Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Over on ReadWrite Web Sarah Perez wrote a compelling post summarizing Forrester’s predictions of Web 2.0 adoption in the enterprise. She gives a great synopsis of the report, and speaks about the barriers to adoption:

“….One of the main challenges of getting Web 2.0 into the enterprise will be getting past the gatekeepers of traditional I.T. Businesses have been showing interest in these new technologies, but, ironically, the interest comes from departments outside of I.T. Instead, it’s the marketing department, R&D, and corporate communications pushing for the adoption of more Web 2.0-like tools.

Unfortunately, as often is the case, the business owners themselves don’t have the knowledge or expertise to make technology purchasing decisions for their company. They rely on I.T. to do so - a department that currently spends 70% of their budget maintaining past investments.

Despite the absolute mission-critical nature of I.T. in today’s business, the department is often provided with slim budgets, which tends to only allow for maintaining current infrastructure, not experimenting with new, unproven technologies.”

And she goes on to say,

“By 2013 Web 2.0 will be a feature, not a product.”

And while I agree with the overall premise of that statement, I agree with Forrester:

By 2013 Web 2.0 will be a fabric, not a phase.

And I think it’s that vision - coupled with fear, not budget constraints - that is precisely what’s holding so many businesses back from Web 2.0 adoption today. Scott Niesen over at Attensa has blogged a leading indicator (to me) of the fear when he said,

“We are working with forward thinking IT professionals [JLJ’s emphasis] who are partnering with business teams to integrate Web 2.0 technologies to enhance existing systems and business processes….”

I agree with Scott that finally enterprise RSS adoption is coming into fruition - but why has it taken us so many years to finally get here?

Why do the folks considering (what James Dellow has called “the DNA” of enterprise communication and collaboration) enterprise RSS today have to be the “forward thinking” ones? Because of fear.

And it’s not the IT folks who are to blame. Many business leaders (in all sizes of organizations) are fearful of Web 2.0.

Why the Fear? Because Web 2.0 Fundamentally Changes Business Rules

Many have written compelling visions of the future of the enterprise under the influence of Web 2.0 technologies. (I still enjoy Sam Lawrence’s “Enterprise Octopus” vision as a succinct roll-up of what happens to a business in a Web 2.0 environment.)

And I believe Hugh Mcleod, in writing his extremely insightful “The Hughtrain” post from 2005 was right:

“: There’s only one thing harder than starting a new business: Re-inventing an old one.”

Hugh’s “Porous Membrane” description (which could look a little like an octopus on it’s side) sums up “why the fear?” to me:

“….So I drew the diagram above.

1. In Cluetrain parlance, we say “markets are conversations”. So the diagram above represents your market, or “The Conversation”. That is demarkated by the outer circle “y”.

2. There is a smaller, inner circle “x”.

3. So the entire market, the “conversation” is seperated into two distinct parts, the inner area “A” and the outer area “B”.

4. Area “A” represents your company, the people supplying the market. We call that “The Internal Conversation”.

5. Area “B” represents the people in the market who are not making, but buying. Otherwise know as the customers. We call that “The External Conversation”.

6. So each market from a corporate point of view has an internal and external conversation. What seperates the two is a membrane, otherwise known as “x”.

7. Every company’s membrane is different, and controlled by a host of different technical and cultural factors.

8. Ideally, you want A and B to be identical as possible, or at least, in sync. The things that A is passionate about, B should also be passionate about. This we call “alignment”. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned.

9. When A and B are no longer aligned is when the company starts getting into trouble. When A starts saying their gizmo is great and B is telling everybody it sucks, then you have serious misalignment.

10. So how do you keep misalignment from happening?

11. The answer lies in “x”, the membrane that seperates A from B. The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between A and B, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both side of membrane “x” to adjust to the other, to become like the other.

12. And nothing, and I do mean nothing, pokes holes in the membrane better than blogs. You want porous? You got porous. Blogs punch holes in membranes like like it was Swiss cheese.

13. The more porous your membrane (”x”), the easier it is for the internal conversation to inform and align with the external conversation, and vice versa.

14. Not to mention it makes misalignment, if it happens, a lot easier to repair.

15. Of course this begs the question, why have a membrane “x” at all? Why bother with such a hierarchy? But that’s another story.

[AFTERTHOUGHT:] And yes, this works with internal blogs as well, poking holes in the membranes that seperate people within a corporate culture; aligning “the conversation” internally etc. The other advantage of internal blogging is that it organises conversation into a long-term manageable form. Two people sharing ideas via blogs is a lot more permanent, viral and useful for the company than two people sharing the same information over by the watercooler.

[AFTERTHOUGHT:] Poking holes in membranes subverts hierarchies. Avast, ye scurvies etc.”

Avast ye scurvies it is! Let’s subvert the hierarchies, get over the fear of changing the way we do business and let the porous membranes dissolve. Our customers, employees and (I’ll bet money) shareholders will appreciate us for it.

Again, in a succinct summary statement, Martin Koser over on Frogpond said:

“Don’t spend hours pondering the details and splitting hairs - actually use this stuff and find out.”

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Sam Lawrence over at Jive Software is a lucky man. He lives spot on in the center of the “enterprise 2.0/web 2.0″ universe. So he dreams. And wishes. And imagines…

“Whenever I talk about the new enterprise collaboration I always imagine an octopus. The big head of the octopus is where we gather….”

He says the arms exist to grab information that we need to do our jobs. But in the current enterprise, there is no head.

“The problem is, there’s no central place for the people. All we have are file generating machines. Email machines. Calendar machines. Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation machines. And many companies purchased even bigger, complex machines to manage the output of all those other machines. In the meantime, we just work around those machines and wonder, “which way to the head?”

Now I’ve never been a fan of octopi in reality, but the picture he paints is pretty fun. And the idea of people in enterprise 2.0 organizations living in the head of an octopus while arms do the heavy lifting for us is fitting.

Of Heads, Hearts and Arms

I’ve been thinking about enterprise 2.0 in a slightly different way when it comes to collaborating with customers, prospects and others in the ecosystem (the sea we float in… as it were). I’m convinced - at least where the corporation meets their constituency online - that:

• Traditional web sites represent the head of an organization - carefully planned and crafted messages set out for knowledge gathering and lead generation activities.
• New collaborative areas of a site (business blogs, etc.) represent the heart of an organization - where we get glimpses of what people inside are passionate about, can engage in conversation and understand the values of the people within.

And the arms? I’m completely aligned in analogy with Sam there - the arms reach out to get / or give information on-demand.

In enterprise 2.0 they do it via intelligent, managed RSS feeds - delivering the right information to the right people at the right time; and in knowledgebases that link the different “complex machines” (CRM, ERP, CMS, name another TLA) that support the business together.

Our buddies at Attensa provide the arms into- and out of- the enterprise 2.0 octopus to me - for those who want to get inside the heads and hearts of those who live there, as Sam imagines…

“Sometimes it’s a team, sometimes it’s the whole company, but all of us are in the head of the octopus. It’s where we live. It’s where we get unify and freely interact. What’s great about being in the head, is you get to leave all your stuff behind and just get to the point“

And in a world where getting to the point is a rare experience, let me find and deliver that experience for customers any way I can…

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Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb on this one - but after a couple of months of using it, I’m hooked. And I can already see how it’ll be one of the top marketing tools I’m going to use moving forward:

Tool #5 - Twitter

I have known about Twitter since everyone was all atwitter (sorry, couldn’t resist) about it (way back in March or April of 2006) at one of the blogging conferences I was attending. It seems the social media geeks generally portend what the rest of us finally ‘get’ years later.

Why I’m enthusiastic about Twitter as a marketing/business tool?

1) I can get glimpses of the real lives of the people I’m following - which is important when you’re building virtual teams. And whether you’re a contractor working remotely, a geographically dispersed team working for the same company, or even a team with people on different floors, the more we stare into our little screens to get our work done, the more we need to find ways to get to know people from the little screen.

I know, for example, when someone is extremely busy - because their twitters go silent for awhile. Perhaps it’s time to check in with them?

2) I can pick up knowledge from others in a quick-hit fashion. I’ve learned a few gems in the short time I’ve been twittering, just by following other people’s tweets. And you can follow conference news from people who’re on site, twittering live - you get their impressions in the moment.  Blog posts follow, most people tweet their postings.

3) I’ve become more aware of my words. You can only use 140 characters to post in twitter… and that’s a great forcing mechanism to refine your writing.

The convention (for those of you who haven’t been there yet) is to acknowledge other’s tweets by saying something like @thiskat when I’m referring to something she has said.

So here’s a hint - don’t pick a long username like I did. @janetleejohnson is a ridiculous waste of 15! characters. Had I to do it all over again, I’d go under an assumed name like mktgmvn or smrtpdx or mrk8r… think in terms of license plate monikers, and you’re set.

Another hint - check out an URL shortner tool like twurl - which also allows you to track clicks…

Happy twittering…

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I love SmartBriefs. Extremely smart newsletters on various industries - from consumer electronics to construction and real estate, from telecommunications to travel and hospitality - there’s likely a newsletter for your industry.

I subscribe to, and read (almost every day), IAB’s SmartBrief (see example here) on the interactive industry.

Dosage: delivered daily.

Cost: Free

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In an effort to show, rather than tell, I’m putting forth my personal Top 10 Marketing Tools in a series. I asked the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network’s marketing committee to send me a list of their top 10 tools, and will be posting about them over on the OEN Blog.

(It’s spring break, so I haven’t seen any of them yet… So here’s my second in the series, to inspire action when they return:)

Tool #2: A Smart Search Engine

I have to admit, I’ve used Google for traditional searces for years. But when I went out on my own, I discovered that a roving worklife meant I was never sure I would be at the same computer all day. I’ve long been a fan of SaaS technology (software as a service - where you go online and login to manage information) and iGoogle, the personal Google service, has saved my bacon many times.

They’ll tell you - when you type in “what is igoogle” to your google tool bar in your browser - which is fantastic in and of itself - that:

Google offers the ability to create a personalized iGoogle page that gives you at-a-glance access to key information from Google and across the web.

• Your latest Gmail messages
• Headlines from Google News and other top news sources
• Weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
• Bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer
• Your own section with content you find from across the web

I don’t use it as a personal “portal” to all things online. I use it because:

• It gives me access to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, where I can set up living documents to capture and share notes, track action items and collaborate in meetings with clients. No matter where we are, we’re quite literally all on the same page.
• I used to be on a Dell with Outlook and a Blackberry, and could never get my calendar to synch with my PDA. (A great lead-in to Chapter 3) I kept my calendar online in Google’s calendar application, and while I wasn’t able to view my calendar (again, I’m not technical or patient enough to set it up correctly) from my blackberry, I could get to it from any computer connected to the internet. (A great selling point for SaaS) And, it would send alerts to my blackberry, which helped me get to meetings on time.

Beyond iGoogle (back to just plain Google for a bit), I use Google as a spelling tool and a dictionary. It goes like this:

You can’t get a fast read on whether you’re spelling a word correctly or not than to type it into your Google toolbar - take one of most commonly misspelled words - accomodate. If you’re unsure, in a flash you’ll know,

“Did you mean: accommodate?”

(While you’re at it, check out the results around the spelling correction in Google - you might see some smart search engine marketers trying to capture common misspellings for their clients.)

I use Google to quickly find sources for quotations - who knew John Heywood wrote: “Many hands make light work…” You can also find complete song lyrics in the same way.

But there are cooler things :

• like putting your UPS tracking number into Google to find out where your package is
• putting your flight number into Google to find out where the plane is…
• figuring out who called you by knowing where the 541 area code comes from… instantly
• …and don’t even get me started on Google maps - it’s the greatest thing for those of us who used to have to rely on CitySearch to find restaurant phone numbers… thank goodness for Google.

…those are the quick timesavers that make Google one of the Top 10 Marketing Tools I use.

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