Sazbean

Software Development Management

Main navigation

You are here: Home / Archives for Sarah Worsham

Sarah Worsham

/

B2B Social Networking – Ning

I’ve been taking a look at social networking sites for the B2B industry. I rediscovered Ning today. When they were first launched they were a free-only service that was geared towards only the consumer Internet audience. Now they’ve added a paid service to remove or run your own ads, increase bandwidth and storage space, and use your own domain name.

As a network administrator, you have full control of exactly how your network looks and acts – ability for blogs, rss feeds, video, audio, photos, forums, and outside plugins. You have ownership of the content on your network, with the ability to backup any code and content within it. Ning does not currently interface with outside registration services (would love to see them support OpenID), but you can import and export your registered users. There’s also the option to create a closed network so that only the people invited can get in.

In just 5 minutes I was able to create a B2B social network that I’ll eventually tweak and link up to this site. If it grows, I can change to the paid options at any time. If you’re looking for a social networking tool for your B2B Website, take a look at Ning. It may be an easy, good and cheap way to add social networking to your site.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

CrunchBase Information
Ning
Information provided by CrunchBase

/

B2B Content – SEO vs Customer-Centric Design

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms will tell you that you need to have keyword-optimized pages on your website in order to appear in Google’s search results for those keywords. Customer-centric design requires that your website be designed with your customer foremost in-mind. Can these co-exist? Can you have the best of both worlds?

Yes and no. Search engines put a good deal of weight on how often content is updated on the site and for each of the keywords in question. Keeping keyword-optimized pages updated can be (and usually is) a full-time job. Have you ever been on a keywords-optimized site as a customer who is trying to find something? Often it is difficult to wade through all the content written only for the search engines.

Customer-centric design means keeping your customer in mind. What are your customers looking for when they come to your website? Do most of your customers come from search engines? If so, taking a SEO keyword-optimized approach may make sense.  Or do you use other advertising methods such as web ads, print ads, word-of-mouth, blogging, conference appearances and speaking engagements? In these cases, it may make more sense to create landing pages for each of these audiences instead.

How do you get the best of both SEO and Customer-Centric Design? Create customer-centric pages optimized for what your customers are looking for and how they came to your site. Take SEO keyword optimization into account when you design those pages and your overall website. Both your customers and your wallet will thank you and, if done properly, this approach will lead to better search engine ranking for the long term.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

/

B2B Social Networks

So we’re hearing this and that about Social Networks being the next big thing in the B2B space after the success of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Digg for the consumer audience and LinkedIn for the business audience. What’s the big deal?

Social networks allow peers to communicate by sharing information, comments and ratings. As a social network visitor you can see what the overall community is doing, plus what individuals in your group are doing. The ABM-Harris 2006 Interactive B2B survey proved that a majority of B2B executives turn to the web when doing research for buying decisions. People are also more likely to trust information that comes from peers over marketing or advertising information. Social networks provide the opportunity to research and share information directly from your peers.

B2B websites have unique audiences – usually a very specific industry or niche, which is visiting the website specifically for information required to do business. One of the top reasons professionals attend B2B conferences and events is to network and connect with their peers. B2B Social networks offer a cost-effective way to connect with peers more often.

How do use this information to improve your own B2B website? Social networks are not effective unless the audience if reasonably large (at least a couple of thousand). If you don’t have that much traffic on your website, see if you can convince an industry association to form a social network so that your customers will be able to share, rate and comment on products and services in your industry. Take a look at a business social network, such as LinkedIn which allows associations to form groups, to connect with your peers online.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,