One of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 is participation, collaboration and moderation through the use of web applications. Web 2.0 sites derive their power from the human connections and network effects from this characteristic that is made possible, and grow in effectiveness the more people use them.
While the internet essentially puts the entire world right outside your storefront door, there are challenges to selling abroad – from shipping to understanding local customs and preferences. PayPal has put together a new resource to help small businesses sell abroad called the Global Selling Guide.
Welcome to microblogging, a new form of Internet communication that has interesting business possibilities. Twitter started as a personal service, where members answered the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. While many tweets, as the messages are called, broadcast mundane inanities about snacking or napping, increasingly proponents are using Twitter to broadcast news, to promote their companies, and to establish closer relationships with clients and customers.
As a busy small business owner, you may not have had time to learn much about social networks. Or, you may think that social networking is just a way that teenagers “meet” other teenagers through the internet using applications like FaceBook or MySpace. However, many small businesses have found that social networks are a great way to get new customers and retain existing ones. According to Forrester Research (November 2008), membership levels in the leading social network sites are as follows:
Social networking web sites allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, and to meet people with similar interests. The largest social networking sites have millions of members. Common to most social networking sites is the viral nature of building contact or friend lists and sharing with them. It is an exponential process. Mary knows ten people who each know ten more people – and soon there is a network of hundreds of people communicating with one another about what is happening in their lives.
When new members join a social networking site, they provide profile information about themselves and their interests. They also have the option to join groups that have similar interests within the social networking space. For example, on MySpace there are 34 group categories, each with tens of thousands of separate groups. Many individual groups have over 10,000 members. People in the groups and forums provide information to one another about their experiences and thoughts. For a small business, the utility of social networks comes from these groups with similar interests. Here is a sample comment about a local dentist I found on a recent forum post:
“Awesome Orthodontist (name withheld)! He’s got a great staff and they all have a great sense of humor … I live downtown Dallas and it’s worth the drive”.
This type of unsolicited endorsement, read by potentially thousands of people, is worth much more than a paid ad. Social network members will trust words from people just like them more than they will believe slick advertising or yellow page listings.
This recent news story illustrates the power of social networking: “Electoral triumph built on a Web revolution”. As Barak Obama considered running for President of the United States, he had a meeting with Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook. Obama wondered if social networking could help him. “It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Andreessen recalled. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible, but we see a lot of that out here and then something clicks. He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Small business owners are very busy people, and monitoring and interacting with social networks may seem like another task on your already full plate. This is where your IT consultant can help. By setting up monitoring and tracking alerts on your system, you can optimize the time you spend on these important activities. Your IT consultant may also suggest software services that help you assess the return on your investment.
It’s almost impossible to find a company today that does not have a website that provides at least information about the company and ways to make contact. This is known as Web Technology 1.0, and it favors large businesses with significant resources to apply to their web presence. Today, meet Web 2.0, the next generation of internet-based information sharing. It’s richer and deeper in content, and broader in scope. So, what exactly is Web 2.0, and how can your small business take advantage of this new technology?
In the good old days (about four years ago), the web was comprised of sites published by companies that described their services and products – it was often nothing more than advertising. The web was flat and the information flow was one way.
Web 2.0, on the other hand, favors quality information content and supports interaction. To appreciate Web 2.0’s advances, it is helpful to understand why people use the internet. As well stated by Janice Redish in her book on writing web content that works, “People come to the internet to answer a question or get help completing a task. They want information that is easy to find and understand, is accurate, up to date, and credible.” Web 2.0 is all about content that provides real information.
Because many people now have access to broadband which supports fast downloads of data, Web 2.0 encourages expanding content types to include audio and video presentations. Finally, Web 2.0 takes advantage of links and tags. Links are websites referenced in your writing that add related content to the topic. Clicking on the link takes your visitor to the referenced site. Tags are metadata, which is data about, well, data. According to Master Media News, “A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip, etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.”
Web 2.0 can level the playing field between you and your larger competitors – those with bigger budgets. Remember: web searchers do not care if you are a large, well-established company or a small business just getting started. They simply want information and help. If you do that well, you will be perceived as credible, and you may win over a new customer.
Your website embraces Web 2.0 by offering meaningful articles about your products, the technology behind them, and by helping buyers make an informed purchase decision. This is not selling; rather, you are educating and helping. When implementing the Web 2.0 philosophy, your site provides links to other sites that may help a customer or potential customer, even if that means mentioning a competitor. You are solving the searchers’ challenges by doing some of the search work for them. You can also encourage your visitors to add comments or suggest additional links.
A powerful way to use Web 2.0 strategies is to post short, how-to videos about your products. For many people, pictures are more believable and provide better training than words. Think of the questions customers ask you, and offer video answers with the credibility of an expert.
If this all seems to be beyond your capability, ask your IT consultants to help. Your IT consultant can add interactive services to your site and help create video and audio files, as well as suggest low-cost methods to increase the quality and quantity of information on your site.
Someone asked me an interesting question over the weekend: “How do these massive web sites like Facebook, MySpace and You Tube stay afloat? Where do they make their money?” Considering You Tube was, last year, purchased for over US$2B – and at face value it’s a company that doesn’t appear to actually sell anything – it’s something that many people have probably pondered. The answer of course is advertising. Revenue generated by online advertising, and ultimately profits, is what these companies survive on. Whilst You Tube is a free online video sharing service, the company itself is in the business of selling advertising space. ONLINE advertising space, I should point out.
And the business of online advertising is a great one to be in more so now than ever before. In Australia, online advertising sales have already eclipsed the dollars spent on cinema and outdoor. If the growth continues at the current rate it won’t be long before radio and magazine advertising is also surpassed. Take in to account the recent studies showing people spend more time online than watching TV and it’s no wonder big companies are shifting their advertising dollars.
Online advertising is no longer pie-in-the-sky type of stuff. Google (you’ve heard of them, right?) very recently announced an annual turnover of US$1.58 billion. Virtually 100% of this was generated from online advertising – adverts that appear on search results pages, or third party websites displaying adverts that have been “outsourced” by Google. On these revenues, they closed out a tidy net profit of US$381 million. That’s almost $400 million profit by selling online advertising space – proof enough for me that online is a powerful advertising medium (and online advertising can be a powerful business plan!).
So that’s how these websites make money. Traditional advertising mediums are up against it when you consider You Tube has recently ticked over 70 million registered users. As an advertiser, being able to reach a global audience of 70 million is fairly appealing, I would imagine.
The Internet bubble may have burst 7 years ago, but it’s definitely inflated again – this time encased by a thicker skin – and with a lot more than hot air to fill it up. Finally the Internet is old enough to have a history, and history teaches us the greatest lessons of all.
Evolve IT work with companies to ultimately change them to IT visionary businesses. That is, they stop thinking about what IT costs them, and start thinking about how technology can increase their bottom line. This is our goal – to help small and medium business clients view technology as a strategic asset.
We like to put big business thinking in to small business practice. In the past we’ve found SMBs assume they aren’t worthy of some of the excellent technology solutions available to their larger counterparts. We take these thoughts and turn them on their head to deliver big business solutions on a small business scale. Why should SMBs miss out on all the fun of: Mobile email technology; Client extranets, Company web portals; Work flow and document control solutions; Multi-branch active directory replication; Remote access; Disaster recovery and backup; Security policy development and enforcement; CRM solutions; and more!
SMBs need not think that these types of technologies aren’t accessible to them – because when our clients deal with us we open up a whole new world of technology value to them. We love hearing the words “seriously, we can do that?!” Yes, with Evolve IT as a strategic technology partner, you can do that!
“Oh, we are in the SMB market” is a term thrown around too loosely at schmoozie IT luncheons. Evolve IT isn’t just in the SMB market – we develop and grow it. We help the “small” become the “medium”. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner & Microsoft Small Business Specialist we’ve show that we’re willing to commit to the SMB market. How many IT companies who are “in the SMB market” can actually back it up with anything?
We’re serious about small business because we are a small business. We have a true small business background and have grown and become successful by implementing our own strategies diligently and proficiently, expanding our own business while doing the same with many clients. We practice what we preach. In 1997 our company had two full time staff and worked out of a modest but small office. In 2007 we have modern offices in two states, service clients nationally and have over twenty staff. We build our own business using the same technology solutions that we sell – because we know they’re successful.
Recently we’ve had some terrific success in turning clients from being technology wary to technology visionary companies: A technical services company with over ten staff were using Windows 95, a peer to peer network and a shared 56k dial-up internet connection only twelve months ago. They came to us with the question “should we be making better use of technology?” Our answer was – of course! It was great to work with a business who were open to seeing what technology could do for them – and once they found out, they went for it full steam ahead. That same company now utilises Windows Small Business Server 2003, XP/Vista workstations and Microsoft Office to use email and calendaring, a company intranet, remote access for staff, mobile email for sales people on the go and other functionality. We’ve helped this company become IT visionary – and will continue our partnership with them to develop and implement their IT strategy.
Examples like this are not rare – we could go on about the Landscape Architecture company that we’ve helped to conquer the vast expanses of WA by implementing a multi-branch VPN and active directory rollout. But we don’t want to brag.
The point to reiterate is this: Selling PCs to a company with twenty staff does not make an expert in the SMB space. But actually participating in developing that market – and having the certifications and qualifications to back it up – that’s worth something. It’s worth seriously considering Evolve IT as your strategic technology business partner.
A client that’s become a good friend of mine is embarking on a fantastic adventure – he’s committed to building $1million in tangible assets in 12 months! That might not sound difficult to some, but considering he’s 24, around $20k in debt and has just pulled the plug on his full time job to pursue the $1M project, this is no mean feat.
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