Make a Web 2.0 resolution

By Lynda Rathbone

It’s time to stop talking about Web 2.0 and take action. If your organisation made a resolution for 2007, I hope it was to do just that.

After all, Time magazine has proudly declared that this year’s ‘Person of the Year’ is… you. Yes, you.

If you haven’t seen the cover of the issue of Time in question, it features a picture of a video player in a computer monitor, printed on shiny silver paper so that the reader sees their own reflection. “You control the information age. Welcome to your world,” the cover line reads.

What? You mean I control YouTube, bought by Google for $1.65bn? I’m in charge of MySpace – the one that Rupert Murdoch now owns? What about Flickr – isn’t that part of Yahoo! now? Well, happy days. Where’s my spot on the board and what’s my strike price? I must be worth a fortune!

Actually, I beg to differ with Time’s message. Yes, Web 2.0 sites are being used by millions – even billions – of people around the world to post pictures, messages, videos and audio files. Yes, they were bought by big companies so they could leverage the traffic, the eyeballs and the user data to sell advertising. Yes, we’re talking about big numbers – but no, you are not in control. How could you be?

The companies that operate these sites are using their mega-publishing empires to propagate them, and then mine every piece of that data that they generate and sell it to make themselves even more powerful.

So what does Web 2.0 really mean to you, the business leader or website manager? I believe the message is: ‘Don’t fight the power, harness it.’

I have written several columns over the last 18 months about what a great opportunity these sites are for organisations to reach target audiences that I believe would otherwise be largely unknown to them or out of their reach. Most organisations have a website, but not necessarily a web strategy. They are still focused on their URL [uniform resource locator] , their site, their content. Why? Take a hint from the big boys – and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! That means looking at few things:

1. Traffic

Web 2.0 sites are out there with oodles of users. You no longer have to work tirelessly to lure visitors to your site – why not try to funnel the right traffic from these sites to yours or, better yet, place targeted content this traffic can see? Take the time to understand where your target audiences are going on the web and see how you can grab some of these eyeballs and show them what you have to offer. Users of these sites are no longer so naïve as to think that it’s all user-generated. They are looking for quality information and if they start by watching a video on YouTube and end up on your site finding what they need, then great.

2. Content

These oodles of users create terabytes of content. What a goldmine! Any smart website owner today will be thinking about how to intelligently participate in these communities and place content there themselves, as a member of the community with a genuine interest in fostering it and growing it as well.

For example, if I’m a niche publisher of speciality content about bird watching in Great Britain and I have a website that offers great videos, a blog for enthusiasts and events you can attend in your area, RSS [really simple syndication] feeds from videos for sale and excerpts from books you can buy, why not start seeking out the communities on the web for birdwatchers and nature enthusiasts and begin to participate in those? You can offer quality content and let folks know your site has more where that came from. You have a genuine interest in bird-watching and so do they – there’s no harm in pointing out you have a site they may want to join or download from, is there?

3. Networks

There has never been a greater opportunity to harness the power of networking than the Web 2.0 revolution. Never before have more connections been made than through sites like MySpace and Bebo and others who’s primary purpose is to help people ‘make friends’ and connect online. Again, what a fantastic opportunity. With everyone from teens to so-called ‘silver surfers’ getting in on the act, the audiences have never been so self-selected or so specialist, so get in there and start researching and networking with them.

Most organisations spend lots of time and money defining their target consumers/audiences and it’s never been easier to just look them up online and find out what the hot topics are by reading the blogs and seeing what content they go to. Then, you can either post your own there or tailor yours to fit the current trends on your own site. Your site will look up-to-date and you can even get basic help with things like metadata and vocabulary so when users search the web using this language your site will be in the top of the results.

This has played out in spades for me as a music enthusiast. I put up my MySpace page about eight months ago and have connected with others who like the same kind of music I do, learned about nights out and gigs going on around London and even been hired by folks previously unknown to me to play at their events. Brilliant! I keep tailoring my tags so that I can help users to find my page and now know how to search more intelligently for what I like.

4. Advertising

Finally, in 2007, if all else goes pear-shaped in your resolution, advertise. Again, you can now be so specific where you spend that your online advertising budget (no matter how small) that you can hopefully catch the attention of users and make those pay-per-clicks really count. Buying keywords is great and optimising your site to support your online advertising strategy is still critical, but to really take a page from the big boys’ bible, specialise. This is, after all, one of the main reasons Google bought YouTube and Murdoch bought MySpace. Advertising in 2007 will yield you a much better ‘bang for your buck’ than ever before just because this is the business model for most of these sites now.

They have thousands of niche audiences that are readily giving up this information and understand that the service is free if they put up with a few ads on their pages. Great! Another example: let’s say you’re running a children’s charity and you want to attract young people to your site. Why not spend a bit of advertising money on the teen networking sites and make your advertising a bit ‘funkier’ to fit in with the ‘look-and-feel’ of the pages? Play up the events you have in their area or the music you’re selling on your site and subtly start increasing your brand awareness at the same time. Teens care – they just need to be communicated to in their own language and their own style. And you have about a million pages and lots of sites to study this behaviour – for free – in order to get the language and style right. If nothing else, these sites provide an amazing research opportunity – again, all for free.

But with all this said, please don’t get me wrong. Blatant corporate promotion, spamming or other intrusive and non-community-style behaviour will be the fastest way to get blacklisted from these sites. Intelligent, participatory and value-added information, however, will always be welcome.

The earliest community sites on the web set the precedent long ago. People who are interested in one particular topic are seeking it out by self-identifying and labelling themselves and their content (tagging in the 2.0 world) in the hope of finding out more about their niche interest and others who share it.

So let’s get in there with the big guns in 2007. They’re giving us a great gift by pumping cash into these sites and providing us with fantastic opportunities to transform our websites from mere URLs to actual web presences and web strategies.

As always, I’d love to hear from you on this or any other topic at: lynda@foursquaremedia.net.