Embracing Web 2.0 in Business
Social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace have revolutionised the internet as part of what is known as Web 2.0, the second wave of the web, whereas the internet was previously an information network, the participatory nature of Web 2.0 has transformed the global population’s vision of the internet and driven usage to all new highs. Much like in the dawn of email, many businesses have been overly concerned with the potential misuse of social networking services and failed to embrace the endless possibilities that instant communication to an infinite audience can offer, however, there is no time like the present to get to grips with everything that Web 2.0 has to offer you and your business.
Web 2.0 technologies offer the perfect opportunity to establish interaction with your clients, customers, prospects, partners and even your own employees and whether it is through the development of an interactive community blog, offering RSS Feeds, Podcasts or video blogging through your website, contributing to user generated content such as Digg, YouTube and Flickr, developing Mashups and web applications, or simply by working with websites such as Facebook and MySpace instead of against them, they can dramatically improve your business.
But what tools will you embrace as part of your Web 2.0 strategy? Some of you may already be using the powerful business networking website, LinkedIn, if you’re not already then you really should but, as is the key with all of these communities, you should commit wholeheartedly or not at all. LinkedIn offers the opportunity to network on a global basis, find business opportunities, enhance your personal and company profile, find high-quality job candidates, research the market, judge your competition, gain publicity and even enhance your search engine visibility, but none of this is possible if you don’t make it work for you. Update your profile with as much relevant information as possible, find existing contacts and begin making connections, keeping your eye on your contacts and their contacts will ensure that you are exposed to any potential business and networking opportunities that may arise.
Blogging
If you have valuable experience in your business sector a blog is essential, alongside creating relevant, interesting content which enhances the number of repeat visitors to your website you can attract inbound links from other sites who have found your content useful and as such can dramatically improve the visibility of your website across major search engines, enhancing your exposure to potential customers and partners. Allowing comments to be posted (which can be moderated) means that your readers will feel part of your community and can in turn offer you valuable feedback on new ventures. Of course there are a huge array of Web 2.0 tools that can enhance your blog and drive traffic to your website, the most vital of those being social bookmarking services such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Reddit to name but a few.
If your business model requires you to drive a significant amount of traffic to your website then you must not underestimate the power of social bookmarking, the phenomenon known as ‘the Digg effect’ regularly crashes hosting servers as popular Web 2.0 sites link to a particular blog post or page and increase traffic with such dramatic effect that the website’s hosting simply cannot cope with the demand. The premise of these websites is simple, their individual communities give the thumbs up to a webpage either by ‘Digging’ it, ‘Stumbling’ it, or simply adding it into their bookmarks on such sites as Delicious and Reddit, their friends see their favourite websites and again give it the thumbs up (or down), quickly enough a page can go from having 10 or 20 hits to having 20,000 plus in a day. As with all social networking, there is very real, hard work involved in building up your profile, developing a reputation as a community member and contributing meaningful content to the particular community.
Social Networking Services
You’ll have no doubt heard about the unexpected explosion of the ‘micro-blogging’ tool, Twitter, but you may have wondered just how it could benefit your business, the answer is remarkably well if you know what you are doing. Computer company Dell have almost half a million followers who benefit from the hardware giant regularly dishing out special offers on new and reconditioned systems whilst Starbucks use the social networking platform to involve their customers by treating Twitter as an open forum where they put out news, new releases and promotions and respond to feedback from their hundreds of thousands of active followers.
The beauty of a tool like Twitter is that communication with your customers is instantaneous, as is the opportunity to gauge feedback, but it’s not just your marketing that can benefit from instant communication to multiple users, productivity, internal communications and business development can all be strengthened by taking advantage of the business benefits of Twitter. Tracking colleagues whereabouts, opinions and schedules can easily be achieved by an entire team who use Twitter as their main communication device, links to useful and interesting web articles can easily be shared across your micro-community, just think about how many one sentence emails you send on a daily basis. From a networking and learning perspective, interesting figures from within your business sector will be increasingly using Twitter and can be followed for their valued opinion, you could even use the community, in a similar way to LinkedIn, to find potential clients and partnership opportunities, all this whilst, of course, telling everyone what you had for lunch and what you’re watching on TV tonight!
Touching quickly on the much maligned social networking ‘friend’ sites, creating accounts on websites such as Facebook can ensure that you have a presence in a community where so many people spend so much time and dependent upon the nature of your business there is an infinite scope on the potential of marketing to users of ‘friend’ websites, just look at the revolutionary effect MySpace has had on the music industry. Creating a ‘page’ on Facebook is another way to gauge public opinion on you, your company or your product, other Facebook users can become a ‘fan’ and leave comments to any posts you make. Be careful however, you cannot moderate feedback in these environments, ensure you have a popular product or a thick skin, the price to pay for gaining such massive, wide-spread and free publicity is exposure to the harsh truth of public opinion.
User Generated Content
User generated content can also be embraced into your business model, setting up a channel on video sites such as YouTube and becoming an active member of their communities can see hundreds of thousands of users passing through your interactive content, we’ll leave the benefits of viral marketing for another post altogether, but needless to say in this day and age its impact upon your business can be monumental.
Industry specific user generated content portals such as TripAdvisor, which allows travelers to leave honest reviews and recommendations on hotels, destinations and activities (similar sites cover restaurants, tradespeople and electronics to name but a few), can be as negative as they are positive but it is essential that you create an account and get involved, responding to feedback is much more beneficial for your companies image than letting the public have their voice and keeping yourself out of the loop. Do some research on your ‘webutation’ and use all the tools you can to enhance your online reputation, it’s certainly not unknown for companies to create ‘fictional customers’ who are in love with their products and want to tell the world about how sensational they are, but beware of being ‘too clever’, online communities are a savvy bunch and over-egging the mix can quickly turn into a surefire PR disaster.
So what next?
In order to successfully achieve your goals it is essential that first and foremost you know your customers and in particular understand what Web 2.0 applications would work for them and decide which technologies you can realistically maintain, merely setting up an account and letting it drift away will have the same detrimental effect as out-of-date ‘latest news’ on your website.
Of course once you have geared your business up to embrace the many benefits of Web 2.0 you will need to keep one eye on the dawn of Web 3.0 where the advent of mobile applications and intelligent, personalised search engines and browsers will allow users to simple ask questions such as “where shall I eat”, your personal likes and dislikes along with your current location will be taken into account before your mobile device quickly fires a list of personalised recommendations at you. For any of you with an iPhone you’ll already know that this is a reality not so far away, so ensuring that your business is ahead of the game in the technology you embrace will become an increasingly important constituent of your overall business strategy.
We’ve really just touched the surface of what cutting-edge internet technologies can do for your business, Worldspan Group offer a full range of services and consulting on all elements of web and interactive technologies and would happily discuss your strategy and goals with you and your business, contact us for more information.