Marketing Enterprise 2.0: Part 1
Wednesday: August 8, 2007 6:36 AM
As mentioned in earlier posts that awareness and education are two of the most important hurdles to overcome when deploying Collaborative Software in the enterprise. This weblog entry is the first of four entries on ways that you can communicate your offering and value via channels: Technology Channel, Education Channel, Communication Channel, and Other Channels. Let’s start with the technology channels since that is one of the easiest ones to do. We will assume that we have developed a single touch point for the customer, which may include an online environment, a support group and client-support functions.
Search Integration
One of the first things we want to do is to integrate our offering into the corporate search engine. While search engines are not as widely used as they are on the Internet, we still see 60-100k searches per month. We want to be sure that if a customer searches for “Enterprise 2.0”, “Web 2.0” “Blog”, “Wiki”, “Collaboration” or other related terms that our environments shows up first. If we can’t be first, we certainly want to be in the top ten which places us above the fold on a search result page. Keep in mind, there may be multiple search engines used in the organization so hit them all.
Taxonomy Integration
All organizations have some form of taxonomy on the Intranet. You want to have your offering classified under tools, Information Technology, information management, or whatever. The key is to get your site listed in as many places as you can. As you step down into the organization and the corresponding web sites, you will have additional areas that you can add your services link. Most web masters are starving for good content and links that make their product better. So offer up you group to help them improve.
Partner Links
You never go it alone. I try to locate other groups that will benefit from our success. Offer a shared link or exchange services for space on their web site. Maybe you have different organizations that handle your operations or architecture. These are great places to cross link and try to work together to expand the content and usage. Maybe you can setup a partnership service like Search or Document Management to “mash-up” services to create something new.
Logo or Brand Mark
While some organizations frown upon logo’s or brand marks, there are a great way to bring in additional customers. Suppose as customer jumps on that Diversity Site you build with SharePoint and down at the bottom is your logo and brand message: “Brought to you by Collaboration and Online Services”. People will see that and know where they need to go in order to get their site or collaborative environment.
High Profile Sites
Not all collaborative sites are created equal. Some are more important than others. Suppose you have the opportunity to replace the main Human Resources Intranet with your collaborative tool. Do you put your best resource on this? Yes, the exposure and brand message would be tremendous. This isn’t collaborative site #12,256, this is replacing the Human Resources interface. Think of this as having Tiger Woods market your product for free.
Social Software
Why not? Why not utilize your own tool to market and brand your services. Our organization has two weblogs that we maintain daily. Our goal is to keep the information fresh and constantly remind people that our services are available. We can post tips, best practices, upcoming events, and observations on the Enterprise 2.0 environment. This allows us to expose ourselves to thousands of people every day. Same thing applies for the wiki, we want our pages to appear on the most accessed and latest updates. Keeping the message in front of as many people as possible is the key.
As mentioned in earlier posts that awareness and education are two of the most important hurdles to overcome when deploying Collaborative Software in the enterprise. This weblog entry is the first of four entries on ways that you can communicate your offering and value via channels: Technology Channel, Education Channel, Communication Channel, and Other Channels. Let’s start with the technology channels since that is one of the easiest ones to do. We will assume that we have developed a single touch point for the customer, which may include an online environment, a support group and client-support functions.
Search Integration
One of the first things we want to do is to integrate our offering into the corporate search engine. While search engines are not as widely used as they are on the Internet, we still see 60-100k searches per month. We want to be sure that if a customer searches for “Enterprise 2.0”, “Web 2.0” “Blog”, “Wiki”, “Collaboration” or other related terms that our environments shows up first. If we can’t be first, we certainly want to be in the top ten which places us above the fold on a search result page. Keep in mind, there may be multiple search engines used in the organization so hit them all.
Taxonomy Integration
All organizations have some form of taxonomy on the Intranet. You want to have your offering classified under tools, Information Technology, information management, or whatever. The key is to get your site listed in as many places as you can. As you step down into the organization and the corresponding web sites, you will have additional areas that you can add your services link. Most web masters are starving for good content and links that make their product better. So offer up you group to help them improve.
Partner Links
You never go it alone. I try to locate other groups that will benefit from our success. Offer a shared link or exchange services for space on their web site. Maybe you have different organizations that handle your operations or architecture. These are great places to cross link and try to work together to expand the content and usage. Maybe you can setup a partnership service like Search or Document Management to “mash-up” services to create something new.
Logo or Brand Mark
While some organizations frown upon logo’s or brand marks, there are a great way to bring in additional customers. Suppose as customer jumps on that Diversity Site you build with SharePoint and down at the bottom is your logo and brand message: “Brought to you by Collaboration and Online Services”. People will see that and know where they need to go in order to get their site or collaborative environment.
High Profile Sites
Not all collaborative sites are created equal. Some are more important than others. Suppose you have the opportunity to replace the main Human Resources Intranet with your collaborative tool. Do you put your best resource on this? Yes, the exposure and brand message would be tremendous. This isn’t collaborative site #12,256, this is replacing the Human Resources interface. Think of this as having Tiger Woods market your product for free.
Social Software
Why not? Why not utilize your own tool to market and brand your services. Our organization has two weblogs that we maintain daily. Our goal is to keep the information fresh and constantly remind people that our services are available. We can post tips, best practices, upcoming events, and observations on the Enterprise 2.0 environment. This allows us to expose ourselves to thousands of people every day. Same thing applies for the wiki, we want our pages to appear on the most accessed and latest updates. Keeping the message in front of as many people as possible is the key.
