Shel Holtz, Communicator

Email marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30% higher click through rates than emails without these features. So says a new survey by Get Response - as well as anecdotal evidence that the rules governing email and social media communication are increasingly becoming blurred.

The study, "Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report" also found that messages with three or more sharing options generated 55% higher CTRs and emails with a Twitter sharing option returned over 40% higher CTRs than messages without any social media links.

The findings illustrate the clear trend of consumers using social media to recommend services, products and advice to each other.  Twitter, for example, has become the top referral site for movies, leaving such sites as Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Bing far behind in terms of average monthly growth in number of streams referred and average minutes of video watched per stream

There's a lot of other interesting data in the GetResponse survey findings. The study also suggests (to me, at least) that email isn't necessarily dead, as so many pundits argue, but that its success will depend in some measure on how well marketers can integrate social elements into their email marketing efforts.

If you want to motivate your staff to succeed, then trusting them to manage their own time--and use the Net when they like, including for accessing social networks--could get you better results than offering more pay, says new data.

Over 1,600 managers and staff were surveyed by Clearswift (a firm specializing in "unifying information security") for this research, covering the U.K., Australia, Germany, and the USA during the first two months of 2010. The headline figure from Clearswift's resulting report, "Web 2.0 in the Workplace," is that over 79% of respondents said that the most important feature of a workplace for them, above job title and even pay, is to be trusted to organize their own work schedule and have free access to the Net.

When I linked to a piece on Forrester's findings that social media makes workers more productive, one of my Facebook friends left a comment that began, "I think employees should enjoy social media...on their own time and on their own dime. Why should an employer foot the bill to support a FaceBook addiction to Farmville? Work is work. Play is play."

Based on that view, are we to think that 79% of employees think they should be able to play at work? If so, it's even more shocking to find that the Clearswift survey, released in May, found that 21% of respondents said they would turn down a job offer that restricted access to social sites.

Of course, the Facebook comment reflects the views of a lot of IT departments and managers out there (the study found that only 51% of management-level respondents felt the same way as their employees). They just fail to recognize that that the old adage "work is work, play is play" is no longer true. I don't know anyone who doesn't take their laptop on vacation. Most knowledge workers do company business from home, Starbucks and just about anywhere else. Most knowledge workers check their company email from bed before they turn out the lights.

The measure of productivity is not where work is getting done, but just that it's getting done. The notion of work-life balance -- that you work only when you're at the office and when you're not, you don't work at all -- is increasingly becoming a relic of the pre-connected age.

Note that the issue revolves around trust. One of the things that has always bothered me the most about blanket blocking of access is the message it sends to every employee: "We don't trust any of you. Not a single one of you." And yet the company hopes that employees will be actively engaged. 

Add to that the fact that many employees rely on Facebook, Twitter and other sites to do their work, and the fact that companies are leaving piles of money on the table when they ignore the value that exists in employees' online connections, and it makes sense to open access for employees (governed by well-communicated policies).

But you already knew I felt that way, didn't you?

Many executives may remain skeptical that the use of social media in the workplace is anything other than a distraction from the work at hand. But companies that forbid or severely restrict the modern communications technologies may miss out on assorted opportunities.

This article from CFO Magazine presents results of a study conducted by Forrester's CIO practice, which reinforces the idea that the benefits of employees engaged in social media far outweigh the risks and fears.

No doubt there will continue to be plenty of business leaders who make no effort to check the validity of their statements before uttering the staggeringly stupid remark, "There's no business value to (name the social channel)." Those who are actually interested in better business outcomes will implement the models and processes that take advantage of their employees' networks.

Rob Cottingham's Noise to Signal comic is always fun, but I liked this one a lot, and not just because Rob cited me in the accompanying post:

"I think there’s a lot to say for Shel Holtz’s suggested compromise (which he wrote as someone who opposes ghost-written blogs, but acknowledges they may be inevitable):

"'And if a business leader ultimately does opt to have someone else handle the writing of the blog, he should disclose it. What’s the harm in a statement like this on an executive blog: “Welcome to my blog. Several times each week, I articulate my thoughts to Mary Jones, who runs communications for the company, and she posts them here ensuring that I make the points I want to make. But rest assured, while Mary makes me sound better, the messages you read are mine; they come from my heart and I read all the comments myself.'"

Tuesday at Gartner's Security and Risk Management Summit, research director Andrew Walls told attendees that although infosec pros may worry that social networking will lead to uncontrolled malware outbreaks, phishing, breaches of confidentiality and trade secrets, and even damage to the corporate reputation, trying to take control or even block its use is akin to monitoring employees' home phone calls and rifling through their postal mail.

"All this message traffic is not in your infrastructure," Walls said. "It all takes place out there in the cloud," plus it can be accessed from anywhere, and users' privacy settings can make monitoring nearly impossible. "At the root of it is staff productivity, and security isn't responsible for monitoring and managing the productivity of the organization."

Some believe social media represents a growing platform for malware distribution, but Walls countered that argument, noting that antimalware vendors he's spoken with say social networks are being victimized by the same malware plaguing email and websites. "So if I'm going to block social media on the basis of malware distribution," Walls asked hypothetically, "why not block email?"

The article goes on at some length to chronicle Walls' arguments against blocking social media in the workplace, even making a vital point that has been at the heart of my argument: Organizations will, he said, come to realize the value of hiring someone who possesses a vast social network. "The most valuable people," he told the audience, "are going to be the ones who demand social media the most."

The entire post is well worth your time particularly if you're trying to make the case against blocking in your organization.

This video from Gatorade shows all of the different types of data being monitored from Mission Control.

According to Mashable, the success of Gatorade's approach to putting social media monitoring at the center of its marketing efforts could determine whether the same approach is taken throughout Pepsico. Other companies have dashboards on large monitors (I've seen one from Microsoft, for instance), but this is the first social media command center I'm aware of.

Apple's new iPhone developers agreement, which emerged in April, prohibited data about app usage to be transmitted to any outside analytics companies, which help agencies target their ads.

Those rules rankled some app developers and generated questions from the Federal Trade Commission, one developer said.

The updated language – which was first noted by the MediaMemo blog – appeared to put in place significant new restrictions, particularly when it comes to Google.

It allows user data to be transmitted only to “an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads,” one that is not affiliated with “a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems.”

This would effectively bar Google, which designed the Android mobile operating system and makes the Nexus One smartphone.

Competing is one thing. Being anti-competitive is another. From a blog post by AdMob's Omar Hamoui:

"This change threatens to decrease – or even eliminate – revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.

"Let’s be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress."

Hamoui's post is here: http://blog.admob.com/2010/06/09/mobile-advertising-and-the-iphone/