B1BLOG

So you’ve heard about the tech­nolo­gies, you’ve read a few blogs, and watched some­thing hilar­i­ously funny on YouTube – but from a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive, what should you actu­ally be doing about Web 2.0? And where do you start?

Some­times it can seem as though unless you imme­di­ately launch a blog, put up a wiki, tag all your con­tent and host an uncon­fer­ence, you’re being left in the dust. But there are some rel­a­tively sim­ple things you can begin doing right now.

1: Hear the conversation

Go to Tech­no­rati and set up a watch­list to track blog men­tions of your com­pany, your prod­ucts and key team mem­bers (eg your CEO, your CIO etc). Do the same for your competitors.

2: Join the conversation

Begin to engage with those who post about your brand and mar­ket. Nom­i­nate peo­ple inter­nally who can talk pas­sion­ately (and help­fully) about the indus­try. Give them the free­dom to be themselves.

3: Cul­ti­vate advocates

Con­sider giv­ing pro­lific posters more priv­i­leged access to your com­pany. Invite them in, show them around, drink tea together. Don’t merely spin the com­pany line to them. Don’t PR them. Don’t try to place prod­uct on their blogs. Find out where they are com­ing from, get to know them bet­ter. Then as stuff hap­pens, keep the con­ver­sa­tion going with them to give your per­spec­tive on events.

4: Think community

Look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to bring groups of cus­tomers together to work with you. This might be to develop new prod­ucts and ser­vices, it could be to open new ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them, or it could be any num­ber of other ways to col­lab­o­rate. Impor­tantly, this is not a ‘sem­i­nar’ or a ‘show­case’. The best model for this is the Bar­Camp series of events and the Yahoo! Open Hack Day.

5: Bring a lit­tle 2.0 to your site

Start to look at how you can use some of the Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies on your cor­po­rate site. This could be as sim­ple as incor­po­rat­ing the Google Maps API on your con­tacts page or as com­plex as devel­op­ing an AJAX self-service con­fig­u­ra­tor to help cus­tomers get the prod­ucts that are best suited to them. There are so many use­ful tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices being devel­oped – it seems rude not to extend them to your customers.

That’s it. Of course this is not rocket sci­ence and is far from the cut­ting edge. But it’s a start and, judg­ing by some the con­ver­sa­tions I had at the Inside the bub­ble event, right now that’s what many in mar­ket­ing seem to need.

No related posts.