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Sailing Off the Edge of the Blogosphere
From my perspective, the momentum for embracing Web 2.0 technologies and social media tools is accelerating dramatically. Just as Dion Hinchcliffe predicted in The state of Enterprise 2.0 a year ago, the use of blogging, wikis and social networks has become second nature for many corporate cultures like Dell and Sun Microsystems. As the Great Explorers, these companies were among the first to sail off the edge of the blogosphere and, yet, they returned to talk about it! I believe that the survival of the early adopters has now inspired other companies to be brave and engage in Enterprises 2.0 strategies.
The explorers also returned with good news to report! In the new Web 2.0 world, blogs create a positive impact on customer service and an ability to openly examine and deal with internal issues. Wikis are just plain efficient and social networks offer the leverage of crowd contact.
Our savvy client, Mercury Mambo, an Hispanic marketing team with Mambo flair, understands the opportunities that can be gained from sharing their deep expertise on the web through social media tools. While faced with exploring a corporate blog strategy, Matt Reyes shared a Forrester report with me that provided solid advice for proceeding with social media strategies.
The article reminds us to clarify your target audience’s social media habits and interests before building a strategy. Then your work will play to their current interests. Seems like a V8 moment, but no one wants to spend hours building a social media machine and then feeding it … only to find that no one is interested in it.
Accustomed to pushing information out, B2B marketers are going to have to get used to listening to what the communities want to pull in. As Laura Ramos of Forrester phrases it, “Social media use is about creating dialog and relationships with a community. The community says what is important, not the marketing folks.”
It’s part of the magic behind Bazaarvoice’s success. The company sets up rating systems that let consumers voice their preferences and companies learn from the consumer data. Bazaarvoice empowers companies to listen to the consumer opinion that is already there; it does not try to go in and push an agenda.
Listening has always been an important part of the sales process. Figuring out what consumers want and filling the need – this is the posture that companies will need to get comfortable with as they adapt to the new rules of doing business in an Enterprise 2.0 world.
