Cymfony and Porter-Novelli just presented the 2007 update of the Corporate Blog survey. Apparently we’re moving away from the era of ‘discovery’ towards one of ‘discipline’. Led by the PR function, we are seeing more and more blog outreach programmes being launched. There’s a podcast, if you want to know more. 

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If you are thinking of getting into the new media space, a couple of nuggets in this brief post. For instance, blogging your way into business (not sure of the efficacy of this, but maybe this is down to your blogging/marketing skills), and how to deal with a tele-commuting workforce. 

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PR Communications picks up on a recent presentation by Christopher Barger on the internal social media team at GM. More and more companies seem to be realizing that there is a real need to develop this expertise in-house, which in turn is fostering a whole new profession.

An interesting problem that is hightlighted is the reticence of marketing to get involved, unless there will be associated direct conversions. I know that this is something that I come up against on a daily basis and seems like a problem that is not going away.

One possible way to look at this is in terms of the addition to brand value. The problem is that can be one of the hardest metrics to pin down, hence doesn’t work well when you’re demanding extra resource from the CEO. What can we do? Work to build better metrics. Systems that can provide a more complete picture of user behavior and so show the impact on the bottom line of increasing social media efforts.

Another solution is to look at increased search rankings, and what this means for the enterprise.

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OK, this isn’t news per se, but if you are interested in following what’s going on with social media and new technology, then the Lidne blog is worth checking out.

They also run these interesting link articles that signpost the top news around the web. Sound familiar?

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If you have built up a sizeable collection of del.icio.us tags and were interested in a new way of visualizing them, why not check out building a mindmap with them?

Blaine Kendall has this neat Del.icio.us Mindmap mashup.

BTW, studious learning has helped me figure out where the dots go in Del.icio.us. Woohoo.

It looks like we’re only at the beginning of seeing the uptake of Wii as an input device for gaming. As it’s a bluetooth device there’s numerous hacks that tie it up to a PC. Businesses are capitalizing on this and developing immersive training experiences. Perhaps that killer app is just around the corner?

Wii and Second Life

Taking the basics of how the Wii could be used in Second Life, MIT research fellows have been creating business models to cut the cost of training by using Second Life and Wii as an immersive learning center. For large corporations, this means not having to send trainees to expensive on-location courses. As a footnote, there is also the possibility to tape a Wii controller to a plastic steering wheel and use it to practice driving. Hook this up to Google Earth and you can drive Paris to Dakar without leaving your sofa.

Wii and finger tracking

Oddly, reversing the Wii and using it as a static infrared camera taped to the top of your TV means you can use the Wii controller to sense finger movements. Look out for the cameo of a pack of cards as a prop. This is what the new generation of mad professors look like:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/0awjPUkBXOU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Where would this work best? I’m thinking for design and music software. As it is, visualizations for plugin VST sound effects already have the look down. They just lacked the input device.
OK, time to go watch the Minority Report to find out why all the comparisons are made (am I the only geek on the planet who hasn’t seen the film?)

Not so much on what corporations should be saying, this brief post delves more into what corporations should be doing – listening to the voices out there, be they on blogs, forums or Facebook. Wake up and take note.

My question here: who does this? It seems to sit in the PR department but how many can effectively cover this?

Question number 2: how do you measure the returns from doing this kind of work?

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Corporate blogging is a relatively new idea, and the jury. is still out on whether it will succeed. This controversial. marketing tool may be the beginning of a new kind of. advertising strategy, or it may fizzle out in a matter of …

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