OK our latest installment to Sony Football Asia – introducing the KICKATHON. Can you kick your way to South Africa? Well if you can there are some 2010 World Cup tickets in it for you – check it out here.

The social phenomenon is not a homogeneous one. Alot of us tend to focus on “social quick fixes” by extending social footprint into our communications strategies. However, there are  giants out there revolutionising their workspaces with social software that vow to innovate with viral adoption techniques,  providing communication, portal, content and general collaboration platform offerings. Bundled support for real time messaging and conferencing, document management, workflow and business process modeling/support continue to blur boundaries between social softwares and other workflow technologies.

The most common struggle in improving “connectedness” within organizations is in balancing risk and business value, as well as the empowerment of end-users promised by social environments. However, there are critical benefits including virtual collaborations, cross-border talent identification and expertise lending, informal network support to empower communities of experts and common interests, and accessing relevant knowledge needed to formulate plans.

As a start, here is a list of minimal functionality required when evaluating social softwares:

1.) Multiple-User Management - ability to create,  modify,  retire user accounts, as well as support for multiple roles including editor, facilitator, community manager etc.

2.) Project/Community Brainstorm Areas- ability to create themed common spaces for like-minded users to get together, and brainstorm virtually

3.) Document storage and sharing - an easy-to-use and automated organization function to upload, store and share files.

4.) Discussion forums - support for a conducive environment to have virtual discussion and the ability for moderation

5.) Blogs - instant publishing functions with comments function

6.) Wikis - Internal linking, word clouds, etc

7.) Ability to support & integrate multimedia from existing platforms such as YouTube etc.

8.) Enabling of social functionality & sharing for content such as social network analysis, social tagging, social bookmarking, social search, etc

9.) Keep a record of all tangible data via generic analytics; the software should ideally be compatible with the Big Boys like Omniture, Google, etc.

10.) Last but not least, the degree to which the vendor is investing in R&D to continue innovation the tool. Creative energy in committing to new browser-based technologies like Ajax and browser-based rich authoring/content recommendations will bring more traction to your investment.

As Jive says, business is now social. Enjoy~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y6aceiLzCI

At Marketing Magazine’s award night, XM won the following:

GOLD
Website Design Agency of the Year
Digital Agency of the Year

SILVER
Email marketing

XM was also a finalist in search marketing.

Congrats to the team for a job well done!

Here’s the congratulatory note from Michael Maedel, president of JWT:

XM Asia had a stunning night at MarketingMagazine’s Agency of the Year Awards, winning both the Online Agency of the Year and Web Design Agency of the Year categories. In addition, they won a Silver for Email Marketing and a Finalist in Search Marketing.

I would like to thank the entire team who has managed to stay focused during a difficult economic year to not only win significant new business, but also win these prestigious awards. Instead of cowering away from these challenging times, XM Asia has used them to their advantages, hungrily go after new business and building their reputation to leapfrog their competitors.

XM, which has been delivering world class work for years, is now getting the recognition they deserve.

Bravo!

Michael Maedel
President, JWT

• Do you like looking at numbers?
• Do you think that you understand human behaviour?
• Do you keep up with the latest technological and marketing trends?

If your answer to the above three questions is a resounding “YES!”, then we have a job for you! XM Asia Pacific is hiring a marketing analyst for the Planning and Analytics department. We are looking for someone who can derive meaningful understanding of how people interacted and behaved with our digital campaigns.
Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing magazine’s June 2009 issue has an article, “Rising Stars”, that showcases 25 of Singapore’s emerging top talents in the marketing scene. At number one is XM/RMG’s very own regional director, Paul Soon. Read on to see what Marketing had to say about Paul (and some of the other talents). For the complete list of 25, look for it in your copy of Marketing!

Rising Stars - Marketing Magazine, June 2009