That was fast!

September 21, 2006 · · Posted by Greg Lloyd

See the update time on Olivier's TeamPage 3.7 post (from my Technorati watchlist)!
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See, it is possible to keep up to date on what anyone in >54 million blogs is saying about you, your product, your company in near real time! If only it were possible to do the same for what's happening within your business. It will be. See Traction's A Web that Works white paper (pdf) from Business Week's 11 Sep 2006 Special Advertising Section, short clip below:

A Web that Works

How to you know what people are saying about your product? Your industry? Before you make a business call, do you 'Google' your contact's name to learn more than you can from reading their business card?

If you're like most business people, you use public web's search and syndication services to stay informed about what matters to you, leveraging resources that only a small country could have afforded only 15 years ago. Why can't your business work more like the web? It can.

On the public web, blogs and wiki's make it simple for anyone to create web content that grows page by page (like www.Wikipedia.org), or as posts over time (like most blogs). What people write on the public web becomes an authored, searchable index to what's happening and what people think is important elsewhere on the web.

The same principles work for your business, with a few twists:

1) Blogs are for groups as well as individuals Blogs can have multiple authors addressing a shared topic, and the same group editing capabilities as a wiki.

2) Business purpose matters Personal blogs are usually one person's opinion, A group blog or wiki for product development, sales or marketing focuses on news, analysis, meeting notes, plans, issues, questions and answers.

3) Security matters Blog and wiki software can provide private access to business stakeholders. Stakeholders include customers, suppliers, resellers, PR firms, legal and other consultants, as well as internal marketing, product, sales and management teams.

A European pharma company started using blog software for competitive intelligence. The CIO reports that it's widely accepted and helps make competitive intelligence more valuable to daily decision-making. He says market relevant communication is moving from email to blogs, creating a new model for knowledge management and collaboration within the company.

See also Enterprise 2.0 - Letting hypertext out of its box
20 June 2005 | Supernova | Why Can't a Business Work More Like the Web?
Use of Weblogs for Competitive Intelligence | First International Business, Technology CI Conference, Tokyo Oct 2005

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