A good friend is working through her MBA and in the context of her studies is conducting a survey to better understand health insurance from the consumer’s point of view.

The survey takes 5-10 minutes to complete, and is fully anonymous and confidential. Data is gathered only for academic purposes.

Willing to help out?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UnderstandHealthInsuranceVI

I’m in the process of redesigning CagedEther after inspiration following a Theme Framework session. On investigating different WordPress themes, I came across a system to that may well help me juggle and organize the various pieces I want to squeeze into my blog’s latest incarnation. First though, a minor detour into my personal history, to illustrate the system’s heritage.

Somewhere in my distant past I was a sub-editor on a monthly print publication and this took me back to something I’d learnt then: the grid used heavily in the newspaper industry to construct those front page formats we’re all so familiar with.

For instance, here’s an example of a 5-column grid used by the UK’s Guardian:

Some elements such as the headline and the main image cross multiple columns, but overall they are still bounded by the lines of the grid.

Then along came the web and rather than designing for broadsheet or tabloid format, we have a screen to fill. Still, the grid format translates over into this world. However, rather than a 5-column layout, many news publications and blogs rely on different column formats, as illustrated here by Mark Porter:

In this instance, Mark points out just how similar the 12-grid layout is between between the online version of the UK’s Guardian and Telegraph.

In terms of blog templates relying on the grid system, take a look at the beautifully functional Neutica WordPress template:

and the highly flexible Basic Maths theme:

So where did the grid system come from?

Graphic designer, lecturer and author Josef Müller-Brockmann is credited with being one of the strongest evangelists of the grid system back in the early 70′s. Interestingly, he is also the creator of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font: a precursor to what we now know as Helvetica. I say ‘interestingly’ because many of the grid system designs rely heavily on this efficient sans-serif block font: Helvetica is a great compliment to a tightly-defined grid.

For more information on designing using this system, check out The Grid System website: an excellent resource pulling together snippets from across the web. And yes, the site is a testament to the visual order and composure a grid system brings.

If you have any experiences of designing with a grid, please share them in the Comments section!

Fellow IBMer Kevin Czap recently took the position of the community manager for the developerWorks Cloud Computing Central group. DeveloperWorks is IBM’s central external resource for developers and IT professionals and Kevin defined his role as follows:

The Community Managers act as an advocate for the Community. They are the eyes and ears of their respective communities, kind of like a intermediary between developerWorks and the group, listening and acting upon requirements, suggestions, feedback and ultimately making the group one that thrives, flourishes and is valued by the Community. Some examples include lining up Subject Matter Experts to blog,contribute, and connecting group members to the appropriate IBM contact when needed. Basically we’re here to help the community in any way we can.

Why do you need a community manager? As Kevin points out, he has a clear objective to make the group one “that thrives, flourishes and is valued by the Community“.

As the 2010 World Cup draws to a close, I can’t help but think of the coach/manager gesticulating wildly to get the most out of his team. I see the community manager role as somewhat similar even though the linkages between members of online communities aren’t necessarily as strong as between players on the same team (especially given that members work for many companies, some of which can even have competitive relationships). Having said this, having someone on the sidelines who can bring energy and verve to the group, marshall team members when needed and deal with any questions or conflict that arises, is a useful function.

I’ve been involved in a number of social media or community initiatives over the last few years, and by far the most successful are those which have a clearly defined community manager. To those of you that work in this space, this may be a no brainer. This role appears to be more commonly overlooked when these communities are set up by marketing departments (given that I work in marketing, I can’t help but point a finger at myself too here).

The problem comes when you sit down to plan the initiative. Quite often this starts with thinking of a platform or application. ‘We need blogs and forums’. ‘We need a Facebook page’. ‘We need RSS capabilities’. Sure, at some point you will need to consider these aspects, but as analysts like Charlene Li have been pointing out for some time, step back and think of the people involved before you get near the technology. And the people for your prospective community need a value prop, guidance and occasionally gentle persuasion if your community is to become a success. Just because you build it, this does not mean they will necessarily come.

So spend the time and think of who will manage the community. I’d suggest this not being a field marketing or demand program manager who may be 1) overworked and 2) have competing interests to overall community development (ie. swamp the community with their company’s promotional content). So, what should this person ideally be doing? Some examples of the role a community manager can play:

• Establishing an editorial calendar to make sure a blog is constantly fed with relevant content
• Finding an expert who can answer comm0n questions posed by newbies
• Tactfully weeding out trolls and threads that could diminish the overall value of the community
• Devising appropriate rewards for the most valuable members of the community (My Media Labs takes this a step further and talks about setting up a leadership team consisting of super users)
• Posing questions to help shape discussion
• Monitoring the community to understand where most activity occurs

This is just for starters. You should make sure you have someone who has the requisite skill set to carry out these tasks. They should be knowledgeable but not overbearing. Tactful but forceful when necessary. A good planner yet flexible. Get the feeling that this person may be as rare as a sunflower in Antartica? You’re probably right. However some parts of the organization may already be inculcating these kind of characteristics in their employees. Check out the support or customer service department. Investigate the technical sales team. Mine the depths of your R &D department. These departments give you a better chance of locating community managers. I’d suggest that the traits are more important than the experience. There is much that can be learnt on the job.

Finding the right person is invaluable for the success of your community. A recent debacle on Nestle’s Facebook fan page illustrates how bad things can get if there’s dissonance between you and your community. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson discussed this subject at some length on their FIR podcast and Shel has this excellent follow-up on questions you should ask before setting up a Facebook fan page.

So, if you are about to setup a new community, or are wondering how you can breathe new life into an existing forum, make sure you have a community manager in place. Just as the fortunes of many a world cup squad has hinged on the influence of the manager, so can a community manager make or break an online community.

This session focussing on online content at the TechTarget Online ROI Summit was presented by Bill Crowley, VP, Group Publisher, Data Center Media, TechTarget.

The core of this presentation: most technical buyers information needs change over the buying process. What is the buying process? The old AID(A) model is useful as a starting point here. To recap:

• Awareness: when buyers needs to figure out what the industry is and how it relates to them
• Interest: really getting into details about how the product/service can help you
• Decision: finally… evaluating different vendors to decide on the most suitable
• (Action:) making the sale

The last point is in parentheses as it is not so important for this discussion as there is generally little marketing collateral involved at this stage.

The point Bill makes is that most marketers don’t produce content for the different stages of the buying cycle. The few marketers that do concentrate on this stand to make considerable gains. According to their research on which documents are most popular, those that do speak to a given segment in the buying cycle tend to perform the best.

So, given that you probably have limited resources and can’t produce documentation across all stages of the buying cycle, where should you focus your efforts? This largely depends on externalities: what is the market, and where do you fit in? There’s a large difference between new and old markets. In a mature market, you have a sophisticated audience. You can heavily segment this audience and offer very focused content. An emerging market needs more general, informative content.

In terms of content, Bill gives some examples of content that has worked well. For the mature wireless access market: ’802.11n: Preparing for your Enterprise Wireless Deployment’ (generated 257 leads). For the emerging virtualization and networking market: ‘Virtual Networking Concepts’ (with a clickthrough rate of more than 1%).

OK, if this all sounds great, where should you start? As with many areas of marketing, a good a place as any is with competitive analysis. Look on the TechTarget site for the most popular content in the area you are considering.

All the slides from this presentation

Mario Sundar picks up on the Technorati list of top corporate blogs. These include his own LinkedIn, Dell, Lenovo, Adobe and Google.

As with the Forrester list, tech blogs feature prominently.

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Welcome to this first post in the Slideschool Series. The aim of this series is to uncover and explain web services and applications that have a major part to play in our evolving online existence.

First off is Friendfeed.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=whyilikefriendfeed-1217794333943131-8&rel=0&stripped_title=why-i-like-friendfeed" width="425" height="355" wmode="transparent" /]
(View presentation on Slideshare)

Friendfeed is a nifty tool for keeping track of all your online activity – whether you blog, post pictures on Flickr, add videos to YouTube, Twitter away your life or engage in any one of the myriad of social networking sites out there. Friendfeed collects it all together in a single log.

What’s more, you can add other Friendfeed feeds to your own, to keep track of those people that interest you. Friendships are asymetrical meaning that those you follow don’t have to follow you (useful for keeping up with big hitters like Robert Scoble or Jeremiah Owyang).

Other services on offer are the ability to comment within the roll and to export your feed via RSS. Advanced users may also be interested in setting up Imaginary Friends (gulp).

If you haven’t already, go ahead and give it a whirl! BTW, you can find me here.

So, it finally happened. After years of happily importing images into Picasa and clearing the disk in the camera, we finally pushed the wrong button and cleared out a whole set of debauched bachelorette photos, many of which could have possibly held some quite senior San Francisco socialites to ransom.

We fretted and Googled and finally came across PC Inspector Smart Recovery. Phew. This simple app scoured the disk and pulled off all the data it could find:

I don’t normally endorse software, but this was a major life-saver. So, if you’ve found that you’ve deleted photos inadvertantly, avoid the cold sweats and give this a go. You might be surprised at what you find. As for me, I’m off to bribe some friends…

Crisis Blogger picks up on the recent lawcase against one of Cisco’s employee’s blogs.
Interesting how this has been picked up by the media – many a horror story of how employee blogging can turn foul. However the Cisco case is somewhat different – the anonymous blog had been setup not as an obvious link to Cisco, but rather to appear as something autonomous.
This kind of approach to corporate blogging is by far in the minority.
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