Is your company ready for Web 2.0?

Just when many companies have gotten comfortable with what Jason Weaver calls Web 1.0 – the world of banner ads, pay per click and search optimization – the founder and CEO of Sway, Inc., warns that the Internet has moved to a whole new paradigm.

Web 2.0 is about engagement, Weaver told his LSB Brandworks University 2008 audience. It is the world of person-to-person communication dominated by blogs, YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. In this world, the consumer is in charge of communications.

Marketing in the Web 2.0 world is all about creating content that will appeal to key influencers on the Web and making it easy for them to pass it along to their social networks. Weaver outlined three basic steps:

• Package your content in an appealing video and get it online via your Web site, YouTube or other sharing site. People will opt in to watch advertising, Weaver said. “Content is still king. The Internet is the highway. Creative is the car.”
• Go to your audience; don’t expect them to come to you. Seek out the social network sites where your audience might be. Identity individuals or blogs that are popular and make sure they get your content. If they like it, they will write about it and pass it along.
• Track who is using your content and who they are passing it along to.

Some successful tactics include:

• Social bookmarks like Digg or Del.icio.us that allow you to track your communication to see who is passing it along and who is watching it.
• Podcasts that contain useful information for your audience. For example, Schneider National, the trucking company, uses to podcasts to communicate with its drivers on the road.
• Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to let consumers know when you publish new Web or blog content automatically. It can help you generate Web traffic or build email lists. A Web site without RSS is like a fast food restaurant without a drive-through, Weaver said.
• Texting. There are now more Americans with mobile phones than homes with landlines. And younger users would rather text than talk, Weaver noted.
• Creating Widgets – bits of code that let people send audio or video content. Widgets have been around since 2001, but The New York Times has called 2008 the year of the widget.

But not all strategies have been successful. Weaver issued a few cautions:

• Don’t try to build your own online community based around your brand. “Your community is already online.” Your job is to find them where they already live.
• Don’t try to create fake communications or seed blogs with anonymous comments. Those tactics are easily discovered and will tarnish your reputation.
• Don’t bother setting up a presence in Second Life or other virtual worlds. Companies that have tried it have found there’s little return on a big investment.
• Don’t create a Facebook account and try to “friend” people. It not cool anymore.
• Don’t just start a blog unless you have a captive audience you know is interested.
• Don’t stop doing your Web 1.0 marketing.

Just because Web 2.0 is new and isn’t directly controlled by marketers doesn’t mean you can’t approach it using the same hardheaded business practices that work in other media, Weaver said. In fact, the best results come from clearly identifying your business goals before you launch a campaign, having keen insights about your consumers and building in realistic measurements of success.

Web 2.0 campaigns can look expensive if you just measure how many visitors come to your Web site or download your content, Weaver said. It’s important to be able to measure the pass-along effect to understand your true cost per contact.

The results can be a big bang for the buck. For example, a Sway campaign for eBay.com that relied on syndicated video clips sent to social communities, blogs and Web sites generated 441,000 video plays and 54,000 podcast downloads among key targets, Weaver said.

Sway works with marketers such as Miller Brewing, eBay, Wrigley and Yamaha, and agencies including Lindsay, Stone & Briggs.