Jon Samsel

With the rapid emergence of Web 2.0 platforms and technologies, many Fortune 500 companies are now utilizing their websites and digital media assets to create mash-ups, crowdsource, microblog, and publish data in a way that promotes, engages and influences their key constituents. They are doing this by utilizing social media applications, word of mouth communication tactics, and consumer-centric interactive experiences to mesh business goals with constituent desires. The reward for successfully navigating this next media minefield is often a stronger brand, more loyal customers, and a new type of business mindset whereby markets are conversations.

Companies who have already embraced the type of conversations enabled by digital networks seem to have several things in common. Here are 10 of them:

1. An understanding that being responsive to customers with service level agreements that know no boundaries, channel barriers or time constraints.
2. Recognition that the online experience you provide is your brand. Great first experiences, like the theoretical ripple effect of a butterfly’s wings, are the catalyst for something larger, positive, profound, and influential, that associates a company with trust.
3. Admission that honesty and transparency trumps double-talk and corporate babble-speak. In fact, it’s this real discussion (warts and all) that constituents crave.
4. Have a network of smart marketers who prompt audiences to interact because they know that will increase the likelihood that their audiences will transact.
5. Have the foresight and knowledge that customer engagement means more than launching an online discussion board, it comes organically through enabling valuable and motivating experiences at every touch point.
6. Tend to have empathetic staff who question what they do for a living and then juxtapose this against what they know their consituencies actually need from them—implementing beneficial solutions as a result.
7. An appreciation that new web analytics and measurement tools need to speak to where the visitor is going, and not merely to ‘where the puck is’
8. Acknowledgement that although user-generated content diffuses corporate governance and editorial authority in some ways, it can be leveraged to boost site credibility and improve natural search results.
9. An innate ability to harness the talents of each individual employee to share their knowledge and leverage their personal connections.
10. Realizes that effective word of mouth campaigns cannot be manufactured. They tend to be spontaneous, honest and truly viral events centered around humor, oddities, insider news, the taboo or the just plain awe-inspiring.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under E-Business, Management, Marketing, Social Media, User Experience, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.