WDYWTK answers: Online Networking Tools – Intro

Bill Sims of the Nevada Small Business Development Center asked a great question (read full comment):

As you know we have been considering adding a forum to our site, for exclusive use by our clients, our “Alumni”. The purpose would be to provide a networking system so that they could share experiences, trade stories, seek assistance and advice from each other etc. Web 2.0 stuff, social networking, etc.

My own hesitation lies in the fact that I have never seen, nor participated in, a forum that seems to work out as intended. Most of them just sit there, great tools that are little used, or are often abused.

Are there better models out there, tools that are working? Or, is it simply another case of proper marketing, using all available channels, to make folks aware of the system and get them engaged in the conversation?

At the recent symposium we attended in New Orleans, Wiki’s, or the use of a system such as InCircle was suggested.

I think that your choice of tool for this problem depends on your goal. The three most common online networking solutions (Forums, Wikis, and Social Networks) are related but have different foci. They are not mutually exclusive. Just because you have a forum doesn’t mean you can’t enhance it with a Wiki etc.

If your goal is to create a knowledge base for alumni to tap into then I would go with a Wiki which is better designed to organize knowledge based information. This will need to be heavily moderated to prevent bad data.

If your goal is to share experiences, trade stories, seek assistance and advice from other alumni then I would go with a forum which is designed to promote threaded conversations, feedback, and advice. It can be harder to mine for information and is easily abused – the squeaky wheel can hijack conversations of value – so it to will need to be heavily moderated.

If your goal is to provide current students and alumni an online network to promote themselves or their businesses and possibly give them an ‘in’ into other industries –then a social networking service is the way to go.

One or more of these will accomplish what you want – all three have the high possibly of becoming, as you said, great tools that are little used, or are often abused. Again you hit the nail on the head – in order for them to succeed you must get your alumni engaged in the conversation and then be patient until your forum, wiki, or network gains momentum.

I’ll create five mini posts on this subject:

• What is a wiki? and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
• What is a forum? and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
• What is a social network? and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
• How do you get your audience engaged in online tools?
• What are the perils of user submitted content?

WDYWTK answers: A new category

I really like the idea of having a “What Do You Want To Know?” (WDYWTK) category. I asked for questions and I got them. However, if I reply to every comment under the post What Do You Want To Know?,  the responses can get buried, so some questions deserve their own posts or series of posts.

All the answers to questions will be pretitled ‘WDYWTK answers:’ so you know what they relate to. I will also include a post back to the original comment.

What do you want to know?

I want to hear from you.

I always have a lot of ideas for posts – it’s just a matter of getting to them. If you are one of the five people who read this blog (thank you) you probably have a good idea of the subject matter and focus. If not, please let me know.

I especially want to know if I’m leaving something out. Is there something you’d like me to research, weigh in on, or explain? Leave a comment to this post or fill out my contact form.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Happy Thanksgiving

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What is web 2.0?

I’ve done several posts on this website that mention or reference the idea of web 2.0. I have realized that I need to define what I mean by web 2.0.

Web 2.0 was first coined by Tim O’Reilly as a way to talk about emerging web technologies (post dot-bomb bust). You can read his synopsis of evolution of the term here. Warning: there are a lot of buzzwords on this page that really are part of the larger picture but off the point – i.e. radical trust, radical decentralization, etc. Read the whole thing, and then think about each of the pieces – or read the rest of this post where I boil it down.

Web 2.0 is an idea in flux. Many have dismissed it as a Marketing Buzzword (which it is when it’s used by Marketers who don’t understand what it means – and there are a lot of them out there). Others simply feel that it is an oversimplification – a pointless pigeon-holing of trends in web development and use.

I think Tim has something (and a lot of other people agree). To me, web 2.0 is an idea about how the web is enabling the sharing of ideas and the creation of dialogues.

The important characteristics of web 2.0 technologies are:

1. Service – Websites that act like applications or services – think Writely (now Google docs and spreadsheets, CogMap, or SalesForce.com
2. Simplification – User processes that are easy to sign up for, simple to implement, and easy to invite others – think MySpace, Feedburner, or Campfire.
3. Open Data – Data that is entered once and used in a variety of forms and formats. Data easily shared – think RSS, Google maps API, and Flickr.
4. Sharing – Individual experience and data populates communities that influence individual experience. A cycle of information – think Digg, the Wikipedia, and del.icio.us.

So that’s the 20,000 foot overview. What does it mean to you?

It means that there are more and more tools out in the great web beyond that will allow you to leverage those four ideas on your own website, with your ideas, using your data. Blogs, wikis, RSS, and social bookmarking are all easy to setup – but how do you integrate them with your current business process? with your website? with your in-house web team? That’s the crux of the web design and web development processes. Now that you understand the high level overview, you can talk to your web development team about taking things to the next level.

Live in the real world

I was reading an article posted on an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) website called The Value of Offline Publicity (Warning: that site is so busy with information, buttons, ads, and banners you might become disoriented). I enjoyed the article for one main reason – it was not your usual SEO topic. The author talks about your website being an extension of you or your company and thus what you do can have profound impact on your site.

He has a point.

I felt his methods concentrated on making your business into a ‘cult of personality’ where the business is an extension of the person (his article makes the assumption that most sites are one person operations – and in the world of knowledge blogging that is the truth). I’ll admit that I think his ideas are very effective – I have promotional strategies very similar to several of his bullet points – but I think that his six tips are just the tip of the iceberg. What he is talking about with a couple examples is a whole paradigm of thinking. It’s the idea that your PR and marketing is all tied together. Each piece of your marketing feeds each other piece.

Too often businesses cut their website and online strategy off from the real world. In SEO circles this is especially true, SEO tends to gets really geeky – it likes to live completely in the head. Marketing needs to be a whole body – what you do online effects the real world and vice versa – and with a little planning you can nudge things in the right direction and sometimes get the perfect storm – buzz synergy that feeds on itself.

I always tell clients – what you talk about to your clients in person, you need to talk about online. What you do in your business you need to talk about online. What you are doing online you need to talk up to your clients. If you don’t want to do this – chances are something isn’t going well in the business or you are trying to be something you are not either in reality or virtual reality.

What good is a brochure without a web address on it? or a website that never talks about print publications? The idea is to have one voice – just because you cross into a different medium doesn’t mean your voice changes. How you say things will change – what you are saying won’t. If it does you have a dangerous disconnect that will disorient your customers.

Now by all means follow his advice – become famous – just remember that all your agents (print, pr, tv, radio, web) need to talk about what you are famous for – and they need to talk up each other as well.

Anyone can Blog

I went to a presentation about blogging a couple months ago and I heard this statement, “Anyone can Blog – it’s easy!” This instantly caught the audience’s complete attention. Blogging’s easy? Blogging is hot! and blogging is the latest, greatest thing in online marketing! get yours today! Okay – the feel in the room wasn’t that frenzied, I’ll admit, but the spark of it was there.

I wish I agreed.

Blogging is hot. Its a great online marketing tool. If you are reading this then my point is proven. Blogging is easy -kind of. Blogging is easy to set up, its easy to get started, but it is really hard to do correctly, and even harder to maintain.

A blog isn’t any different than a website. A blog is an idea that is executed by various different types of code, products, vendors, etc. When you have a blog you have the idea of consistent portable content that people can respond to right now – that’s it. It’s not Wordpress, its not Livejournal, its not Moveable Type – those are all mechanisms for executing your idea.

Those mechanisms are really easy to set up but harder to integrate into your traditional website effectively.

Most blogs have no value and fail faster than a small business. Why? They don’t have a plan.

Blogs needs regular content. They need a focused theme. The need a schedule for writers to post to.

Without focus, your business blog becomes just rambling and you don’t want to ramble to your clients to you? Your client doesn’t need to know about your dog, or your issues with in-laws, or how hard it is for you to deal with them. Blogs can be dangerous territory.

Without regular posting you blog withers and dies. There is no reason to revisit a blog whose content never changes – it’s like the business newsletter that always has the same three headlines – it becomes junk mail.

If you think a blog fits creatively into your business or your businesses’ marketing strategy then write up a mission statement, a growth plan, and a schedule of posting. Then sit down with your team – even if it is only you – and brainstorm the first dozen posts. Only then is it time to go look into WordPress or LiveJournal and get your blog set up.

Editing

Okay, I must confess, I don’t edit my posts for typos. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you may have noticed. Sorry if this fact impedes your reading…but I am much better off waiting for my wife, Erin, to do it. She’s a proofer at heart, but she’s pretty busy, so she’ll probably only edit me once every couple weeks or so.

So, please note that as of now, everything here is shiny and clean. But I make no claims on future posts until she’s had a look. (Oh, and she proofs all my client sites before launch, by the way.) A big thank you to Erin for all her time and effort.

Becoming Part of the Dialogue

I finally joined Technorati and FeedBurner today.

Basic Do-It-Yourself Tutorial

I’ve completed the first draft of my build your own website basics.

All the people out there who want to try their hand at web development can now be pointed in the right direction.

I’m also going to create a web 2.0 technologies primer as a companion piece.