Web 2.1- Right idea, wrong direction

So I blogged a couple days ago about Web 2.1. We are making progress in certain areas. I see others continuing to struggle to get it.

Let’s start with a couple that I am afraid do not get it. I read about the following in MediaPost this morning:

• Twing, a search site for forums
• Yidio, a search site for videos

Right idea, create micro-communities. Wrong direction, creating community around platform verticals (forums, video, whatever…) fails to focus on the customer. I may be very wrong, but is there a large enough micro-community looking for forums on any/all topics?

Instead, think verticals (or horizontals if you are visual and need to see another direction) based on micro-community by interests and affiliations.

Here are two examples of sites where I think they have it right:

• Spiceworks, a free IT tool for small and medium businesses
• Tennis.com, the online site for Tennis Magazine

Spiceworks’ micro-community is a collection of IT professionals with similar challenges, experiences, work flows, configurations, etc. Tennis.com has provided their micro-community a site with news, video, blogs, etc for the tennis enthusiast.

In each of these latter cases, the companies put a customer at the center of their micro-community strategy. The former two put a technology platform.

In the end, the customer will win.

Web 2.1- It’s not about Social Networks and Communities

Pull in the reigns, and slow that horse down. Everyone wants to talk Web 3.0. Before we get ahead of ourselves, can we please figure out the 2.x World.

From the people I interact with, to what I am reading, people are starting to get there. No one has yet clearly described it. So here I am to help.

You see it here first. I am coining the lingo. What we are venturing into is Web 2.1 - ‘Micro-Community’.

Web 2.1 does not take rocket science to figure out, as I did, and I am definitely not a rocket scientist (although I do know one).

It stems from physical communities and your ‘bubble’ within your current community. Take Austin, where I live. That is my community. However, most of my existence resides within my smaller ‘bubble’, my micro-community, in my section of town. Austin has the Tarrytown bubble, the Westlake bubble, the University bubble, the downtown bubble, the Lake Travis bubble, etc. Atlanta, New York, Denver, San Francisco- all the same. There are smaller micro-communities within larger communities, wherever you go.

Add to this the technology aspects:

1. Open sourcing platforms to encourage development on top of ‘platforms’
2. Decreasing costs of putting together more customized presences on the Web
3. Empowering users to create content and communities among themselves

And finally inevitable market forces--- from both sides:

• Social sites are trying desperately to figure out how to monetize their members. The smaller and more relevant the audience they can deliver (while at scale for their overall communities), the more appealing to advertisers and marketers. A company can then monetize the parts, at increasing revenue rates, while still managing costs of creating those micro-communities (heck, the smartest will let their members create and manage those micro-communities for them).
• Companies are looking to place marketing and advertising spend on-line, but want to do it wisely and with ROI. What better way than to serve your add to 10K target customers, rather than 10M eyeballs of all makes and sizes. A company should prefer to spend $100K of targeted spend, as opposed to $400K of random spend.

Wa-la…. We have Web 2.1.

Now, can someone please help stop the feminine hygiene products from being advertised on Extreme Cage-Fighting Championships?

The Short on the Long Tail

The Long Tail is all the industry rage these days. Popularized by Chris Anderson in his book of the same name, marketers have raced to embrace and use this to their advantage. Google, Yahoo and others have ‘reprogrammed’ their algorithms to exploit the Long Tail. It seems that anyone and everyone is/are talking about how this changes everything.

Blogs are reporting how the once popular ‘standard’ Google searches are showing a new order of keyword replies. Industry pundits are claiming that this changes advertising and is turning everything on its head. Small companies are out performing large companies. Standard advertising practices are no longer relevant, and large brands will be left in the dust.

Chicken Little is shouting, “The sky is falling!”

I think not.

Here is my logic:

1. With enough sample data, the long tail data too falls within the 1st or 2nd standard deviation- it is a law of statistics
2. With enough market force embracing the long tail, large and small companies alike will start using their keywords/adwords and SEO to exploit that tail—more samples to populate #1
3. Marketing basics will prevail, marketing is based on adapting to drive awareness, consideration and conversion- whatever drive those three will be used
4. We are not in 2000 all over again- this is not magic, nor rocket science

Pundits will counter, when the long tail becomes mainstream as you claim, a new one will emerge. True, and that too, if the right thing, will become a standard as well.

The evolutionary cycle holds true about 170 years later. Darwin really was a smart man.

Ours Go to 11

Anyone out there remember This is Spinal Tap. A cult classic movie. Hair bands, heavy metal lifestyle, 80’s rock. But I guess that is not the point of my blog.

The point is contained in the one scene about the amplifier that goes to 11.

Was that marketing genius, was it not understanding what other people could grasp, or was it trying to make something out of nothing? You are left to guess, if you so chose to analyze the scene… which I would presume most did not (which only proves that I really am an odd bird, but again I digress).

So how does your product or service stand up?

Does yours go to 11? Or do you just make 10 louder? Or maybe you are moving to acoustic instead?

Know What Your Customer Wants

So I was at home this morning, and my son (all 20 months of him) was pointing at babbling at the TV. I am thinking to myself, ‘he wants to watch the TV, and there is too much of that already’.

Then I realized as he played his air guitar, that he really wanted the digital music. That request I could grant.

I tried kids music, bluegrass, top 40 hits… all to no avail, as the word he does have down pat is ‘no’.

What in the end did he want? Reggae.

I knew we had listened to it in the past. I knew he liked it. But did I know that is what he wanted to hear at that time? Did I know that it was this music that would make the difference? It was about the right music, at the right time, in the right room that made the difference.

Do you know what you customer wants? When they want it? Where they want it?

You should.

Strange Bedfellows?

So now that the Microhoo merger is off the table (at least temporarily), we can get back to business as usual. Errr, or not. Does anyone remember that Yahoo and Google are going to run a trial for using Google search on Yahoo?

Is that not a strange bedfellow? Is that an ‘Art of War’ Sun-Tzu moment?

Really it is neither. It is a wise move utilizing a key strategic alliance. Being a big proponent of focusing on your core, I am also a supporter of strategic alliances.

The general assumption I work under is that even if a certain business aspect is not core to your company, it is core to some company out there. Thus taken to the logical extreme, if your company only focuses on 1 core thing, it could still cobble together a very successful enterprise by striking alliances with companies that represent all other components, where that component is ‘core’ to that business. While not realistic, the concept holds.

Companies should really take a good hard look at what their core competency is, and how they can compliment and enhance that, through strategic alliances. Sometimes, like in the Yahoo case, it requires you to ask and answer some really tough questions, challenge some notions that may be considered sacrosanct, and really swallow hard. You do not have to be best of friends to successfully work together. You just have to align people to common goals and share the vision.

Call it whatever you want; in the end these partnerships can help you accomplish some serious business goals- whether scaling costs, opening new doors to new markets, outsourcing non-core business processes…. The list goes on, and with creative thinking and a good team to help find and deliver the opportunities, you too can help change the game of your business for the better.

The Data To Support ‘Green’ Growth

As a precursor to Earth Day I blogged how companies left, right and center were embracing ‘green’ and using it in their marketing campaigns. That post was mainly about ensuring that people are aware of action v words.

This morning I read a new report from Chad White (Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council), on some data to help support the rapid growth of utilizing ‘green’ in marketing. While this is only a snippet, and only relates to e-mail campaigns on Earth Day, it is none the less telling as to the trend.

• The number of emails from retailers that mentioned Earth Day more than tripled this year compared to last year
• If you include emails that included eco-friendly messaging but didn't explicitly reference Earth Day, then the number increased more than six-fold over last year
• The percent of retailers promoting Earth Day in their emails quadrupled, increasing to 16% from only 4% in 2007

My prediction, this will again more than double next year, and post the US election this fall, we will see a significant jump as well.