Sales 2.0

Cohort of Web 2.0

Frankly speaking, I have no idea about the Sales 1.0, if there was one. Or, the sales experts just coined the term as if the case in software business, that when you first created an application you usually named it version 2.0 in hoping of a less connotation of the very first product.

 

Sales 2.0 is a concept, or formative collective ideas that embedded Web 2.0 into the process of selling. The idea is very simple, looking up info from social media in the first place, collecting intelligence that could trigger a sales opportunity and then dig out more insider info as to facilitate the customer entry campaign.

 

In the past, sales intelligence often acquires from personal and direct channel, such as word-of-mouth, personal networking, or circle of close friends. Phone call and email are often the two traditional avenues for info funneling. In order to get an insider intel, one usually picks up a phone and rings his/her reliable source, but nevertheless I have to say this is a passive and reactive approach.

 

Also it depends on the patronage’s will to whom should be revealed the insider info in the first place. And it often takes a long time to cultivate a reliable link and more efforts to put it on board. The number of qualified leads also would hit a limitation as the energy of a person allowed. And the door to new realm is hard to kick when no connection is laid out in the first place.

 

Then there comes the idea of Sales 2.0. Pulling from the source of social media, it’s just amazing how many genuine info you can get at no cost from LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Facebook, etc. Professionals, practitioners, and on-lookers, no matter what identify involved, everyone just puts bona fide personal info registered into the database system of social media. And they keep updating! That’s the most astonishing part! Indeed, they puff out every fresh incremental info on a daily bases or in a regular cycle and the only purpose is to keep everyone on the premises updated.

 

I have to admit the eye-popping and unbelievable shock as my first touch experience. The personal info in LinkedIn is not only encompassing but also detailed. One often tends to publish his/her career life and education background chronologically and supplies every other element regarding his/her life for your further advancing of intention of LinkedIn. And the most fantastic part of LinedIn is the concord of the disclosing personal info bona fide. Had it not for a collective efforts and generally accepted conformity, there would certainly be chance of defrauder. And also the reciprocal behavior norm of American society has been espoused in this virtual land too.

 

So, if you wanna tap new customer, and run into headaches of limited info at hand, what should you do? Cold call has always been proved to be a barrier rather than facilitator. Apart from traditional mega info hub, such as Reuters and Bloomberrg, which often provides external or extraneous news regarding your new client, new outlets should definitely deserve your notice. And the info ground of FaceBook, LinkedIn, JigSaw usually suffice you with totally different intelligence in sharp contrast to mega info source. They tend to be personal, tiny, but usually of magic power of turning customer on.

 

Not only you can find gravitas faces, but also you can dig out the other look after work of your prospect. Their children, hobbies, recent reading, cooking, or anything that could serve as Midas Touch that may come to your aide when you pitch them.

 

It’s rather than a serious business pitch, but a romantic flirting. And that’s the power of Web 2.0 married to sales discipline.

Marketing Automation

The frontier of marketing development in this hemisphere is breaking into a dreamland of marketers: Marketing Automation.

 

If you are familiar with office automation, then the concept is not that strange. During the movement of office automation, concurring with the bolting of information technology, office site manager and operation manager have been benefit significantly from this concept and many software solutions. Efficiency is achieved, effectiveness is acquired, and greater value is realized. Not to mention the satisfied cost reduction effect in the long run.

 

However, marketing automation is still in its infancy. Not only the unpromising lucrative potential, but also the economy of scale is hard to achieve. And unlike office automation, marketing is the most dynamic and diversified and personalized field without a common infrastructure at sight or universally agreed.

 

One can take a look at the marketing textbook, even the most authoritative codex, is revamping its content year from year, which leaves little fancy for the ambitious software engineer or aspirant entrepreneur to dig a well of gold in this piece of land. Yes, no more can set a rule for marketing practice, given the vast variety of products and services involved.

 

But, you know what, if you exert yourself enough to dig all the marketing automation tools providers online, God, it is a hell of legion! And nearly covers the all needs for at least a business website. Besides the conventional functions, some creative providers/vendors even breach your imagination by adding a lot of fashion add-ons to the applications.

 

If you take efforts roaming the internet, or just read some guidebook of guerilla marketing, you would find the holistic list of application builder for business website. From basic web structure design, content outsourcing, user group, to merchandise cargo processing, audio/video creation, webinar/web conference application, email campaign……and many, many more!

 

The concept of marketer for today’s business is a totally different idea. More a virtual team integrator; and less a hands-on field moderator. If you just cast a look into nowadays’ marketing strategy and tactics, on-line promotion is valued much and more. With the thriving of Web 2.0, the integration with social media is make itself a paramount take for marketer and communicator. And some genius software application is catering this idea and upcoming.

 

The most impressive aspect of marketing automation is how simply and easily an on-line tool can be tailored and integrated into your current marketing system. It takes only several steps and some info filling and format choosing and you are closing to your dream marketing land.

 

Now, let me give you some cues so that you can share with me the feelings of bliss.

 

Audio Creation, Recording, Editing, and/or Sharing Software and Equipment:

–OnlineMarketingSuperstore.com; –InstantFlashAudio.com; –CopyTalk.com; –SonyCreativeSoftware.com; –WebAudioVideoTools.com; –AudioStrategies.com; –iTunes.com

 

Video Equipment and Software:

–YouTube.com; –InstantVideoGenerator.com; –Squidoo.com; –Stickam.com; –GoogleVideo.com; –MySpace.com

 

Teleconferencing Tools:

–Camstasia.com; –Moodle.com; –EasyLiveConference.com; –FreeConferenceCall.com

 

Online Press Release:

–PRWeb.com; –SubmitYourArticle.com; –Ezine.com; –GoArticle.com; –AritclesAlley.com

 

Blogging:

–WordPress.com; –Technocrati.com; –Drupal.org; –Joomla.org

 

One-Stop-Shopping Cart:

–EasyWebAutomation.com

 

Video Email:

–HelloWorld.com

 

Tele-Seminar/Webinar:

–Ideas-to-Come.com; –Sketchcast.com

 

Account/Password Mgmt:

–Roboform.com

 

For Small Business:

–BCentral.com

 

Search Engine:

–Dogpile.com

 

Website Design:

–Luckmarble.com; –Bigwebmaster.com

 

Industry Status:

–Bizstats.com

 

Content Voting/Customer Polls:

–Diggs.com; –Shoutwire.com; –AskDatabase.com; –SurveyMonkey.com

 

Other creative applications:

–SendOutCards.com; –PayDotCom.com; –ClickBank.com; –Cj.com; –Maps.google.com

 

Law, Etchics and Web 2.0

This topic was brought up during several gatherings between friends.

 

One side argues the American Law system is incomplete and leaves plenty of gray rooms or even loopholes to be good-willy utilized by foreigners sometimes. Another line would hold the native Americans even lower-rank people are not able to detect these loopholes due to their holding of high level of ethics by nature and education not available to third-world countries, such as China.

 

A third point of view would attribute the difference to the different law system adopted by each country: the common law system embraced by U.S. and the continental law system from the heritage of Great Britain. The previous is built upon precedent and the later is operated on scriptures pre-written.

 

Since I am not a law expert and only got a shallow taste from my Business Law course during my MBA study, I would cast this argument a different view.

 

From my standing, Law and Ethics within the confine of a society is a pair of balanced forces. The two as instruments work together to maintain the stability of societies. And in most cases, we can see complementary effects taken places. Where the law system is much more detailed and frequently regulated, the ethics in the same confinement would tend to deterioration. On the contrary, where the law system is light and loose, the ethics would be upheld with high standard. Thus the controlling body is able to stabilize the society and to develop it healthily.

 

This culture difference is significant and manifest when one travels to a totally different social setting. One with different moral upholstery would easily identify gray areas in a dissimilar law system. Or we could say, one can craftily use some techniques to avoid or take advantage from the existing law system.

 

However, such a behavior or intention is not agreed by the majority both from domestic as well as foreign land. In this unbalanced world ecosystem, there would always be different countries or nations with graded or even sharp different balance of law and ethical complexes. In the interaction and intercourse between these dissimilar entities, the first applied rule should be, as I advised, should be culture difference self-awareness with the aide of third-party information. And as I am experienced, a preliminary course of brief history education of the host country would be instructive and elucidating.

 

As all, law and ethics in a social setting is the natural result of evolution in that piece of land where people come and go. A summary learning of history events in an organized way would be a Midas touch for the first entry.

 

Such reality is laid in the front of the first user of Web 2.0. Without the authority of law and self-regulatory system of ethics, it’s always a frustrating and fruitless try for the newcomers. Many had already suffered fraud and scum during their first try of internet surfing, such as the usage of local tabloid portal like craigslist.org. New emerging internet deceptions have got disguised in creative chapters that sometimes even the veteran could not easily identify the odds. Incrimination is out the question in the theater of on-line community as a result of retarding constitution for this piece of virtual land.

 

A check and balance system should also be engineered and introduced into the on-line community with the advent of thriving Web 2.0 colony. Facebook, BlackPlanet, Myspace, Youtube, Eons, Twitter, MyBatanga, Eventful, AsinaAve, Linkedin….these already existed and more neophytes are defining the emerging on-line community world-wide. A sharp distinction in this global virtual land is the boundary setting by languages and interests rather than physical borderlines. Being an uncharted land, people thronged in this vast community are subject to no pre-set rules and kings.

 

Once again, we would find an old familiar setting applied to this new world: the formation of U.S. Colonized by piece of piece land, the first 13 states were able to sever from all the colonizers by the war of Independence. Shall we anticipate such historical process once again taking ground in this new on-line world formed on the applications of web 2.0? We can’t rule out the possibility. After all, history enlightens the understanding towards new instances.

 

In lacking of a jurisdiction, execution and legislature system, the building of ethic system seems the paramount task during the forming stage of this New world. And the burden somehow now is carrying by the first plutocracy with board members such as Google, Amazon.com, and Yahoo.com, etc.

 

Consent to terms of use is not of an education purpose but a more without-recourse expediency. Though the provision of these terms-of-use do offer a solid ground for on-line ethical groundwork, these magnates are not making use of them in a much more meaningful way.

 

Maybe it’s time to ponder over the possibility of forming a ethical system for web 2.0 world.

Web 2.0 Triggered the Long Tail of Mass Communication

Nowadays, marketing in west part of the globe is showing significant trait that bearing the burden of US economy distress. The newly emerging and outstanding trait as we may aware of is the use of on-line marketing.

 

On-line marketing is the crucial fruition of the development of web 2.0 applications. Overwhelmingly used and deeply planted into the heart of new generation, the technology of Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Twitter, and many other on-line venues are merging with integrated marketing communication tactics. In some cases, even the digital marketing is the strategy itself.

 

Let’s take the success of Obama over Clinton during the first half of 2008 US presidency election. The victory is achieved by vastly utilizing the viral communication techniques. Log onto Obama official blog, you can see a area dubbed OBAMA EVERYWHERE. Where you can find Obama online and make friend with him? Let’s take a look. Facebook, BlackPlanet, Myspace, Faithbase, Youtube, Eons, Flickr, Glee, Digg, Migente, Twitter, MyBatanga, Eventful, AsinaAve, Linkedin, DNC Partybuilder, etc. Wow, what a holistic lists of web 2.0 applications? Even you can use the case of Obama as a success story and good learning material for mass communication! And by this way, Obama was able to collect the tenuous ballots scattered long and long on the mass communication tail, which is the root of grass-root at lowest cost or even no cost at all!

 

It’s no wonder Clinton fired her campaign manager too late only to loss the whole battle. Although as the former first Lady, and so powerful woman ever in the history of America, with the support form her two-term-president husband Bill Clinton, and the background as a white senator of New York, Hillary Clinton couldn’t recover her vantage point as the brunt of web 2.0 encroached her whole grounds without the slightest notice. That’s the power of on-line marking or viral communication!

 

Take another success story as I’d like to peg down. The idea.com storm! The first user of idea.com according to BusinessWeek could be attributed to Dell. The once starch personal computer builder. The early success of Dell comes from its innovated on-line order strategy which integrated the whole supply chain and allowed the techniques of JIT manufacturing and storage into reality. For so long a time, Dell is deified as the JIT paradigm. However, criticism surfaced as more an more PC manufacture seek the other way to corner Dell in marketplace. That’s the personalized ear bestowed other PC vendors a new chance to beat Dell. HP for example, would hawk Personalized Computer and paint laptop and desktop vivid colors to enliven the computer as the emblem of personal character rather than bleak machine. A rabid surge of industrial design followed by the success of Motorola Razor cell phone worldwide has led the world business leader a strong belief of the design as integral part of wining strategy.

 

Then Dell seems falling behind the tides of personalization. Has Dell? No. The Dell guys are smart enough to gather new edge. There came the ideastorm.com. Dell is gathering and garnering ideas from worldwide customers! The categories of Ideas amounts to over 30, covering from products to sales to marketing, and even to environment issue and corporate affairs. Even a category dubbed WOMAN INTEREST definitely devoted to woman computer users. What an exploiter of Dell! The cheapest way to exploit worldwide talents at low cost! And customers are telling Dell every secret of winning business all over the world as long as they speak and write in English! No wonder you can get dizzy by a shining and flamboyant outer face of a Dell laptop carried by someone in a city train!

 

Another success user of idea.com is starbucks. My Starbucks Idea also directs confluence of customer talents into the downcast Starbucks business. You can get a feel of starbucks idea.com at http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/apex/ideaHome. This portal offers every Starbucks coffee lover a place for making Starbucks coffee and cafeteria personalized and drive every bit of profit on the long tail of coffee consumption to the hand of Starbucks. Categorized under three main themes, Product, Experience and Involvement, Starbucks, although as a follower of Dell, definitely started to win solid grounds in marketplace after reporting of business loss early this year.

 

It’s no wonder the demand of digital marketing professionals has roared and dominated the marketplace in west part of this global. With the penetration of web 2.0 into grass-root in this hemisphere and having taken solid hold of general customers, and the negative influence of economy deterioration, on-line avenue has appealed more and more marketing and advertising fund since the power of Google has crunched the business world in English speaking countries.

 

The Long Tail era of mass communication has come! And digital communication is wining the majority of marketing strategy. One oversight of the engulfing trend would lead to nowhere but a defeat in worldwide business world. And a genius utilization of this trend can supply one with the most ambitious and cheapest victory ever can be imagined in the history of business world!

Jane Austen and Web 2.0

What’s the connection between Jane Austen and Web 2.0? Recently, circulation of Google’s manipulation and retrieval of personal data blatantly has shocked privacy advocacy groups. Since the birth of Gmail, tides of protests against Google’s screening of personal emails and juxtaposing relevant ads along sides headlines of emails have surged and spread all over the world. And all of sudden, even the ordinary users of google with minimum or little knowledge of computer privacy had begun to worry about their lives already being digitalized onto google database without consciousness. And this remind me of the linkage between Jane Austen’s novel and the era of Web 2.0, the so-called internet revolutionary overhauling the whole human being society, it’s a time to call upon the narrative techniques of euphemism, circumlocution, even verbiage and excess decorum when one comes to the small input box on google.com and several other portals by LinkedIn, FaceBook, Myspace, etc.

 

It’s not a metaphorical expression. One may be disillusioned by my correlation. Yes, when one flips the pages of Jane Austin novels, the deep impression of overwhelming employed euphemism, circumlocution and sometimes verbiage would provide one with the luxury of language and euphoria of sheer moment of reading. Yet, the obscurities incurred thereupon may force one to the ends of his/her wits in order to generate meaningful understanding besides language aestheticism. However, most of the time, the narration of Jane Austin is much like a gem, only providing elusive reflections, giving one a vague grasp of the subtleties and an angled reception of her novel. Unlike nowadays’ American literature and writing style, which gives explicit and direct points and let reader a crystal clear understanding of the purpose by writer, with easy words and sentences running, literature in 17^th century of Britain has a affinity to an oil-painting or a piece of music composition intending to evoke empathy and echoes lingering around instead of the serving of fast food without or just a transient taste.

 

However, such long avoided writing style or excessive social decorum reflected in writing has found its way into internet world. A user of google nevertheless leaves his trail online, all of the search key words contributed to a truly self unknown even to the user himself. Unscrupulously, and unceremoniously, the searching key words left behind constructed a user behavior and psychological state result in a very closeness to ego and super-ego as the theory of Sigmund formed centuries ago. And a secret leaner such as google crawler can easily do the personality-wide analysis bases on one’s recent search key words via the IP address being used. And sometimes, privacy issues engendered in this manner. Even sexual propensity can be revealed without the ego knowing of it. And once the IP address can be linked to personal data such as name, address, and occupation, the plaintiff would have been ill-disposed to super disadvantage points and disaster to personal life. Such case was not rare in era of Web 2.0. And by this newly emerged consumer need that the power of Jane Austin comes into aide.

 

So, instead of input one or two words for the search engine churning out desired results, one may consider more words combination and often tangent descriptive adjectives support the purpose of searching. Consider the juggernaut application of google, even sometimes the use of antonym can cut right into the heart without the slightest indication of provenance. For example, one wants to apply ‘marriage problem’ as search words, in stead, one may use ‘matrimony issue’, or ‘detriment to the male part of a family bondage’ or any creative ways to denote the idea as long as he could compose or as circumlocutory as he may craft. In this way, one can reduce the exposure of the original purpose or pull a disguise against outside malicious intruders. Not only google, but many other Web 2.0 applications can be a healthy adopter of this Jane Austen anti-intrusion communication technique. Online members talking to each other in this way tremendously eliminate the traces of conversation logged and stored on servers and many other secret places across the half of globe. Although some software or browsers provide trace-eraser function, the history of traces could always be recovered on host servers or some juncture notes on internet since data replication and redundancy and backup technology have been vastly deployed by internet service providers and infrastructure builders, it’s only knowledge of knowing of its existence making the difference.

 

Such a need has already sprung from massive internet users. The transformation of internet colloquial style is only a mere matter of time. People will inevitably start using the Jane Austen’s language decorum for a cover of their privacy requirement. Although such a splendid language cloak as Jane Austen managed to put together would be a difficult for the result of modern English education, especially when language skills had degraded long since Jane Austen’s time. However, a revival is not out of anticipation. And this would produce huge impact on the new internet language behavior. Once such mode is formed and influence heavily on later internet generations, all the website will have to face a herculean task of overhauling all their website language to meet the revived search key words style as a adoption of euphemism, circumlocution, and verbiage, etc.

Beijing Olympic Game: Crunching Wheel for New Media?

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Game is now pulling over. But this event is full of so much material for further scrutiny and study from many aspects. Presented as a multi-faced diamond, one reflection is the media communication channel. One interesting observation of Beijing 2008 Olympic Game is the consumption of its content has been far crossing the boundary of traditional TV carrier to a broad option of new media channels.

 

Since my duty of attending my MBA study in U.S. so imposing as to leave me no possibility of coming back to China and indulging myself with the blasting TV broadcasting, I nevertheless was opened to another venue where a new habit of content taking is forming. One of my classmates told me that she was watching the opening ceremony online and also she subscribed to NBC.com for any matches she desired but missed. And since I missed most part of the opening ceremony, and one of my best friends happened to catch a wind of my grievance offered me a portable hard-disk loaded with a 4GB video of opening ceremony as the fruit of his voracious internet consumption.

 

As to my case, I turned to google news page everyday to check out the golden medal spot and contended myself with a unbeatable place of China’s number one golden medal collector. After the first satisfaction of China’s fixing place on the medal list, I then directed my attention to any articles appealed to me when the key words in headlines standing out as quick as possible to catch my eyes under my fast coasting along the pages. During my surfing, there was a subconscious guideline though, as a retrospection and self-analysis, that my watching of TV during daytime did provide the thread that directing my navigation of internet cruising.

 

Another place for gaining more interesting perspectives of Beijing Olympic Game, as a byproduct of my another internet hunt, is the personal blog sphere. A group of journalism majors have been sent to volunteer the media service office of Beijing Olympic Game and each of them logged their feelings, spotting, anecdotes, personal photos as well as sentimental text provided you a perfect way of getting a personal feel of the game in addition to the official and professional report. Considering the hundreds of thousands visitors from all over the world to Beijing, you can have no other expectation but astounding in awe the mountain weight amount of content produced online by individual writers. Just try the google search different combination of key words to dig out the stupefying inundation of personal information regarding the Beijing Olympic Game and only wish you have the energy to read them all!

 

Today, for such fortuitous encountering, I got to know Twitter. And that lends me another strike of the speediness of the spread of emerging mobile technology. If internet is not as desirable as to connect you tightly to other as you want, cell phone could serve the purpose better. As a constant online point, cell phone user would be always available to communicate anywhere and anytime safely with the telecom network coverage. And applying the satellite channel can actually link you any place on the globe at any time. Such would incubate a necessary linkage between cell phone and internet to form the lingering of information longer. Twitter is a pioneer on this front. Facilitating the flowing of messages, and managing a simplicity even to layman of tech, Twitter let you seamless connection with anyone within the radar of your circle. And another benefit of Twitter, is the instant upload of message and publishing.

 

According to the source of worldpress.com, NBC spent $900 million on broadcast rights for Beijing. And NBC intended for a variety of platforms other TV broadcasting. Other explored channels included internet, cell phones and cable video-on-demand. And NBC has hired five different research firms to tell them who are watching what of the Beijing Olympics, on what technology. According to Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal, some 1.7 million video streams of Monday’s stunning swimming relay had been downloaded by Americans where the American team came from behind to beat France and keep Michael Phelps’ gold medal streak alive. An estimated 1.5 million video streams were e-mailed from one person to another.

 

Media giant like NBC has taken seriousness in the forthcoming exploding of new media era. And no doubt could be spared for the influence and penetration of new media in a much flattened world. All the efforts taken by NBC is not a wheel breaking a butterfly. Every investment in new media will surely receive its payback in due time. And it’s the 2008 Beijing Olympic Game crunches the avenue for the upcoming prevalence of new media era.