Web 2.0 is the current flavour of the month in the online world. Businesses, start-ups and established corporations are embracing this new trend like, well, Web 1.0 circa 1999. What can Web 2.0 offer your business? We will explore three somewhat overlapping aspects of Web 2.0 and discuss its impact on organisations. There are three “spheres” of Web 2.0:

• Technology Architecture;
• Business Models;
• Aesthetics.

What drives the business model for a company to establish a Web 2.0 project? It’s about communication. The simpler the communication method, the greater the capacity to communicate more effectively, which inevitably leads to more people sharing knowledge. We have seen the explosion of user generated content, such as You Tube, MySpace and Flickr. Companies are now moving towards “employee generated” and “customer generated” content. Instead of managers and the executive writing “top-down” directives, we may see the emergence of “bottom-up” policies and ideas emerge and discussed from staff and “lateral” policies introduced from the macro data of customer experiences. Of course, the cultural aspects of the organization needs to support such open discussions and this level of workplace democracy for this to work. This also includes engaging with your customers in an open dialogue and be prepared to hear their opinions: good and bad.

But haven’t we heard this all before? Didn’t IT knowledge platforms of the past from Lotus, Microsoft and the myriad of other software providers going to help knowledge sharing and customer satisfaction? Yes, they did help. But as employees become increasingly comfortable with consumer oriented Web 2.0 websites the more they become familiar with both the culture and technology tools that aid knowledge sharing. Similarly, customers now expect companies to have online forums and blogs and be intimately involved with the brand and product experience- thereby increasing their loyalty.

So what is the software platform that enables Web 2.0? In simple terms, the software architecture of a website consists of a database (where raw data is stored in logical groups, eg. user login details), the code (which communicates with the database and decides what is displayed on a particular page) and the presentation (or the “look and feel” of the website). These are separate modules that communicate with each other. For example, if we change the presentation or “look and feel” of a website we don’t have to worry about changing the structure of the database. This means we can have database designers working on the database structure, the coders working on the programming and the graphic designers working on the presentation of the site. Of course, there will be interface points that need to be managed but by separating these three basic layers allows innovation to prosper in each layer as a specialist can develop solely for a particular layer and not have to worry about the other. For example, it is unlikely that a database programmer will have the artistic flair of a graphic artist designing a website’s “look and feel.”

Presentation (“Look and Feel”)

Code

Database

You have probably noticed that new Web 2.0 websites like, YouTube, Flickr and the myriad of blogs out there, somehow look different. Bolder, cleaner, gradients, bigger text and less cluttered. Screen elements can be resized and buttons fade. The technology fuelling this innovation is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript). We won’t be going into its details, but the key message is that AJAX is helping improve the look and feel and more importantly the usability of the web. By usability we mean that the web user experience is moving towards what we expect of PC software (eg. Word, Outlook etc.). Think of it as having the best of both worlds – the user experience we expect from PC software coupled with the power of being online via your web browser.

The other important technology, XML (Extensibile Markup Language) is a common language that allows software (be it on the web, PC or mobile) to communicate with each other. So by having that common format, data can be exchanged and presented in unique ways.

So how can Web 2.0 “aesthetics” help corporations? One of the key problems facing executives is the real time reporting of what state their organization is in. Revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction, burning issues, media and PR “buzz.” In most cases, the information is there; in fact one can argue that there may too much information. The trick is to turn information into knowledge (and hopefully knowledge into wisdom!). Web 2.0 technologies can be used to distill information into dashboard objects – charts, dials, bar charts etc. For example, below is a snapshot from Salesforce.com’s analytical dashboard:

Note the wonderful, colourful snapshot of the organization an executive can get and cut through the information “clutter.”

Concluding remarks

As with all new corporate technology, it’s important to have realistic expectations about what it can achieve. If you want a knowledge sharing blog make sure you have a knowledge sharing culture first with your customers. Want a great executive dashboard? Make sure you have a visually creative development team that can transform your old boring spreadsheet data into an imaginative array of dashboard indicators to help you, at a glance, get a hold on how your organisation is performing.

With the rise of online advertising (now worth 10% of the $10 billion Australian advertising market), we discuss strategies your website can employ to earn money through online advertising.

3 Fundamentals of Online Advertising

First a refresher. There are 3 basic ways to advertise on a site: 1) Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), 2) Cost per Click (CPC) and 3) Sponsorship

Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM): This is the amount charged to an advertiser per 1000 views of an ad. Rates generally range from $30-$50 per 1000 impressions.

Cost per Click (CPC): This is when charges are only accrued when a user click on the ad which takes them to your website. Rates for these generally range from a few cents to a couple of dollars. This sort of advertising is popular with search engine companies.

Sponsorship: This is generally based on a finite time-period (e.g.. for a fantasy sports competition) or for a specific event (e.g. an email campaign to your customers). Generally, these are secured through your existing business relationships or managed via a PR/advertising team.

(UPDATE: Google have just announced a trial where advertisers only pay when a specific action is undertaken online. For example, you only pay when a customer who clicked on your ad then goes and purchases a product or submits a contact request. Read here for more details.)

4 Online Advertising Revenue Models

1. Share Advertising Revenue with your Contributors

The big trend that is generating a lot of interest is consumer generated media served from a central, well-branded website. Think YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Flickr. These are sites that de-centralise (some say democratise) the process of creating content and placing the power back into the hands of the individual. This process is important because it is incredibly popular. Being popular means happy advertisers.

But what of smaller, niche sites such as blogs and forums? How can they compete with the big boys? As we have mentioned previously in our technology reviews, content is king. Focus on getting the right content for your audience. High quality content gets you loyal visitors. A niche market means that advertisers can target their message carefully. Focus on getting high quality content for a niche audience and advertising will follow.

So it begs the question – “How do I get great content?” One way is to pay experts to write about their industry, or build a great brand (see our article from Pandemonium for tips) that attracts experts. The other option, which offers some promise, is sharing advertising revenue with your writers. This is where YouTube, MySpace and blogs will head in the future.

Sharing advertising revenue with your writers/contributors works like this. Assume you have advertisement running on your website and you are using a cost per 1000 impression (CPM) model (See earlier discussion on CPM). Now, when a visitor reads, watches or listens a contributors’ content, the ad is displayed next to it. In normal run of events 100% of the ad revenue from that ad goes to the website operator. In the ad revenue share model, a cut (say 20%) will go to the contributor.

The great thing about this model is that it is self-correcting. A popular contributor will be encouraged to continue submiting more content because they are getting rewarded. A less popular contributor will be discouraged as they are not relating to the audience. Thus, the “cream rises to the top.” and thus improves your website’s popularity with your audience.

2. Podcasts

Advertising strategies for podcasts are more or less borrowed from their traditional media counterparts, radio and TV. Typically, short ads (less than 30 secs) are inserted into the start of a podcast. Again, subscriptions to podcasts can be tracked although it is a little harder to actually know how many people listened to it (SONAR recently released a media player that can track this sort of information).

3. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) gives users the power to subscribe to a website’s news, new articles and new content. For example, this blog has an RSS feed. RSS feeds can be sent to a dedicated RSS Feeder (such as FeedDemon) or viewed on your personal Yahoo/Google homepage. It’s a great way to keep in touch across a number of websites without actually having to visit them – which is why they are very popular. Now this could be a website operator’s worst nightmare as the number of visits to your page could be threatened by this technology. However, RSS feeds can have advertisements embedded within each feed, thus providing a extra source of revenue. New ad service companies, such as FeedBurner, help website operators to embed advertisements in their feeds.

4. Google Adsense vs Yahoo! Publisher

One cannot talk about online advertising without discussing what the big players, Google and Yahoo! are up to. For the uninitiated, Google have a system to help customers earn revenue on their website, called AdSense. Google AdSense automatically serves advertisements (by you placing a small bit of code on your website) and will automatically display ads that are relevant to your website. When a user clicks on an ad, you get a share of revenue and Google gets a share.

The online world has been waiting for Yahoo!’s response to AdSense. Yahoo! offers an invite-only, BETA system called Publisher Network.

It is worth considering Google or Yahoo! Services to manage your advertising on your site. It’s very easy to set up either service and requires little management overhead.

Last Word

Using a mix of the above online revenue models can boast your site’s earning potential. But as with any media, it is important to understand who visits your site. How many unique visitors per week? What locations (country, state, city) do your visitors come from? What are the general demographics of your visitors? These are the basic questions that any advertiser will want to know. Create a media pack with all of your demographic information, rates and technical (size, format etc.) specifications. Make it as easy as possible for an advertiser to say “Yes” to advertising on your website.

This article gives a basic overview of how search engines work and tips to improve your ranking.

Yahoo!’s original strategy

In the beginning, Yahoo! started as a student hobby by David Filo and Jerry Yang, who in 1994 decided to keep an online list of interesting websites. As their list grew, they decided to put those links into categories, and sub-categories, and so on. This is important as this dictated their general approach to advertising – businesses pay to be listed within a certain category. Think of early Yahoo! as the YellowPages of the Internet world. Over time they developed search algorithms to trawl their listings (and then the web at large) for interesting websites.

Google’s approach

Like Yahoo!, Google was spun out of Stanford University by two PhD students: Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Their approach was to not to categorise websites but to rank them based on their popularity. On a basic level, website’s popularity is based on how many other websites link to them. So the more your website is linked by others the more popular you are and thus your website will be ranked higher than others.

As Google’s search engine evolved, their algorithm ranked “main stream media” websites (eg. News.com.au or cnn.com) as having higher quality content. So if your website is linked from these high quality sites, your ranking improves and you start to shoot to the top of Google’s search rankings. User’s found that Google’s method of indexing and ranking websites extremely useful in getting to relevant information on a consistent basis.

How do you get onto search engines?

There are a number of strategies to improve your website’s “popularity” ranking on search engines.

1. Content is king

Many people focus on “tricks” to fool search engines. Your primary strategy is to continually improve your website content. Make your content so interesting and so compelling that other website operators and bloggers want to link to you.

1. Write articles for the main stream media.

This is easier said than done. But take any opportunity to write opinion pieces or give interviews to the main stream media. Get them to provide a link to your website. The search engines will give your website a boost.

1. Participate in online forums

Find online communities in your areas of interest. Participate, but don’t “spam” your message. Make sure your website or business solves a need that is being discussed in the forum or blog.

1. Meta data

Make sure that you include meta data and meta tags to your website. This “meta” information helps search engines understand the content of your webpage and thus helps connect searchers to you. Ask your website operator to make sure that these are up to date and relevant to every page of your website.

1. Free press releases

There are a number of free press release services out there. Do a Google search for them. It’s one way to promote your site and getting links to your site.

Do you have problems sharing knowledge across your business development team? Are you trying to build a community around your product?

What is a Wiki? In a nutshell, a Wiki is webpage that allows any one to change the content of that webpage immediately via their web browser. The best known example of a Wiki is wikipedia.org where registered users (anyone with a valid email can register), can submit new topics and edit existing ones.

In a non-wiki environment, generally one person is charge of website content. If another person wants to add or update information, he or she would have to go through this gatekeeper.

In the Wiki model anyone can directly change the content of a page – all through their standard web browser.

Scenario 1 – Sharing leads among your business development team.

Sales and Business Development are the lifeblood of any organization. Being able to work together as a team to secure new customers and retain existing ones is necessary to sustain a competitive advantage. One possible application is to use a Wiki like a virtual whiteboard. Each Business Development team member can add their opportunities and/or client facts to a client page. Once this page is updated, the entire team can now have access to this knowledge.

Scenario 2 – Building a community around your product or service

In today’s online world, users expect to find customer support and product information easily on the web. This means generating a lot of content. A better way is to get your customers to do it for you. A properly structured Wiki can enable your customers to add advice, create tutorials, create “Getting Started” guides and suggest product features. For example, GarageGames, a company that creates software for independent games developers, has a Wiki for customers to contribute tutorials and advice for the community. Another simple example, is Mick’s Wiki, a place where kids can contribute to ideas for a video game. In conjunction with blogs and forums, Wiki’s are just another way to integrate into clients and help customers feel part of the brand.

Scenario 3 – Internal documentation for your product development team

Creating and protecting technical documentation within a team is always a challenge. Usually you will have one “content manager” in charge of developing and releasing relevant documentation to the team. Wiki’s can help “democratise” this process by allowing programmers, team leaders, contractors to contribute in controlled space. There is only one document only one current version.

Who’s in control?

One big question for managers is “How do we control the content?” There are a number of ways:

• “Watch List”: anyone, including administrators, can watch a particular page. If objectionable material is posted you can always remove it.
• Banned Users/IP Addresses: if you have a habitual abuser you can block them from editing your Wiki.
• “Protect”: Administrators can protect a page so that only authorized users can change its content.
• Access Control: some Wiki’s allow you to restrict content based on group privileges. This is useful in a corporate environment where keeping information separate between business units is a requirement.

Knowledge Sharing Culture

One final note. While Wiki’s, (or forums, or blogs for that matter) are useful, they cannot by itself create a new business environment. For Wiki’s to succeed, your team must be committed to a knowledge sharing culture. An environment where people are encouraged for sharing information and wanting to help others. Only then will Wiki’s provide valuable communication functionality for your business.

A global niche market – is that a contradiction in terms? Not any more. All over the world entrepreneurs are able to sell their products to niche markets using search engine marketing – Google and Yahoo! predominantly. This is known as 7 sigma marketing, targeting the “tail end” of a market.Specializing in a niche market was once uneconomical as distribution channels were rigidly defined – manufacturer to the wholesaler to the retailer to the consumer. While many claim that the internet has opened up an alternative global distribution channel to consumers – that is only part of the story. Search engines companies, such as Google and Yahoo! were able to filter the vast amount of information on the web and present it to the user. People searching for information on medicines, cars, duck shaped soaps, vespa coffee mugs, calendars from the Vatican or anything were presented with ads that matched their search requests. This allowed niche players in the market to efficiently target a global audience in a cost-effective way.

While this all sounds good in theory how can you get your product out on the global market? Here’s a rundown on how to get started with Google and Yahoo!

How cost-per-click advertising works

When a customer clicks on an online ad (which directs the customer to the advertisers webpage), the advertiser is charged by the website owner. The amount that is charged can range from a few cents to tens, even hundreds of dollars. The main benefit of this sort of advertising over traditional advertising is that you can efficiently target your niche market plus be able to track your return on investment on your ad campaign.

Where does your ad get shown?

All of your ads will be associated with a particular keyword. So when a user types in your keyword in a search engine (eg. Google or Yahoo!), your ad appears. Larger search engine companies also have vast affiliate networks – so your ad may appear on other websites too!

Advertising on Google

I have taken the liberty of using Google’s generic step-by-step guide and adding a few tips along the way.

1. Choose your target customers.

Google allows you to target specific countries and languages.

TIP: Make sure you have the ability to deliver your products/services to these markets and have an understanding of local taxes, currencies and postage costs. Plus think about creating a website in other languages to capture more markets!

2. Write your ad copy.

Since Google ads are all text-based, you need to come up with a short concise description of your product/service.

TIP: Be as specific as you can. If you have more than one product to sell, create separate ads for separate products with separate keyword (see step 4) – don’t create an all encompassing generic ad.

3. Put in your website link.

This is where the customer will land when they click on your ad.
TIP: Make sure you link directly to the product information page not your generic home page. Customers expect to get to information quickly! So don’t direct them to a page where they then have to search around to find further details about your product.

4. Assign Keywords to your ad.

When a Google user types in a keyword in the search engine, your ad will be displayed on the right-hand side of the search results.

TIP: This is a critical step. Spend some time putting yourself in your customers shoes – what does your product or service solve? What type of information might your customer is looking for that relates to your product? What type of words would they enter? Be as specific as possible – you will get better, more cost-effective results.

Choose your currency that you want to pay Google with.
TIP: You can’t change your currency once it has been set.

5. Set a maximum cost-per-click.

The maximum cost-per-click is the maximum amount that you want to pay when somebody clicks your ad. In general, the higher you are willing to pay, the higher position your ad will be on the search results page.

TIP: use the Google “View Traffic Estimator” it will give you a good idea where your ad will be positioned and the likely cost-per-click. Use this to fine tune your keywords and ad budget.

6. Set your daily budget.

So that your online ad budget does not get out of control. You can set a daily budget. Once your daily budget has been reached your ad will not be displayed until the following day.
TIP: Keep track of your daily budget. If you keep hitting your daily budget – think about raising it to capture more clicks to your website

7. Monitor.

It’s unlikely that you will get all of your keywords, costs, budgets etc right the first time around. Google allows you to monitor the performance of your ad campaigns online and allows you to make adjustments as necessary.

TIP: Pay particular attention to underperforming keywords – try to choose specific rather than general keywords.

Advertising on Yahoo!

This time I have used Yahoo! UK’s step-by-step guide. Yahoo!’s process for setting up advertising is quite simlar to that of Google’s. I personally find Google’s process much more user friendly, but Yahoo! have actual human editorial staff that go through your ad and can make suggestions to you to improve your ad’s effectiveness. The other great thing about Yahoo! is that your ads will also appear throughout Miscrosoft’s MSN web portals.

1. Select your keywords.

Choose your keywords. Yahoo has a Keyword Assistant Tool to help you out if you get stuck.

2. Write descriptions with keywords.

TIP: Keywords in your description will mean a better click through rate to your website!

3. Create your budget and payment plan.

Yahoo! utilises a pure auction bidding system. You can see a list of your competitors bidding for your keywords. You can then decide how high you wish to bid – the higher you bid the higher your position! You can also set up the maximum daily budget so that you can effectively control your online ad spend.

4. Editorial review.

Once you have submitted your ads a Yahoo! editorial team will go though your ad and make recommendations. This is a great service, especially for novices.

TIP: Take their advice!

5. Monitor.

As with Google, Yahoo! allows you to monitor your ad effectiveness online. Keep track of your ads and keywords, particularly underperforming ones!

Conclusion

By adopting a two pronged strategy using Google and Yahoo! online advertising you can develop a 7 sigma marketing strategy.

Good luck getting your niche global!