3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
Web 2.0 101
I'm Collin Canright, principal at Canright & Paule, and we're here in the third installment of the Canright Speaker Series on Online Marketing to talk about one of today's web sensations--video on the web. By way of introduction, Canright & Paule is a communications consulting firm focused on marketing, sales, and technical writing. We help promote organizations through traditional and online marketing communications, we document software systems, and we produce publications. I've been involved in online communications for more than 20 years now. I started out in 1984 as a news editor on an early online venture in the Chicago area for KEYCOM Electronic Publishing. In the 80s and 90s, I wrote about the operational aspects of ecommerce before we called it that. With Canright & Paule, I managed The Journal of Electronic Commerce, a research publication, and have built both marketing and customer-relationship management websites over the past several years. Web 2.0 DefinitionWeb 2.0 to me is a term that designates a convergence of marketing techniques and communications technologies. Tim O'Reilly defined Web 2.0 as, the network as a platform. It gets better the more people use it. Creating network effects through what he calls an architecture of participation. It goes beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver a rich user and media experience. Three Key Elements Networking User or Consumer Generated Content Collaboration You'll hear me say Web 2.0 "techniques and technology" because it's really both. There are marketing trends and techniques that underlie Web 2.0 and maybe even caused the term to be coined. And there are technologies, few of which are new, that support those techniques and make the media experience much richer, both in terms of the types of media you can use to communicate over the web and, most important, the ultimate communication experience for your audiences.
3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
NetworkNetworking and connectedness are at the heart of what people are calling variously Web 2.0, the new media, online media 2.0, and other such tags. You'll hear the term social networking a lot, because it is the social networking sites that tie a lot of these techniques together, as we'll see later this evening. In the meantime, however, I want to stress that what we're talking about here is online networking, networking in a traditional sense done online, in a way that extends your ability to make contacts beyond your own geographical boundary. I haven't looked into the term "social networking" as applied to web communities, but I suspect that the adoption of the term was no accident. There are a number of academics who study online search and whose works form some of the theoretical underpinnings of Google. They also study social networking, and it turns out that social networking has a precise scientific definition: In an article "Maximizing the Spread of Influence through a Social Network," you'll read, "A social network--the graph of relationships and interactions within a group--plays a fundamental role as a medium for the spread of information, ideas, and influence among its members." If we want to understand the extent to which such ideas are adopted, we must understand how the dynamics of adoption are likely to unfold within the underlying social network." Keep that in mind as we go, because to me that's the key to all Web 2.0 techniques, no matter how they are used and in what industry. This is what gives the techniques and technologies of Web 2.0 their power. It points on their role in generating a "tipping point". MarketingUser Generated Content The conceptual glue that holds all this together, in the words of an O'Reilly writer. Marketers no longer control the relationship with customers. It's the other way around. Figure out a way to participate in a conversation in a more personal human responsive way. Conversation is the key–you must engage the customer on their terms. CollaborationThis aspect of Web 2.0 often gets short shrift, and it will here, too. We’ll show our own use of Basecamp and mention wikis, but we’ll concentrate on Web 2.0 for networking and marketing.
3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
Why Web 2.0?Generate Traffic and Monetize In the end, you generate traffic to make money, sell something, or generate leads. Advertise Make money by monetizing your blog or network. One of the main ways is through Google Adsense. In the Ning networking infrastructure, you get it for free because you agree to have relevant ads and they are hosted from Google. Bloggers want traffic so they can monetize their blogs. http://battellemedia.com/archives/003432.php Sell Product You generate traffic to sell something. Look at Amazon.com as a leading example. They use consumer-generated content, and it's that content and the engagement of their customers that's critical to selling more product. WalMart, for instance, also recently announced that it would have reviews from consumers. Amazon is also using social bookmarking. They have tried wiki's, though I've not seen much started there. It's designed to engage customers and point out other things that are relevant so they end up in the shopping cart. I know from my own experience that it works. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-GuideKabbalah/dp/1592575420/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/002-72429530220825?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188450939&sr=8-7 Generate Leads Finally, you generate traffic as a way to generate leads. This is the approach a professional services or creative firm uses. It's what we do with our newsletter. You go to our site. You read something you like. You sign up for our newsletter. At some point, you'll get a call from Christina or me. We'll ask about the newsletter and what you like, and we'll ask what made you sign up and what you're interested in. We'll work to engage you more deeply in a conversation about your communications challenges and goals–you have entered our sales cycle, and at some point you might hire us.
3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
For lead generation, content is king. It may sound self serving, but it's true. You use engaging, vibrant content to seed the viral effects of your traffic generation strategy, and it must be genuine, useful, and relevant stories, article, quotes, whatever. The more useful the content is, the more likely it will generate repeat traffic and the viral effects that build traffic. According to Ken McCarthy’s internet marketing formula, “Traffic plus conversion equals profits”. Map of the Web 2.0 Universehttp://www.informationarchitects.jp/ia-trendmap-2007v2#more-403 Podcastshttp://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2022864,00.asp Blogshttp://wordpress.com/ http://www.micropersuasion.com/ http://publishing2.com/ http://battellemedia.com/ Why Blog? http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/whyblog Five Reasons for Small Businesses to Blog Instead of Static Website http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/resources/small-business-website RSShttp://www.google.com/reader http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home Social Bookmarkinghttp://del.icio.us/ http://www.digg.com/
3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
Blog Content to Traditional Mediahttp://www.sphere.com/ http://publishing2.com/2007/06/07/publishing-20-steals-page-views-from-wallstreet-journal/ Collaborationwww.wikipedia.org http://www.basecamphq.com/ TechnologyAJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29 Mashups (Integrated Google maps is classic example) http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/embedding-google-maps.html Community/Social Communication www.twitter.com (Blog haiku, quick communication) http://www.mybloglog.com/ (Blog sharing, community) http://www.flickr.com/ (Photo sharing) http://www.micropersuasion.com/ (Ties together in a blog) Community/Social Networking www.hello-online.org (Ties techniques and technologies together in a social network) www.viewpoints.com (Chicago-based social networking sites for reviews)
3717 N. Ravenswood, Suite 215, Chicago, IL 60613 773.248.8935 | www.canrightpaule.com
MARKET, SELL, EDUCATE & INSPIRE
Businesses Starting Communitieshttp://btobonline.com//apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070813/FREE/70813048/1174/ ADCAMPAIGNS http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=tab_pro (Professional community) http://www.wrightexcellence.com/a4s.php (Community to sell services) http://wright.ning.com/profile/collincanright (My personal page on a community) http://wright.ning.com/profile/christinacanright ConclusionMy caution, however, is this: Don't expect miracles. I was at the Chicago Interactive Marketing lunch session today, and a representative from Google YouTube gave a caution I think is particularly apt. You can't just put something on the web and expect it to be viral. You have to promote your content, your site. You have to let people know what you've got, and you have to be strategic about that. There are online PR techniques we haven't talked about. Social networks like Facebook had a strategy of penetrating one college at a time. At the Wright Leadership Institute, we're starting with the existing students and will broaden the community when it's adopted internally. With our Basecamp at Canright Communications, we've spent considerable time learning to use the technology ourselves, and only now are we ready to open it up to clients. Above all, have fun. Experiment. The best advice came in from Matt Moog of Viewpoints. Get the youngest person in your firm and let them experiment.