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WordPress Love.
We were so lucky to have Raanan Bar-Cohen, media engineer for Automattic, come to our Web Technology class on Wednesday February 24. I have to admit I have a pretty good tech-crush on him. I was already a huge fan of WordPress after only having used it for a short 2 months. What I find remarkable is the ability, not just to use it as a blogging platform, but to use it a web CMS. Admittedly, even Raanan shied away from using the term contact management system (CMS) but he definitely identified it is an emerging trend.
In fact this blog/website is based on a Web site style template. I am not shy to mention that I purchased this template from studiopress.com which I fully endorse. There are many other template companies out there. The best part is, the templates are very easy to install.
Accompanying WordPress’ core blogging engine is along list of plugins that will satisfy any possible need – everything from twitter feeds to e-commerce (one I am particularly interested in). What you do need to know is what you are looking for and that is usually half the battle.
So why is this good news for small businesses on the Web? Well, these businesses and independent contractors often rely on hiring inexperienced affordable developers or having family members create their web presence. This usually results in having sites with poor navigation, poor design and an overall unprofessional presence on the web. In order for business to compete in today’s market their first impression is important. Many consumers visit the sites of potential companies to determine legitimacy and worth. Previously, having a robust website was quite costly.
Here comes WordPress, like a knight on a white horse. Don’t get me wrong, it is not all rainbows. There are still some technical needs. You will need someone to get you set up, installed and clean up the site. The most significant plus to having your site on the WordPress platform, is that you can have control. Control on posting, changing pages, adding media, inter-site searching, basically everything you previously were relying on a third party to do.
I think we are about to see a rather large shift in small to medium sized companies (and independent contractors) having their sites migrate to an affordable WordPress-ish site. A site where the HR managers can update their own job listings, the product managers update their company’s products and have the CEO writing communication press to their customers.
I love WordPress.
Online Communities
Online communities are some of the newest tools in the marketing arena and many successful companies are employing them. There are several reasons why companies get involved in online community technology and management, but it most definitely should not be because everyone else is doing it.
What type of criteria should be used to determine if a company should participate in online communities? In other words, what are a company’s motivating factors in using online communities? This question needs to be clearly answered. Using online communities gives a company a chance to really listen to the consumer and a deep understanding of the customer. This focus shift from the usual outbound communication with consumers is very different since using this method moves the communication control to the hands of the consumer.
Does the company want to improve their product? Engaging in online communities allows the company to hear what their customers are saying about the company, the brand and the product. This is a great way to get unmitigated first-hand information. In cases mentioned in this week’s reading, we see that the consumer in many cases is more familiar with the product than the company’s own support team. In addition, if the revenue model of the company includes releases of newer versions of an existing product, then who better to listen to than the consumer? Monitoring online communities for wish lists and other feature requests can be very helpful in creating a newer, better version for market.
Do you want to protect your brand? By monitoring “chatter” about the product/brand, a company is able to quickly pacify and hopefully easily persuade agitated consumers to aid in rectifying any problems or issues. This also includes preempting product crises and dealing with negative users.
Where is your competition? One other factor in choosing to participate in online communities is if the competition has a significant presence in other online networks and communities. This alone isn’t a determining factor. However, it is important to be visible for the customers to be able to compare.
Budget! If a company decides to participate in online communities, whether it is on its own web space or through other community tools like Facebook, it will take money. Make sure you have an available budget. You will need moderators and managers to make sure your goals are focused and on track. Planning and strategy are also essential and that too takes money.
Now that you have decided that involvement in online communities is necessary to the company’s success, how should they participate? It is first important to determine what the goals are. Is it to gain product intelligence? Is it to gain followers and loyalty? Find a way of measuring progress so one can determine if the efforts are making ground. Next, listen and listen carefully. This can be done by simple observation/monitoring or by searching (search.twitter.com, etc.) and see what people are saying.
Participation in the online community largely depends on the context and goals of the interaction. For example, responses to product issues should be done quickly. Devising a process of monitoring the communities daily or hourly could be very helpful in reaching this objective. It may also be necessary to start conversations or re-energize them if they dwindle. Also, be prepared to redirect conversations during community participation if there is a specific goal that needs attention (i.e. new product features). It is always good practice to identify oneself , be authentic, and be organic when participating in the community. Pay attention to the written rules of the community and also to the rules of the community not mentioned but understood by other members. Be consistent with voice and tone when representing the company in community tools like twitter and Facebook. Also, always adhere to the company’s own community policies and police it when violators are present.
Most importantly, be passionate about the product and remember no one can do it alone! Some of the necessary help will come from the participants of the community. Focus energy on the evangelists and major participants of the online communities (both good and bad) and establish and keep these relationships healthy. Reward and encourage them to help in the growth of your online community.
Choosing to enter, create and participate in online communities for your consumer-facing company leaves a lot to be considered. What is clear, from all the information and data in regard to this market strategy, is that there is no one way of approaching it–each community, each situation is different. However, the overall guideline for the criteria and participation seems to be consistent; listen, be passionate and be authentic.
Web applications have made a natural progression into our everyday lives. In most cases, without us even realizing it has happened. As the article mentions the most obvious example of this is browser based email clients. It was once a battle between software titles like Outlook Express and Eudora. Setting up the software was sometimes confusing but all you had to do was set it up once and it was done (or until your computer crashed). Times have changed and quickly. AOL’s notion of “email on the go” gave these companies a run for their money. Soon everyone saw the benefits of having your email exactly where you wanted it or needed it and the portable mailbox was born. Soon, many other companies began offering the same online service that AOL was offering. Sure it took some time but it was certainly, in my opinion, the beginning of thin clients and web-based applications.
Years ago (and is still true today), if ever you had to create a webpage with out any software it was incredibly time consuming, clumsy, complicated and the end result was less than professional. Most early amateur web pages were “amateur looking” at best. Even with the most creative design sense your resulting work looked like a two-year-old’s project from art class. Desktop software developers saw a big hole in the market for applications to create web pages and soon products like Microsoft’s FrontPage and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver were launched. There were simpler versions of these products produced by fewer well-known companies but these big names still exist in the market place. Soon ISPs realized that if they could make the creation of web pages easier, more people would be renting server space to host their pages. With this, web-based applications that create web pages were offered by many ISPs. GoDaddy.com, one of the largest commercial hosting companies, offers a similar web-based application called Website Tonight. The end result—as gleaned from its product name—is to be able to create a website in a night!
I have seen this product first hand. It does exactly what it says it will do, that is to step the user through creating a website in a very short time. The end result is a site that is created and published by the end user. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it only takes the user a modest way beyond an amateur website creation and any sophisticated interaction with a user or with the server would require more tools than available through this online toolbox. This is where software like Dreamweaver or FrontPage play a bigger role. The abilities of desktop software that allow programming, testing and manipulation of code are much more useful than its web-based counterpart. Not to mention the auto-correct features and auto-suggest features available from the desktop versions.
So this case of “is it better or not” is complicated. Yes, I will agree that for someone that knows little about creating web pages and published them to the Internet, this web-based application is a definite improvement in getting your web page from paper to the Internet. However, does it work better than Dreamweaver, for example, in creating a commercial webpage? I would have to say no. Perhaps the reason web-based applications and desktop software applications continue to co-exist in the market place is because of this reason: It really depends on the user’s needs.
