Are you keeping up with where your target market is to be found?
A good friend of mine Neil posted on his blog at www.neilcocker.co.uk today about Bebo, and its development since its aquisition by AOL. His point was that since the takeover (all $850m of it), it has failed to grow at all, in terms of members, and he wondered exactly what AOL were doing with it. I was reminded of a similar situation closer to home- around 2000, friendsreunited was the UK’s social network darling; everyone I know was on it, and in fact there was a time when it was constantly in the news for various controversies, usually to do with romantic flames being rekindled, or exes getting revenge. It too was initially started by a small team, and acquired by a corporate for a large amount of money (ITV bought it for £120m in 2005). The effect on that site has been even more marked, at least anecdotally. While the likes of Facebook and Bebo developed the social networking paradigm to cater to an increasingly sophisticated and global audience, friendsreunited trailed behind, and although their traffic has increased to record levels since a recent relaunch which included many of the features expected by users of web 2.0 social networking sites (link), I cannot but help wonder how it could have been if ITV had moved faster. I’m convinced that it is the nature of ownership of the likes of Facebook, and the initial husband and wife team at friendsreunited that drives their success, and this passion and ability to move fast are lost on the huge corporates.
What I think this means for business is that you have to be ahead of the curve. However much your marketing department think they know online, and understand SN, there’s always something around the corner that is bigger and better, and the guerilla nature of these new sites means that only those with their fingers at the bleeding edge can identify exactly where your efforts, and most importantly your spend should be going. Sites like friendsreunited and Bebo still have their place in an integrated SN campaign. But where will they be in a year’s time? More importantly, will Facebook still be #1 in a year’s time? Or is there a niche up and coming SN that will reward insider knowledge with a higher return on investment, and a more credible campaign?
Read MoreLinkedIn enter the social network application space
I’ve always been mindful of the fact that though Linkedin has great potential as a professional networking tool, it’s never been quite fully-featured enough to take it from a personal showcase hooked up to a directory of contacts. It’s never been a destination for me, and while I maintain a profile on there, and have had the odd contact from times past, it’s not a resource I check on a daily basis. Now I get word that LinkedIn are adding application support to their offering- a no brainer seeing as it’s exactly this move which propelled Facebook into the all powerful network it is today. As you might imagine, the LinkedIn apps are of rather more of a serious nature, and it appears limited right now to selected partners, so we get online file storage courtesy of Box.net, and an app to allow you to share your current reading material via Amazon. Before Facebook became a marketplace for various useless viral applications (Zombies, Super pokes etc) I had assumed it would do the same- though thinking back I didn’t consider the demographic and the motivation for these apps (ie CPA/CPC ad impressions). LinkedIn isn’t free, so there’s not the same considerations, and by controlling the apps, LinkedIn will be getting an revenue stream from the Amazon affiliate system and (one assumes) the paid versions of other apps.
I see this as a smart move by LinkedIn. By maintaining control of the apps, they make sure they remain of a high quality and relevant to their users. More interaction with the site equals more page impressions, along with a new revenue stream. It’s certainly something I’ll be looking into in much more detail; if I can inspire others to look at my profile and create genuine new contacts while enjoying the site more than a simple contact manager then I’ll certainly be spending more time on it. I’ll post with my findings soon
Read MoreFacebook and working from home- can they co-exist?
The way I have structured my business means that I can work from anywhere and at any time, so long as I have a web connection. Everything from my CRM (via Highrise) to project management (Basecamp), even my accounts package, is all online. I log into my VOIP, my 0845 number is active and I’m ready for business. Right now I mostly work from home, and when I started my business I began to track my time. I tend to spend a lot of spare time on the web anyway, and work and social tend to get mixed together. It’s really easy to get chatting to someone, or check Facebook now and again, or get on a load of random forums. I started to find it quite a struggle not to get distracted, and simply demarcating the time didn’t work for me. All that ended up happening was that I’d be in this work/social blend all day and all evening.
The key for me in the end was simple- I loaded up another browser (Flock, lovely for social networking addicts), and transfered everything personal onto that, all my bookmarks, my email, my social networking logins, all my RSS feeds (so many blogs so little time). I then crafted my orignial browser into a work powerhouse- I sorted out all my bookmarks, loaded up work-related RSS feeds and spent some time just getting the browser to feel like I was “at work”. And equally, my Flock browser has no end of stupid add-ons, fun stuff and time wasting opportunities. The simple act of doing this, and loading up the work browser during work time, and the social browser during out of work time has seen my productivity rocket. In fact I would go so far as to say that I spend less time on social networking than I did when I was employed by someone else. It’s gone a long way to separate work and play and has made me far less stressed in the process. It’s worked so well that i’ve done the same on my laptop, and have even used Foxmarks to synch my bookmarks for both browsers across each machine. Now, wherever I am, if I feel the need to chill out, I close work and open play. It’s clear to my mind that this is non-worktime, so I’m so much more inclined after a few minutes so log out, close Flock and load up work.
Simple but effective!
Read MoreCrowdsourcing
The power of collective action has been taken to a whole new level via the Web.
Crowdsourcing refers formally to the act of recruiting and calling to action a number of individuals in order to solve a central problem or perform individual tasks as part of a larger project. This can be as part of a charitable or otherwise non commercial goal, such as the many user contributed and edited articles which make up Wikipedia, or on a commercial basis- for example Amazon’s ‘Human Turk’ freelancer operation, where businesses offer out ongoing and often repetitive work on a per action basis.
The term Crowdsourcing can also be used as a consumer demand term; for example Threadless, the online t-shirt retailer, releases new designs to be purchased only when enough members of its community have voted for, and paid for that design. Either way, it seems clear that one common element of sucessful Crowdsourcing is the community and social element; commercial considerations give way to a feeling of working with others towards a single goal.
In business, you could do well to understand that not everyone is driven by profit- recognition and the feeling of having contributed to a sucessful project are often just as important to many people. Perhaps if you have a problem then why not ask your customers to help en masse?
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