Fortune Telling

Back in September I posted a piece on Apple and their brilliance in business building. Well it seems that Fortune magazine agrees! CEO Steven Jobs tops the list at number one of the 25 Most Powerful People in Business. What does the future hold? One certainly hopes that Apple continues "creating new innovative products that will surprise and delight our customers". Bring on the iPhones, movies, music, touch-screens and all. For my part, I look forward to something a little more straightforward — not having the PC /Mac chasm to deal with. Within our own walls and between our customers and ourselves the investment in IT and cross-platform challenges come at a price. Perhaps Mr. Jobs has the kind of power to make that manifest.

Seven Amazing Lead Gen Tips!!! Absolutely Free!!!

... but to get them you have to fill out a two-page registration form, give your credit card information and they're only free for 3.74 minutes.

This drives me crazy.

I'm referring, of course, to e-newsletters that promise one thing and then in a back-handed way get you to give them something else. Not only is it bad business practice, it's also breaking a cardinal rule of permission-based marketing.

By now you as well might be feeling a bit ticked off too. After all, I promised lead generation tips and so far you haven't got them. The fact is, I can't tell you what that e-newsletter had to say about lead generation, because I refused to pay for something I was told was absolutely free. And not only that, I will never know what kind of pearls of wisdom that service might "share" with me, because I not only deleted the e-mail, I unsubscribed from the service.

I'm not going to give you seven lead generation tips (at least not in this posting). I'm going to give you one tip about permission-based marketing. The advice stands for certain kinds of lead generation as well: to get something, you have to give something of equal or better value in return. This is best done in a climate of confidence and trust. If you say you're going to give me some great advice for free, and then you don't, I won't trust you. But if you say that I can have access to some great time-limited information for free and that I need to register, I will at least be able to respond to you in good faith. You might get fewer click-throughs. But you'll also get a lot fewer people who will unsubscribe from your services in the future.

In my next post, I'll share some advice about using search engine optimization to boost lead generation. I promise.

Web 2.0 On the Inside

In past blog postings we've talked about grassroots marketing as part of Web 2.0. A recent McKinsey report talks about adoption of Web 2.0 as part of a grassroots initiative within a company, and for a company. I find it interesting that Web 2.0 applications are not only changing the relationship between customers and companies, they are also changing the relationships among employees within a company.

Among Web 2.0 technologies, collaboration and communications technologies are the clear winners. I’ve “snipped” some interesting stuff from the McKinsey report (which you can see in full here, once you subscribe for free):

Wikis, which involves software enabling a group of people to contribute to an online document, encourage collaboration within companies, in particular for developing shared knowledge. One executive noted that they are particularly useful to develop a commonly agreed-upon terminology set - starting from the centre and translated into terms that are meaningful in specific end users' contexts. Wikis are also appealing because they capture anecdotal or unstructured information that might otherwise be lost, either because there was no way to capture it or the organization has outgrown its ability to gather and share knowledge informally.

Blogs were mentioned by many executives, as a way to communicate with customers and engage with critics, and therefore performing a productive discursive role. Some companies were also using mash-ups (combinations of two technologies to create a new application), such as displaying locations or photographs on maps, to address customer demands. Mash-ups using Google maps are one of my particular favourites because they are so easy to implement and they visually create a de-facto sense of community.

In an online discussion meant to derive insight from the quantitative results in the McKinsey report, it became clear that the ease of adoption of Web 2.0 was driving the grassroots push for communication and collaboration tools. One discussion participant claimed: "These projects started at the grassroots level, however the value was rapidly demonstrated."

The ease of exploring and adapting Web 2.0 technologies are elements that help advocates avoid typical implementation barriers. Among many respondents (described as Senior Executives), top-down management was seen as a hindrance, and that the best role for senior management was one of enabling adoption and setting of boundaries.

Measuring the impact of newly implemented Web 2.0 initiatives is not so straightforward, however. Some respondents were unable to claim that the use of Web 2.0 was providing clear competitive advantages. Other respondents claimed more qualitative effects such as engaging customers for product-development ideas and encouraging interest in collaboration and a stronger sense of community.

This last point brings us back to where I began. Web 2.0 is about enabling participation from all quarters, and this is the crux of how it is changing communications, business and communities.