Tools for Business

Web 2.0 Digital Marketing Strategy

Web 2.0 tools for business are just that – tools; they are not solutions in their own right. It’s up to each organisation to deploy these technologies in ways and combinations that meet their own specific circumstances.

An interesting aspect of many business level web 2.0 tools is their ability to be utilised both internally and externally to the organisation. Another is the technology itself – it tends to be inexpensive to acquire (if not costless), relatively simple to understand, quickly deployed, and scalable.

THE INTERNAL DILEMMA

There is increasingly common organisational dilemma surfacing: should the IT or other departments be driving deployment and managing the underlying processes? Yes, there is technology involved, but without a nuanced understanding of the market or the operating environment many of these new tools just won’t work effectively, and in some cases can even be counterproductive to the organisation.

From our own observational experience, non-IT staff have no difficulty grasping and utilising the underlying technologies; the fact is that most web 2.0 tools and platforms are not complicated to use - just ask any 16 year old.

The real challenges are not IT based; we believe business level success is predicated on the marketing department’s ability to read and understand the market, i.e. to identify and fulfil the wants of specific target market segments more effectively or efficiently than the competition can.

OUTWARD FACING WEB 2.0 DEPLOYMENT

Only a skilled marketing practitioner will have any chance of exploiting the web 2.0 toolkit to provide successful outward facing solutions. And the solutions can take many and varied forms, from setting up a customer based forum for real-time market research, managing a microblog to engage directly with customers, or creating an interactive online map to channel customers to a local distribution or service point.

INWARD FACING WEB 2.0 DEPLOYMENT

Again, IT should provide a supporting and not a driving role. HR, Operations and Marketing executives within the organisation should be encouraged to start formulating their own novel and inexpensive business level solutions. Examples include using wikis for project collaboration, setting up web based video for training purposes, or maintaining internal forums for sharing ideas and knowledge amongst staff and departments.