Click on the headline of this story to see the nice mention.  I'm sure it looks good in the print edition as well.   Congrats to Kevin and the A.D.A.M. team.  I'm very proud of them.

ThePort is in the social media "infrastructure" space.  This means we provide the underlying technology to add social media elements to exist web sites and create an expanded web presence including online community functionality.

The question today is what should we do if one of our clients "designs" an implementation of our technology that we feel is not going to work effectively.  Do we walk away from the account?  Do we beg them to change it based on our experience?  What if they don't take our suggestions?

We have faced this issue repeatedly in the past where we get judged on how our deployed communities do when we have little or no say in the actual implementation design. This is an interesting paradox.  Our platform can work flawlessly but if the actual implementation, which at times is out of our hands, is not done correctly, often times we take the blame. 

The answer we have tried to implement over the past few months is to standardize our product offering and deployment methodology using best practices.  We also try to work with our clients upfront so we develop common metrics to judge success or failure.  We encourage them to start a little slower, get their user base comfortable with participating in a community and then expanding from there.   The "less is more" approach is really starting to work.

Some random quotes from Advertising 2.0:

Social media that connects strangers is more valuable than social media that connects friends.  Yelp, Trip Advisor CPM's much higher than Facebook

Type of Content: PSAA.  Professional content; Semi-professional content; Amateur content; Advertiser content.

"Enabling" has taken the place of "Sponsored" which took the place of "Advertising".

The vast majority of advertising dollars online or anywhere is spent by Fortune 500 companies.  Therefore, they need to be comfortable advertising on social networking sites and to date they are not.

Social Networks lack context, said Sue Decker of Yahoo!

Women's groups and healthcare sites are very popular subject matters.

BDX-Brand Duration Exposure

Social Media Metrics: Traffic, Ad Engagement, Sales Impact. 

It is not easy for Brands to step into a social space. 

 

I've recovered from my two-day, three-night trip to NYC last week.  Quite an adventure: I got to see Barack Obama on the street  (it was from a distance and the police lights made him difficult to see, but who counting), I met the publisher of the New York Times (seriously, and told him we were both Tufts grads and that ThePort could help his business...we are, already, with Boston.com and A.D.A.M. is an important partner with nytimes.com).  I got lost on the subway which was a new experience to me as a native NY'er (I just don't know the west side like the east side).  I went from 46 and 7th, down the 42 and 7th, then one short hop to Times Square then one stop North before I realized I was headed East when I wanted to continue North.  I got out at 52 and 7th, sweating and cursing profusely, and having wasted a half hour and walked a half mile underground lugging my (heavy) laptop bag with my blazer on, I had gone just about 6 blocks in total.   I cannot tell you how happy I was when I finally snagged an airconditioned taxi and went on my merry way.