Web Networks Reprogram Law Firm Marketing

'They were mostly mainstream folks who came because it affected their business, not technology geeks,' Witt noted.

The Next Wave

Witt and others see social networks as the next wave of business opportunities to come from the Web ' opportunities that are being exploited by small startups and companies as large as The Coca-Cola Co. Witt said social networks are a form of 'disruptive technology' that will challenge sustained models of doing business, much as the digital camera displaced Kodak's film and paper model, the cell phone is displacing landlines, and e-mail displaced a lot of regular mail.

Witt said social networks are creating new business models, new technology platforms ' and new competitors. As an example, he said craigslist.org, which allows people to post free advertisements online, created a new model for classified ads that has become a major threat to newspapers.

If anyone had suggested ten years ago that a handful of individuals could invite people from all over the world to write an encyclopedia and pay them nothing for doing it, most people would have scoffed, Witt said. Yet Wikipedia proves that such collaboration is possible.

'If you are an employer and can tap into the collective intelligence of your employees or a manufacturer who can tap into that of his customers, you can produce a product that people will want,' Witt said.

Haynie, who has started several technology companies, including Hakano Inc. and Vocalocity, predicted the growth of social networks tailored to an individual's particular interests. Individual blogs can pull in revenue from advertising and
offer entrepreneurial opportunities. Corporate blogs can help build collaborative relationships with customers.

According to Heyl, the Web in its initial form enabled companies simply to do online what they were doing offline ' giving out information about the company, its products and personnel. But the information flowed in only one direction.

'Web 2.0'

By contrast, today's Web, or 'Web 2.0,' as some call it, allows people to interact with each other without geographic or time boundaries. 'All social networks have implications for business, because it is about communicating and sharing information and promoting yourself,' Heyl said.

Toby Bloomberg, president of Atlanta-based Bloomberg Marketing, a strategic marketing and social media consultancy, said corporate blogs should tie in to the goals and objectives of the company's marketing plan.

She cites the way the New Orleans-based law firm McGlinchey Stafford, one of her clients, created and used a blog on the federal Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 to establish itself as an authority on this field of law. As search engines picked up postings to the blog, they multiplied its impact, she said.

Bloomberg said the ease of blogging is another element in its favor as a marketing strategy. It also helps build relationships. 'When you are reading somebody's blog day after day, they begin to see who you are. It's like the corner grocery store,' she commented.

Bloomberg helped Mayfield Dairy Farms create a blog to position itself as a down-home, relationship-focused business. She said customers are more likely to do business with individuals they feel they have a relationship with. 'You can relate it back to the return on investment in the blog,' she said.

And it's not just companies on the edge of innovation that are getting the message. The Coca-Cola Co. also has paid attention. For example, Coke not only posts its annual report online but has added a survey that allows users to describe how easy, or hard, the site was to use, which sections of the review they found most valuable, and any improvements they would like to see.

Coke's new branded site wants 'imaginative minds to be part of our creative Web site … The goal of this site is to develop organically into a global user-generated content portal,' according to a company press release. Another Coke site enables members to blog, make T-shirts, play videogames ' even create a virtual home to meet friends online. Like other virtual world sites such as Second Life and Kaneva, homes can be virtually equipped with furniture and high-tech electronics purchased with points. The first points are free; more can be purchased by buying real Coke products.

Philippa Maister is a reporter for the Fulton County Daily Report, a sister publication of this newsletter.

Early this year, Leonard Witt, a professor of communication at Kennesaw State University, went online and met two aficionados of social networks, in which people interact through blogs, podcasts, virtual worlds and other new media. Witt and his new friends, Sherry Heyl, CEO of What a Concept!, which advises clients on emerging social network technologies, and entrepreneur Jeff Haynie, soon decided to host a discussion at Kennesaw on social networking.

They circulated information through blog entries that were picked up by other blogs, and within three weeks, 275 people had signed up to attend the event. They called it an 'unconference' because it relied mainly on audience input for its content instead of formal presentations.

The responses came not from avatars or phantom e-mail addresses, but from real flesh-and-bones people, most of whom showed up at the event last month.

'They were mostly mainstream folks who came because it affected their business, not technology geeks,' Witt noted.

The Next Wave

Witt and others see social networks as the next wave of business opportunities to come from the Web ' opportunities that are being exploited by small startups and companies as large as The Coca-Cola Co. Witt said social networks are a form of 'disruptive technology' that will challenge sustained models of doing business, much as the digital camera displaced Kodak's film and paper model, the cell phone is displacing landlines, and e-mail displaced a lot of regular mail.

Witt said social networks are creating new business models, new technology platforms ' and new competitors. As an example, he said craigslist.org, which allows people to post free advertisements online, created a new model for classified ads that has become a major threat to newspapers.

If anyone had suggested ten years ago that a handful of individuals could invite people from all over the world to write an encyclopedia and pay them nothing for doing it, most people would have scoffed, Witt said. Yet Wikipedia proves that such collaboration is possible.

'If you are an employer and can tap into the collective intelligence of your employees or a manufacturer who can tap into that of his customers, you can produce a product that people will want,' Witt said.

Haynie, who has started several technology companies, including Hakano Inc. and Vocalocity, predicted the growth of social networks tailored to an individual's particular interests. Individual blogs can pull in revenue from advertising and
offer entrepreneurial opportunities. Corporate blogs can help build collaborative relationships with customers.

According to Heyl, the Web in its initial form enabled companies simply to do online what they were doing offline ' giving out information about the company, its products and personnel. But the information flowed in only one direction.

'Web 2.0'

By contrast, today's Web, or 'Web 2.0,' as some call it, allows people to interact with each other without geographic or time boundaries. 'All social networks have implications for business, because it is about communicating and sharing information and promoting yourself,' Heyl said.

Toby Bloomberg, president of Atlanta-based Bloomberg Marketing, a strategic marketing and social media consultancy, said corporate blogs should tie in to the goals and objectives of the company's marketing plan.

She cites the way the New Orleans-based law firm McGlinchey Stafford, one of her clients, created and used a blog on the federal Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 to establish itself as an authority on this field of law. As search engines picked up postings to the blog, they multiplied its impact, she said.

Bloomberg said the ease of blogging is another element in its favor as a marketing strategy. It also helps build relationships. 'When you are reading somebody's blog day after day, they begin to see who you are. It's like the corner grocery store,' she commented.

Bloomberg helped Mayfield Dairy Farms create a blog to position itself as a down-home, relationship-focused business. She said customers are more likely to do business with individuals they feel they have a relationship with. 'You can relate it back to the return on investment in the blog,' she said.

And it's not just companies on the edge of innovation that are getting the message. The Coca-Cola Co. also has paid attention. For example, Coke not only posts its annual report online but has added a survey that allows users to describe how easy, or hard, the site was to use, which sections of the review they found most valuable, and any improvements they would like to see.

Coke's new branded site wants 'imaginative minds to be part of our creative Web site … The goal of this site is to develop organically into a global user-generated content portal,' according to a company press release. Another Coke site enables members to blog, make T-shirts, play videogames ' even create a virtual home to meet friends online. Like other virtual world sites such as Second Life and Kaneva, homes can be virtually equipped with furniture and high-tech electronics purchased with points. The first points are free; more can be purchased by buying real Coke products.

Philippa Maister is a reporter for the Fulton County Daily Report, a sister publication of this newsletter.