Creating Value through Web 2.0 - Debrief

Our talk on Creating Value Through Web 2.0 last night was as interesting for my co-presenters Silvia Cambie and Giles Colborne and myself as for the delegates who came along. We had a lot of great questions and good discussion coming out of this very topical issue, helped along by the panel chairman David Wootton.

First off, our slides can be downloaded as a pdf in the box below so if you were at the talk and want a copy of them, please click the link for the download - and if you were not there but would like to see what we discussed, you’re welcome, too.

Now, onto the debrief. Many of the delegates at this Institute of Directors event represented small to medium sized enterprises, with a number of freelancers and also solo professionals in the mix. We had a lot of the lively discussion during the question time and also in the pre- and post-event drinks. I thought it would be useful to continue the discussions online here on my blog for a wider audience as well as for the delegates who were there last night. So here are some of what struck me as the burning issues that came out of the presentation and discussions last night:

# Should we participate in social media?

Web 2.0 and social media is here to stay with millions of people around the world engaging in social networks, blogs, Twitter, forums and more. Traditional broadcast media such as newspapers, magazine, radio and TV will still be around and very influential but are evolving and finding new ways to engage with their audiences through the multiple channels now becoming available through the web. Traditional PR will still be valuable but it is worth considering how to integrate a social media strategy into your businesses communications strategy. Even if, after an assessment of the relevance of social media to your business, you decide that it is not the right medium of communication for your business, you need to at least monitor what is being said about you and your business online and be prepared to act and engage with those commentators in an appropriate way.

# If we participate, where should we go - Facebook, blogs, Twitter?

The most sensible place to enage online is where you customers or stakeholders are. If they are on Facebook, then it’s worth looking at how you can engage with them there. Even if your business doesn’t blog, do your customers or key influencers in your sector blog? If so, how might you engage with those bloggers in a genuine way?

# How can you tell if anything you find online is fake eg fake rave reviews of a product or company?

Yes, there is a lot of fake stuff and rubbish out there! How can you tell if someone you meet at a party is a fraudster or conman or raving psycho? There are “tells” usually - especially if you spend some more time with them. Similarly, there are also “tells” online - you can check out previous blog posts which will tell you about the blogger over a period of time, you can Google someone for more background information, you can judge overall tone and content and so on.

# Is there scope for using social media in a business to business context?

Most business blogs we hear about tend to be in the consumer context but many of the delegates offer services and products to other businesses. I was able to share the case study of THFC Space, the blog that I manage for The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) where I work part-time - as a not for profit lender lending over £1.5billion to the social housing sector, THFC Space’s target community are Finance Directors, Chief Executives and Treasury Managers within this niche sector. Social media is about peer-to-peer communication so THFC Space engages the company’s peer group - as guest bloggers as well as readers. This creates a network of experts sharing specialist views with each other and positions THFC as a lender that has in depth knowledge about the hot issues that are affecting its customers’ businesses.

An article I wrote with a detailed discussion of the THFC Space project can be downloaded as a pdf in the box below.

# What about Return on Investment (ROI)?

As small and medium enterprises, a hot topic was the ROI of social media. How can you judge the success and outcomes of social media? What about the time it takes to engage online?

Well, there are many tools to analyse the success of a social media project eg the number of visitors, the number of times a pdf is downloaded, the geographic location of visitors, the number of links from other blogs. You can see if pretty much real time which blog posts are popular and how many comments are coming in about a topic you’ve discussed.

Taking a step back from social media, how do you measure the ROI of giving your time for free to say, write an article or give a talk such as the one we were all engaging in last night. Giles, Silvia and I spent time preparing and meeting together then coming to the event - how many hours of work did that represent? And what was the ROI for us? Or the ROI for the delegates taking the time out from their evenings to learn something valuable for their business? I would suggest that the ROI for social media is in the same ball park as the ROI for such activities. For me, the ROI of real world events and of my blog / engaging in social media are very similar - raising my profile as a writer, increasing my knowledge and expertise in my field of interest and networking with others with similar interests: all valuable in different and sometimes unpredictable ways - and sometimes, even resulting in commissions for work.

If you were at the talk last night and have any comments or questions you’d like to add, I’d love to hear from you - please add a comment below or email me via my contact page. If you weren’t there, I’d love to hear your views, too, so please do join the discussion as well.

And before I sign off, I’d really like to thank Mei Sim Lai for inviting us to speak and for making it such a fun and lively event!

Download our presentation and also an article on THFC Space from the box below:

If the box above is not showing, you can click on the following link to download the pdfs - http://www.box.net/shared/82r76olov8