You can think and plan while you surf... Daniel, a friend just came back from a vacation in Turkey. The Mediterranean beaches in southern Turkey have become a big resort area. Isolated resorts like the Turkish coast and the central western coast of Mexico (Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cozumel, Mazatlan, Acapulco, Ixtapa) are a wonderful place to "get away". In business this is one of the best opportunity to think and plan. My friend didn't just vacation, he put together a whole plan for a blog and a new marketing strategy. His only rule for the vacation is not to take a laptop and not to check e-Mail (that was already taken care of). But he did take with him a few books and a list of ideas on blogs, wikis, social networking and other new interesting marketing technologies. I don't think that Daniel had a concrete idea of what he wanted to do with this material. For us techies it's a little scary to leave home without our laptop. But Daniel figured out, maybe there is a way to slow down the "doing" and "pushing forward" activities of daily work-life and think deeply about a new marketing project. If you look at the new web technologies, they tend to fall into a few categories. I would suggest to classify the technologies in terms of their format, uses, and relevancy to your needs first. This will help you put together a short outline or even a complete mock-up of the project. Here are the categories / applications:
- Blog: the most popular form of Web2.0 technology. Format: linear chronology; Uses: related articles and divided long series of articles, progressive tracking of news and trends. Relevancy: in the tech world: "Learn 'something' in 21 days". Roll out a new product, a feature per day. Interview 10 of the top applications.
- Wiki: the most popular form of organized information (WikiPedia). Format: flat organization of related information; Uses: encyclopedia, similar factual articles, division by area of interest. Relevancy: in the tech world: knowledge base with more structure than just searchable database.
- Social network: a unique application to connect groups see Linked-In Format: personal profiles or pages with connections to individuals and groups. Uses: connect individuals with similar interest like user groups, product users, or technology developers. Relevancy: just emerging in the corporate and technology world as a method to connect individual with similar interests. Linked-In seem to be the business leader, MySpace and Facebook are on the consumer side.
- File sharing, storage: deliver without sending or shipping Format: file storage with limited or open access. Uses: file and program distribution. Technical support / program upgrade. Distribution of marketing documentation without printing, shipping, and address management.
The next step Daniel started thinking of ways to use blogs, wikis, social networks, and other Web2.0 technologies in his marketing. Very quickly he realized that both blogs and social networks were a perfect use for many of his marketing material announcements. He also realized that many people in his organization wanted to contribute to running and writing on the blogs. This was also true for the social networks like MySpace and Facebook. When these applications first became popular it was not "proper" for high-tech companies to use them. Mostly because they seemed to attract more free spirit and non-business types. But Daniel realized that this is no longer true. Also he realized that there are so many serious business blogs out there that he was starting to show more of a follower attitude in the market. Already most of his small customers and many of his large customers had blogs, specially for the more customer centric tasks. The application examples, news publication and web reference stories, partner web stories including their blogs, customer blogs and other related stories could all go onto a blog and be easily maintained by the marketing staff. Actually, for the first time in a long time web publication work, design, and promotion did not have to be done by a "specialist". Some work was so specialized in the past, such as page design and database design and administration that it required outside experts to complete the work (at a very high price). Daniel realized that all these were issues that essentially STOPPED his marketing from going forward at full speed. For the first time, by not sitting in front of a keyboard or in a long meeting with all his staff he was able to gain perspective of what can be done right now and how to get started.
I hope this short story helps you in using the summer for some good thinking and planning. And don't let anyone keep you away from the surf!
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