Martin De Saulles - Web Services in the Real World

What every business needs to know about Web 2.0 and social media

2010-07-28T11:00:09Z

I've been working on developing a training programme for companies that want to know more about the relevance of Web 2.0 and social media to their businesses. Their's a lot of confusion out there about whether these new services really offer anything that can help with marketing, communication and collaboration or if it is just hype. A recent article in Fast Company backs this up:

"I have a number of friends who own or operate small to medium-sized businesses. The number one question I get from them is how to make online marketing work for their businesses. There seems to be quite a bit of pent up need for online marketing help by SMBs..... The problem is there is also a lot of noise. Part of the problem is there is no barrier to entry in the online marketing consulting industry. All one has to do is put up a Web site. So what's an SMB to do?"

Hopefully, my series of 5 half day sessions at the University of Brighton will go some way to cutting through this confusion. The programme for the course is:

Session 1 – Tuesday 16 November
Why Web 2.0 / Social Media is relevant to your business

What is Web 2.0 and social media?
How are other businesses using them and with what success?
What are some of the issues you should be thinking about in this space?

Session 2 – Tuesday 23 November
Marketing your business on the web

How can you improve your Google search rankings?
How can you use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube to market your company?
How do you advertise on Google?

Session 3 – Tuesday 30 November
Web tools for collaborative working

How are other companies moving beyond email to communicate and share information?
What is cloud computing and I should I be using it?
What is a wiki and do I need one?

Session 4 – Tuesday 7 December
Dealing with web designers and search engine consultants

What can I do myself and when do I need an expert?
How much will these experts cost?
What questions should I be asking them?

Session 5 – Tuesday 14 December
Monitoring the effectiveness of your web strategy

I’ve got a website but who is visiting it?
What are people saying about my company on the web?
How can I improve my web strategy?

If you want to know more or make a booking, click HERE or email me on mrd@brighton.ac.uk

Is this really blogging?

2010-07-23T08:56:14Z

The best business blogs are those that have a personal feel to them where you get to know the person or people behind the posts. Some good examples that I regularly read are A VC, The Obvious? andBuzzMachine. I trust the authors of those blogs and feel they believe in what they write.

I'm sure ghost writing services for blogs have been around as long as blogs have existed and no doubt do a lot to help with the SEO of corporate web sites. However, in the long term I think it will become a zero-sum game as content is created purely to get more Google juice and not to express the thoughts and reflections of the people really running the business. Emotional connections with an author and, by extension, their company will ultimately have more value than another cynical top ten list of this or that.

Know your cloud from your elbow

2010-07-22T08:58:33Z

Cloud computing, grid computing, utility computing, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), public cloud, hybrid cloud.

Confused?

I was until I read this excellent post from Kate Craig-Wood who puts it all in context. I thought I understood it all but then I made the mistake of watching this video from explainingcomputers.com - the presenter introduced a new phrase Hardware as a Service (HaaS) - dohhhh! I think HaaS is what Kate calls utility computing.

And techies wonder why people get confused by all this stuff.

Enterprise 2.0 - a view from the frontline

2010-07-19T07:42:24Z

Last week Ulrike Reinhard, publisher of the WhoIs blog, interviewed Lee Bryant from Headshift about the impact that new social networking tools are having on the enterprise. Headshift is doing a lot of work in this area, helping organisations with the deployment of these tools and seeing the challenges involved as old ways of collaborating, communicating and sharing information meet some of the new ways. Lee's comments are worth listening to as he is not prone to hyperbole but puts forward some reasoned and sensible suggestions for where the workplace might be heading. You can watch the video interview (35 minutes) below but some of the main points I've taken from it are:

Enterprise 2.0/social networking tools have the power to be disruptive to traditional ways of working as they start to enable natural human networks to emerge within organisations that may conflict with the established demarcations of departments;
Large companies are not going to disappear overnight but those who already have firmly established social values will make the transition to Enterprise 2.0 more easily. Lee gives the example of Unilever;
IT departments cannot be expected to do everything in terms of deploying social networking tools. They should be responsible for the platforms/plumbing but other parts of the business should be able to layer relevant applications on top as and when they are needed;
Enterprise apps need to be as intuitive and easy to use as iPhone apps;
The need for communications/PR people will not go away but their role will change from simply pushing out corporate messages to internal and external networking to help information flow.

What is the future for professional associations?

2010-07-15T08:23:23Z

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the impact that informal and virtual communities might be having on established professional bodies. I find I am getting a lot of value from the LinkedIn groups and other online communities including several run within Google Groups. The discussions that go on in these places and the ability to ask and answer questions of other members provides much of the functionality that professional bodies have traditionally offered. I see 4 key advantages that virtual communities offer over professional bodies:

They often cut across traditional barriers and link individuals from a variety of backgrounds and professions who share common interests that transcend the articles of association of bodies that may have been drawn up over 100 years ago;
They are easy to join and usually free;
Group members can be quick to respond to issues and questions - no bureaucratic committees to go through;
They tend to emerge from the grass roots to address specific issues and pursue common interests rather than from the top down. Some professional bodies give the impression (sometimes unfairly) they exist to serve the interests of their employees rather than their members.

Of course, professional associations also have their advantages such as having the resources to act as advocates for a profession, helping with the professional development of members and offering physical spaces for members to meet. Some even have legal rights conferred on them requiring membership for employment in certain professions although this might be seen as an unhealthy monopoly and not always be in the broader interests of society.

I'm not a technophile who thinks that the internet and its associated services and technologies are going to sweep away industries, organisations and practices over night. However, I do believe some radical changes are taking place in the ways people communicate, collaborate and share information. One of the key functions of professional associations is to offer a space for people to gather, share information and pursue common interests. Services like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google also offer this functionality and people are increasingly taking to them. When physical meetings are required these online tools work well in organising meet ups in cafes and bars. I see this happening a lot in Brighton where a vibrant new media industry utilises the many watering holes and community work spaces around the city. Many professional associations are also using these tools to help their members communicate with each other. However, I can imagine a time, not too far away, when members will start to question what is the value their association offers if most of the conversations are taking place on online platforms hosted somewhere else. Will it be possible to justify charging annual subscriptions of several hundred pounds to pay for buildings and employees?

What do you think?

Social media monitoring - free report

2010-07-07T08:21:22Z

Fresh networks recently released a free (requires filling in a simple form to download) report on 7 of the leading social media monitoring tools. The report is unlikely to appeal to small companies as these tools typically cost hundred of dollars a month and sometimes more to use. However, for the larger organisation that has brands they wish to monitor online then it is a good starting point. The chances are this job would be outsourced anyway but the report would be useful as background reading prior to meeting with a digital media agency. One of the key findings of the research is that automated sentiment analysis still has some way to go before it can be relied upon.

"Sentiment is more nuanced than a single number and using an automated tool to assess how people feel puts too much faith in the today‟s software. The diagram on the right shows a typical result – the average sentiment tends heavily towards a neutral classification. We don‟t believe that the tools on the market have nailed sentiment analysis yet. The tools can be extremely valuable, but it is important to understand their limitations as it is to understand their capabilities."

Confusion in the social technology space

2010-07-07T07:21:10Z

This matrix from Jeremiah Owyang of the challenges facing the social technology industry does a good job of summarising the issues for developers and users of these technologies. I think point 4 - Fast moving industry creates confusion - is one of the most important. Confusion leads to poor choices being made by organisations in their selection of social technologies or, just as significant, no technology being chosen because of the fear of making the wrong choice. Jeremiah illustrates this in the brand monitoring and community platform sectors:

"The technology is innovating faster than companies and institutions can’t keep up. Furthermore, the list of choices is staggering, such as the 145 brand monitoring vendors and 125 community platforms."

Helping organisations cut through this confusion could be as big a business opportunity, at least in the short to medium term, as developing the technologies themselves.

How Google Works

2010-07-06T13:21:07Z

This flow chart from the PPC blog neatly shows how Google search works along with some interesting information about their infrastructure.

Infographic by PPC Blog

Is Google the solution to Facebook?

2010-07-05T14:28:47Z

We all know the issues with Facebook and its changing privacy settings. Facebook has gone some way to addressing these concerns but for many people, myself included, the trust has gone. Antoher problem with Facebook is the way it blurs the distinction between types of friends, contacts, colleagues etc. Basically, they are all lumped in together so that messages intended for your Facebook friends can also been seen by your Facebook colleagues. This is one of the reasons I closed my Facebook account last year - I did not feel comfortable having an online spaced co-populated by friends, old college and school acquaintances, students, colleagues and ex-colleagues. ( I recently opened a new Facebook account but only for research purposes). It's probably a sign of my age but email, LinkedIn, Twitter and the telephone seem to serve me well enough for the moment.

However, the news/rumour that Google is about to launch a Facebook competitor (Google Me?) is interesting. As is the Slideshare presentation below from Paul Adams, a UX person at Google (thanks to Katie Piatt for alerting me to this via Twitter) which describes how our social networks work in the real world and why Facebook is not sophisticated enough to deal with them. Perhaps Google Me will allow us to reflect our multi-faceted identities online. There are a number of major hurdles Google would have to overcome if it is to succeed on this front:

Facebook has approaching 500 million active users. Amongst certain demographics and in some geographies it is firmly entrenched. Will enough of these people switch to another network?
LinkedIn is the online weapon of choice for business networking. Same question as above;
Google does not have a good track record in this space. Google Wave and Google Buzz. Perhaps Gmail will be the way in as long as they don't misjudge users again as with Buzz;
Do enough people care about Facebook's privacy issues enough for them to switch? I'm not sure they do.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

DIY marketing for SMEs

2010-07-02T07:09:26Z

David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, is a great primer for any small business wanting to better understand how to harness the web as a marketing tool. He has just made this 2 page marketing planning template available for free download (it is in PDF format). The first page prompts you to answer some basic questions about your customers, your company and your products/services. Although they might seem rather obvious, the act of filling in the template forces you to think more precisely about what it is you are trying to market/sell within the context of using the web as a channel. I've just been using it for a service I'm considering launching next year and it has definitely helped to clarify my thinking.