Have Myspace, Facebook, Flicr got you thinking? Should you hop on to the web 2.0 bandwagon? What is your strategy? It is very simple. Just enable your portal’s community features. Really.
The list is endless. Flicr, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace et. Al. are overnight sensations that have made every strategist stop and think about web 2.0.
What do you do to leverage this trend?
As organizations think up ways to hop on these mega-trains, there is an even bigger question: can you create your own community? Wouldn’t it be more powerful to have your website provide community features that compel your visitors to keep coming back for more? And when they do, you can slip in product/service information and leverage this traffic in other ways?
How do you know if being a part of another website is better than spending the time, money and effort cultivating your own community? What are the factors driving this decision?
The answer lies not in websites but in your business model – the latter is driven by market considerations such as customer needs/wants. Market considerations are the only determinants of sustainable business success – everything else is a pipe dream waiting for you to wake up.
Here is a bit of good news for those of you who want their own community: if you have an organization, you have a community. A better word would be “ecosystem.” Your employees, customers, vendors etc. are part of this ecosystem. The question is: are they willing to interact with each other on your website? Why?
An insurance company has customers. Why would they come to that insurance company’s website to interact with each other? Their relationship with each other is that they all bought products from the same company. Here are a couple of reasons:
- Peer-To-Peer Interaction: Exchange ideas about individual insurance needs. Help each other with upcoming insurance decisions.
- Advice: Get advice on insurance products
Understanding ecosystems and why people participate in them is critical to your success.
Here is the dilemma you face:
- Are you willing to take the chance of an open and honest peer-to-peer interaction?
- What if they discuss the problems with your company and/or its products
- What if they discuss the prices they paid for their insurance?
- Can you allow a discussion that goes beyond your company’s products?
- What if they recommend other company’s products?
- What if they provide comparative product information? (even today products are sold because of market inefficiencies such as unavailable, incomplete or incorrect product information)
Most companies have not got the foresight to allow these discussions.
But then there is the whole issue of your internal capabilities – do you have the desired skills to create and sustain an online community?
