Delicious is a social bookmarking website that has offers many features that may be beneficial for business. You can:

• bookmark links that you wish to return to
• share links with your project team, co-workers, and others
• use common tags to discover new links
• promote your business (or your client’s) content
• access your bookmarks from anywhere

So why would you want to ‘tag’ websites? For a business person, when you search the Internet you can be overwealmed with information. There can be many hundreds of websites that you come across that may be relevant to you particular business or client’s business. Sometimes you will come across a site by ‘accident’ that you may think ‘that was exactly the information I was looking for another time, but couldn’t find it’. This is when del.icio.us can come in and assist so that you can recall this at any later point in time.

The below video explains the process, how to join and how to effectively use delicious features:

One great feature for business is the ability to setup subscriptions for specific tags groups and watch what others use that save a specific tag. This allow you to stay up-to-date on specific topics. ”Tag mining” can be used for brand research – allowing businesses to know how their customers ’really’ viewed their brand and how it was categorised. By using data about the total amount of ‘saves’ and ‘notes’ visitors have made about your brand can be used to compare with some of your business competitors.  How are they faring compared with you? Is your web presence as good as theirs? Have a look at their website and see what pages seem to be attracting interest. Consider why? and how this information may be used to improve your own business brand.

So check it out… try delicious and see how it can be beneficial – the ability to have one repository for all your relevant websites and marketing features is a definite YES for any business professional interested in improving their ‘brand’.

Digg is another popular site that allows users to share content they have found on the web with others in the ‘community’. The content can be ‘voted’ on allowing you and other users to determine the value of the content.

So how can business users take advantage of digg?

Well you can share and search for content online including videos, images, and podcasts -  discuss news articles, etc. Users collectively determine the value of the content therefore you can see how your brand and other similar brands (ie. opposition businesses) are doing out there ‘as voted by the online population’.

Digg can also be used as a ‘tool’ for driving traffic to your website. By submitting regular, quality, blog posts on this site you have yet another way to achieve this. Just make sure that the title and description of your post is relevant and will attract an audience – sell the article to readers so that viewer will ‘digg’ it because if you get enough positive votes, it will be shown on the ‘home page’ which will be seen by many thousands of users.

Social networking is the ‘aim of the game’ so ensure you interact with the ‘digg’ community.. participate in group discussion with quality input.. build your own community and enhance business opportunities through other user participation.

 Use digg’s categories to find relevant topics that have been voted popular by users. In this area there are two options – ‘popular’ and ‘upcoming’. If a submission does not receive enough votes, it will not reach the ‘popular’ section and eventually be removed from the ‘upcoming’ section also. Most viewers are only interested in the ‘popular’ stories, so to be successful your submission must make it to this area.

Digg has tools that you can incorporate into your own website such as:

• buttons and badges that allow viewers to read and ‘digg’ your post (thus improving the ranking)
• widgets that allow recent ‘digg’ posts to be shown

This video has more information about how to use ‘digg’  …

So, YES Digg is yet another way business can promote their brand using a web 2.0 technology … because it is used by millions of people, I would suggest it is worth consideration as another place to start business enhancement.

Although Facebook may be thought of predominently as a general social networking tool that is used by people to find current and former friends, highschool buddies, etc… Facebook can be a great Web 2.0 tool for business professionals because it offers a well-known web service-platform.

So how can it benefit you as a professional buiness person? Below I have identified the main ways you can utilise Facebook.

1. Finding contacts – Similar to Linkedin, Facebook offers searching abilities to find former colleagues. These people may assist when you are looking for shared interest business opportunities. It is not necessary to create a large amount of ‘friends’ by trying to add everyone you can, you are better off with only a handful of quality connections to start with.

2. Add an “Application” selectively – although there are over 2000 apps that can be added to your Facebook profile, you should only add those that may be used as a professional tools specifically for your business requirements. For example, should you really be adding an application that involves playing games? Consider what you want an application to do. It will be on your main page and will be shown to the ‘world’ so chose applications that may be best suited. Applications can also be used that will not actually show on your page at all – it will work in the background and collect visitor usage patterns that can assit in determining the way you create your page.

3. Ensure correct settings – allowing people to search and to view your profile is beneficial for you to ensure your business is available for visitors. Consider whether you want ALL people who are casually searching to find you, or whether you only want persons in a specific geographical location to find you. Additionally, you should ensure your ‘preferences’ is fine-tuned to the type of information that you want – this will save time when sifting through updates.

4. Join Business Groups - Facebook groups can feature a ‘wall’ that contains threaded discussion lists. These discussions can be very useful as they can provide common information that may be of interest. Ask questions about a particular issue and see how you can benefit from these discussions. Use your ‘friends’ list to assist in finding these groups.

5. Place targeted ads – you can test out marketing with a targeted advertisement for minimal cost on Facebook. This can assist you develop a product or idea and provide valuable insight  about your potential market.

The video below discusses ’How to use Facebook for business marketing’ …

Facebook has over 100 million members worldwide and can be used easily by any business professional. So enhance your personal branding and utilise this no cost marketing tool today…

Linkedin is a social networking site that is predominently used by professionals and businesses alike. It allows users to store contact details about other business people they know and trust. Users of this social networking platform can awsk to be introduced to other peoples contacts to assist them finding work and other business opportunities.

Watch this online video below about how to use the ‘Search’ functionality of Linkedin

The top 5 main benefits of Linkedin for business is listed below.

1. Ask the business community for advice – “Linkedin Answers” is an excellent resource that enables users to ask others in the community questions about specific topics. The answers you receive will generally supply quick and accurate information that can assist in your business requirements. For example, if you are looking for a specialist to provide your business with another improvement or function OR you just want to find out the viability of a possible new product line before you spend a lot of time, money and effort.. linkedin is a great place to start.

2. Create groups of business like minded users – usually in business there are many times that you may feel alone and unsure of yourself. Creating a group with other similar types of business people can be very rewarding. For example, if you are a small business with only a few staff, it may be comforting to know that others out there struggle in similar ways to you. These other users may be able to offer comforting suggestions and alternatives that may assist you in reaching a business decision that just seemed ‘too difficult’.

3.  Increase your brand name visibility - adding connections will increase the likelyhood that other people will find your profile when they are searching for someone to do business with. Businesses would much prefer to build relations with other businesses that their friends know and trust.

4. Improve your search engine ranking – Linkedin allows you to make your profile available for search engines (such as google, bing, yahoo). By alowing your profile to be public, search engines generally rate these links highly making your postings more ‘searchable’ by users.

5. Research potential business markets – Linkedin can be used to find people who have worked for competitors or other companies that may have failed. From the information you can source from discussions with these people, you can learn a vast amount that may assist in your final decision about whether you should start your business in a market OR if you do start, what pitfalls do you need to avoid. 

If you have your own business or a professional business person, I would definitely recommend Linkedin. In my opinion it is one of the best web 2.0 professional social networking sites around…

Now where  are we  …  you have done your research and understand some of your potential client’s requirements. NOW it is important to listen to what they want, need, and desire. So far the meeting has been productive, you have been given details about how they currently do things, have listened intently, and have an idea about what their business is and how they currently operate. Now is the time to find out the future – find out what they perceive to be the direction that they wish to take with possible WEB 2.0 technologies.

If you really want to ensure your proposal is ‘the best’ and ‘spot on’ with regards to all aspects, listen to where the client foresees their business going in the future. By understanding their concepts and thought on possible direction, you will be able to more correctly identify the possible technologies that may be utilised to offer them the most appropriate solution. Although the perfect client would ‘know exactly what they want’ and then it would be easy for you to find the solutions, this is rarely ever the case. Even if it was, then you need to show them why they would want to utilise YOUR services to help them. You need to show them OTHER possible enhancement areas and ideas.

Generally your potential client may have an idea for their future direction, but not understand really how they can get there with the best possible outcomes. This is where you show your expertise and create a proposal that will ‘blow their socks off’. To do this once again LISTEN to their needs. Do they want to host services on-site to allow more control on the information? What improvements do they NEED and are considered a ‘must have’? How have they come to this conclusion – from reports, research, other marketing tools?

Next, consider their WANTS and DESIRES. What do they see as being the improvements that may ALSO assist in their business operations? What would they consider best case senario for a technology platform? Have they seen or do they currently use any technologies that they think MAY benefit them – and how? What are the most important additions and improvements required, and what are some nice little add-ons that ‘could help things’. Understanding the potential clients absolute NEEDS as opposed to their desires will assist in giving you your “improvement list” – this is your start when determining the technologies you will consider within your proposal.  Although a full proposal should identify all the answers to the business needs and also some other suggestions, generally time constraints and access to resources may limit the ‘fullness’ of the submission.

The most important thing is to ensure that suggested implementation measures detailed within your proposal are possible within defined timeframes that will be acceptable to your client….

(Next Post (Part 3) – After the meeting… more research, contemplation of technologies, starting your proposal draft)

It can start by a business approaching a firm and requesting them to provide a proposal to show how current web technologies may enhance practices. Alternatively, if you are proactive, you can go out and do some research and ‘track-down’ a business that appears to be in obvious need for a new outlook. Either way, it is important that consideration be made before ‘diving into it’ to research your possible client and understand their needs and desires.

For these set of posts (this being part 1), we will suppose that a potential client has approached you (or your firm) with the understanding that they need to modernise their current practices. The organisation has found that their business is stale and other similar companies are continuing to thrive and grow (even in the tough economic climate) by ‘using these NEW technologies’….

Now although many WEB 2.0 technologies have been around for years, it is only in recent times that a majority of businesses have started to use them to assist with growth and brand promotion. WHY? Perhaps due to peoples underlying fear of the unknown, to ‘get out there’ and make things more transparent, to wait and see what ‘others do first’ and how they do it, to ensure that they will not jump in head first and make mistakes – better to let others make the mistakes and learn from their experiences…

So… back to our potential client who has identified the need to use these technologies. What do you do?

First thing to do is to ‘understand their current situation’. This requires much research and work. The suggested best method would be to do your own research BEFORE meeting with them. Understand, possibly by searching the web (using Google, Bing, etc) for information, about their business. If they have a company website, see what they do and how they currently appear to do it. THEN, after you ‘think’ you have an ‘idea’ about the business, arrange the first meeting. It is important to NOT go into this meeting with NARROW VISION. You CAN use the information as a possible way to show to them that you understand their business (a little) and that you are keen to help (this will be shown by your research and comments during the meeting). However be careful not to appear to ‘know their business’ as assumptions at this point can be detrimental. In the meeting it is important to understand how they currently do things and what their business is.  Use good communication skills – LISTEN to their needs.

You and your team will then (and ONLY then) be able to work on possible technologies that would best ‘fit’ and be utiised in the best way. This will enable you to conduct the most appropriate research, study other similar businesses and see how they are currently using WEB 2.0 tools (if at all). Find the good, the bad, and the ugly. Learn and use THESE results as a foundation and a starting point for your report and your recommendations. Show the potential client that you KNOW what you are talking about and that the proposal is based upon ‘good, reliable, facts’.

(Next Post (Part 2) – The meeting continues… the client’s needs, wants, and desires)

So what benefits are there with posting externally?

Here are two important ones:

1. Building customer relations
2. Ability to connect easily with customers and suppliers

Blogging allows for businesses to provide up-to-the-minute information to customers and provide an increasing appearance of transparency. Providing interaction with customers and suppliers encourages closer and better relations. This in turn should increase brand building and trust for the business.

Other Benefits?

Posting is a cheap and easy way to communicate and to enhance business branding. It may also increase your business name search ranking on Internet search sites such as ‘Google’.

Although these benefits sound great, before you go out and commence posting and promoting your business ‘out there’ it is important to consider what could be some negative aspects of business blogging and how these should be addressed?

Important Considerations:

Benefits of external blog posting generally outweigh the detriments, however certain factors should be considered before businesses start ‘external blogging’. The last thing you want is to have your company trade secrets revealed or disgruntal employees expressing damaging, negative opinions. So what should be done?

It is important that the business have a ‘blog posting’ policy that is enforced. Additionally, the staff whould have full and regular training on how to post ‘appropriately’. With regular monitoring of blog posts and responding quickly to negative comments, businesses can utilise this web 2.0 technology as a very beneficial and useful tool…

Firstly, the steps shown on Twitter itself (http://twitter.com/widgets) may be fine if you do not really have an issue with site page formating. For example, those who can put the RSS feed ‘anywhere’ on their webpage and just work around it will not have an issue. However, on a site that you already have set page formats (table widths etc), it is quite inconvenient when your webpage happens to ‘change shape’ simple due to a Twitter feed post.

The web page I needed to add the rss feed to was a basic html page. I needed something that was easy to apply that would not ‘rearrange’ my current site page formatting. The solution I present below worked for me and I think it should be suitable for most site page formats. It is an easy solution that could also be addressed with a complex answer and many lines of code. I am not saying that it is ‘perfect’ however it is quick, easy, and it seems to be a reasonable solution.

Step 1: go to the twitter widgets link (as shown above) and ‘login’ to your account. Select ‘other’ from the list of website options (so you can add the feed to your own site). Select the ‘html widget’ and then ‘copy’ the code shown there that is specific to your twitter account. Copy the javascript code first and place at the bottom of your website html page just above the /body tag. Now copy the rest of the code and put it in your website where you want it to be shown.

Step 2: Now this is the ‘tricky bit’. Currently your site will not be formated how you want. If it seems ok, then just leave it. However the issue I had was as soon as one of the Twitter feeds had a very long word OR had a link to a website page (which IS a very long word) I had issues and the formating went very strange indeed. Also, if you already have a ‘set height’ for the area to place your feed, it could start ‘reorganising’ itself as soon as you have a few posts on twitter. So the lines of code last inserted into the html page needed to be adjusted as follows…

<div id=”twitter_div”> (note: this line OK)
<h2>Twitter Updates</h2> (note: you CAN change the name on this line IF you wish)
<ul id=”twitter_update_list”></ul> (note: this is the line that needs to be changed – see below#CHANGE)
<a href=”http://twitter.com/electrical_aus” id=”twitter-link” style=”display:block;text-align:right;”>follow me on Twitter</a>
</div> (note: this last line is OK – your code will not be the same as my line shown above though as it will be a link to YOUR twitter feed)

#Change – the next line below is the code for the line you need to change (as stated above)

<ul id=”twitter_update_list” style=”font-size:80%; margin-left:0px; padding-left:0px; height:100px; width:130px; overflow:hidden”></ul>

Important - the font-size, margin-left, padding-left, height, width – are all variables that can be set according to your own requirements. Just mess around with them so they suit your specific needs. The “overflow:hidden” variable is to ‘hide’ the information that comes from your twitter feed that “GOES OVER” the allocated space for the information to be shown (ie more info than will fit into your table space available).

Well – I hope this helps some of you. If you have any futher enhancements or comments on the above information please post a comment so others may also benefit. Good luck…

Signing up

Create a username that relects your business, perhaps similar to your registered business name. Note however that you may be limited with the amount of characters you are allowed to use when creating the username.

Searching Twitter – customer feedback

One important aspect for a business is customer feedback. For any business to continue and grow effectively, customer views must be considered and addressed when required. Athough your business may receive customer feedback by phone, email, face-to-face, and in other ways, this will prodominently be ‘major’ issues and these may NOT address smaller areas of concern. Issues that are seen by the consumer as being ‘less relevant’ and not worth addressing further (perhaps due to frustration already with your business) can still be very harmful as one comment may deter other possible future clients.

The ‘search’ function on Twitter may be used to find out if there are any current areas of concern (or areas of praise) about your staff, product, service, etc. Just go to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter your business name or brand as a search criteria and see what results you find !! You may be suprised…

What to do with ‘search’ feedback?

This feedback you get from these posts may not all be relevant or justified, however it can be a very useful tool to help enhance current brand and business consumer confidence. Some of the posts may be very positive and detail how your product or company has been very useful. Other posts may identify some small areas of concern that you may not have been addressed because you were not aware of them. Other larger, relevant compaints must be considered and investigated further to ensure they are addressed appropriately.

Connecting with your customers

From the search results, identify the comments that you feel are important to address. Carefully construct your message, showing your concern about the issue that has been raised, how this has been (or will be) addressed, and thank them for their feedback. Also respond to praise, showing that your business appreciates and welcomes their views. By communicating direct to your client in this form, will assist in removing any perceived  ’distance’ between you an dyour customers. A customer that believes you are care is a happer customer.

Promote products, specials, new lines

There are vertually unlimited ways in which you can use Twitter to assist with the growth of your business. The following are just a few ideas:

• link to your website
• details about a new product or service your business is offering
• details that may help customers (current or future)
• details about your ’specials’
• upcoming business events

Identify new areas of business

One other important aspect of micro-blogging is market development and research. Using Twitter to find out what thoughts and ideas potential customers may have about your business plan may assist with its positive development. Knowing external thoughts about your conceived ideas and business plans BEFORE you implement them may save must time, money, and heartache. Additionally, if you would like to know how current customers would like to see the business develop, feedback from a well worded ‘tweet’ may be invaluable and could be used when structuring a new business plan.

Promote your ‘Twitter’ username

Your ‘tweets’ can be a beneficial way to keep in contact with current clients.  Special events, promotions, products, pricing, helpful information, are just a few ideas on how you can use your twittering to assist and pormote your business. Your customers and potential clients can ‘follow’ you so that they can be kept up-to-date with your business. Just remember to ‘micro-blog’ regularly ….

One part of my reservation was with regards to ‘putting it out there’ – posting potentially to the ‘whole world’. Building a ‘personal brand’ requires putting yourself out there, and because I want to ensure that the my ‘brand’ is positive and builds respect, it has been a challenge to try and write posts that would be both beneficial and would build a positive reputation. With these reservations on my mind, some of my 300+ word posts have taken me at least several hours to write. Why? – because I see my posts as being a personal reflection on who I am.

Another subject I am currently doing at uni is in Law – Professional Responsibility. In this subject we have been learning about personal and professional conduct, ethical and moral issues, public perception, and much more. One topic of discussion was in regards to personal branding – how we behave and how others may portray our actions even after hours in our own personal time. Maintaining an internet presence may be very damaging if you are not careful. A photo taken during a night out and uploaded for the world to see (posted by yourself or someone else), a ‘twitter’ post with defamatory comments, and a couple of things that can affect your chances of getting a new job, keeping your current job, maintaining professional standing.

These negative thoughts initially hampered my contributions to posting of blogs. However now, although I still take several hours to write a post, I am now more comfortable with what I am doing. I still have a fair way to go though – maybe in another month or two it will flow more easily.

Assessment Criteria:

1. Use Web 2.0 technologies to enhance personal branding – My personal branding and internet presence was 0% before taking this subject. I conducted a ‘Google’ search on my name and returned ZERO results (no matter how many pages I looked at). I have since created this WordPress blog site, started posting micro-blogs on ‘Twitter’, registered a new domain name - hosting a new site ’specifically’ for posting (and started posting there also), and created a ’Facebook’ account. If you would like to view my ’beginnings’ and initial and current use of these Web 2.0 technologies, just click on one of the names shown within this paragraph.. These actions SHOULD enhance my personal branding (hopefully) over time, however even at the time of writing this post, I am still not easy to find (by personal name OR by entering my blog tags) when using a ‘Google‘ search.

2. Consistency and Quality of Participation – as can be seen on the links available in the previous criteria, although I started with only 1 or 2 posts each week, I have tried to increase the quantity and quality of my blogs. Although my Twitter account is basically ’just for fun and not academic in context’, the other contributions have been carefully though before posting. My plan is to continue to enhance my contributions and introduce more quality and quantity posts.

3. Appraise Web 2.0 technologies for personal and organisational success – As shown above in this post, I have registered a new domain name (electricaltalk.com.au) and commenced posting on this site. This website is specifically focused on providing the public and specific communities with an insight of specific areas that are of interest to me. This site is to be an extension of my current business website (Electrical Search), which has the same industry focus. I plan on using the tools learnt in this unit to build a successful website that can be linked to my current organisation and provide useful information written by persons with many years of experience in these fields. Public contributions will enhance user knowledge and provide a reason for people to return to the site. This will be an on-going project and will be enhanced over the next couple of months inline with the suggestions and requirements of this unit.

4. Ability to engage with the wider community – There has not been enough time yet (I feel) to show that this criteria has been met. Even after a few months of internet activity it may not be achieved as I can only offer posts that are hopefully informative, regular, engage with user, and promote participation.

The above points highlight the main criteria required from Enterprise 2.0. Should you have any comments about this post, please let me know – self development is always high on my list of priorities.