Web 2.0: what is it good for? Part 2

by Ian Hendry
Guest Blogger and CEO of WeCanDo.BIZ – make your business network WORK!
http://www.wecando.biz

Continued from Part 1…

Best for getting back in touch with former colleagues
This task is most easily performed where most of your colleagues are likely to be found — and for most, this will be LinkedIn. As it stores a list of companies you have worked for, requested when you signed up or which you can update at any time as you move jobs, it offers easy methods of searching for people who worked at the same companies as you. Connections are made either directly or through mutual acquaintances on the site.

Facebook also offers a similar feature, enabling you to enter details of previous work places, although not many of the significantly higher overall number of site members (120 million worldwide at last count) use this feature. You can still search for former colleagues by name through the site’s search facility, however.

Spock isn’t a site for Star Trek fans, but a Web 2.0 site that aims to help you find anyone on the web, no matter where they are located. It primarily looks for people across other social networks, LinkedIn and Facebook included, attempting to show you all results it finds for the individual you are searching for. It goes without saying it doesn’t work so well if you are looking for a former work friend with a common name, or if they share their moniker with a well known celebrity, as you’ll have to sift through all references to their namesakes first. It is interesting to trawl through, however, and you’ll soon find yourself looking up your own name up to see what or who else exists across the far reaches of the web with your name on it! You’ll need an account on the social networks it finds your colleagues on to be able to connect to them.

Best for keeping in touch with existing customers
E-mails and newsletters are the most common ways of keeping in touch with your whole customer base using electronic means, but the communication tends to be all one way – unless they mail you back, you don’t get to hear about what they are doing or what they need. And why should they mail you back? There are probably many other suppliers managing a more personal touch to those contacts and winning business as a consequence.

Think also about all the business cards you have picked up over the years and what you are actively doing to see if you might still be able to do business with those people. And what about everyone listed in your various e-mail address books or your mobile phone contacts list? Remember that partners, suppliers and even friends can also be customers.

Web 2.0 offers some great ways of maintaining contact with ALL of those contacts, encouraging a two-way flow of information on needs, as well as offers. We have made it a key part of our WeCanDo.BIZ website: you can invite all your e-mail contacts to connect with you on the site (sync your phone with your e-mail to ensure you address those contacts too) and then you’ll get to read their most urgent business needs as they post them, looking for assistance. You can message all those contacts, or broadcast your urgent business needs to them also – they may be able to help or have close contacts that may be able to assist. It all helps to encourage contact and trade within the network you already have. Maximising the return from known contacts is much easier and cheaper than approaching and trying to win new customers from scratch, although WeCanDo.BIZ makes it easy for you to reach new contacts through its business focused network too.

How do I co-ordinate all these?
The number of Web 2.0 sites is mind-boggling and it grows longer every day. Luckily, in a business context there are only a few you need to concern yourself with and those are mentioned above. However, it could still become a big part of your day flying from one to the other if there wasn’t an easier way of keeping on top of them all.

I am a member of many sites and, of course, need to keep a constant eye on my own. To do this easily, I use a “dashboard” from Google, called iGoogle. If you already have a Google account for Google Adwords, it will be easy to set up; otherwise, you just register a new account. iGoogle allows you to build your own web homepage with various components on it, all reporting activity from other sources across the web. Clicking the “Add stuff” link allows you to do a search on the sites you’d like to collect information from; if they are listed, you click Add to include it on your dashboard. For sites where you can’t find a so-called “widget” to keep you updated, you might be able to add a RSS feed.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a stream of news or events from a website that you can display through an RSS reader, which iGoogle has one of (look for it on the “Add stuff” page down towards the bottom on the left). If a site you know has an RSS feed, normally indicated by an orange RSS button either in your web browser or on the website itself when you visit it, click it to get the address of the RSS feed page, before you copy the URL (web address) for that page into the RSS reader on iGoogle. It is a lot simpler than it sounds.

You can find the RSS feed for our site here
http://www.wecando.biz/rss/bizneeds.php

Do this for each site and you can have a stream of news, features and more all coming straight into their own panels on your dashboard. Combined with the specific social networking widgets available, you can get a single view of what is happening on each of your social networks and forums on one page. Clicking the “story” in each panel will take you to the source site if you need to go there to answer a query or pick up a lead.

Most internet browsers also have RSS readers and you may consider it easier just to list the feeds in your browser rather than use iGoogle. Again, look for the orange RSS button on websites or in your browser address bar to subscribe to the feed and get updates whenever it is added to. I find the best RSS reader in the Opera browser, which is also available for internet connected mobile phones and PDAs. There are also RSS readers in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Web 2.0 offers a lot of useful resources to help your business. Not all of the above will suit every individual or company, but it is worth experimenting with each to see which brings the greatest return. Also very important is which method you find easiest to spend time on cultivating those benefits. Technology should assist you to achieve, not trip you up; that applies with Web 2.0 technologies as much as any other.

I hope this all heps someone get to grips with Web 2.0 for the benefit of their business.

Ian Hendry