Blognotes

No matter if you're an independent, starting a new business, working for a large company or looking for a job: Linkedin should be fully integrated in your business  strategy and considered a major piece in your communication. The leading platform for business networking has much more to offer than just a static page where you would describe yourself, your career path and company profile. Linkedin can dramatically boost your business, brand and personal attractivity. I would like to share here a couple of tricks, some you might not be aware of.

- Create a Profile Page for Your Company as you would do for yourself and make it a hub to connect with your co-workers, clients, partners, prospects, users etc
- Embed Multimedia Content on your Personal / Company Page (video, powerpoint etc), use it as an additional channel to connect with your brand / self-brand. To do that, use the Box.net application.
- Get your Colleagues, customers and partners link back to that Company page, and let them have your multimedia material and embed in their own profile so as to widespread your brand message.
- Connect your Linkedin page consistently with Your Corporate site, communities  and other social networks. Draw on paper the whole online architecture and work on its effectiveness.
- Connect your corporate or personal blog with your Linkedin page by using the Blog Link or Wordpress application.
- Create Business Groups and generate Discussions that will link back to you
- Use the newly created subgroups for better targeting and to enlarge your networking capabilities (subgroups are not included in the 50 groups limitation).
- Work collaboratively with your customers, colleagues and prospects by using workgroups. to do that, use the Huddle application.
- Update your Status and use it to Tease Customers, Prospects etc.
- Invite visitors to interact with you / your brand by showing the Polls or Compnay Buzz application on your page.
- Emphasize your professional expertise by showing great management books you´ve read and intend to read (Amazon app.).

will be upgraded

I've been thinking all I would be doing during those crisis times if I were running  a business.  I came up with this list focusing on marketing and sales management points. It' s a mix of own experiences, thoughts and readings. I will try to upgrade and enrich it with third parties articles and best cases later on. And some points I will detail in separate posts. I chose to concentrate especially on mid and long term action points: you shouldn't expect too much from your short term activities in those crisis times if your markets are really depressed; but it's highly important and the right time to prepare for better times and set ready to harvest later on. And it's not just about crisis and after-crisis times; it's about a new paradigm: not only the financial system has collapsed, but many other parameters have actually changed dramatically, driven by the global hyper connectivity and competitiveness, by the emerging power of the masses and by a new generation that has a stronger voice to denounce failing models and to claim new values and perspectives as a citizen, as a consumer and as a worker.  Therefore, It's important in those deep times to think on that new order and adapt your business practices accordingly.

A Non-Exhaustive Business Check-List, in Progress :

1)  Refocus on your end-users as a starting point in your decisions, listen to what they say on your business and brand, what they actually want and what they imagine you should/could be doing. Leverage web 2.0 platforms to secure a permanent and interactive discussion with them.
2)  Enhance your market intelligence, make sure you have a large view, not only in your usual scope of business but in other relating and emerging businesses. Think in terms of moving business models and transforming ecosystems. Link all information systems, online/offline sources, external/ internal information into an open and powerful live information pool. Leverage web 2.0 and new generation IT tools do so.
3) Secure collaborative and transparent work principles. Make sure your co-workers share their voice and interact. Break the laws of hierarchy. Use open platforms of communication based on social software and web 2.0 to do so and to secure a permanent, transparent, live and easily addressable pool of ideas and innovation. Collaboration will also enhance positive workers feelings and translate into a stronger corporate culture.
4) Generate new business leads by embracing social networks, by activating new online tactics and by maximizing your online presence and its efficiency.
5) Break inefficient and time consuming reporting to concentrate on value creation, action and speed. Harness new generation IT tools and web 2.0 to move to near live, continuous and collaborative reporting. Also break with such tools the inefficient mail based communication that occupies an average 2 hours work time in Europe.
6) Embrace cost efficient communication channels including social media. Progressively shift to those new media whilst measuring their effectiveness. Hire small agencies at the forefront of new marketing techniques, especially in digital and web 2.0 marketing.
7) Challenge your lead agency to speed up in embracing new marketing techniques and in securing a 360° approach (offline-online holistic marketing)
8) Upgrade your marketing teams. Make sure they're embracing the new marketing spirit, they're aware of the latest practices that work in the new digital and crisis times and that they're curious enough to challenge ideas and practices. Training and coaching are necessary given the speed of change in new marketing areas.
9) Check all you can outsource and leverage new outsourcing possibilities, especially via the social networks and virtual market places. Compare the cost efficiency and quality. Start with small trial works. Establish long term relationships with relevant online workers and organize your internal/external resources into an efficient ecosystem.
10) Work hard on your product offering. Don't make it another boring 10+feature product-centric offering.  Give your product additional dimensions including accessories & service and co-innovate with complementary partners and your communities of users so as to achieve a unique offering. Think in terms of unique experience instead of product.
11) Communicate a unique product experience.  Make competition irrelevant by communicating a unique outbreaking experience and by using a double positioning technique where you suggest your absolute superiority and competitors obsolescence at the same time.
12) Maximize your product launching. Speed-to-the-market is critical for your product success and P&L whilst life cycles quickly shorten in the digital connected world. Start penetrating your product before launching, raise curiosity, initiate buzz and organize a strong D-Day. Make sure all your departments and workers align efficiently before, during and after the launch. In that process, make sure they work on an efficient project basis. Closely monitor the message and product penetration with predefined milestones for sample and metrics checks. Prepare milestones targets that every department is aware of.
13) Turn your service into a strategic business asset. Define clear business goals for your service. Make it part of your product offering and communication. Use it as a lever to differentiate and position your brand. Organize a strong, continuous and live loop from your users and clients by embracing open communication platforms.
14) Permanently benchmark other industries, best practices & new ideas. List your key-assets and functions and benchmark their efficiency and ranking  against your competitors. Use external intelligence or ad-hoc resources like students to do that. Subscribe to expert blogs to follow the best practices and cases in other industries. Revolutionize your own industry by applying external practices and gain a competitive advantage by doing so. Challenge every part of your organization with this benchmarking attitude.
15) Take benefit from waiting attitudes and from weakening competitors. In low seasonality / low demand periods, most companies embrace a wait & see attitude and would freeze their marketing budgets. It might be interesting to attack their positions during those times by maintaining a relatively high marketing budget level. A surprising effect combined with a  low cost access to the media during such  periods might translate into effective brand awareness and market share gains. It might also be interesting to buy from weakening competitors their technology - if not the complete business,  or at least gain part of their customers by attacking their message proactively.

will be continued ...

I research quite a lot online. Over the years, I've developed a structured approach which I call the '5 steps from the single Google Search to a Collective Intelligence'. I will detail that approach and related tools in this article. 

1. Search Better
1.1 Fine-tune Google
1.2 Enhance with Add-ons
- Surf Canyon
- Deeperweb
1.3 Use Alternative Engines
1.4 Focus with Specific Engines
- People: Pipl, Spock, 123people
- Business: business.com, bnet
- Press:
- Blogs: icereocket
- Discussions: Twitter Search
- Scientific:
1.5 Use Meta Engines
1.6 Dig into the deep Web

2. Structure
2.1 Organize your engines 
2.2 Use RSS feeds
2.3 Compose & Filter RSS
- Yahoo Pipes, Grazr
2.4 Organize alerts

3. Socialize
3.1 Join conversations
3.2 Contribute
3.3 Interact

4. Systemize
4.1 Organize an ecoystem
4.2 Interconnect
4.3 Feed & tease

5. Specialized Software
- AMI Software
- Arisem
- Digimind
- Qwam
- Iscope
- KB Crawl
- Ixxo

ARTICLE IN PROGRESS

Want to apologize to my readers for not posting since April here. Was extremely busy,  working and thinking in various areas including web 2.0 and digital technologies. I will come back soon and hopefully more regularly with new articles that I will try to make deeper and more interesting. I would especially like to share my thoughts and experience in leveraging web 2.0 for business purposes: web and collective intelligence, consumer insight and brand reputation, knowledge and collective information management, social networks (Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter) for real business, self productivity, innovation & sourcing, six sigma & collaboration 2.0, realtime business tracking, etc. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter and check lots of resources and links on this blog. Hope to interact with you soon.

Don Tapscott (co-author of "The Wikinomics", refer to my related posts) and Steve Papermaster (CEO of nGenera Corp, a business innovation platform for next-gen. enterprises) have a fantastic white-paper on the next generation enterprise - also called enterprise 2.0 which I´ve embedded in this post. This is a must read to understand the concept and how companies must reinvent their management so as to harvest the global pool of talents and resources and co-create in a  global connected world. They also started a great community of thought leaders who write on enterprise 2.0.

In crisis times as we have now, I feel too many companies are only going the "easy" way: lay-offs, cost-cutting, price adjustments, wait and see attitude etc. Many don´t have a specific and proactive plan to counter-attack, with a clear destination. The usual way is rather to downsize the original plan by X % and wait to see if this was the right assumption. It´s clear we are not only in the middle of a very difficult economic situation but also at the crossroads of fundamental changes: globalization, digital revolution and social mutations that strongly affect all industries. Under such circumstances, companies that don´t reinvent won´t survive.  And we see in most sectors how dramatic changes quickly happen and how business models mute, not only a consequence of the financial crisis. "New Times, New Ways": it´s time to be more innovative and creative than ever, that's the way to go through those difficult times and prepare for the after-crisis period. One first thing CEOs should do is a strong internal and external communication plan where they detail their specific anti-crisis project with clear goals, metrics,  assignments and milestones so as to boost their troops and get their full commitment. Psychology is key. A second thing CEOs should do is to leverage social technologies and web 2.0. Going digital and web 2.0 can bring five types of advantages: new business opportunities, cost effective PR and marcom channels, customer listening and direct conversation, collaborative management and working speed, and ideas & innovation sourcing.

This is a selection of my best twits of the last week: you find here great resources for Twitter, productivity tools as well as articles on new  marketing practices and social media.

TWITTER & CO

• FriendFilter improves your signal to noise ratio on Twitter » link to PR 2.0: Introducing FriendFilter, A Better Way to Make Friends on TwitteR

• Tweetizen: Create Instant Twitter Community on Your Website » link to Tweetizen: Create Instant Twitter Community on Your Website

• 99 Essential Twitter Tools And Applications - » link to latercera.com

• TweetTop.com - Follow Twitterers In A Different Way » link to TweetTop.com - Follow Twitterers In A Different Way | Visit

• TwitterJobSearch.com - The Twitter Job Search Engine http://tinyurl.com/dxd6su

• Twitmatic.com - Watch Videos Being Shared On Twitter http://tinyurl.com/ddrgod

• How to Use Twitter for PR http://tinyurl.com/ce23cv

• 10 Twitter great tools - http://snipr.com/dzqai

• Twitter Line is an extention for Firefox that displays your Twitter time line on the toolbar as like as a head line (or ticker) - http:/ ...

• How to Follow A LOT of People on Twitter and Still be Engaging using TweetDeck http://tinyurl.com/bo286v

• WeFollow: A Top Twitters List http://tinyurl.com/cu28g6

• 50 Open Source Companies, Products And People To Follow On Twitter http://tinyurl.com/b5fds2 (via @twittes)

• I've created a user powered twitter directory http://wefollow.com - click upper ... Read More: http://is.gd/nn8z

• Tinycast - Video twittering http://bit.ly/zW4nv

• Phil Bradley's weblog: Twitter Search - 20 alternative search engines http://tinyurl.com/abgja8

• CIO Magazine: How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/d54xbh (quoted) (via Twitter) http://ff.im/1vv44

• Firefox Extension Search Cloudlet Brings Integrated Tag-Based Search To Twitter http://tinyurl.com/ac32qt

• Twitmatic lets you watch a real-time stream of videos being shared on Twitter. http://tinyurl.com/c9kug

OTHER TOOLS

• Very useful site for biz dev and sales: orgacharts of companies http://adjix.com/fuvi
  
  
• Omgili Stream Offers Another Discussion Tracker For the Web » link to Omgili Stream Offers Another Discussion Tracker For the Web
  
  
• 80+ free people search engines and email address finders - http://tinyurl.com/2wg9qa
  

• Nice - TasteKid is an exploration engine that recommends music, books and films and provides related information - http://snipr.com/dx4z7
  

• MyAlltop Launches: Get Your Own Alltop http://tinyurl.com/c9hr8y
  

• list.it helps manage the tons of little information bits you need to keep track - » link to list.it .. before you forget it! a place to stash your information

• Personal Information: your scrap notes get contextual information with Jourknow: - » link to Jourknow

• Create Data-Rich Interactive Webpages (maps, coverflows, and other visualizations) with open source Exhibit -» link to SIMILE Widgets | Exhibit

• Enhance your Delicious bookmarks with Facette - » link to Facette | Facets for Delicious

• JotNot Turns Your iPhone’s Camera Into A Document Scanner » link to JotNot Turns Your iPhone’s Camera Into A Document Scanner

• 9 Web sites IT pros should master in 2009. I use 4 of them, incl. Twitter & Yammer which I share w. my colleagues - » link to Nine Web sites IT pros should master in 2009 - NYTimes.com

• News Search Engine Newssift for business professionals - http://tinyurl.com/c9m8pe

• Use Technology To Spend Less Time Working - http://tinyurl.com/dnkjt2

• NYT - Web 2.0 tools can foster growth in hard times - http://snipr.com/dzq83

• 20 Facebook apps to try http://tinyurl.com/dcyvuj

• 100 Web Tools to Help You Boost Your Resume and Reputation During Recession - http://twurl.nl/o4eqcj

• The best job search groups on Linkedin - http://is.gd/nxkp

• Top Five Web Design Tools - http://snipr.com/dzqc4

MARKETING

• 500 outstanding Guerilla ads - » link to viddler.com

• Hey Marketers, Stop Being Control Freaks http://tinyurl.com/ctjb

• An Introduction to Social Media and Social Media Marketing » link to An Introduction to Social Media and Social Media Marketing - Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
  
  
• Eventzi: sell your event online http://tinyurl.com/dza2gf
  
• Social Media Translated into the Real World http://tinyurl.com/da5aw4
  
  
• Learning to do a good powerpoint presentation by expert Garr Reynolds (Apple, Google) - http://tinyurl.com/cpg8gt
  
  
• Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media http://tinyurl.com/d6w2un
  

VARIOUS

• 25 Surprising Things That Google Knows About You by e-Justice Blog http://tinyurl.com/c47469
  

• Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol: People will talk to the Web and the Web will respond http://tinyurl.com/ch8mx
  
  
• Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0: The good, the bad, and the ugly » link to zdnet.com
  

Out of my hundreds of twits over the last six weeks, I' ve extracted the best ones which I have categorized:
Twitter & co (of course), various productivity tools, key-articles on advance marketing, social media and enterprise 2.0.

TWITTER / TOOLS

10 MORE Must Have Twitter Tools http://tinyurl.com/bq4je8
TwitterAnalyser is a great tool to analyse a Twitterer's profile into details - http://snipr.com/dq945
TweetSum.com - Great Twitter Following Tool http://tinyurl.com/brf3ce
Twitter as a brand-builder: ThRee examples http://tinyurl.com/ak8fn6
How to (better) search on twitter - http://snipr.com/dmh4x
Twitseeker is a

good Twitter

Twittes: best way to follow all that is hapening around Twitter. It's all about links on Twitter - http://snipr.com/dh4b9
Twittereader= googlereader for twitter. Very convenient.
Corporate twitter-like Yammer has a new competitor: Communote which shows at Cebit. Looks superior. - http://tinyurl.com/bjm22a
Should you follow that person? Twimailer has the answer - http://tinyurl.com/bsmtau
testing Twitter-based MicroPlazza tribal news. looks good. - http://snipr.com/d51zi
Twe2.com: Twitter per free SMS in Europe
Twitter Useful For B2B Marketers - http://snipr.com/cqsoh
Tweetworks = Twitter + Groups = Professional Twitter - http://snipr.com/cpuok
#tools 100 Free, Time-Saving Apps for Web Writers - http://tinyurl.com/dbtfae
TwitterPerch: keyword based auto-follow service - http://tinyurl.com/db723o
12 Twitter Stream Aggregators To Make You Smarter http://tinyurl.com/dxbnn6
HOW TO: Create Groups for Twitter - http://is.gd/jDc1
See which twitter users recently visited your blog - http://tinyurl.com/adwuda
NYT's @DavidPogue gives advice on twitter, good article for execs. http://tinyurl.com/bf3vf9
Twisten.FM - Listen to Twitter music - http://is.gd/jpzX

Interesting Tool: Twengager - http://twengager.com/ - finds ppl on twitter with similar interests and auto follows them
TwitterHawk: targeted advertising through twitter - http://tinyurl.com/b69xh9
TwitterRemote: see which Twitter users visit your site - http://is.gd/jaTo
TweetLater allows to tweet when you’re offline and schedule your twits - http://snipr.com/bpw2u
10 Hot Twitter Tips - http://snipr.com/bpvg4
Hot Retweets and most Retweeted URLs at Retweetlist - http://snipr.com/bpv2o
retweet radar: twitter trends for today and right now - http://snipr.com/bpv00
Getting Things Done with Twitter: 30+ great tools - http://snipr.com/bprkc
twtbase: discover new twitter applications - http://is.gd/iYjc
twtQpon: Enhance your social media marketing by offering discounted coupons to the Twitter-sphere! http://is.gd/iIiL
Twitter Network Dynamic Visualization - - http://tinyurl.com/cd6rkm
twtbase = easy to search database of Twitter apps with new ones added everyday - http://tinyurl.com/azjg9s
8 Twitter Networking Tips - http://tinyurl.com/afe8sp
Most Influential Twitterers - http://snipr.com/b5rh8
The future of Twitter

? twitter

VARIOUS TOOLS & TIPS

80+ free people search engines and email address finders - http://tinyurl.com/2wg9qa
Great - welcome your site visitors with you speaking in a bubble - http://tinyurl.com/bfxs8k
Versionista monitors any site and alerts you when it changes, showing the exact words and sentences that changed - http://tinyurl.com/5spzxn
Eufeeds: 1000+ european newspapers - http://snipr.com/dniw5
Looqe.com - Find New Great Sites http://tinyurl.com/cjccrw
DocJax - the best search engine for documents - http://tinyurl.com/de2v6g

Really cool: with iCandy you generate QR codes to market your digital content offline e.g. iPhone apps - http://tinyurl.com/7nubs5

Easily share in private your files with drop.io resp. tweet.io and collaborate in real time - http://snipr.com/djynd
The Official Board: updated organiz. charts of the world's 20.000 largest corp. - http://tinyurl.com/b43muc
LimeWire: secure and simple way to share files with each other and no one else - http://snipr.com/ddimv
trying Inkscape to create logos, an open source vector graphic editor similar to CorelDraw - http://is.gd/LKo
Kosmix turns your search into a dashboard of relevant links,photos, videos, communities etc in a magazine style http://snipr.com/ck9oc
100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better - http://tinyurl.com/2l25dg
Delicious Toolbox: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources http://tinyurl.com/bx5dey
HOW TO GUIDE: 60+ Great How To Sites and Resources - http://is.gd/k3bO
Resource: 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers http://tinyurl.com/apm7ok
5 analytics tools for your blog - http://tinyurl.com/adegmy

Vozavi product review search engine indexes 3.6M+ internet users reviews from 5.5k+ sources - http://snipr.com/bthdb
LearningTimes is an interesting online platform for education and training - http://tinyurl.com/y3eh

Call Skype From Any Phone Through OpenSky - http://snipr.com/bpsco
Trackle Feeds You Personalized RSS - http://is.gd/jdUt
trying again RSS Bus service. pretty cool. - http://tinyurl.com/cudxvu
Share big files online with these services - http://tinyurl.com/damltl
Base is a fantastic scientific search engine indexing 1100+ content providers and 16 million documents - http://tinyurl.com/dg6gyx
Onehub makes it easy to share files and collaborate - http://is.gd/iYrq

Dataopedia: all the data related to a a website in one page: traffic, conversations, profile etc - http://tinyurl.com/4qv7tu
Search Engine Guide, Search Engines and Search Marketing - http://snipr.com/b60tv
Q&A + wiki = Wikianswers launched by Jimmy Wales. Ask, answer and finetune other's answers - http://tinyurl.com/a9soo5
How to be a LinkedIn superstar - http://is.gd/iGZz
Global Internet Map. cool job. - http://tinyurl.com/2xvwj3
vator.tv: TV channels for entrepreneurs - http://snipr.com/b5q1l

MARKETING
10 ways to turn angry consumers into brand advocates http://tinyurl.com/angz78
Read this Free 22 Page Report and Case Studies on Growing Your Online Business - http://tinyurl.com/aoa85v
Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy. a great 126-page slideshow - http://snipr.com/bpsxn
Promotion 2.0 - The Future of Interactive Marketing. excellent slideshare - http://snipr.com/bor3f

A map of Trends 2009+. excellent. - http://tinyurl.com/96n6g4
Leo Burnett's Youtube video on Future Trends in Advertising - http://is.gd/inzM
#book ouvrage Marketing & Entreprise 2018 rédigé par une 50aine d'experts en download gratuit (308p) - http://snipr.com/bgs2k
cours marketing très sympa pr les francophones: "comment être super bonne au plumard vs apprend le marketing" - http://tinyurl.com/cblcyr

SOCIAL MEDIA

How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans - http://snipr.com/dlhl6
Cliqset: Unleash Your Social Identity - http://snipr.com/djzfi
35 Must-Read Articles for Social Media Marketers - http://snipr.com/dg87a
Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media - http://is.gd/kgLd
45 Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz - http://snipr.com/bzhse

Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing - http://is.gd/jk9l
Allfacebook: the unofficial facebook resource - http://snipr.com/bxbed
The Top 20 Most Engaging Facebook Applications - http://snipr.com/bxbd5
SocialToo: a toolbox for your social media - http://snipr.com/b5yyk9:01 AM Feb 2nd
13 Quick tips to Make Your Blog STAND OUT from the Crowd - http://tinyurl.com/d5yrmw
How to Create a Successful Blog: Content - http://snipr.com/bpulo
BW Innovators in Social Media: Ford case study - http://snipr.com/bpufm
Google Launches New Official Blog Focused on Social Web - http://is.gd/iZCh
40 top bloggers share their secrets - http://tinyurl.com/dgfpq5
10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media - http://snipr.com/bk8cg
How to Stand Out as a Blogger (video interview) - http://snipr.com/b80o1

TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft’s Vision for 2019 http://tinyurl.com/djascg

ENTERPRISE

2.0

Open Enterprise 2009: Research Study and Report http://tinyurl.com/df4qrt
McKinsey launching What Matters, essays & interviews with opinion formers around the world. http://tinyurl.com/d2pvml
Bye Bye E-Learning: Emergent Learning Paradigm More Important Than Digital Delivery

Tools http://tinyurl.com/b4myue

5 Ways to Collaborate on Documents Online in Real Time http://tinyurl.com/da55l6
#Benchmark - 15 Companies That Really Get #Corporate_Blogging - http://is.gd/1jKI
McKinsey - Six ways to make Web 2.0 work - http://snipr.com/c8wa6
Using Web 2.0 to reinvent your business for the economic downturn - http://tinyurl.com/ddvnum

I'm finalizing - or at least upgrading, it's an ongoing process - a corporate portal to enhance the collective intelligence at my company. I will describe the construction and implementation hurdles in this article which I will upgrade progressively (Come back again to see the final status). That portal consists of 20+ different web2.0 tools to track, discuss (microblogging), cross-fertilize and build up a collective knowledge. The portal is split into 14 tabs which I will describe hereafter.

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The portal structure is provided by Netvibes with is a public view for general information to our clients and a private view for our colleagues (password protected). I will focus on describing the private collaborative portal.
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The first tab integrates an "e-newsletter" (I don't use the word "blog", some people still hurt by the word here in Europe, we are the conservative continent ;-). This blog is the core of communication with all colleagues. The platform behind it is Typepad which I've been using for five years; it's a robust and easy to manage blogging platform. In that blog, I regularly post very short articles that appeal to the sales people and that don't consume their time for reading. If they find the post interesting , they can keep reading details in the extended entry. Further, I highlight in bold some key-words and integrate lots of links that direct to further resources in that portal (wiki, database, bookmarking lists, virtual library, etc as described hereafter). The columns host different tools: Feedjit shows the readers traffic by country (I track who's reading and who is not reading so that I can adjust my posts accordingly). A Twitter badge is also integrated: it shows industry and deals breaking news which I push from my Digsby dekstop client when coming across interesting articles and news. I also integrated my company news coverage widget: corporate news always appeal to the masses and help discussions. I've built the widget with Grazr: feeds originate from our RSS website and from Google FeedMySearch and get mixed in that Grazr widget which is a "read-in-the-box" solution. You find an example in the central column here under "web highlights".
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Second and third tabs integrate respectively the company website and intranet: people should feel at home.
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The third tab is dedicated to industry and competition newsreading: the best tool for that - I feel - is Google Reader: it's a compact newsreader, easy to understand, offers multiple views and a home summary; and you can share and forward articles. I integrate the most professional sources of information and do some spring cleaning when finding better sources. With "better" I mean quality and steady flow. I invite my colleagues to contribute to the sources of information, so that we have a collective effect in the quality.
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... in progress, visit later on again and don't forget to comment and contribute.