| Online Marketing - What is Web 2.0 Marketing? |
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The world of online marketing is changing rapidly. Everyone who plans to make a living on it needs to recognize and adapt to those changes. Part of that is learning how Web 2.0 works...
The world of online marketing is changing rapidly. Everyone who plans to make a living on it needs to recognize and adapt to those changes. Part of that is learning how Web 2.0 works. This new generation of usage methods and technologies are shaped to take advantage of the ways people want to use the Internet. The result of those changes is an online world that is shaping into a marketing powerhouse, with flexibility and advantages those in online marketing could only dream about a decade ago. Mobility is the first key ingredient of Web 2.0 marketing. With the advent of powerful cell phones that have multiple uses, the game changed. Suddenly, you weren't chained to your desktop PC; you could have at least a tiny piece of the Internet in your pocket. This technology began to develop back in the late 1990s, with the invention of the mobile Web, but it has come into its own today. The mobile Web has been largely abandoned, and next-generation phones like iPhone are using the ordinary Web that we all access. When the Internet is in your pocket and always on, those in online marketing suddenly have power to notify you about very short-term sales, to reach you with information about venue changes, to offer deals to you when you're trying to determine your best options on large purchases. Coupons can be delivered to your phone, purchases made from it, and every piece of information you desire about any product can be right at your fingertips. There has never been anything like it. User feedback and content creation is the second part of Web 2.0 marketing. Your users are your new content providers, creating their own communities and data online. This started small, with sites like FaceBook and Match.com, and also the early blogs and independent music sites. People who needed a public global voice gravitated fast. Today, those who are best able to take advantage of the two-way possibilities of Web 2.0 are those who have a unique voice, usually small artists and those with something to say. Corporations and big money interests have been slow to catch on, but look for them to get there soon. Decentralized platforms are also important to Web 2.0. You can't funnel people to one specific website anymore, and you also can't expect them to have brand loyalty the way they used to. Web-savvy users are moving more toward very independent decisions, looking to get into websites from the bottom where the stuff they need is located, sorting through a dozen sites before finding the one that provides what they want. A web marketer needs to understand how to stand out in this sort of system. Finally, Web 2.0 is very much about small communities aggregating into larger ones: a minor blog's membership is almost a perfect subset of a larger blog, with a very large community. Web communities are becoming very tribal, with the smaller tribe coming together in the larger tribe and the membership of all shifting and communicating. If you work with this concept of the web, as a very tribal community with very tribal loyalties, you start to understand where Web 2.0 is taking you as a marketer. And understanding enables you to take advantage of it in your online marketing. To your online marketing success! |
