Building an All-Star Social Media / Web 2.0 Team

If you could only bring 6 Social Media Pros to an island to start a Web 2.0 Marketing Department, who would they be?

Making it on Jeremiah's list of 'Social Computing Stategists' got me thinking about my team, what we do, what we want to do and what's next. My team is fairly new and we've been at it for about 9-months now and the various disciplines and skill sets of our team was built trial and error over the past few months. As we plan for the next fiscal year I can't help but think big so I started creating a list of all of the things a 'Social Media and Web 2.0' team should focus on (leaving out the boundaries of resources). Here's what I've come up with:

Social Media Strategist - In 'Alice in Wonderland', Lewis Carroll wrote "if you don't know where you want to be, it hardly matters which direction you take". At the core of every good team there’s a good plan. This is the person who pulls everything together. They build the Social Media Marketing plan and determine what the objective of the campaign is and therefore what tools should be utilized and how.

Community Manager – There are currently two communities that we have an active presence on - Facebook and NetPro having someone actively facilitate conversations in these communities would really take things to the next level.

Social Site Management – The great thing about engaging your customers in social media is that you can tweak your message depending on the audience. The tough thing about engaging your customers in social media is that your message could end up looking different for every audience. At the core of any marketing strategy lies a common message. We now have a presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Depending on the campaign we may leverage one or more of these channels and having someone to manage the communications and having it centrally executed is critical.

Blogging (including Micro-blogging) – Blogging is made up of two basic parts: content creation and content distribution. You could be channeling Shakespeare in your daily journal but if nobody knows about it, it won’t ever matter. Offering assistance to our bloggers to help optimize their posts for the search engines helping with suggestions on key or hot topics or sending out Twitters when new posts are live can make all the difference in the world.

Monitoring – If a tree falls in your community and you didn’t hear about it; WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU DOING THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT?!? Whether it's with Google Alerts, Nielson BuzzMetrics or TruCast, it's important to have an ear on what conversations are happening about our solutions so that we can actively participate in those conversations.

Web Innovations – This involves looking at the technolgoy our web pages use and determining if there are new capabilities available to better communicate or present something on our website. For example behavioral targetting, implementing widgets, or something as simple as adding Lightbox treatments can give your entire website a 'web 2.0' feel.

What do you think? What additional superpowers should a Social Media / Web 2.0 all-star team stock up on?

Unlike the Dot Com Bubble, Web 2.0 isn't Going to Bust

Some people are waiting for the Web 2.0 bubble to bust but I don't think they should hold their breath. And here's why:

• Savvy investors learned their lesson and are paying more attention to revenue before taking the IPO leap. LinkedIn, for example, is projecting $100 million in revenue next year.


• Web 2.0 is more than hype - it's a new business platform. In fact, I see more similarity between Web 2.0 and the PC boom than the dot com bust. The introduction of the Windows operating system let software makers stop worrying about platform integration and focus on functional innovation. The advances in browser technology makes it even easier for application makers to innovate and the PC office is now the web office.


• Web 2.0 is more than just a technological evolution - it's a cultural evolution. It's about people connecting to people using various types of social software. Unlike the focus of many dot com ventures, the purpose of most Web 2.0 applications is not to save time or money. Many of these applications, such as LinkedIn, Myspace, etc, are literally changing social behavior. Take away my chance to save 15% on my pet food purchase, I’m probably OK – but take away my online social network and you’ve changed the way I live. My social network, unlike my pet store, is a primary focus of my life. The fact that I’ve automated and internet-enabled my social interaction likely makes it the stickiest application I use, second only to my communications platforms: email and instant messaging.

Welcome to the Web 2.0 economy where people are given a voice and empowered to make a difference. I have used the 'new web' to make new friends, share my insights and more easily take my work with me with web apps. How has Web 2.0 changed your life?

The Evolution of Product Marketing

This post comes from a discussion I had with someone about the book, Founders at Work. I haven't read it myself but it did make it to my future reading list. We were talking about how many products evolve and end up very different from the original idea or conception.

For example:

• Flickr was first created as a feature, not a product


• Paypal was originally founded to do handheld photography


• Facebook was supposed to be an online yearbook for college students - not the world

All of these products have changed for the better. So what happened? What redefined the original purpose of these products? We did! Not 'we' as marketers but 'we' as people and users of these products. The rules of the game have changed. Traditionally this process is redefined with a select group of beta customers. Feedback is gathered and the product is refined and sometimes redefined entirely.

This definition and refinement process is one that product marketers are trained to navigate. It's the same ol' game but in a brand new playground - the Internet. The fact that we can listen to customers even when they aren't talking to us is really powerful. We no longer need to hold a glass to the door of the focus group, we've just need to tap the wire to the forum. Instead of getting 10 guided opinions we know have access to thousands of brutally honest ones.

As noted above, companies that listen to the market will have the opportunity to transcend their original vision and hear the roar of success that comes with giving a million eager customers exactly what they're asking for. Sadly, those with a tin ear risk going home with nothing but a Darwin award. In this game of B2B Survival of the Fittest - the company with the shortest path between product marketing and customers, wins.

Two examples of companies that are leveraging the Internet to get customer feedback early and often are:

• Google labs which allows anyone to play in their playground by releasing 'beta' products and encouraging users to provide feedback.


• Salesforce.com whose open API allows developers to use their programmable web as their sandbox.

By taking the initiative to bring our customers into the development process we can get to the unexpected sooner. Cisco's human network campaign sums it up nicely, "Welcome to a place where an idea is created by one, tweaked by many and shared with the world. Where collaborative applications are rewriting the rules of business."