Member Article

Web 2.0 - Meeting the Challenge

With Stephen Moretti of Enigma Interactive

Previously, I noted that “Web 2.0” and social networking are now a part of everyday life and businesses are beginning to realise the benefits that they might gain from adding them to their usual customer interaction and marketing plans.

So how will new media agencies meet the challenge of creating Web 2.0 applications for their clients?

For most new media agencies that provide any kind of content management system or bespoke web application to their clients, the technical side of providing these kinds of applications will not be a great hardship.

The biggest challenge will be managing the client’s expectations. Web 2.0 is not a magic bullet that will instantly make them more popular or sell more units. It can have the opposite effect if past and current customers latch on to the company’s new openness and vent frustrations and complaints in the very public eye. It might even be, as is the case of one site ‘revamp’ I can think of, that the client’s user-base is just not interested in their existing services being “Web Two Point Oh’d” or any of that “social networking malarkey”.

This is an aspect of Web 2.0 that media companies should ensure that their clients are aware of. Integrating Web 2.0 applications is only for a business that is aware and prepared for the good, bad and indifferent feedback that will come their way. If they are prepared, then they should be ready and willing to respond to and make appropriate changes to their business processes based on this feedback.

Maintaining Web 2.0 output can be very time consuming. Once a company or a person starts building a network they must maintain a reasonable flow of useful information if they want to maintain and develop that network. Blogs provided an alternative to the traditional static news and press release sections to a site, but need to be updated much more regularly than normal news, as well as ensuring that any comments are replied to in a timely fashion. If forums are to be included then they need to be monitored for posts and inappropriate content, as well as responding to existing posts and making new posts. Twitter accounts need to be watched for new followers and replies and updated with appropriate content throughout every working day.

While any media agency with a technical skill base can build and integrate with Web 2.0, it will only be those that can communicate to their clients the necessity to apply sufficient resources and set up business processes to manage their new Web 2.0 offering that will build successful applications.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Supreme Ice Cream .