You know you’ve been there. You open your email inbox only to find a string of emails, replies and forwards regarding something as trivial as a meeting agenda. And because everyone involved has made a change to the original document you sent out, you hunt through trying to find the most recent copy because you’re in charge of the meeting and it starts in…5 min! Ugh.
There must be a better way, you say. And there is. Stewart Mader of Future Changes and author of wikipatterns gave a keynote presentation at the Web Content Conference this morning showing us how wikis can save the day where more familiar tools like email have failed us.
Many of us are drowning in email. What was once a “cool new thing” that made communication faster and easier is actually making us less efficient today. We have come to rely on it as our sole communication tool, when in fact there are better tools for collaboration, documentation and knowledge sharing.
If you’re new to wikis – or you think a wiki is an encyclopedia – don’t be discouraged. A wiki is simply an editable Web page. Start with a pilot wiki and host a workshop to get others in your organization acquainted with using a wiki. Once you get others in your organization to adopt wikis, as Stewart says, you can stop getting started on things and instead “get done.”
If you’re like many marketers, delving into social media may feel like stepping onto a roller coaster; exciting and super scary all at the same time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I don’t get Twitter. Why do I care what someone had for breakfast today?” The truth is, social media is here to stay, it can help your business and if you’re a marketer I hope you’ve already bought your ticket.
In a keynote presentation at the Web Content Conference, Rob Rose argued that we are in a transformational stage in marketing. Those of you who cringe when you hear the term “social media” will love his view that when it comes to this Web 2.0 world where there are “no rules.”
The bad news is that if you’re looking for an easy road map to follow or a step-by-step guide to guarantee success, there isn’t one. The good news is that innovation wins; and you can use the skills and ideas that you already have as a marketer to make social media work for you. Don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail.
If social media is still an unknown to you, don’t let your fears paralyze you. You don’t have to be “this tall” to ride, but you do have to jump on.
Most of us search, we find stuff, we move on. We write content, we post it, we move on. But what is the importance of the technology behind the content? Do we see the big picture? This morning I was served a dose of XML with my coffee at the Web Content Conference, forcing me to think about the backbone of everyday web applications and how that applies to marketing.
Joe Gollner of Stilo International spoke about the technologies behind the content and the relationship between the two. As business professionals and marketers we need to understand a little bit about the power behind the technology in order to consider the possibilities that lie ahead. Ann Rockley of The Rockley Group talked about how XML and other technologies allow us to provide a customized experience for customers like they’ve never had before by only delivering the right content at the right time.
There are certain things that we take for granted today, such as being able to easily move information from one application to another. I can quickly send an email with a link to my friend who can then view a video, digg it and post it on her Facebook page. We can thank XML for a large part of this. Back in the day, there were great applications, but they couldn’t talk to one another. You can think of XML as the mass transit system of the web; your content is the passenger. It doesn’t do us any good to have great content if it’s just sitting still. Once that content can easily “travel,” that’s when the magic happens.
So how does this affect us as marketers? The convergence of content and technology allows for better performance and allows us to have better interaction with our customers. We’ve moved beyond just giving people information to giving them the ability to take action. We’re not just arming them with knowledge, we’re equipping them with tools. And we can effectively do this if we start thinking of our customers as both consumers and publishers.
