Everybody has a view on Web 3.0 (including us) so here is the
McKinsey Quarterly:
In effect, that its marketers are being replaced. As markets morph into Web 2.0 “conversations” and consumers gain much greater freedom to pursue their own interests, customers are doing things that online marketing managers don’t necessarily want—or expect—them to do. For example, they can easily connect with one another, often using multimedia sites such as YouTube and Flickr, so they themselves can satisfy their need for information about products. What’s more, consumers may trust information obtained in this way much more than they do information from your company. What will happen when these consumer experiences are much more interesting than anything your marketers have put up on the Web?
Good question. Apart from creating a new aggregation point that the company doesn't own, that is.... the author, Donna Hoffman is is codirector of the UCR Sloan Center for Internet Retailing and thus advocates using the Sloan LEAD model
Executives can use a model we at the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing have developed called LEAD - Listen, Experiment, Apply, Develop (as opposed to the more usual HALT model - Hear, Argue, Limit, Terminate) to create a road map that will help companies thrive in the online world’s environment of constant change.
How does this apply here? We expurgate it below so you don't have to leave this site.....:
Listen.
Your organization should have a formal process to monitor and analyze what its customers are saying about it online and then use this information as an early-warning system. Even casual observation of these online conversations is better than nothing... ...But simply entering the game is only a start. Companies should always assume that the digital environment will change rapidly—so they must adapt accordingly. Rather than pushing messages at consumers, marketers should listen to them and think constantly about ways to engage with them actively. A social Web presence that is tone-deaf to a customer’s needs augers rough times ahead.
Experiment.
Don’t just monitor social media—engage your newly empowered customers by using the novel tools of Web 2.0 and beyond. Start with simple pilots: for example, create a company profile on social-networking sites, such as Ning, or sponsor a promotion on the innovative social-shopping site Polyvore. Make friends with bloggers and tweet your customers on Twitter....
....While return-on-investment metrics for social media are still in the early stages, these experiments clearly pay off big time in greater customer awareness and brand engagement. Unless you have Web 2.0 experts on your team, stick with small experiments, since big ones can fail badly. [And don't let any Interns near the project habitat]
Apply.
Take the experiments and apply them. To make it easier to reach out to customers, optimize your Web site so that it connects fluidly with online communities and social-media sites. Make it simple for consumers to link to you and tag your content, and find ways to make your site more relevant in social-networking searches. If you have nothing worth linking to or tagging, or if your content isn’t relevant to consumers at all, you’re in trouble. Measuring impact is paramount, so you’ll need to use the Web’s predictive tools and quantitative analysis to track the results of your experiments. As you gain experience, you can apply what you learn on a larger scale.
Develop.
The Internet is a social medium and should therefore be a crucial part of any company’s marketing mix. But it is critical to develop integrated marketing programs that use the Web as more than just another advertising channel. Companies must therefore rapidly flee from the mass-media broadcast mentality: for example, rather than simply buying ads on MySpace, they should make interactive Web 2.0 elements part of their marketing programs.
Bottom line: by focusing on the fundamental aspects of the consumers’ online behavior— not just current best practices—companies will be better prepared when Web 2.0+ morphs into Web 3.0 and beyond.
Not much to argue with, really - though some of its a "bit known" so the ways are well trodden, thus a bit more originality may be required. It plays to much of the thinking around VRM and other like arenas (see
here for a starter). But, what I want to know is what the marketers morph into as Web 2.0 morphs into Web 3.0. Is it more of a PR play (Indirect Influencing) or do they disappear altogether, replaced by a direct conversation between the direct buyers and sellers, as the more purist forms of VRM hypothesize.
