Maria's Blog

I’ve been thinking about the 2.0 boom and the companies that are willing to make a lot of money from it.

There is no doubt that web 2.0 is a new and innovating concept, but what’s the difference with the .com failure of 15 years ago? Here is an old article from those days, so you can picture how bad things were.

Searching on the internet we can find different theories about this topic.

Back on the 90′s, the web companies were supposed to be the next generation of business. “The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms“  This is what Wikipedia says about that period. Many of the dot-coms companies failed…

Making an analogy, we can find Meish’s  post about how many web 2.0 companies have disappeared already…

I’m not really sure if web 2.0 is as lucrative as many people think. For sure, I’m not the only one wondering if we are going through the same, here is an interesting article with expert’s opinions that explains why we are not in a bubble. On the other hand this other article that says exactly the opposite, we are in a bubble, just like in the 90′s.

From other point of view, web 2.0 is more than just business, is a concept. So I’m not sure if it’s as lucrative as some people want it to be, but for sure is a revolution about the way of using internet and communicating, but this is a topic for another post…

I never thought I would write this post… but it seems like twiter is actually a good tool for marketing. I’ve found a very interesting article about research on this topic “the research found that 20 percent of all tweets—or one out of every five updates—mention specific brand names or products.” So next time your are creating a new product, don’t forget to Tweet it! Other interesting article, tells us that Twiter advertisers are quite happy with the results.

Maybe I judge Twiter without the necessary information. It seems to be a great tool, and very usefull to be in contact with friends and other people. I’ll give it a try!

I’ve been talking about web 2.0 tools, my thoughts about some of them, and today I’m talking about using web 2.0 applications with marketing purposes. To implement a succesful web 2.0 marketing strategy, there are a few steps you need to follow (if you decide to do this by yourself).

Research

The first step when implementing new tools is: get into them. Randomly create new accounts in different web 2.0 applications won’t be enough. You need to know exactly what services they offer, how they work, who is using them and what for. Use them, test them, search for the experts’ opinions, find out why they are popular. There is so much information out there, USE IT!

Plan

As in any other marketing campaign, it needs careful planning. Imagine how many people are involved in the creation of a new TV advertisement… the same planning must be backing your new web 2.0 marketing strategy. What do you want from the internet? Do you just want to create an online blog or do you want to go further? Always bear in mind what you are dealing with, web 2.0 is not just a label on the street, you need much more than just printing your company’s name in some cool places.

So now we have a plan and we know which tools we are going to use… What’s next?

Time to work

Start implementing your meticulous plan. Web 2.0 is based on the sense of community. You are willing to enter to this new community and make the difference. Create new and fresh content about topics related to your business, share your knowledge!

Keep on with the good work

Creating lots of accounts, posting one blog entry is just the beginning of your new hobby. You must keep on writing, searching for new information, researching about the latest tools, thinking!, exploring the web, expanding your marketing strategy… these are some of the thousand thing you will have to look after. Once you are in the community, and people is expecting something from you, you can’t disappoint them… so be prepared, because web 2.0 is not just spending some money in advertising, but it’s about hard and continuous work.

If you have this in mind, your marketing campaign will be a success!! But remember, there is no magic wonder in the web!

I’m thinking seriously about taking Alan Skorkin’s advice about planning my blog as an invasion. I’ve found his post on problogger. I’m one of those people he talks about. I mean, I have a vague idea of what I want from my blog, but it’s not enough.

Strategy
Blog’s objective: create a personal branding. Have a web blog which represents me. Use this web blog to sell myself, so people can know about me.

Steps on the road to my goal : Get at least 30 visitors per day (I’m not planning to take over the Internet, obviously) and have at least 50 posts. Mmmm deadline… I’ll leave that for later

Superior Tactics
I’ll continue writing about inb346 workshops off course, about events in my personal life (as holidays, nice dinners with nice people, etc). But also, I’ll try to introduce some content about what I like in the IT field (like web design, SEO, usability, etc).

I’ll publish my last posts on facebook, so all my friends can read them. I’ll think about some new ways to expose my blog on the web…

Allies
I think all my inb346 mates are my allies. They are helping my blog by commenting, or simply by reading… Thanks guys!

Win The Skirmishes
“You need to make time to regularly produce content”. He sounds just like Jason!!!

Getting Distracted By The Scenery
This is definitely what happened to me!! Thanks Alan for writing this down. I’ll focus myself on more writing, and less reading!

The Logistics
As a web developer, I promise I’ll spend some time on the design of my blog. Although I like how it looks, it’s not unique.

I hope I can get all this work done!! I’ll let Alan know about the results, and for sure to all of you too!!

About this blog itself.

When I first started my blog, every single post was so difficult to build… I’ve spent so many hours researching, surfing the web, trying to find something to write about, but nothing was good enough. After some posts, it started to be easier… I started posting about things I really like, and I started to see that people (my inb346 mates) reacted positively.

Personal Branding.

I’m not sure if this blog is really helping me to build my personal branding. I’m working in web development + design, an area in which lots and lots of people are working . So, what makes me different? You won’t find that in this blog. On the other hand, this blog is a great trigger for creating my personal branding. This is the first step to build a blog which really reflects myself. Maybe I’m completely wrong and the section my life “outside work” is really showing more aspects of my life and basically, creating my personal branding. It’s up to you to decide whether I’m right or wrong…

About weekly workshops of inb346, I think it took me too long to get into them. I think, the best post for these activities was the one about Accenture. I found some great information related with the unit content and related with a very big company in the IT market. As web 2.0 is about sharing information, I’ve used my twitter post to share some good blogs. I’ve been commenting in some mate’s blogs also about EKKA, the new language of Internet, about companies using web 2.0.

There are millions of web 2.0 tools out there. I’ve been using some of them, like:

• TripAdvisor, where I posted about the hotel in NZ, and where I’ll post about all the future hotels I stay in.
Delicious to bookmark my pages. Not only I can access my bookmarks in any computer but also, I can share them with everyone.
I’m preparing a presentation for an other subject which I’ll add to slideShare (although it’s in google docs, visible to public)
I’d updated my profile in LinkedIn. It’s not complete yet, but it will be…
I’m using Facebook more than ever!
I used to use Assembla for team programming projects. Not only useful for the team, but also for the community, as all the code is public, and anyone can search and use your code.