Today, Offerpal released the results of a survey that targeted social gamers’ monetization activities.  Specifically, the report found that 29.7% of social gamers do not have the ability or means to pay for virtual currencies with cash, and 53.3% of consumers are willing to engage in alternative payments, like offers, to earn virtual currency. The report also found some other interesting statistics related to monetization behavior.

Seeing as this is an Offerpal study, the results aim to demonstrate that alternative payment methods will attract many social gamers who don’t have means to pay for their virtual currency with cash.  However, this is in line with other numbers we’ve heard from the social gaming industry, such as Zynga’s claim that 33% of their overall revenue comes from social games.  The survey identified “alternative payments” as filling out a survey, watching a video, shopping at online retailers or signing up for a subscription.  The standard payment options are credit cards, Paypal, bank transfers and mobile billing.

Another interesting result was that 34.9% of gamers say they are “very unlikely” to part with their money in order to ...

“If you had to choose social media* or 100% engaged employees for your brand, which would you choose?”

I recently asked that on Twitter and the responses were pretty interesting. The question forces a choice, which many of the people who responded had a hard time making. One person even called it down-right ’silly.’ Generally, people wanted both - engaged employees who use social media. Fair enough, but not a singular answer the question begs.

If you’re having a hard time with the answer, this might be a good gut-check.

You see, the answer gets at a deeper question - what is the most valuable asset that your business has?

We’re not denying that social media can have massive influence for a brand, or even that it can add to a brand’s bottom line if wielded correctly. But I am saying that we would bet on a business with engaged employees and no communication through social media over a business with mountains of online ‘influence’ any day of the week.

Why?

It’s pretty simple: one of the foundations of a good business is an amazing customer experience. And employees provide that experience to customers. And 100% engaged, passionate employees do that in a way that turns ... read more >>

Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful:

• howsociable.com – Social visibility score
• knowem.com – Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights – Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com – Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined ...

“If you have a screwed-up customer process and you deploy Salesforce, all you do is screw your customers faster,” he said.

Brett Queener is, admittedly, not the “guru” of social customer relationship management at Salesforce. He bestows that title on SVP Product Marketing Kraig Swensrud and Chuck Ganapathi , SVP of Sales. (I’m not a fan of the “guru” label… “don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters,” right? But somehow the term always ends up in my interview questions…gotta drop that one…) I got the chance to sit down with Queener after his opening keynote at the Sales 2.0 Conference conference yesterday.

Brett Queener is one sharp and funny dude, and he’s chartered some of Salesforce’s cooler acquisitions (like the natural language processing company, Groupswim . He knows a metric ton about customer relationship management, and he’s a thought-leader and an industry veteran, whose team is about to drop a game-changing product for small-and-medium enterprise: Chatter . Queener has been doing CRM since I was a shorty, promoting punk shows in the basements of Madison, Wisconsin. As Ali G would say, “Mad respek. Mad respek.”

Once we sat down, Queener immediately dug ...

In 1762 Jean-Jacque Rousseau wrote a little book called The Social Contract.  As stated on the Wikipedia page for the book, Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society. 

The Social Contract argued that the people (and their general will) were divinely empowered to legislate – not the monarchs who ruled over them with an iron fist.  Once again, the Wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well:

“The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole...”

The book, and the “radical” thoughts put forth in it, would help lead to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy.  While Rousseau’s focus was on political philosophy, the theme of the masses taking back control of their lives from the few resonates today in what we’re seeing in business.  Social technologies are allowing individuals from around the world to come together and form communities (virtual ... read more >>

Why is it that Millennials demand instant gratification?? If you put yourself in our shoes, though, can you blame us? We grew up on technology. I used a computer for the first time in the fourth grade, primarily for computer games, and grew up as the Internet evolved. We are extremely technologically savvy and love exploring the web.

We desire instant gratification in other ways as well:

When we turned 16, we expected to get our license and a car.
When we hear a song we like, we want to download it instantly.
When we took a test or wrote a paper, we wanted results quickly.
When we send an e-mail, we expect a message immediately saying it was sent.
When we call someone, we expect them to pick up.

Now what is it about technology that everyone loves?

Instant access.
Confirmation that an action was received.
Quick responses.
The ability to compute things fast.

Since us Millennials grew up on computers and the Internet, and the above four components are major benefits of fast computers, that explains our need for a quick reward from every action. It is almost an innate instinct of ours to receive instant feedback from something we do, not because we are greedy, careless, ... read more >>