Brent.fm • a technology mixdown

Ok, so you’re figuring out that this whole web 2.0 thing could have some merit. I’m sure it’s still cloudy but there’s hope here. Remember, there’s reportedly still very little spending in web 2.0 compared to other things like security, seo, hardware, traditional advertising etc. Of course, not too many people have even heard of web 2.0. If you’re “iffy” on web 2.0, this article is kinda long, maybe you should stop reading now. It’s not my job to convince anyone to get on board this early. Opinion is still mixing with facts and only clients with 100% faith in my abilities are listening at this point.

Just because there’s seemingly little to grab onto it doesn’t mean “this whole web 2.0 thing” is without merit. In fact, just like web 1.0 business owners are traditionally slow to embrace new technologies, let alone new marketing vehicles. I believe for many of you it’s cause for alarm but I’m not an alarmist so let me frame it this way.

Bill Gates missed out on the initial understanding, thus opportunity of the Internet. Perhaps he just underestimated it. If he would have “gotten it” just a few months sooner, he might have been able to create a Google instead of learn from one. Opportunity is everywhere in the web 2.0 world now. My focus here isn’t to get into the opportunity. Rather, I’ll frame some organizational ideas for those of you that do “get it.” Many of you may have already employed some of this ideas. If you have, leave comments to learn from by registering and clicking on the comments link.

It’s frustrating to have winning ideas in your organization and be completely helpless. I feel for those of you unable to move your teams to embrace the inevitable change you see coming down the tracks. You can be on top of it, technologically, but unless your teams understand their new roles and responsibilities, your destined to watch the early opportunities sail by.

Let’s drill down into an emerging but soon to be popular, situation. Perhaps your struggling to define strategically, what you are missing to create the change you need? Y might be concerned that your teams are communicating effectively. Your current 1.0 or 2.0 projects could already be falling behind and maybe it seems like everything is up in the air for the future? If you’re wondering about any of these issues, chances you’re in need of some change management 2.0-style.

Diesel mechanics are only so helpful on a sailing team. The needs are different. The roles are different and the fastest way around the course is not by taking the same tact (he he). To successfully change, you would need to first identify what you need to do differently. The differences between 1.0 and 2.0 may not be this drastic but the first step is the same, figure out what you need to do differently.

First you might consider your team’s ability to change, to learn and to adapt. Just as your marketing department has changed as a result of the web, so too are more traditional web roles and with that comes a change in responsibilities. Help from outside resources can provide valuable insight. You web team probably thinks and believes they’re ready for change. Afterall, they are the original agents of change that you hired due partly because of their demonstrated ability to do things differently. Web professionals are typically prepared for change. Therefore, your independent or third-party assessment is critical. We’re almost done but let’s drill down a bit further.

Traditionally the webmaster was responsible for making sure your messaging was usable, read well and looked nice in browsers. A webmaster rarely cared about how the website looked on a cell phone or much less, the back of a seat in a SUV. Webmasters always had to manage links but feeds are a different story. Publishing outwards rather than inwards is a web 2.0 mandate. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is creating mass amounts of change as webmasters are learning to become feedmasters -hopefully. Traditionally, webmasters cared more about broken links than syndication. This must change at your company now, to benefit from any early opportunities in web 2.0.

For example, RSS can substantially help get your message out. If your products can be listed in feeds, you should be going through a fundamental shift in the way you publish information. A traditional webmaster needs to know web 2.0 and the truth is that many of them are not prepared. Perhaps that’s why the World Organization of Webmasters focuses more on the term Web Professional (webprofessional.org) these days and less on the title, “Webmaster.” Understanding the changing role of webmasters is important in understanding the skills you need on your team(s).

Here’s some tough questions to ask your web and marketing teams:

• Do we have a RSS feed?
• What’s the feed address?
• Where do I subscribe?
• How many subscribers do we have?
• Do we have a podcast or is our rss feed iTunes ready?
• Do we have an internal blog?
• Is our site accessible?
• Is it standards based?
• How does it look on a cell phone?

Important!
Call a meeting and ask everyone to bring their cell phone. Have them load your website on their phone. Pass your phones to the right until everyone has seen the website on as many phones as possible. No one to call for a meeting? No problem. Go to phone stores and ask the sales people to show you, your website on all of their newest phones. You may have to figure out how to do this yourself if you’re in a Verizon store (sorry).

More questions to ask…

• Has our site been graphically treated to insure ease of use and adoption of key pages by key visitor segments?
• What is our video strategy? A video is nearly as fast as a blog when it comes to getting your message out in the search engines. You need at least one video up on the major video portals.

More on video…
If your business is already starting to rely on RSS feeds to distribute your information, you’ll need to look specifically at areas you can cut costs and areas where you need to hire additional players. You can outsource video for example much cheaper than setting up a video editing workstation, server and video editor.

>> Consider outsourcing the video but make sure the meta tags in the video are optimized for your target audience including search engines and make sure they’re branded with your company logo if you want to retain some control over it’s usage. Formats are key, consider using Flash (FLVs).

>> Consider hiring a feed master. This is someone that manages your feeds. They should be able to generate valid feeds from information stored in a database. They should be able to merge your feed with other feeds to generate new feeds based on the requirements of your customers. They should also insure that your feed will look and function great in all the major feed readers including the newest web browsers and if relevant, Google Base or other feed directories.

>> Consider hiring a feed marketer. This person listens to your customers to learn how your valuable information (think of your product catalogs, listings or knowledge based products) can become more valuable. This person should be able to promote your feed and work with a feed master to maintain quality and adherence to standards such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Atom and XML. A feed marketer should be able to monitor the distribution of your feed(s) and continue placing your feed details in high visibility areas that continually increase subscriptions to your feed(s). A feed marketer will distribute, monitor and analyze your feed in a closed feedback loop. Consider using Feedburner to add features to your feed easily and to cut costs.

Now for your role. With so many new technologies out, how do you help make sure that you’re not throwing money down the tubes? How do you make sure your teams are working on the right projects at the right time? Here’s a few things you can try that others have successfully adopted:

>> Increase or define accountability on a per project basis. A complete web 2.0 project lifecycle includes stages like these:

1. Goals and planning
2. Design
3. Development
4. Testing
5. Release
6. Promotion
7. Monitoring
8. Analysis (metrics)
9. Reporting (return to step 1.)

It is your responsibility as an orchestrator of services to make sure that new project (not “product”) lifecycles do not exceed 90 days. I recommend to clients that no new projects exceed 30 days. Only very strategic projects you have patent interests in, should require more than a month to complete. If your project is longer than this, pare down your goals and rethink your design. Don’t get stuck here, let’s move on.

So let’s presume your project management and development efforts are web 2.0 ready. It is also your responsibility to make sure that your project doesn’t compete with other companies that could compromise your ability to secure the adoption numbers you need. By this I mean, don’t go build a community-based video portal or similar, “alreadey been done too many times” application. Everyone wants to be YouTube, even Google (Update: Google has acquired YouTube). But only a few strategic companies with acquisition motives, care to compete with these already successful sites.

Web 2.0 doesn’t mean you need to create anything new. To survive, you need to adopt a new way of doing things. Adopt new strategies and use specific techniques to create change internally. As your teams adopt these strategies, the techniques will start to show in your existing efforts. Your marketing metrics will respond accordingly. Try to measure your results in a more social context online by engaging potential cusomters, turning visitors into subscribers and subscribers into buyers.

A few more tips…

• Socially aware or conscience applications help build community and are necessary.
• Take responsibility for learning 2.0 technologies and what they means to your organization.
• Study transparency and ethics issues.
• Study persuasion architectures.
• Remove communication barriers between you and your customers

Get all of these issues out in front of your teams and your roles and responsibilities upgrade will start happening right in front of your eyes.

You’ve got some a-ha moments in front of you and you deserve all of them for reading this far!

aloha