Interactive Media, Advertising And Other Interests

January 11, 2010

2010 predictions & recommendations for Web 2.0 and social networks

How mass col­lab­o­ra­tion is trans­form­ing com­pany and culture

As chron­i­cled in the just-published Decade in Review 2000–2009, the 21st cen­tury is prov­ing to be volatile and dis­rup­tive in every way, and 2010 will con­tinue the trend. Three dis­rup­tive forces are con­verg­ing: the rel­a­tive value of the Indus­trial Econ­omy con­tin­ues to fall as over­pro­duc­tion reigns. Glob­al­iza­tion is replete with extras that peo­ple at the head table didn’t order. Most imper­cep­ti­bly yet poignantly, the emerg­ing Knowl­edge Econ­omy is dig­i­tiz­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and chang­ing the eco­nom­ics of knowl­edge and relationships.

Web 2.0 and social net­works drive down the cost of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which accel­er­ates volatil­ity because when peo­ple talk, ideas change and lead to action, and dig­i­tal con­ver­sa­tions hap­pens faster and less expen­sively. Social net­works are rapidly mak­ing the Web human, thereby attract­ing an ever-larger por­tion of all human com­mu­ni­ca­tions online. In 2009, adop­tion reached crit­i­cal mass, ramp­ing strongly among con­sumers, so many enter­prises are fol­low­ing. The Web 1.0 adop­tion rhythm is very instructive.

Per­va­sive Web 2.0 also means reex­am­i­na­tion or dis­rup­tion of most areas of life, cul­ture, soci­ety, gov­ern­ment and busi­ness because social net­works alter how many and what kind of rela­tion­ships peo­ple have. The impact is sim­i­lar to Ford’s pro­duc­tion line, except it is more pow­er­ful: it scales rela­tion­ships. Large orga­ni­za­tions will remain in a pro­found state of tur­moil because they were not built with with­stand the volatil­ity these forces are unleash­ing. Many For­tune 500 com­pa­nies will be con­fronted with their sur­vival, and some will not make it. Entire indus­tries will con­sol­i­date over the next sev­eral years (auto­mo­tive, air­lines, bank­ing, hotels, food, con­sumer goods…). Web com­mu­ni­ca­tions mean we con­sume nov­elty far more quickly, which cur­tails prod­uct life cycles and leads to ultra-fast com­modi­ti­za­tion. Com­pa­nies will require unprece­dented inno­va­tion to even stay in place. New entrants around the world com­pete for cus­tomers and lever­age their lower costs and bet­ter inno­va­tion processes. And Web 2.0 is still in the early stages of adoption.

This dynamism ele­vates oppor­tu­nity and threat for exec­u­tives and their orga­ni­za­tions, so our focus here is to lay out prob­a­ble mile­stones for 2010 to assist exec­u­tives in busi­ness strat­egy and career plan­ning for 2010 and beyond. First, I will lay out pre­dic­tions, on which I’ll build for my 2010 rec­om­men­da­tions. By the way, this fol­lows Year in Review—2009/Social Net­work­ing Gains Legs on Heavy Seas and Decade in Review 2000–2009/The Rise of Web 2.0, the New Per­va­sive Human Space.

Pre­dic­tions for 2010

1. The econ­omy will con­tinue to be unpre­dictable, and demand will be spotty in 2010. Numer­ous struc­tures of the global Indus­trial Econ­omy are in doubt, which delays busi­ness deci­sions every­where. The U.S. jug­ger­naut has seri­ous eco­nomic prob­lems related to health­care and the lack of fis­cal dis­ci­pline that will not be resolved soon, and no one really knows what the impact will be, except it will be sig­nif­i­cant. Japan and Euro­pean economies have sim­i­lar issues for sim­i­lar rea­sons (except health­care). Related to this, there is more uncer­tainty around the U.S. dol­lar as a reserve cur­rency than there has been in decades. Major economies’ cen­tral banks are aim­ing to ease back on the assis­tance they have been using to sup­port their economies, and this entails sig­nif­i­cant risk. Unem­ploy­ment will con­tinue to be high due to the uncer­tainty, and this damp­ens con­sumer demand. Over­pro­duc­tion is ram­pant, which keeps defla­tion on the table as a poten­tial risk. These are all struc­tural issues that call for lead­er­ship and dis­ci­pline in fac­ing the unknown. I wish I could see “quick fix” sce­nar­ios to any of these, but I can­not. These con­di­tions will per­sist for some time, so I advise clients to embrace them as a reality.
2. Com­pany fail­ures will con­tinue to make head­lines. Automak­ers, air­lines and con­sumer goods firms will fail or be sold on the cheap. Indus­tries will con­tinue to con­sol­i­date to take pro­duc­tion capac­ity out. Main­stream media titles will dis­ap­pear: news­pa­pers espe­cially will con­tinue to see read­er­ship and ad rev­enue plummet. However, online adver­tis­ing will con­tinue to increase, and ad agen­cies that can­not tran­si­tion to dig­i­tal fast will fail. This will force gov­ern­ments with unpalat­able choices: sup­port enter­prises that are “too big to fail” or let them go under, dis­rupt­ing the econ­omy either way. These deci­sions are affect­ing most of the world’s largest economies. Worse, 20th cen­tury lead­ers still cling to the idea that BRIC will drive up demand for their prod­ucts, but this will largely prove to be a mirage: emerg­ing economies will rapidly inno­vate and grow their own indus­tries to cater to their grow­ing demand.
3. Employ­ment for exec­u­tives will be stag­nant, which will require them to com­mit to con­sult­ing, not only as an interim arrange­ment between jobs but as a more per­ma­nent career. Indus­trial Econ­omy orga­ni­za­tions are trans­form­ing, so this will per­ma­nently change the struc­ture of work, but demand for ser­vices will per­sist. Orga­ni­za­tions in tur­moil will avoid hir­ing as much as pos­si­ble, but they will urgently need exper­tise and will con­tract exten­sively. Smart exec­u­tives will chunk their exper­tise smaller (con­sult­ing), but this will require them to use social net­works to reduce busi­ness devel­op­ment costs. In a related devel­op­ment, exec­u­tive blog­ging (more below) will see case stud­ies in which exec­u­tives are hired or con­tracted due to their blogs. Within 3 years, exec­u­tives in sev­eral indus­tries will be expected to have their thoughts online. Con­sult­ing is the new employment. ‚^(
4. Mar­ket­ing 2.0 will con­quer numer­ous big brands because Indus­trial Econ­omy push mar­ket­ing is a deflat­ing diri­gi­ble, and cus­tomers are experts at tun­ing out mass media. Mar­ket­ing 2.0 com­bines dig­i­tal and word of mouth in a new phi­los­o­phy, to treat cus­tomers as col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ners. Mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives have been inten­sively inter­ested in Web 2.0 dur­ing the past two years, and they are increas­ing their invest­ments slowly. Mar­keters still have to con­front their assump­tions about how to engage cus­tomers: too many mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions still talk about “con­tent” that they push to con­sumers. The cus­tomer wants to hear other cus­tomers, and too few mar­keters under­stand that. Accord­ing to For­rester, dig­i­tal agen­cies are dis­plac­ing tra­di­tional agen­cies in agency of record roles at big brands, and look for this trend to con­tinue. In tough times espe­cially, CMOs love digital’s abil­ity to offer ROI. What they lack is relationship-focused invest­ment mod­els for social net­works. Their agen­cies’ DNA is cre­ative, not roll-up-your-sleeves cus­tomer con­tact and rela­tion­ship build­ing (it’s not sexy), which will lead to disappointments.
5. Social busi­ness will see mixed results—on one hand, mar­ket­ing spend will increase 2x or 3x this year. Given #4, social media, which con­notes push­ing con­tent through “social” chan­nels, will grow the most rapidly because it is clos­est to legacy mar­ket­ing think­ing. Social net­works will grow more slowly because they require new think­ing and skills, but they will increase engage­ment much more. 2010 will be a parade of case stud­ies. How­ever, this upsurge will be accom­pa­nied by a pal­pa­ble back­lash against “social media” in which main­stream media (MSM) will crit­i­cize social’s lack of effec­tive­ness, but usu­ally for the wrong rea­sons. Too often, MSM doesn’t get Web 2.0, and they have have neg­a­tive atti­tudes because Web 2.0 is rais­ing the bar for trans­parency, speed and analy­sis while it takes atten­tion away from them.
6. Com­pa­nies will build “social media” teams in earnest. Begin­ning in Q3 2009, CMOs and CEOs began ask­ing for social net­work­ing strat­egy to weave together their ini­tia­tives and syn­chro­nize them with busi­ness strat­egy. Con­se­quently, the Social Net­work Roadmap fea­tures promi­nently in my prac­tice, and this trend will con­tinue into 2011. Large com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions have been exper­i­ment­ing, and mar­ket­ing lead­ers no longer seri­ously think of social as a fad, so they will hire “direc­tors of social media” in 2010, and early adopters will cre­ate spots for vice pres­i­dents of social media and social net­work­ing later in the year. These social execs will man­age teams of inter­nal and exter­nal blog­gers, Twit­ter jock­eys, video pro­duc­tion peo­ple and com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers. “Com­mu­nity orga­nizer” will become a pip­ing hot posi­tion, too.
7. Social net­work plat­form review—2009 was siz­zling hot as social net­work plat­forms vied for atten­tion. This mar­ket couldn’t get more dynamic or com­pet­i­tive as key play­ers broke bound­aries, invaded each other’s turf all year, with no end in sight. Here is my back-of-the-envelope on some of the major platforms:
   • Twit­ter—served as 2009’s dark horse and dis­rupted the Web 2.0 ecosys­tem, jan­gling mar­ket lead­ers Face­book and Google. Twit­ter cre­ated another cat­e­gory of social space that very few peo­ple under­stand yet, espe­cially those who com­ment from the side­lines. Twitter’s com­pet­i­tive­ness is largely dri­ven by the social con­text it created—ubiquitous real-time status—and that remains its key com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. Peo­ple are shar­ingevery aspect of their expe­ri­ences, even very pri­vate things, on Twit­ter because each tweet is only a glimpse. Twit­ter is low­er­ing pri­vacy bar­ri­ers and chang­ing the game. Because peo­ple tweet from every­where all the time, fol­low­ers are becom­ing a sub­sti­tute for Google’s search for some use cases. Mean­while, Twit­ter will be seen as the tip­ping point for the end of walled gar­den model. I don’t expect Twit­ter to go through any own­er­ship changes in 2010; they’ve already turned every­one down, their paper value is at par­ity with Facebook’s and their num­bers are strong. Most peo­ple don’t know how to use Twit­ter yet. They are field­ing enter­prise ser­vices in 2010.
   • Face­book—Face­book is the “por­tal of life” in which an increas­ing por­tion of exec­u­tives and their stake­hold­ers engage and share across all spec­tra. Until 2009, Face­book had a walled gar­den strat­egy: “Attract every­one to Face­book, where they would trans­act and we would learn more about them.” They wanted to take over the world by attract­ing the world to them. Face­book is one of the stick­i­est sites in the world, mea­sured by length of time peo­ple spend on it. They reversed that strat­egy in Decem­ber 2009 with the change in pri­vacy, and they are open­ing the wall to push pri­vate con­tent to the Web, where Google can access it and get Face­book more expo­sure (and adver­tis­ing rev­enue). In typ­i­cal form, Face­book didn’t give mem­bers much choice as some con­tent was reclas­si­fied (i.e. friends are now pub­lic). Face­book is still strug­gling with con­vert­ing its tremen­dous stick­i­ness to rev­enue. It is much more likely to acquire oth­ers. Its recent deal with Yahoo was hailed as a coup de grace due to the oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate syn­ergy with the two huge audi­ences. Face­book is act­ing like a large com­pany now.
   • Google—is the ner­vous sys­tem of the Web, and its over­all strat­egy is to encour­age peo­ple to for­sake the machine for the cloud (hence the bat­tle with Microsoft). Twit­ter has been a god­send for Google because it has turned the tide away from the walled gar­dens. Face­book was a thorn in Google’s side because its growth and high-value trans­ac­tions were invis­i­ble. Google is not a social com­pany per se, but I include them here because they are such an influ­ence in the mar­ket, and they are exper­i­ment­ing with becom­ing more social. They are chal­leng­ing Microsoft, they launched real-time search to neu­tral­ize Twitter’s erst­while real-time advan­tage. More­over, Face­book sees itself as com­pet­ing with Google, with the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion that it mea­sures socialtrans­ac­tions among friends. Google is likely to acquire.
   • LinkedIn—is the quin­tes­sen­tial B2B enter­prise play; it is rel­a­tively out­side the main­stream news, but it is exe­cut­ing its strat­egy of becom­ing the exec­u­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form of choice. It has sea­soned hands at the tiller, and I expect LinkedIn to drive fur­ther into the enter­prise in 2010. This also rep­re­sents a change: in 2007 the com­pany had a com­pet­i­tive stance vis à vis enter­prise soft­ware providers, now it is part­ner­ing with them. If LinkedIn main­tains this strat­egy, it will avoid major trans­ac­tions; it can play a slow game and will end up reward­ing share­hold­ers hand­somely. No trans­ac­tions, but I expect select strate­gic alliances to con­tinue. As I’ve said for some time, LinkedIn can become the swiss bank of exec­u­tive pro­files, and I was excited to see the unveil­ing of LinkedIn API Plat­form go live in November.
   • MySpace—con­stantly sur­prises me dur­ing client work, although it has clearly lost its title as the lead­ing social net­work to Face­book. How­ever, depend­ing on the demo­graph­ics of stake­hold­ers, MySpace can be an extremely rel­e­vant plat­form for engag­ing peo­ple, as I’ve repeat­edly dis­cov­ered through client work. Lead­er­ship of the com­pany is wan­der­ing, and man­age­ment is deliv­er­ing rel­a­tively lit­tle value add, but the com­mu­nity is large. It is the plat­form most likely to be bought as lead­er­ship doesn’t seem to have a strong vision or busi­ness strat­egy. News Corp failed the acqui­si­tion and doesn’t seem to have the vision or skills to make it work, so I expect it to unload MySpace, which could only ben­e­fit the company.
8. Social tech will relent­lessly drive rich expe­ri­ence into the cloud, but few peo­ple will notice. At a min­i­mum, watch for three key trends and, even bet­ter, con­sider pilots with them.
   • Fed­er­ated iden­tity will gain sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion. Exam­ples are Face­book Con­nect and Google Friend­Con­nect, which enable users to use their cre­den­tials to log in to third party web­sites (think “sin­gle sign-on” for the Web). This will encour­age more main­stream users to inter­act with Web 2.0 sites, which require logins. More impor­tant, how­ever, it will make friends portable. For exam­ple, log into CNN.com via Face­book Con­nect (FC), and your Face­book Friends who are also mem­bers of CNN.com will appear when you’re on the site, so you can read their com­ments or inter­act with them, and share this on your Face­book Wall. It enables you to inter­act with Face­book Friends on third-party sites of which you are all mem­bers (have logged in with FC). Google Friend­Con­nect is a sim­i­lar offer except it is not restricted to your “friends” because it doesn’t know who they are. Fed­er­ated iden­tity + social will rapidly become a mech­a­nism for peo­ple to ask their friends for input on buy­ing deci­sions. It will change how peo­ple buy.
   • Syn­di­ca­tion will ramp strongly in 2010. For one exam­ple, LinkedIn’s Plat­form enables devel­op­ers to syn­di­cate LinkedIn data into enter­prise appli­ca­tions. The Web 2.0 ecosys­tem will see sig­nif­i­cant advances in 2010 in which expe­ri­ence is the seam­less result of con­tent and func­tion­al­ity of mul­ti­ple prop­er­ties simul­ta­ne­ously. The rule is, don’t recre­ate, syn­di­cate. Lever­age the ecosystem.
   • Wid­gets have been around for­ever, but they are vastly neglected as engage­ment tools. A wid­get is a mini appli­ca­tion whose code nor­mal (i.e. non-tech ‚^) peo­ple can put on their web­sites, blogs or social net­work­ing pro­files. Google Friend­Con­nect is a sim­ple exam­ple. Com­pa­nies thus gain a foothold in oth­ers’ web­sites; how­ever, to win this right, their wid­gets must do some­thing inter­est­ing and valu­able, so the per­son wants to have that func­tion­al­ity on her site. Wid­gets are another way to cre­ate and lever­age the ecosys­tem by let­ting stake­hold­ers cre­ate with your infor­ma­tion or functionality.
9. Social busi­ness mod­els and tac­tics will see more case stud­ies in 2010, and here are four with which you should at least exper­i­ment in 2010:
   • Crowd­sourc­ing—loosely means ask­ing the crowd for input or advice on impor­tant ques­tions, usu­ally in a trans­par­ent venue, so the crowd itself can vet responses, dri­ving up qual­ity and cred. Most exec­u­tives don’t under­stand the dynam­ics of trans­par­ent forums, so they over­look the poten­tial, which has three key levers: 1) qual­ity is high due to the crowd’s diver­sity and abil­ity to eval­u­ate responses; 2) crowd­sourc­ing increases engage­ment because peo­ple feel hon­ored that you are ask­ing their opin­ion; 3) it is fast and inex­pen­sive. You can­not afford to not crowd­source because you will be harmed by com­peti­tors who do. It is not com­pli­cated, but you need to develop exper­tise and approach to how to ask, man­age venues and fol­low up to max­i­mize value. One bril­liant enter­prise exam­ple is Facebook’s glob­al­iza­tion strat­egy.
   • Comm-Co—is my term for “com­mu­nity com­pany,” the Threadless’s model. The com­pany serves as an enabler for its online com­mu­nity, which designs prod­ucts and decides which prod­ucts are made. I pre­dict that Comm-Co will become wide­spread for con­sumer prod­ucts in gen­eral. I’m talk­ing ketchup, apparel, bicy­cles, tech gad­gets, cars. By giv­ing cus­tomers a role in design­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices, you give them a chance to give of them­selves, increas­ing engage­ment. Give your com­pany to your cus­tomers, and your prof­its will climb. Specif­i­cally regard­ing Thread­less, the com­pany has an oppor­tu­nity to syn­di­cate its busi­ness model, as Ama­zon did. As you remem­ber, Ama­zon pio­neered numer­ous e-commerce tech­nolo­gies and busi­ness processes, and it sub­se­quently used its model to serve as the back end for other com­pa­nies (i.e. Toys­rus, Bor­ders, Tar­get). Did you know that Zap­pos gives sem­i­nars on using cul­ture as a com­pet­i­tive weapon?
   • Pro-Am—mashes up profes­sion­als and amateurs to col­lab­o­rate. Ama­teurs sup­ply pas­sion, out-of-the-box ideas and time while pro­fes­sion­als lever­age their exper­tise. This cre­ates a pow­er­ful profit-making cock­tail that will become a dom­i­nant busi­ness model in the next 3–5 years. The Indus­trial Econ­omy was about buy­ers and sell­ers, pro­duc­ers and con­sumers. The Knowl­edge Econ­omy is about col­lab­o­ra­tion. Every­one is an ama­teur of sev­eral things and an expert is a cou­ple things. Unlock the value by invit­ing ama­teurs to con­tribute. Qual­ity is high and cost is low. The Pro-Am model will be promi­nent in con­tin­u­ous innovation.
   • Gam­ing and vir­tual worlds have neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions for many exec­u­tives (“waste of time”), but when you abstract them, you real­ize they are just struc­tured types of engage­ment, and many online games and worlds are intensely col­lab­o­ra­tive. Col­lab­o­ra­tion in social net­work forums and gam­ing are along the same con­tin­uum. Con­trast World of War­craft and Wired’s exper­i­ment with start­ing over.
10. Con­sumer empow­er­ment will see promi­nent case stud­ies in 2010. Empow­er­ment refers to indi­vid­u­als using Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies for cit­i­zen activism, out­ing com­pa­nies or gov­ern­ments or peo­ple. Now every­one has a dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions mega­phone, and peo­ple will increas­ingly use it. Expect to see exam­ples like Saint Regis, United, McDonald’s and oth­ers. This will call for Web 2.0 dis­as­ter recov­ery ser­vices. This threat will increase expo­nen­tially as mobile phones have video cam­eras, so your com­pany is one click away from YouTube.
11. Mobil­ity and mobile social net­work­ing have been sim­mer­ing the the U.S. for years, and 2010 will see sig­nif­i­cant growth. The U.S. lags Asia and Europe for sev­eral rea­sons: com­puter pen­e­tra­tion is high, wire­less net­work is poor, provider envi­ron­ment sti­fles inno­va­tion. In most of the world, peo­ple access the Inter­net with their mobiles, and this will start com­ing true everywhere.
    • The iPhone has main­streamed the mar­ket for smart­phones in the U.S. due to ease of use, smart design and focus on “iLife” (music, movies and busi­ness). Mean­while, iPhone appli­ca­tions have extended the “phone” to almost any area of human endeavor, so it has become a lim­it­less tool. The U.S. car­ri­ers are, if belat­edly, finally at 3G. Other sig­nif­i­cant device com­peti­tors like Android and Black­berry will only extend the trend.
    • Mobile devices are mobile com­put­ers, and they give peo­ple the abil­ity to cre­ate text, photo, audio and video con­tent and pub­lish in 1 or 2 clicks. Every per­son is increas­ingly a pub­lisher, which will dis­rupt many busi­nesses. Com­pa­nies need to develop a mobile strat­egy in 2010 with some urgency in order to take advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity to engage peo­ple wher­ever they are in time and space. This will take time because they will have to redis­cover how stake­hold­ers expe­ri­ence their com­pany. Increas­ingly, stake­hold­ers will share all aspects of their expe­ri­ences, and com­pa­nies need to engage them.
    • Mobile pay­ments via mobile phone will con­tinue to make inroads, increas­ing the impor­tance of “the device.” These are tak­ing two forms: P2P ser­vices like Nokia Money and POP­Money and Mastercard’s Mon­ey­Send. Nokia is also a leader in mobile con­tact­less pay­ments (via RFID and NFC tech­nol­ogy). This will pro­ceed slowly in the U.S., but it is advanced in parts of Asia and Europe.
12. Video will be increas­ingly main­stream, which will require com­pa­nies to have strate­gies and processes to be present. As you’ve undoubt­edly heard, YouTube is the sec­ond largest search engine in the U.S., behind Google. It means that, for many peo­ple (they skew younger), the first request for infor­ma­tion is for video, which will even­tu­ally dis­place read­ing as the main medium for infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing. Video requires pro­duc­tion capa­bil­ity and some coor­di­na­tion of cam­era and ver­bal chan­nels, so this is not triv­ial. The tools are get­ting eas­ier to use every quar­ter, which will increase par­tic­i­pa­tion. Google is work­ing hard on tech­nol­ogy that “reads” video and makes video con­tent search­able. Of course, their endgame there is attach­ing ads to the YouTube video vault. This is cer­tainly an auda­cious under­tak­ing, but I’ll wager that they have put sig­nif­i­cant resources against it.

Rec­om­men­da­tions for the enter­prise in 2010

I hope you can see that the Knowl­edge Econ­omy rep­re­sents a pro­found shift in soci­ety and busi­ness. The good news is, the way you make your tran­si­tion to it will largely deter­mine whether you sur­vive or thrive. As I review this list, the macrotrends I see are eco­nomic uncer­tainty and increased col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, skills and expec­ta­tions. Your company’s place in the value chain/web and your rela­tion­ships with stake­hold­ers will deter­mine how imme­di­ately these trends affect you. In general, customers are con­sult­ing each other on what, how and when to buy every­thing, so com­pa­nies need to be engaged with influ­encers. It is no longer about hav­ing ads and “con­tent” avail­able, it’s about inter­act­ing and cre­at­ing rela­tion­ships. Your com­pany needs to know how to show the right peo­ple how you care about them. You can’t buy this, you have to earn it.

Based on my expe­ri­ence with dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies and cur­rent work advis­ing com­pa­nies and exec­u­tives on their Web 2.0 adop­tion strate­gies, I’ll offer this guid­ance for 2010. I invite your ques­tions in com­ments or privately.

Enter­prise

• Iden­tify, define, under­stand and engage your Web 2.0 ecosys­tem. Web 2.0 com­mu­ni­ca­tion and empow­er­ment are rapidly chang­ing stake­hold­ers’ expec­ta­tions, and most com­pa­nies do not under­stand how. You need con­crete answers for:
  • What are stake­hold­ers (cus­tomers, investors, reg­u­la­tors, employ­ees, part­ners, alumni…) doing in Web 2.0 venues?
  • Why are they there, what are they try­ing to accomplish?
  • Which venues do they use, how do they use each venue and why?
  • How are they engag­ing with each other, com­peti­tors and other players?
  • Based on your cul­ture, core com­pe­ten­cies and busi­ness goals, how can you engage effi­ciently and effectively?
• Develop res­i­dent skills with Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies, processes and sen­si­bil­i­ties. This is a strate­gic imper­a­tive because stake­hold­ers will increas­ingly expect you to be avail­able. Your pres­ence will have a major impact on buy­ing deci­sions. For many com­pa­nies, 2010 will be the last year that they can move ahead of their com­peti­tors. Keep in mind, Web 2.0 is all about social behav­ior; it’s not a tech­nol­ogy you can buy and put in place; your peo­ple and prox­ies have to learn how to act, and that’s a process you need to pur­sue aggressively.
  • Blog­ging is about what you think, not about sell­ing. Leave the lat­ter for your Web­site. No mat­ter what your busi­ness is, you have to share your thoughts online. This also means engag­ing blog­gers with impact on your stake­hold­ers by com­ment­ing on their blogs.
  • Con­tribute to online forums fre­quented by stake­hold­ers. This might be LinkedIn Answers, indus­try forums promi­nent blogs, MySpace or Yahoo forums, wher­ever stake­hold­ers are ask­ing ques­tions and solv­ing problems.
  • Deploy social busi­ness infra­struc­ture inter­nally to drive skill devel­op­ment and increase pro­duc­tiv­ity; kick off pilots in which teams use wikis, blogs, microblog­ging, social book­mark­ing and rich media.
• Assign a top exec­u­tive to man­age your adop­tion of Web 2.0 because chang­ing stake­holder expec­ta­tions will change your busi­ness. Do you want to let this hap­pen to you reac­tively, or do you want to proac­tively help guide stake­hold­ers’ expectations?
  • Develop a social busi­ness strat­egy that includes: your over­all approach con­sid­er­ing risks, rewards and busi­ness strat­egy; goals, time­lines and resource require­ments; met­rics and mea­sure­ments; a risk-managed process to scale your ini­tia­tives. Your avail­abil­ity to inter­act with stake­hold­ers will increas­ingly drive your brand value because they will expect you to be present, appro­pri­ate and sin­cere. Your com­pany, employ­ees and prox­ies need to learn how to do that. It’s not easy because peo­ple have to unlearn some key things that used to work but no longer do.
  • The strat­egy will enable you to cre­ate a strate­gic dia­log among man­age­ment; in 2010 and 2011, exec­u­tives are going to be doing reme­di­a­tion because social projects are hap­pen­ing all over the enter­prise, in some cases coun­ter­act­ing each other. I’m not advo­cat­ing cen­tral­iza­tion and con­trol­ling mes­sage, but hav­ing goals and meet­ing them col­lab­o­ra­tively will sig­nif­i­cantly increase returns.
  • Cre­ate a strate­gic dia­log within the orga­ni­za­tion and with part­ners and peo­ple out­side. You need an adop­tion approach that con­sid­ers the spec­trum of risks and focuses your efforts on rewards that move your busi­ness strategy.
  • Your cham­pion should have expe­ri­ence lead­ing “innovation”-type ini­tia­tives that break rules and ruf­fle feath­ers. S/He should also be open to per­son­ally embrac­ing social prac­tices (i.e. blog­ging, tweet­ing, inter­act­ing online).
• Cre­ate and main­tain a relationship-centric mind­set for your Web 2.0 ini­tia­tives. See the Social Net­work Life Cycle Model and the Rela­tion­ship Life Cycle for more on this.
• Use risk man­age­ment best prac­tices to main­tain momen­tum. Keep pilots small, spe­cific and rapid to shrink ROI dis­cus­sions, mea­sure results and scale what’s work­ing. Quickly.
• Part­ner with IT on your ini­tia­tives, and engage “real­is­tic enthu­si­asts” to under­stand IT’s capa­bil­i­ties and will­ing­ness to syn­di­cate social con­tent in from out­side (LinkedIn Pro­file infor­ma­tion, for one).

Indi­vid­ual

• Start blog­ging. Here is my free Quick Launch Guide to get on in about an hour.
• Take your LinkedIn Pro­file up a level. Peo­ple go to LinkedIn when they are look­ing for exper­tise. Remem­ber, Web 2.0 is about inter­ac­tion, not con­tent. You can pay for con­tent, but your atten­tion is priceless. On LinkedIn, this means:
  • Par­tic­i­pat­ing in LinkedIn Answers: answer oth­ers’ ques­tions and ask ques­tions; this attracts attention
  • Putting your slides on your pro­file via Slideshare
  • Invok­ing your blog posts on your pro­file with the Word­Press or BlogLink Apps
• Com­mit to tweet­ing. Twit­ter is a new mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that you need to under­stand because it is trans­form­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cre­at­ing new kinds of rela­tion­ships. See Twit­ter: Key Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion of the Decade.
• Cut back on unpro­duc­tive net­work­ing. Don’t fall into net­work­ing as an activ­ity trap. If you drive an hour to/from an event and spend 3 hours there, that’s half a day. You could have writ­ten 6 blog posts and answered 4 LinkedIn ques­tions. When you have a con­tent strat­egy for your blog, it cre­ates dig­i­tal bread­crumbs that are always work­ing for you. If you choose the LinkedIn ques­tions you answer judi­ciously, peo­ple will dis­cover them at any time. At face-to-face net­work­ing events, the value dis­si­pates much more quickly. I’m not say­ing to reduce face-to-face sig­nif­i­cantly, but cut­ting back on two events per month will give you more than enough time to ramp up online, where the lever­age is far greater.
• Relent­lessly con­duct your­self so that you increase trust with peo­ple who count. Make intro­duc­tions, answer ques­tions, give help, ask for help, fol­low through on what you promise. In Web 2.0 envi­ron­ments, other peo­ple are observ­ing our inter­ac­tions. We can choose to be creeped out by that, or use it to our advan­tage. When you are authen­tic and help peo­ple, other peo­ple see. Huge leverage.