The lack of social media

Where have all the social media gone?

David Bowen in one of his recent regular commentaries has pointed ot that a lot of companies have yet to fully engage in the use of social media on their main sites. He believes this is for two main reasons:

1. Structural:
   Most of from That the corporate site is not the right place and the real activity in social media happens elsewhere (e.g. micro-sites, partners, etc.)
2. Risk:
   Its not unusual for large companies to observe others making miskakes firs. But just watch them subsequently claim they've been doing it all along, just because they put a couple of social bookmarking links on a few hidden pages.

However, I'm also sure there are other factors Mr Bowen has missed:

A. Cultural differences and the evolution of the transparent company.
There are still a lot of organisations out there that still believe they own their customers opinions of them and even some that don't realise that customers can't hear what is being said as they are too busy listening to each other. They therefore don't realsie that facilitating these comments and participating in the conversation that they are potentially improving their market opportunity and brand perception.

B. As well as companies (senior managers and marketers) not understanding the value of social media, they can't just take the blame and obviously a lot of agencies still don't "get it". Jim Nail of Cymphony recently polled an Ad Age audience "Who's to blame for the slow page of development of marketing on social media?"

With the choice between client Marketers and Agencies... 59% picked both.

Web Effectiveness Index 2008

For those who didn't catch the Financial Times this Wednesday, Bowen Craggs has produced their second annual FT Index of corporate website effectiveness. This time they have added an additional 15 companies, taking it up to 75. Take a look at the article on ft.com and further detail (plus insight) is also available from the BC/FT website. Unsuprising is the second place positon for BP (previously complimented for being open about its previous issues), more shocking is the significant drops for Total and Samsung.

The accolade for Siemens is, in my opinion, a little over the top in places:

..Multimedia home page adds lustre to very carefully thought out web estate

Although they should be commended for their use of video further into the site....But I'll leave it to you to make your mind up...http://www.siemens.com/

But aren't we just making it too easy?

Humans are a lazy bunch. Always looking for ways in which to make things easy & spend less effort doing stuff. Anyone would think we are designed that way, that we're originated from a species that had limited food supplies and tried to preserve what energy reserves it had for procreation and finding more food (this sounds a little too much like my brother, so I'll move on swiftly)

If you read Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think you could forgiven for thinking that man is incredibly lazy online, for example:
1. He shuts down websites that don't communicate what they're about instantly
2. He ignores huge amounts of lovely written copy (probably written by a lovely copywriter)
3. He will stop halfway into the buying process if its not immediately clear what button to press

I mean... is this the action of an amazingly evolved creature? Is this what a clever person really does? They revert to the laziest action they can to preserve their strength for... oh well, you know what I mean!

Errrrr... yes.

It is actually... and you should all jolly well go and read his book straight away, although I can't remember if he mentions procreation.
(In fact, when I talk to clients about usability I often take them a copy to keep - with my contact details in the cover of course!)

However, if you take my 3rd example of someone stopping halfway into the buying process if the obvious is not entirely..... .. obvious... then surely the easiest thing to do is give them what they want straight away and wait by the phone (in a lovely air-conditioned call centre of course) for them to ring you instead?

Well, this is exactly what Scottish Widows do... and those clever people at Bowen Craggs notice this the other day (I bet they don't shut down websites straight away, ignore lovely copywriters or other silly stuff)
http://www.bowencraggs.com/best-practice/tips/758

Building a good Corporate Website

So, who has built a corporate site that works well? Well this should be assessed from the different perspectives of each of your users.

Its recommended when looking to re-do your company's corporate web offering, that you investigate the different information needs of these different users (applying the appropriate weighting based upon what you do and what you can maintain online). Typical example users are: Back in March 2007, FT.com commissioned an investigation into which companies provided the best corporate website: The results make for interesting reading and show best-practice in communicating with the different audiences you have.

The table of results is from the Bowen Craggs index: http://media.ft.com/cms/1de78660-dc91-11db-a21d-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=4dce8136-4a24-11da-b8b1-0000779e2340.pdf

Note: A low value (3 out of 12) was given to Wells Fargo’s ‘Contact’ – measuring the efficiency of the points of contact, and also the effective diversion of contacts through FAQs. This will hopefully now improve, given their outward methods of communication using Social Media and Web2.0 technologies more recently.

Using a user-centred approach to content-rich sites should help you create a web offering that matches to the information needs of your targeted audience and help your communicate that much better. It will also help in what is referred to by David Bowen as ‘Construction’, that looks at navigation and coherence of the overall site.