Hardware

-          Dual Quad Core Processors:

• 2 X Quad Core Xeon E5405 Processor2x6MB Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, PE2950

-          8GB RAM

• 8GB 667MHz (4x2GB), Dual Ranked Fully Buffered DIMMs (311-6197)

-          RAID 6 configuration with four hot pluggable 146GB 15K RPM drives!

• 1×6 Backplane for 3.5-inch Hard Drives (311-7936)
• Integrated SAS/SATA RAID 6, PERC 6/i Integrated (341-5729)
• 4 X 146GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug HardDrive (341-3031)

-          Redundant Power Supply with Y-Cord (310-9897)

• Power Cord, 250 volt, C13 to C14, PDU Style, 10 amps, 2 feet (310-9862)

-          Universal Sliding Rapid/Versa Rails, includes Cable Management Arm (310-7412)

-          8X DVD-ROM for PowerEdge 2950 (313-3933)

-          LOM NICs are TOE Ready (430-2968)

-          Bezel for PE 2950 (313-3920)

-          Riser with 3 PCIe Slots for PowerEdge 2950 (320-4607)

-          ONBOARD BROADCOM 5708 1GBE NETWORKING (430-1764)

-          4 year hardware Dell next business day service contract

• Basic Enterprise Support: Business Hrs 5X10 Next Business Day Onsite Service Post Problem Diagnosis Init YR (970-4070)
• Dell Hardware Warranty Plus Onsite Service Inital YR (984-1399)
• Basic Enterprise Support: Business Hrs 5X10 Next Business Day Onsite Service Post Problem Diagnosis 3YR Ext (902-7293)
• Dell Hardware Warranty, Extended Year(s) (984-1417)

Software

-          Windows Server 2008, Standard x64, Incl Hyper-V, Incl 5 CALs (420-8354)

-          Yosemite Backup Enhanced Pro Suite (420-2958)

Price

Purchased at $8,000 tax included on November 4, 2008, we are letting it go for $3,499.45 (3499.45) or the best offer. Check quotes at dell.ca for equivalent hardware and you’ll see it’s a very good price and it’s only about 19 month in a 48 month warranty!

The buyer will pick it up at our Montreal downtown office.

More sales to come!

I will be posting two other older servers to sell and a KVM switch in the coming days.

Here’s some statistics about effectiveness of Facebook marketing tactics:

Looking at the numbers, we see that creating Facebook applications was the most effective tactic. Surveying fans had pretty good results too. Advertising on Facebook is the worst performer.

Usually, a good Facebook application will engage users in a fun or meaningful way. Facebook applications have the potential of engaging for long and can exploit viral channels available in Facebook. I also thought it was the most effective approach in Facebook in the long term since brands can use an application to grow a user base with time. Then, the brand has a base of operation to pitch their fan page, contests or other timely promotions. I’m glad to see that numbers are confirming what I believe.

Here are the statistics for Twitter:

For Twitter we see that try to sell was giving the worst results. The best performing tactics were those involving answering tweets about PR problems or responding to other negative tweets about the brands.

I also like the fact that in-person events are performing well with Twitter. Twitter is always proving to me that it is an amazing bridge between online social interactions and real world interactions. What’s more engaging that meeting persons face to face? Fun stuff!

It’s common sense for people in social media but it proves that really engaging with users or customers is the most effective social media marketing approach.

How They Plan to Spend their Money?

I read on eMarketing that 60% of the social marketing dollars next year will go toward staff salaries for activities such as blogging, content development and monitoring of social channels. Another two-fifths will be spent on outside help from agencies, consultancies and service providers.

We believe that content must be produced in-house so hiring your staff  is important. But brands need external help from social media experts to build an effective social media presence, to review and implement the best practices and to help them stay ahead of the curve. The outside help budget would be bigger for brands who want to get custom applications for Facebook, the iPhone or the Blackberry. Rules often changes; so you must account for that in your budget and deadlines. For example, running a contest on Facebook is subject to an approval process since November 2009.

Most Popular Social Media Objectives

With the splurge on email marketing to their in-house list that was evident this holiday, I am surprised that we do not see the in-house list or building a community of fans as a strategic marketing objective.

Industries that will Increase the Most their Social Media Marketing Budget

As you can see, retailer and e-commerce brands will increase the most their social media marketing budget followed by the publishing/media industry. I am surprised that the travel/leisure industry is not on the top 3.

+ via eMarketer

Kim Vallee just published a post on What to Consider Before Creating a Facebook Business Page. I suggest you read it to follow the right process in creating a Facebook page for your business.

The Rules of Engagement

As Kim mentions, I often receive Facebook friend requests from brands and businesses. Sorry, but for me and many others, friends are real persons. For businesses, Facebook created pages for which people can become fans. It is important to mention that personal accounts on Facebook are subject to Facebook’s terms of use where it is stated:

• 4.1 You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
• 4.2 You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Facebook Pages are also governed by interesting terms:

• 12.1 Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).
• 12.2 You may only administer a Facebook Page if you are an authorized representative of the subject of the Page.

So clearly, Facebook Pages are meant for businesses. Using personal profiles for commercial purposes could easily get you banned. Additionally, personal accounts are clearly meant for persons.

Protecting Brand Ownership

I know many agencies and friends that help small businesses and larger companies manage their Facebook presence. If you do so, it is important that you protect the ownership of the Facebook Page for the client.

As Kim mentioned, to create a Facebook Page, you need a personal account. You can add administrators to a page, but the Page creator will always keep ownership of the Page. It is not well known that administrators cannot remove the page creator from the list of administrators. It’s an easy mistake to create a Facebook page from your own profile. Don’t do it!

If you need to create a page for a small business owner or founder, it might not be a mistake to register the Facebook Page under his/her personal account. Even then, you never know what might happen. The business might sooner or later be transferred to someone else in the family or be bought in the future. The new owners will lose control of the Facebook Page.

For larger businesses, it’s evident that it’s a problem. The CEO/president is probably not there forever and employees come and go. So, under which personal account should the Page be created to ensure future ownership of the Facebook Page?

I asked my friend Clara Shih who wrote the excellent book: “The Facebook Era” about this Catch-22 problem. She answered:

“Good question. We recommend companies set up a new personal Facebook account for Admin User, and then keep this login/password for whoever at the company is managing the Page(s). Does that make sense?”

I replied to her that it might put us in a grey zone as to Facebook’s terms of use. Her answer:

“Yes, but it is the only way we have figured out to get around this!”

So, here you have it from an expert on the subject!

Based on that, we recommend that you create a personal profile for the company. Also create a specific email from the company domain to log into the account and to ensure future ownership. As a disclaimer, we must note that it probably goes against Facebook terms of use. You are warned: do not knock at our doors if a company profile gets banned! However, since there are no other good workarounds yet and that Facebook hasn’t solved the problem, I suppose it can be considered an acceptable use.

To avoid potential problems, Kim had great suggestions: make sure the profile is totally private and hidden on Facebook through privacy settings. Manage your Facebook Page by adding appropriate administrators (employees for the business or the agency). Since you won’t ever really be using this personal account (give the email and password to appropriate company officers) risks are low it would be banned.

Just a quick note to announce that our VP, Kim Vallee will be a speaker at PodCamp Montreal this weekend. Based on her experience running At Home with Kim Vallee, she will focus on what it takes to create great blog content. She will discuss what works today to grow your traffic and free ways to monitor the social conversations. Her Top Tips for Better Blogging presentation will be at 10 am Saturday, September 19th, 2009.

After lunch on Saturday, Kim will participate in a Top Blogger Panel. It will be a chance to hear four Montreal-based bloggers that concentrate on design and arts. Michelle Sullivan has assembled a panel made of Éric Bolduc, Gabrielle Chalifoux, Cindy Laverdière and Kim Vallee.

Both presentations will be live streamed in case you cannot attend PodCamp Montreal 2009.

MORE:
+ Details of Kim’s conferences
+ Schedule of PodCamp Montreal 2009 – you must register first to attend. It’s free

You can click on the slides below to better follow the presentation.

The Slides

More precisely, Jérôme Paradis and Kim Vallée addressed the how, the why and the benefits of carrying out a large-scale migration, including why you would move to WordPress, demystifying the good and the bad of changing all our URLs, migration tools and techniques and a migration checklist.

I wish to tell you that they are actually 8 videos from WordCamp Montreal 2009 on WordPress TV.

Basic questions that any brand would ask before they start are:

• How do I find the influencers on my market?
• Which social networks my customer base are using and at which frequency?
• How do you track all mentions of your brand?
• How many resources it will take and who should do the job?
• How do I track the effectiveness of my tweets?

You will find on Mashable, a list of Tweeter Tools for the Enterprise that can help you answer these questions. Start with the integrated Twitter search to track the mentions of your brand or a few keywords. You can saved the search requests on your Twitter account. Doing that saves you time.

I would add to Goggle what you are looking for as they are many small niche sites that gathered topic-related tweets or Tweeple. They give you a head start on who to follow.

The A/B testing tips using hashtags is a wonderful idea that is so simple to implement. Like Sudha Jamthe mentioned on Mashable, you can use it to test the effectiveness of your message, test what time and day brings you the best results or analyze the effectiveness on different audience segments.

MORE:
+ Corporate Twitter Toolbox: Twitter Tools for the Enterprise by Sudha Jamthe on Mashable

This story is a quick lesson on building an online community. Repeat after me: it takes time and energy. You cannot expect to create an engaged community overnight. Every successful blogger will tell you, you built it one reader at a time. But big corporations often do not have that patience.

Many corporations put lots of money and resources in launching an initial campaign, get good results only to see their community fades away. It is common in the corporate structure to publish in one shot all the content they have. Big corporations act slower then the pace of the social media. Therefore, they are often unable to publish new content fast enough to encourage their readers/fans to come back. This is why I adviuce any new blogger to keep a few posts unpublished when they are starting out. But there is more to that.

On Social Media Today, Rachel Happe compared building an online community to making a risotto. When you are making a risotto, you add a ladle of water at a time, let the rice absorbs the water and then add more liquid. Our president, Jerome Paradis is an expert at making risotto. He cooks the best risotto I ever had. Jerome will tell you that you need to massage the rice as it absorbs the water. It is the same for building a community. You need to nurture it for it grows into something dynamic and engaging.

MORE:
+ Growing a Community on Social Media Today
+ Asparagus, Mint and Lemon Risotto recipe

The fact of the matter is people consume news differently and from other sources than newspapers. I find it mesmerizing that they struggle to change in order to serve the public the way the public wanted to be served. By embracing the new technology and remember than their role is to deliver news, not a paper, they could see that the new reality provides them with lots of opportunity for growth.

I suggest these two excellent posts on the challenge of the newspapers industry:
+ Online Coverage is Harder to Get, or is it? on Conversation Agent
+ 12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive on Mashable

I only wrote about IDEO’s Innovative Ideas on the Future of Journalism on my social media blog. For three weeks, a team of media-savvy IDEOers met day and night, scribbled and scrapped ideas about the future of journalism. Pretty cool ideas emerged from this huge brainstorm session.

I read on Mashable yesterday their 10 Things You Must Do to Earn Your Audience’s Trust. I often made similar recommendations to people. I feel that some points needs clarification or adjustments. Here are my insights on some points.

Tell us who you are

I would add that you should say what topics you will discuss, what is your angle. If you run a blog, do not make it only about your brand. For example, Paradivision creates social media applications but our blog covers social media news and trends for business.

Don’t setup a profile on every network

I do not recommend to write the exact same message on all the network. I stay away from tools to publish the same updates on many networks; doing that only creates noise. If you wish to engage in a conversation with your customers, you must be willing to make the time.

I often spread the same stories on Twitter and Facebook. But I will use different sentences to do it. On Twitter, my followers may have never met me. There are more chances that I have at least met you once if we are Facebook friends. For that reason, I use different words to talk to each audience. In Facebook, I use the link and comment features to publish richer content.

Know that news spread more and die faster on Twitter. I find LinkedIn to be a passive social network. But some people like it. Try it to see if it is for you.

Write for the Word

Writing short posts is crucial. Aim for posts between 200 and 400 words. People do not have the time to read longer stories. If you wish to cover several angles, split the story in a series of posts. Each post must stand on its own.

Document Everything

I wish to point out that text is more SEO friendly than video. So even if you post a video, you need to include some text in your post. Use videos to complement what you are saying, to bring a topic or to document an event. It works great for quick interviews. Keep your videos under 2 minutes but aim for 1:30 minutes. It needs to be short for people to watch your video.

Web 2.0 is about sharing and engaging. Upload your videos on You Tube or Vimeo. You want to give bloggers a chance to spread the words and embedded your video into their story.

+ Photo by Jerome Paradis showing an improvised session at PodCamp Boston 4, that happened last weekend