According to a recent report by Forrester, the enterprise sector is about to embrace Web 2.0, and in particular social networking, in a big way. By 2013, businesses are expected to have splurged nearly £2.5 billion on social networking tools, with more than half of companies in Europe and North America saying they’ve placed Web 2.0 on their priority list for next year. If you’re not already clued up on how the technology can boost your business, you’ll need to be soon or risk trailing in the wake of those in the know.
Web 2.0 itself isn’t a new concept, in fact its birth is widely associated with the invention of the online blog circa 2002. But uptake of the technology as a business marketing tool has, to date, been limited.
In fact, says Ben Dansie, MD of digital agency Omobono, it’s only been fairly recently that the business community has really understood what Web 2.0 is. “Put simply, it’s a two-way method of communication,” he says. “Before, we had Web 1.0, and that was about putting your content on the web and letting people view it. It was frustratingly one dimensional. It’s only really now that brands are waking up to the benefits of being able to actively engage and interact with their audiences.”
Dotcom flashback
Blogs, wikis, podcasts and virtual worlds have all found their place on the Internet as Web 2.0 technology has flourished. In fact there are so many companies jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon that the movement has echoes of the dotcom boom of the 90s. Few are predicting a similar ‘crash and burn’ ending for the Web 2.0 boom though, because lessons have been learned and this time around sites are being built around robust business models that meet a real and tangible demand. And that demand, it seems, is increasingly shifting towards a greater desire for professional, business orientated sites that offer services to select audiences; an exciting prospect for B2B marketers.
“Social networking is sustainable but as the boom continues, sites will increasingly need to serve niche audiences in order to continue to succeed,” says Gareth Pike, marketing manager of FT.com.
By far the most prolific Web 2.0 enabled invention to date has been that of the social networking site. What started out as a means of connecting people with long lost school friends (think Friends Reunited and Facebook) is now throwing up exciting opportunities for companies to connect with audiences that can afford to invest money in their very own branded sites.
Add to this the meteoric rise of business networking sites like LinkedIn, which is consistently adding more than one million members each month globally, and the opportunities for enterprise that the social networking medium offers become increasingly apparent.
“Web 2.0 has brought the Internet to the masses and made sure that it’s no longer seen as a tool for geeks. It’s an essential communications device. Nowadays there are more social networking conversations than there are email ones so it’s easy to see the massive potential for businesses to use the medium to engage with each other and with peers,” points out Penny Power, founder and director of business networking site Ecademy.
Networking for business
Ecademy, along with other well-established professional networking sites like LinkedIn, offers just about the easiest way for business people to communicate with like- minded souls. Less of a direct marketing tool and more of a relationship builder, nonetheless Ecademy’s landing page promises to ‘grow sales results.’ Users of the site can join communities, write and read blogs and find out about meetings and events all over the country.
Power points out that the site can be an excellent way of cementing B2B relationships with those you might not otherwise have had the chance to connect with. “People who use Ecademy do so to develop their sales. It’s possible to create a brand inside a social network, to show yourselves to be the experts in your field so that when others on the site have a need for your service, they know to come straight to you.
She continues, “using Web 2.0 technology, you can gradually build brand awareness in a similar way to, for example, a brand that sponsors a TV programme. It’s a way to get your name and your area of knowledge in front of an audience.”
A shift from B2C to B2B
Ecademy has 100,000 members, which might seem small fry compared to LinkedIn’s 22 million, but it’s worth noting that both sites have reported a marked rise in the number of members signing up in recent months. Ecademy signed up a record 13,500 members in April and LinkedIn now has so many members in Europe (six million) that it’s expanded its HQ to include a London office and has plans to expand its functionality to encourage the setting up of community groups (at the moment, LinkedIn is more of a business directory than a place to have actual conversations).
Both agree that sites like Facebook are helping them to grow, as people sign up to them, get bored of them and seek sites with more added value, which inevitably translates into sites that can offer them a more professional environment in which to communicate. “People get easily exhausted by consumer sites,” says Shannon Clouston, European communications director at LinkedIn. “We call ourselves a knowledge sharing network and we’re all about making people smarter, better and faster at what they do.
“Increasingly, people are looking for sites that make them more productive, where they can connect with like-minded individuals and seek out lasting professional relationships rather than more one dimensional places where they just upload photos and chat.”
An expanding medium
This desire for a more grown-up kind of social networking experience hasn’t gone unnoticed by brands themselves, with an increasing number of those who can afford it going beyond joining the generalist sites, and setting up their very own to attract niche audiences. The FT, Quark and Volvo have all made commitments this year to enter the social networking arena as a means of communicating with specific audiences; and the former two already have relatively established sites up and running.
Quark, for example, has set up its own social networking site targeted mainly at the freelance design community, with a specific aim of raising both brand and product awareness amongst this important target market.
“Clearly we are a business and we haven’t hidden the fact that this is a Quark branded site with a Quark Express section,” says marketing director Gavin Drake, “and yes we are happily seeing a lot of people going to this section and downloading our trial product.
“But setting up the site has also been about showing people how serious we are about the design market and making sure that we are associated with good design.” Quark has set out to achieve this aim in a number of ways, which includes endorsement from world renowned designers.
The FT, meanwhile, is taking an even more niche approach with its networking site. The FT MT Executive Membership Forum, launched earlier this year, is focused on exclusivity, rather than quantity, when it comes to membership. “The aim is to provide senior level execs from the global telecoms, media and technology communities with a forum to continue debating the issues raised at our conferences that they attend throughout the year,” says Pike.
“By keeping membership exclusive, we can offer senior executives a more intimate and focused networking experience and our research tells us this is what they want.” The site currently has around 60 members which include senior members from MTV, Facebook, Microsoft, Orange, Yahoo and Bloomberg.
But it’s not just the more established brands which are exploiting social networking technology by setting up their own sites. In London, private members club for the creative industries, The Hospital, has set up a social networking site to aide its global expansion strategy. Established four years ago, the club is looking to expand into other markets and says that by launching its own social networking site, it’s already gaining industry recognition in these key areas ahead of opening offices.
Many of The Hospital’s members are entreprenuerial agencies of five or less employees who don’t have their own offices and therefore use the venue as a base for meetings. “Going digital means that we can build member bases in other cities quickly,” explains The Hospital’s digital development manager David Marrinan-Hayes. “A big part of growing any business is about networking, and having a social network allows us to step things up a gear. Just by being a part of our network, you’re able to connect with 2500 like-minded people – and that figure is growing all the time.” Marrinan-Hayes says the aim is to have at least 15,000 members on-board by the end of the year and that sights are set on opening venues in Berlin, New York and Shainghai.
Keeping costs in check
Setting up a branded social networking site obviously isn’t for everyone; whilst it’s hard to put an exact figure on the costs involved in getting one up and running, most experts estimate that £20,000 needs to be spent on the functionality alone, and that’s excluding any of the costs associated with getting it out to market. “You need to start off a project like this with some clearly defined objectives, it’s easy to get too carried away as something like this offers up no end of ideas,” warns Drake.
Therefore it remains that for smaller brands, making the most of existing Web 2.0 technology is the most realistic option. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean just using pure social networking sites like LinkedIn though; whilst they are very much the medium of the moment, some of the more ‘traditional’ Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and newsgroups can be just as effective for getting your brand name out there.
“These days when people talk about social networks they’re often unable to think beyond the likes of My Space, but the reality is that newsgroups and forums have been used effectively by businesses for a long time and can be just as powerful,” says Dansie. “As we see Facebook numbers tail off slightly too we have to ask ourselves ‘where are those people going?’, and I think they’re turning to more niche websites that give them a chance to have conversations with like-minded individuals – and that’s a trend that suits B2B.”
Relinquishing control
Darren Strange, Microsoft’s UK product manager and business blogger, presents perhaps the UK’s most famous examples of a successful B2B blog; the ‘Officerocker’ blog that he created in the run-up to the launch of Office 2007 was credited with humanising the brand. Since setting it up, Strange has attracted an avid following and much press attention.
“B2B and B2C brands that are embracing Web 2.0 successfully are learning that yes, they have less control over their brand image because of blogs and forums, but if you get the communication right then you can really strengthen your brand,” says Philippa Snare, head of live services group for Microsoft. Using the existing technology provided by sites like YouTube can be of huge benefit to brands on a budget too. When Sony ploughed millions into its now infamous Play Doh bunnies ad, it found that in Japan and Korea an enormous buzz was created around the brand when it invited people to make their own versions of the ad and post them on You Tube.
As business brands get to grips with the Web 2.0 phenomenon, is it too early to predict what might be next? Some anticipate that virtual world technology, already being dappled with mostly by consumer facing brands (see box out on page 22) will soon take off in B2B. Beyond that, tech heads are predicting that Web 3.0 technology is on its way. Snare isn’t so sure though that businesses need to worry about getting their heads around that just yet.
“Web 2.0 has been about the evolution of the Web into what people wanted it to do in the first place,” she says. “I think Web 3.0 speculation is a little premature at the moment; some people are predicting that it will be about faster download and stream times but I think it will be about a lot more than that; Web 3.0 will be another evolution in how we communicate with each other over the Internet that will take some years to come about.”
