Good news at Trovus - we have relaunched our site focused on b2b internet marketing intelligence at Trovus.co.uk

More to follow in the coming weeks…

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Just back from meeting one of our clients, RM2 who set up employee share schemes for companies - as a former accountant you’d think that being on top of the most efficient tax schemes would be second nature, but from talking to Colin and Geoff you realise just how quickly your knowledge goes out of date. For all those web entrepreneurs out there, its probably something worth thinking about - the Inland Revenue isnt especially web2.0, but you can be savvy and work out the best way to maximise your gains when your social networking project turns into the next Bebo or Facebook.

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I was asked last week to provide feedback on the online community that the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW) has set up and of which I should confess I am a paid up member from a former life as bean counter.

I think they have done a great job at IT Counts (what the site is called) and thought it would be worth publically sharing my views:

The challenge with any community site is finding sufficient fresh interesting relevant content that its users find sufficiently compelling to encourage them to want to return on a regular basis. If the content and the topics are too broad the site tends to lose the interest of its readers as it doesn’t address their issues; if it is too narrow, it presents challenges in terms of producing sufficient quality content.

 

A simple way for me to judge content suitability is the measure of how many comments get left on posts on a regular basis – what I observe on IT Counts is that there is a good flow of comments and postings which are a good indication of the content being suitable for the audience.

 

 

The site design is simple and effective – it uses all the space and allows for a consistent mental map so that I can continue to find key information as I navigate through the site

 

IT Counts is a great initiative to get CA’s more connected and sharing information – the web is happening all around us and the advantage I believe moves with the innovators – ICAEW have taken a great step with this initiative.

 

I look forward to seeing how the site continues to develop and engage with its members (not always the most innovative of thinkers from my experience!)

 

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Social networking - so tantalising for all those brands out there - millions of people in your target market all in one place - how do I get in there and sell to this captive market.

I can see lots of brand managers grappling with this one - spurred on by their directors - we have to get into this social networking thing - its where all the buzz is.

Here’s the view of one blog commentator:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/06/17/how-brands-can-buy-social-media/

In essence - the article outlines that value comes from three areas:

- Advertisements - straight purchase of ads

- Sponsorships - longer term form of advertising

- Social Media Optimization - using the social media platforms to optimise your brand and content (part of what Trovus does)

 

I would add several other areas;

- engage with the discussions - this is a battle for mindshare - this is’nt about you the brand, its about what the people want - run with what they want and help them get - its the best way to get engagement;

- create things (content and tools) that are of interest to your target market - its about what you can do for your market, not how much you can sell them.

 

The key thing - its not about you - its about them. Thats why I dont believe that advertising on social networking platforms works - it just jars as its an intrusion and doesnt add to the value of the platform for the users.

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Interesting insight in terms of different ways to avoid sending emails by accident. It arose after a client discussion and then a straw poll in the office of different email sending habits.

I observe from my statistically inaccurate poll three different approaches:

1) The safety valve

A client yesterday shared a great function in outlook which I had never heard of before - it’s a one minute delay after you click to send an email before the email is sent. This gives you the chance to edit an email within that one minute if you click send that fraction too quickly.

2) The fool-proof pre-checking system

Courtesy of Peter in the office, a link to Seth Godins approach - a list of 36 things to check before you send an email. Yeah right, we all have time to check that!

3) F*** it approach

No names mentioned here, but you get the picture. Oh well I’ve sent it now.

 

Suspect that most of you have never thought of this before (like me) - I now have the safety valve in place - let me know if you want the details of how to implement, and remember if the next email you get from me is rubbish, I need to find another system or hopefully not something more fundamental!

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Not much to do with the web, but a great clip - Euan had it on his blog, so i thought I’d replicate it as a note to self too.

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£110m pa if you want to develop a site on the scale of the BBC (figures released today)

Clearly we have no idea what this was spent on what inefficiencies increased the cost above reasonable norms (which is what the article implies).

However, the scale of numbers underlines the fact that if you want to create a powerful compelling web presence, it takes investment - lots of fresh content (on a by minute basis), tools and ways to engage people to capture mind share. And that they have certainly done - to quote:

“By late 2007, it had an average of 16.5million users a month, out of the total of 33million internet users in the country.”

The point for our customers is that clearly this is on a huge scale and covers many thousands of different topics, but that running and driving a website needs continual investment to make it attractive to users and to give them reasons to come back.

The question each website owner has to ask is:

- what is the value of my website - what do I want to get back from it

- How do I measure that return and quantify the value from my site

- On that basis, it needs a clear investment case and spend attached to it.

Finding value on the web in our view is much more achievable now than it used to be and there are many different ways to find/ create value be it finding new customers, engaging with old customers, recruiting staff, managing clients, driving internal collaboration, running alumni networks and so on. The question is simply defining the value that you want and then creating the right achievable plan to get it …for a tiny tiny fraction of £110m!!

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Great meeting yesterday with Phillip Goodman and Peter Rogol from accountants Goodman Jones.

Phillip has been working to drive value from the web for the last couple of years through both their Corporate Website and a blog site.

Music to my ears to hear what they have been doing - taking corporate issues and writing about them in a way that customers can relate - talking in real world language (not always a forte of accountants from my experience).

The benefits for Goodman Jones:

- Enhanced Reputation - people know about them and refer to them;

- Lead Generation - its generates business through the website.

Thats pretty compelling stuff in anyones language.

More evidence for their success comes from having Accountancy Age awards for the last 2 years for Best use of the internet. This has led to winning work from ICAEW (the Chartered Accountants Institute, of which I am a member for my sins) and helping them develop their online presence and an online community.

Its great to see people doing what we believe are the right things and getting value from it - they key thing to us is that this is all about “differentiating yourself in a saturated market place” and capturing the mindshare of your customers, suppliers, partners and employees.

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Its the biggest question around social networks. Are they actually worth the coin?

USA Today wades into the debate with this article. Having read the article which reviews all the social networks and how they are making money, the key areas the article points to are:

1) Advertising. Clearly. Advertisers follow people and that means large concentrations of people in one place are an attractive proposition for those with ad budgets. The big question for me on the efficacy of this is whether that ad spend converts in value for  the advertisers;

2)  Premium Services - sell additional services such as ringtones and other subscription based services;

3) Sell - sell it to someone else who thinks they can make more money with it.

So the bottom line is these are media platforms, with the most powerful revenue streams coming from advertising - the more focused and contextual it is, the more likely you will get better revenues. If you can differentiate your offerings enough and persude subscription based services, so much the better, then but not many people are able to do this. [I note this week that Friends Reunited are now moving to a free model rather than a paying model].

It remains a battle for mindshare, but some networks need to start proving the coin behind the model to keep the buzz sustained for the longer term.

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Does the web tell the truth?

Great quote here:

“the web provides the unvarnished truth about what the parties are really thinking”

This is one of our beliefs - people when they blog on the web or type questions into search engines ask the “real questions”. There is no hiding or dressing up what people want - its the real thoughts.

If you want to know the real thinking that people have, look to the web…

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