Web 2.0 – what does it mean for your business?
Web 2.0 and particularly Social Media are hot topics at the moment and we are finding clients are asking us how they can use it to enhance their marketing. So we thought we would put together a short overview along with some useful tips for implementing in your business.
Let us first define Web 2.0 – ‘Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of web development and design which facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications such as social networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashup and folksonomies.’ (Definition by Wikipedia, itself part of Web 2.0)
Social Media
The term social media covers media which is created by people in text, audio and video formats and is shared and distributed over the web. The most well known and well used are:
Blogs
You are on a blog now! Came from the term web log and is a publishing website that provides commentary and news on particular subjects and visitors can leave comments. Click for more information on business blogs.
Podcasts
Podcasts are audio broadcasts that can be created and shared online often on a blog or web site.
Video Blogs
As you might expect these are blogs that have video posts instead of written content. Like a written blog visitors are encouraged to leave their comments about the ‘vlog.’
RSS
Short for Really Simple Syndication, RSS is a web feed format that when visitors subscribe they will be automatically informed of updates to a web site or blog
Social Networks
There are hundreds of social networks out there on the web, in fact I have unearthed many I hadn’t heard of before whilst carrying out my research for this article. The most well known and well used are:
Facebook
Very popular social networking site and the 5th most trafficked site worldwide with 60 plus million users. The majority of users are under the age of 25 but its fastest growing demographic are those that admit to being over 25. You can create a profile for yourself and/or your business and share personal and business information.
MySpace
The largest membership of any social networking site currently with over 300 million members ranging across a wide spectrum of ages. MySpace isn’t viewed as a “professional” social network such as members do with LinkedIn or, to a lesser extent, Facebook.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is aimed at the business professional who want to network with other professionals and with possible employers and has over 43 million members in over 200 countries.
Ning
Ning offers an easy-to-use technology platform that lets you quickly and easily create your own social network. This site is growing fast with over 1.3 million Ning social networks created and more than 30 million registered members.
Other Social Networking Sites
The networks already mentioned draw on members from all social backgrounds but there are some sites that focus on a specific audience eg Hi5 is popular among Latin Americans and BlackPlanet focuses on African Americans.
Collaborative and Community Tools
Collaborative and community tools allow your customers and partners to create content with you. They are excellent ways to establish and share knowledge and can help strengthen communication between all parties.
Wikis
Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites and collect information from a large group of people. Wikipedia uses wikes to create its entries.
Forums
An internet forum or message board is an online discussion site and is the online equivalent of a traditional bulletin board. A forum allows members to initiate and participate in online conversations.
E-Commerce/Rating sites
A great example of this is www.amazon.com where you can buy products and you are encouraged to write reviews of the product. E-commerce sites can be effectively used in conjunction with other social media such as blogs and Facebook profiles.
Micro Media Formats
This is emerging technology and micro media formats are small “bite-sized” pieces of information that can be created and shared on your social media site, or in your social networking profile
Widgets
Widgets are codes that you add to a Web site, blog or social networking profile that pull information or media from another source and redisplay it on your blog, Take a look at Breathe’s blog where we use a widget to pull in the latest marketing news
Micro-Blogging
Micro-Blog’s allow you to send others short messages and links and can be used via your mobile phone. Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging service and enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
What can Web 2.0 and Social Media do for your business?
Connect and forge relationships with your customer
Social media provides a unique opportunity for you to listen one to one with your customers and create true dialogue. Find out what they are thinking and saying about your brand and engage in that discussion.
Build awareness and reach
The enormous reach of social media will substantially increase awareness of your business and its products and services.
Target distinct markets and demographic groups
The trick is to create awareness where your customers are online by carefully segmenting and aligning with the social channel that they use.
Test market your ideas
Use Web 2.0 and social networks to test market your ideas and gain valuable one to one feedback directly with your customers.
Manage your reputation online
You can use social networks to manage your reputation online but beware it is very important to be completely transparent and honest in your communications.
Some useful tips
- Don’t launch straight into Web 2.0
- Research and understand the differences between each channel
- Investigate the demographics of each social channel
- Create a strategy with goals and objectives
- Allocate enough time and resource
- Make your content engaging and encourage feedback don’t just regurgitate your sales messages
Have you used Web 2.0 and social media successfully? Please post a comment and share this information with our blog visitors.
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microblogging is really useful when you want to broadcast short updates. i am still leaning towards traditional blogging.`’.