be the perfect answer. Casio selected Movable Type for its smooth integration into Casio’s existing systems, the freedom it would give employees to communicate with one another, and the ease with which changes could be made to new and existing content.

Since using Movable Type-powered blogs, Casio has enjoyed easier content changes and increased communication. For instance, the person in charge of “company notifications” was able to change settings after only 5 minutes of training. The sales department reduced the time and work needed to update content. And as Watabe Sho from advertising added, “categories and archives are made automatically. People have conversations around our Digital Photo Gallery, increasing both posts and conversation.”
Casio’s managers use the blog to communicate directly to employees in order to lessen the gap between them. Currently, the director of the Operations Department disseminates information via a blog; communication is streamlined, and efficiencies are improved. In addition, Casio’s Hanemura Technology Center in Tokyo uses blogs to promote new and original ideas and very easily post thoughts. This allows previously unpublicized knowledge to be shared, information to circulate, and new ideas to emerge.

Casio states that they could achieve the following goals:
- Faster, more direct communication among departments and employees
- Easier idea exchange and increased idea generation
- More efficient implementation of changes

The three case studies show how companies can profit from using Enterprise 2.0 benefits. It is not necessary at all, to implement all web 2.0 technologies at the same time. Startig with a wiki or a blog allows organisations first experiences and initial learnings. Further social elements can be added later, if appropriate.

The future will show if the 30 German DAX indexed companies can go uphill

Recently in the Empire State Building, some business people are tweeting that they are up for some ice cream. The local ice cream seller reacts quickly and effectively and fulfils their desire. Many US companies use the potential of Twitter, some of the best and famous examples are Dell, General Motors or Comcast.

Dell has more than 30 accounts, each of it targeted to a project, issue or target group. 1,200,000 followers are based only on one DellOutlet account and additional three million dollars revenue are achieved, according to Dell.

Are German organisations able to leverage Twitter in the same manner? The agency Zucker Kommunikation und Blätterwald determined the Twitter usage of German companies in Summer 2009 and found out that more than half of the 30 DAX indexed companies have an active Twitter account. But most of the Twitter attempts seem to be without any meaningful strategy or concept. These companies average 673 followers, 350 follow ups and 13 tweets per week, a gag compared to the number of customers or employees.

Twitter use of German companies

Best case organisations are Lufthansa and Daimler. After a bumpy start while Lufthansa used Twitter for online advertisements, they tweet useful information in the meantime such as tips, updates or delays. Daimler has targeted Twitter accounts, for example “Daimler-News” or “Daimler Career“.

Allianz has an own Twitter account since April 2009 with 230 followers. The figure is ridiculous compared to the large organisation, but Allianz focusses on personal exchange with the goal of a better relationship to customers.

Siemens is not represented at Twitter at all. For them, “Twitter is more a medium for communication between individuals rather than for the dispersion of corporate-messages” (Speaker Constantin Birnstiel). But Twitter is observed and might be used for events.

The car manufacturer BMW goes similar ways. Speaker Micaela Sandstede states: “We are not sure if Twitter is only a hype.” Two international accounts for the brand Mini are used for tests.

The Commerzbank is a bank without a company account. The communication department told the newspaper Süddeutsche, some employees use Twitter in their spare time. That should be enough.

Most of the mentioned organisations use Twitter only for a short while. The Twitter community in Germany grows and has about 100.000 active tweeders with double-digit growth monthly. It is recommended that companies start using Twitter as soon as possible as they might make mistakes in the beginning. Better to do them now than doing then when most customers and stakeholders are active on Twitter.

PC World published on the day of release an interesting article about “Five Reasons to Dive Into Google Wave”.Google Wave is part social networking, and part unified communications, and all Google. Wave combines email, instant messaging, blogging, document sharing, wikis, and multimedia content to provide a seamless communications platform. The main benefits are ‘single point of access’, ‘next-generation communication’, ‘real time sharing and collaboration’, ‘the waves lives on and all wave members are updated in time’, ‘the wave is in the cloud and has web access’.

The fantastic post of Siegler provides a comprehensive overview about the features and functionalities with supporting screens and explanations. It is really worth a read. Another wunderful description of “the top 6 game changing features of Google Wave” was written by Ben Parr.

Wiki style functionality
While Google Wave works a lot like email or IM, there is a huge difference: you can edit not only your messages, but the messages of anybody within your wave. You can reply to messages within a conversation string and reorganize conversations.

Wave extensions
There are two types: gadgets and robots. Gadgets are just like Facebook applications, so you can run an app like an online game or a project management tool from within Wave. Robots are smart, automated conversation participants. They can detect keywords and respond, bring in outside information from services like Twitter and more.

Drag and drop file uploads
In email, you have to search for files, and then attach them before sending. Then you need to open them up when you actually receive the email. Google Wave ignores that entire process by allowing users to drag files from the desktop and dropping them. Anyone can then see the files as they’re being uploaded. Images are shown in an album format, music can be played, and docs can be quickly shared.

Wave embeds
Wave Embeds is just like what it says – you can embed any wave onto a website. Embeds can be customized and used for a multitude of purposes.

Playback
If you’re added to an email conversation late into the game, it can be a pain to parse all of the back-and-forth within an email conversation. With Wave’s playback feature, you can actually see how the entire conversation developed from the start, making it incredibly easy to catch up on conversations.

Open source
Google Wave is not only extendable, but is an open-source project. This means two big things. First, developers can build their own version of Google Wave. Second, Google Wave can be hosted on your own server – just like an Exchange email server.

All this sounds like Google Wave will bring the new form of communication. But how can all this be used by business? Are there efforts to combine Google Wave with other business tools to absorb the full power of communication and collaboration?

The ability to interact in real-time collaborative conversations, record and playback discussion & decision making, Google Wave for business will quite simply ‘blow away’ most current online project management tools, as stated by Entropy Digital. But even though Google Wave is a powerful competitor for many tools, it offers opportunities which should be discovered in an early stage. SAP for example has already developed a prototype of Gravity, a tool for collaborative Business Process Modelling within Google Wave. Gravity is embedded as a Google Wave “gadget” that can be added within the Google Wave client. Leveraging the collaborative features of Google Wave, all business process modelling activities get propagated in near real-time to all other participants of the Wave. In addition, participants of the Wave can use all other features provided by Google and its developer community to enrich the collaborative modelling experience.

Travel agencies could embedd booking extensions to Google Wave and magazines or newspaper can update their clients within a wave. It remains thrilling and in the end stays the question: Do you think it will succeed?

The whole paper can be downloaded here: Business versus private social networks

While private networks connect individuals to share videos or resumes, networking in business is more than just making friends. Teams may collaborate across the world, team mates may leave, but the relationship to a company may still be intact, enabling the individual to conduct further business with former team members. Business networks are formed for more or better business, increased market share, a positive increase in the company’s reputation in the market and many other reasons. Xeequa differentiates between personal social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing and business social networks like Xeequa as follows:

The following five major differences are described more in depth:

1) Purpose of networking
Professional business networking needs a specific purpose, goal or strategy. The purpose may be to build improved partner and/or customer relationship or to increase the reputation a company has in the market.

2) Organization relationships
Business Networks require including companies or organizations as entities into those networks. People have connections with other people and they are related to companies. Companies have relationships with other companies. Large partner networks with thousands of other worldwide partners are important networks.

3) Network processes
Some key activities in social networks for businesses include business introductions, conducting joint sales calls with partners, collaborating over joint projects with alliances (the equivalent of video sharing in personal social networks). Business networks reflect those processes, which results in a very different tool set.
Corresponding security requirements must be considered as well.

4) Alliance Building
Networks of people AND networks of companies are needed. Teams, as both a whole group of people and as part of a company, play a very strategic role in social business networking. If a company’s team works with another company’s team, hundreds of people will suddenly have access to each other.

5) Network Value
While the quality of a private network may be measured in the number of connections, this is no interestion quality measurement. So the quality of a network must be defined different, eg. by the depth of connections.

The following benefits are provided by social business networks:

Network of Networks
A network allows many sub-networks (the supplier network, the partner network, the strategic alliance network, customer networks, etc.) to be built and managed separately, while simultaneously support overlap.

Virtual Introductions
Virtual introductions have become a common practice in the corporate business world. People are introduced by email with great ease.

Opportunity Sharing
A network is not only an ideal mechanism to better manage those shared opportunities, but provides critical support such as control, visibility, accountability, and reporting capabilities.

Project Collaboration
Engineering teams, which are often spread around the globe, need complicated project management tools and rely often on email to communicate. With actionable network architecture, project collaboration can be done easily over the business social network, and does not require the parties to install a specific system. Project updates, project progress level, estimated completion, and other basic features can be provided in a user-friendly, simple program.

Community Features
Some current social community functions, such as building groups or setting up events, are helpful in business as well. But the business community has additional requirements, such as inviting members to groups and supporting the structures of the organizations and companies.

Organization Structure
Social business networks need to support organizational structures, from small local companies to global enterprises. Social
business network applications must be scalable from a single team to a multinational department structure, yet be easily expanded with low administration overhead.

Reporting
Social business networks will require a high degree of reporting capabilities.

Xeequa provides such a business social network system, further information are available at the Xeequa homepage.

1. Mindmap
We created a mindmap for collaborative brainstorming and used it for sharing our ideas for the business proposal . A good tool for collaboration in a mindmap is mindmeister. It is free and accessible online and by iPhone. Each team member created an online account so we were able to share our ideas in one mind map.
Assessment of Mindmeister as a collabortation tool: It is quite easy to use mindmeister and to create a mindmap for a collaborative brainstorming. Mindmeister provides a good description about the functionalities available in a blog (really web2.0 like). The free version has some limitations (e.g. only two mind maps) but it was a good tool for our contribution.

2. Wiki
Brian Perkin, one of our group members has created a wikidot account. Firstly we uploaded the index for our business proposal and started by writing our ideas from the mind map to each index part. After two weeks of contribution we had a good draft of our business proposal and could start with the final description of the proposal
Assessment of wikidot: Wikidot provides a restricted number of wiki pages for free. It is a fantastic tool to share ideas online and all team members can see the proceeding of the current process in time. When the wiki was edited by one team member, the other project stakeholders are informed by email.
As we have to submit our assignment in a word document, we realised some limitations of wikidot. It is quite complicated to upload pictures and tables to show them online. We soon started to upload the finalised word documents with its tables and graphics instead of uploading them in the wiki.
For displaying a picture, it has to be uploaded first, before it can be added to the wiki. It can take hours to figure out how that works. There is really place for improvements!
See here for a full list of features available in wikidot.

3. Project management tool:
Go plan provides a project management tool for online collaboration. We used this tool to demonstrate scheduled milestones and depending tasks. According to the number of users a monthly fee is charged. The tool is free for two users, but that is actually not more than a test version.
Assessment: We tried the free version for two users, but that didn’t allow us to test collaboration. Go plan has all basic functionalities that are necessary in a project management tool. It is possible to create milestones, assign tasks and ticket and to control the current state. But project management statistics or burn down diagrams are not available (or maybe only in a charged version).

4. Social Networking
Ning allows the creation of own Social Networks. We used it for our project to demonstrate an example of a social network tool and we are really excited about it. Members can connect with other members, blogs and chat functionality are available and the application is easy to use. The configuration is similar to facebook so that user can easily handle it.
Assessment: A great tool for organisations that want to create closed networks, eg within a company. An own URL can be created (containing .ning.com)

During the research for our business proposal we identified many social media tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing. Most of the tools are available for free or a small monthly fee. It is definitely worth for companies to determine the web for suitable tools if the implementation of an Enterprise 2.0 organisation is aimed.

Organisations have different degrees of collaboration in respect to BPM:

- Non-collaborative BPM: Describes uncoordinated efforts by individuals to document and alter business processes
- Endocollaborative BPM: Term for collaborative BPM that involves only participants from within a defined entity – a company for example
- Omnicollaborative BPM: Internal and external players come together

A change may come from the non-collaborative BPM or the endcollaborative BPM to the omnicollaborative BPM. A recent Forrester research has figured out that “social and Web 2.0 technologies are breathing new life into BPMS to tackle the remaining process whitespace that still needs to be conquered in the enterprise.”

Recently some tool vendors have released solutions with Social Network components.

Lombardi Software developed Lombardi Blueprint which claims to be simple and collaborative process documentation. Stakeholders (eg. employees, partners or suppliers) can participate in communicating and improving organization’s business processes, ideas and initiatives. According to the software producer, Lombardi Blueprint combines the following web 2.0 benefits for business process modelling in organisations:

- Centralized and collaborative
Blueprint is a cloud-based application accessible from any browser. Because the application is centralized and networked, individuals are able to collaborate on a process from wherever they can access the internet. Chat is also integrated for realtime collaboration.

- Easy to use
Blueprint is designed to be simple enough so that people who have direct knowledge of a process, but may not be familiar with process mapping, can work on the same process simultaneously or at different times. Because Blueprint is a cloud-based application, it is accessible from any browser anywhere, no software to install or maintain.

- Up to date
After the log in changes or comments on a processes you’re working on are immediately available.

- Access control: Authors and Participants
As an author you are able to create and modify a process. Participants can view and comment on processes but aren’t able to modify or create them.

- Bring data in, take data out
Data output is possible as an automatically generated PowerPoint presentation as well as a Word document. Visio charts can be imported.

The slogan of the Align Space Beta is Business without Boundaries.
The idea of AlignSpace is that business process improvements requires collaboration and collective decision making from stakeholders across the organisation. By combining social networking tools with intuitive tools for process design and modeling, collaboration can be done effectively to create and improve processes.

The elements of AlignSpace are:

- Social Networking
Logon, Register and create a profile. Create a Social Network, identify new connections (within the organisation or beyond), invite them to collaborate on projects. Large groups can collaborate simulaneously and view group changes.

- Collaborative process design
Easily interact and collaborate to discover, document and create process models that can be exportet and run with BPM engines.

- Import and export all popular BPM formats

- Knowledge sharing
Exchange expertise with individual process experts

- No Technical barriers
Nothing to install, only internet access required

Further software solutions are provided by IBM Lotus software and IBM’s second life. Our current research explores how Second Life can be used within organisations for Business Process Modelling. Updates on our research will be posted here.

But what are the advantages and the drawbacks of employees using Social networks? Are companies concerned about the time their staff is spending on Social Networks while working?

From my point of view Social networks provide a great opportunity to stay connected even when time is scarced to interact with people in real life. It takes only a few seconds to keep contacts up to date. This applies for private contacts as well as for business contacts.

Here is a list of benefits for companies which engage in Social Networking from an internal point of view (no advertising)

- Find possible job candidates

- Better networking of employees

- Share knowledge and interesting knowledge sources

- More innovation

Even if most social networkers are enthusiastic users some pitfalls are fact and have to be considered:

- All information published by users are open for the whole bunch of the internet with all the positive and negative aspects

- Possible job candidates are scanned by new employers

- Employees might spend too much time on Social Networks

- Do you really want to let your superior know what you did last weekend?

- Phishing

- Spam

Most concerns regarding Social Networks are due to the data openess and the internet criminality. But if users publish their data carefully (most Social Networks provide the possibility to share certain data only with connections), users can profit from the benefits of Social networks, have fun and build up a professional network.

Other opportunities are available for companies that do not want to create open networks. Ning is one example tocreate own “closed” networks within organisations.

The following issues have to be considered with Social Computing in business:

- Lack of social media literacy amongst workers.

- Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities.

- Need to prove ROI before there will be support for social software.

- The needs of community management.

- 66.8% of Internet users across the globe accessed “member communities” in 2008, compared to 65.1% for email.
- In 2008, users spent 63% more time on member communities than they did in the previous year.
- Facebook saw growth of 566% in time spent on it by users worldwide.
- Facebook’s fastest growth demographic is older users – 12.4 million people between ages 35-49 in 2008
- Globally, Facebook reaches 29.9% of global Internet users, versus 22.4% for MySpace
- MySpace remains the most profitable social network, generating an estimated $1 billion in revenue versus $300 million for Facebook in 2008.

Due to these impressive figures, social network platforms are becoming more and more interesting for marketers. Not only that the interactivity of social networks allows a targeted communication with the users. Even if a company is not inter-active, their customers may publish a lot, entirely out of marketers’ control. But how can an organisation communicate with somebody they don’t know? Forrester Research identified 6 user groups in the internet (based on a study in the US) and classified them according to their main attributes.

The following graphic shows how the number of participants of the identified groups have changed during the last three years.

Even if the Forrester study is a general classification of web users, it may give an interesting aspect of how important it is to know the “online community” of a company. Not only because they are potential customers, they may report positive about an organisation with a positive “social network” image.

Social Media are changing the marketing and advertising market extremly. While the old communication of companies used to be a one way communication and a monolog, it has now changed into a dialogue.

In this post I am going to show how marketing departments should use Social Media for two important marketing aspects. Firstly I discuss the advantages of web 2.0 advertisements and secondly I give some examples how Social Media can be integrated into Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Social Media and Advertisement
The most common problem for advertisers is that people are overloaded with information and it doesn’t matter whether they are relevant for them or not. The average person is exposed to 3,000 advertising messages a day and that is definitely too much to filter any relevant information. In addition advertisement on TV or radio is widespread, so adverisers can never be sure if they are communicating with the right tagret group, as well as they can’t avoid that people change the channel during advertising breaks.

It is time to change marketing communication from a monologue into a dialogue. A great presentation how this can be achieved can be found here:

Social Media and SEO/SEM
Each company that is doing online advertisement has normally a team which considers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing(SEM). SEO is mainly about the ranking in search engines, eg. the main goal is to be listed in top positions for certain keyword search. SEO supposed to be free (besides the money companies spend each year for expert knowledge). The most common form of SEM is Google ads. With SEM companies buy traffic from Google and appear in the special highlighted area on the top of the right side when a certain keyword was entered.
Good SEO/SEM strategies are based on comprehensive keyword researches. Here is the point where Social Media can give valuable support. The following Social Media platforms are a wounderful source to find out trendy keywords:

- Twitter: The best page to find out what folks are talking about. Twitter shows recent trends and the Twitter search helps to find out what exactly people are thinking about specific keywords. Tweedvolume shows the frequency of keywords.

- Facebook: The Facebook lexicon shows the most discussed topics over a certain timeline.

- Youtube: While typing a keyword into the Youtube search, various suggestions for the keyword cobination appears.

- StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon provides many up to date tags.

- Delicious: Explore most interesting tags in the tag cloud of delicious.

- WordPress: Most used buzzwords give a peek into what people on WordPress.com are talking about this very instant.

- Technorati: Popular tags on Technorati show the most famous topics for blogging.