Christmas; the wind up to a wind down

This year really has been one of monumental ups and downs. Everyone I bump into riding the lift up to the 30th floor has the shell-shocked, glazed over eyes of a survivor.

I've been reading with fascination Time magazine article "Decade from hell" with a fine twinge of regret, and awe. I think to look over the last 10 years is overwhelming, so I'm choosing now, in 2009, to hone in on the last year.

2009; A year where we finally saw the USA take on an Barack Obama, the first African American president, a year where the stockmarkets crashed below anything we've experienced before in history, and a year that saw "Black Saturday" shake Victorians to their core as quite possibly the worst ever natural disaster experienced in our country.

It's also a year where news has spread faster, thicker, wider and deeper than ever before. Facebook surged to be more popular than Google in November. Twitter took the art of publishing down to 144 characters which impressed semi-literate celebrities to start playing, and soon a collaboration between Twitter and the iphone will allow the general public to turn their phone into a credit card reader.

What has astounded me more than anything is the sheer volume of people getting connected, using the web, and creating more intricate networks.Hitwise data shows "The traffic influence of the Top 100 Social Networks has grown 28.6% in the past year compared to Search
Engines increase of 6.1%, measured by the weekly upstream visits to All Categories (the week ending 17
October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008).

This is fairly monumental considering that only 3 years ago myspace was the king of the social network space, and now, it's steadily on a decline as 'social network' of choice...

So what does this mean for someone like me, a web content manager of a corporate website? It means that we've got to pay attention and create conversations with our customers. We've had a "push- publishing" mentality for so long that I think it really takes a step back from the norm to listen and respond.

Today I was in an interesting meeting where we discussed the philosophy of giving a corporate website a 'face'. I think previously this has been used as a branding terminology to "humanise" the public facing side of a corporate site....

Now though, more than ever, we dont need glossy pictures of  "Real people" on a static website.

We actually need to bite the bullet and put REAL people out there as the face of a corporation. Dont get me wrong, I dont think a 'free-for-all' would serve anyones purpose, but I do know that the absence of a healthy conversation in any relationship spells trouble...

Our customers want to talk to a real person. It's strange seeing as over the last 5 years, IVR has become second-nature and self service websites are the norm. It still doesnt stop a disgruntled customer getting on facebook or twitter to gripe about poor service, shoddy products or the bad day they have had. The absence of acknowledgement allows the anger to grow and everyday people will inevitably question the brand and the positioning of the company.


In true "big brother" way, I know that most of the large banking, insurance, medical, energy and transport companies of Victoria are listening to these posts via social media monitors etc. But like all well-entrenched organisations, the risk of speaking out seems larger than the risk of silence.

The craziest thing though, is that each large corporation can count the "stars" they have, those little rays of light in a company that truly 'get' the offer, the product, the position, the company. It's these people we need to harness, train up in web writing and let them go to it.

If I've learnt anything at all this year, it's that after years of web trying to make things faster by removing obstacles, at the end of the day, a form is a form, but a real person on the end of a blog, a chat-room, or a forum is a powerful tool for showing that as a corporate organisation you are ready, you are available and you want to listen.

Relevance; that old chestnut.

An amazing thing has happened to me over the last month, I've become re-inspired by content, but more specifically, search and content. I should preface this with the fact that I have always had a love-hate relationship with Search, SEO, SEM.

I have in the past worked with unethical marketeers who will pad a website to within an inch of its life, just to get a good ranking in google. Thank god google, yahoo, bing (yes even BING!) have cottoned on to this and started yanking sites down the page- based on irrelevance.

So relevance- how do you get it?

Well, I've always been a great believer that web really is just another communications channel and the same old principles should apply. You have to know your audience and your message, and what it is that you want your audience to do. It's an old principle- that is slowly being turned on it's head. Like me!

We now have so much information available, and so much we want to share that we forget that web content management is not so much about what you want to push out, but more about aligning your content with what people are looking for.

We've always had to marry the needs of the business with the needs of the customer, but it's only really been in the last 2-3 years that the business is being shaped by the needs, thoughts and actions of the customer in an online environment.

Fine-tuning your content relevance comes about by researching your markets thoroughly, understanding your competitors and providing a point of differentiation. For an organisation, (like the energy company I work for) the differentiation is about positioning of products and how we conduct ourselves in the community.

Here's the thing I'm noticing though. The point of differentiation in the print, TV, radio, outdoor world can be a major pain point in web.

Internally, we've gone and named our products to be visually recognised as different.
Let's use the example of 'GreenPower'. Simple, easy, green, right?

Search engines see this as being one word. Well, it is, for us.

Relevance to users?

Well, if they have the 'smarts' or 'telepathy' to just outright type 'GreenPower' into a search engine, then they might find it. I'd give them a prize for being able to read minds.

Right now, the big-ticket items out in Energy land are all to do with "Green Energy", "Renewables", "Carbon", "Carbon-offsets", "ETS".

Imagine that your website could come unstuck by the space between two words.

I wonder how many other relationships have come unstuck by such a thing?

Thankfully, we've got a cluey webteam that understands how to implement SEO well enough to still get results, but a space between two words really can be the difference between thousands or hundreds of new interested web users.

So, I apologise for prefacing these following items with aforementioned waffling, but sometimes, all you need to do is a little research on word association to save some time and face. Oh, and help that potential customer, investor, student, blogger, tweet fanatic, you name it actually find you in this big old web world.

• Google Wonderwheel; whatever word you think you know, someone thinks it differently.
• Google local business centre; more and more people are searching by keyword and locality. If you are a business, this is a free listing with maps, youtube, images, description and testimonials. Worth checking out.
• Tianamo; this is a 3d visualisation of your search term, aggregated by Yahoo search, news and blogs. Pretty funky tool, but you'll need java 1.7 to run it.
• Pageflakes; a place to start monitoring what your key markets are doing by customising widgets such as facebook, twitter, myspace, news, RSS feeds etc to your needs. Pretty cool- and I've only just started playing with it.

Social Networking means active management

A year has passed, and so this becomes one of a plethora of dormant blogs. It's made me think- especially in this new Web 2.0 world, how much of our social networking will become stagnant, irrelevant, useless?

Working for a large corporate company, the new buzzword (for at least the last 18 months) has been "Social Networking"...and everyone wants a piece, but really, how much value can there be for a company that only wants a presence?

The underlying truth with these mediums is the same as any web presence. If you haven't got a plan, a set of objectives, and someone- yes- ONE person at least who has sole responsibility to feed it, nurture it and occasionally spank it if it's bad, then it will end up being the sulking kid in the corner. (Pretty much like this work blog!)

Social Networking takes a hell of a lot of energy, much more than your standard static website. Unlike the "push publishing" of the early 90's, you actually have to maintain an active dialogue. Let's face it, you've not only got to be active, you've got to be damned interesting!

This is great activity to do with family and friends, but how do you do it for a corporate company when you're selling a product? Do you create a community about the product, or the benefits, or the "types' of people who would like both?

It seems like a simple scenario, for example; I'm selling 'the Energy company' as a 'Green Company'. I'm not selling the energy itself, just the position.

So I'll set up a Green Energy profile in Facebook, and I'll talk about all the benefits. I might even get all twittery and start sending out bursts on how you can save money, time, perhaps go to some green events etc. Hey, I'll even get a couple of B-Grade celebs to come and post some personal tips on how to live green. That'll be cool, people will love it........Right?

WRONG. Social Networking has one thing that going for it that most other mediums in marketing don't have- it has an 'inbuilt mass-volume instant bulls**t detector".

Users know straight away (or at least with a few clicks) that a profile has been set up by a company selling "Green Energy"- so anything you endorse instantly looks like a pitch.

That's okay if you are open about it and perhaps use incentives- but if you REALLY are about branding and position, then your profile needs to be objective, removed from the company, and MOST importantly, able to take the good with the bad.

Long gone are the days of the "Web Master moderator" who goes in and deletes unfavorable comments.

Now is the time to hire yourself some subject experts, give them a brief and let them go to town.

I know it sounds mad- crazy even! It's not, it's the natural progression of "Content is King" (thanks Gerry!).

Find out what users are reading in "Green Land", get yourself some credible "Green experts", give them a framework for publishing and stand back.

If you really want to build an active community as a corporate company, you need to make a decision early on- "Do I want this branded?" or "Do I want this to work?"

My answer would be the latter, and I'm sure there are many examples of branded Corporate facebook profiles, though I have to be honest- I just cant think of one....