Technology Forecast: Smart Firms Find Space Online | The online world is paying dividends to businesses that learn to conquer it correctly
Photo/Livia Gershon
Patrick Lynch, Destination Worcester executive director, demonstrates the organization's Facebook page.
In his tongue-in-cheek television commercials, newsman Bill Kurtis may be perpetually surprised to “find” the Internet in far-off locations thanks to his AT&T Laptop Connect Card, but local businesses—and some global ones, as well—are finding that a standard web site, no matter how elaborate, is no longer sufficient when attempting to conquer the World Wide Web.
Social networking web sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.com represent the new frontier for business development, and while the concept may be foreign to some, the first step down the path toward long-term prosperity is only a double-click away.
When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February 2004, the Harvard University sophomore saw it as a social networking site for college students. But what began as a site dedicated to Harvard undergrads quickly evolved to include most colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.
By September of 2006, the social media website opened its doors to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address. Suddenly, the site that was once dominated by procrastinating college students was now a marketing platform for major corporations including Microsoft and Apple Inc.
With more than 120 million active users, and the site’s target demographic growing older every day, Facebook represents the ideal medium for businesses looking to maximize their exposure.
“So much is moving toward social media, you have to have a presence there,” said Patrick Lynch, executive director at Destination Worcester. “If you don’t do it now, you’re going to have to do it later.”
Meeting Expectations
For Lynch’s organization, which promotes the city of Worcester as a meetings and events destination, the transition to Facebook is an obvious one.
“More and more people are going to the web and looking for user-generated content in terms of where to stay, where to eat, what shows to see,” said the 35-year-old Lynch, who launched his organization’s Facebook page in August.
“The nice thing about Facebook, when you setup a page, it’s a step-by-step process. There’s a learning curve, but you don’t have to search for information to learn how to use it. They’ve made it very user friendly.”
User-generated content has become so popular, in fact, that major corporations are utilizing it to improve the quality of their services, not to mention their customer relationships.
Take Twitter.com, for example, a social media web site that allows users to share information on anything they wish, provided they do it in no more than 140 characters per post.
Given the site’s ability to search by a specific topic, computer manufacturer Dell immediately saw what was possible: an opportunity to reach out to existing and potential customers in a way that was impossible before.
“Perhaps you already use Twitter to communicate with your friends, find out about breaking news, and keep up with technology and social media (or even political) leaders,” begins a statement on Dell’s web site. “Now you can also get great deals from Dell, stay current with what’s happening at Dell, and connect with other Dell fans and employees through Twitter!”
“Revenue is not key,” Dell spokesman Richard Binhammer told BusinessWeek back in September. “What we want most is conversational engagement.”
The prospect may sound enticing—a direct line of communication from the minds shaping a business to its individual customers—but for entrepreneurs eager to make that connection, Peter Caputa at Hubspot.com, a Boston-based company providing several hundred clients with Internet marketing guidance, urges a conservative approach out of the gate.
Don’t Walk Away
“Most businesses that are dabbling with it [social media] are wasting their time because they haven’t done the important things first,” he said.
“Their web sites are lacking. They don’t post new content. They’re not designed well to be found in the search engines. People tend to build their website and then walk away from it. If they commit to doing some blogging, they will constantly be improving and increasing their amount of leads each month.”
The advice may seem like common sense, but too often the key points are lost on small business owners eyeing the Internet for increased success.
If social media sites will direct new audiences to your web site, that web site must close the deal. Creating a dynamic homepage that provides users with beneficial content and encourages them to provide contact information will generate immediate sales growth, advised Caputa. But that must be in place before you attempt to draw new visitors from social media sites.
Darcy Cook, president of Safety Trainers, a Worcester-based provider of safety training programs, learned these lessons directly from Caputa and his hubspot.com team.
“We had a web site for five years,” she said. “It looked beautiful. We had someone managing it. But it never gave us lead generation.”
Since launching her company’s new site in March, complete with video presentations posted through youtube.com, Cook has generated 535 new leads from people who contacted her ready to buy. The advantage of this new technology, she says, is the control it allows her to have when promoting her business online. The disadvantage, she said, is the effort required to make it work.
“As a small business, you have two choices: Do you spend the time just working on the web site, or do you spend time on the website, and the blogging, and the social media? You can’t just build it and they will come,” she said. “You have to build it and then you have to work it.”
Shaun Tolson is a freelance writer based in Ashburnham.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments