A few years ago, I wrote a controversial post suggesting corporate websites were irrelevant. Why? Decisions were being made off-domain by customers and peers. Secondly, many marketers were trying to get customers to go to their corporate website versus joining where they already are, “Fish where the fish are.”
Today, I’m pleased to see that the thinking –and technology, has emerged, where we’re finding a variety of companies that are integrating social technologies right into the corporate website, bringing the trusted discussions closer to the corporate site. In fact, I’m kicking off the Gilbane CMS conference in SF as the keynote, and will be sharing this deck live on stage.
Although the highest state of nirvana (seamless integration) doesn’t yet exist, we should expect there to be very little difference between social technologies and corporate websites as content will assemble on the fly. I predict URLs won’t matter, as content will be dynamically assembled around the buyer and their context in a variety of devices. Sure, that’s far out thinking now, but that’s why we have several other stage gates that companies must first go through.
In fact, use this presentation (loosely modeled after a post of the same topic) as a roadmap for brands, web strategists, and the vendors that serve them. Feel free to use these slides with attribution.
Thanks to our head of Research, Christine Tran for her assistance.
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Gained a whole new appreciation for social technologies studying the “Corporate Website Relevant” presentation. Look forward to visiting the slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang in the future. This serves as a good example of “thinking in action”.[v.o.M.]
Excellent post as always, Jeremiah.
However I found the slides very focused on social networking integration not on social technologies as a whole. We have been talking about this concept in a similar way – we call it contextually relevant social media: how to integrate social media in a way that is relevant to users based on the site they visited and what they are trying to accomplish.
This is why social commerce is so powerful: it provides trusted discussions on a brand's site in a way that it helps customers make better decisions. For example, better purchase decisions on an ecommerce site with reviews.
On a separate note, I agree URLs don't matter from a user experience perspective, but they provide a context in terms of user expectations, especially around identity, privacy and security. I believe people have different identities (work, personal, gaming, anonymous, etc.) that they want to keep separate as they travel the web.
Gerado
Yup this is *just* about integrating existing social networking sites like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn. This doesn't encompass the online community space (which I coined “Community Platforms” while at Forrester).
When humans use URL, it's an example of us speaking “machine language”. That'll eventually go away.
Thanks Victor.
To that note though, couldn't Community Platforms really be the 8th step? To me, that's when you're not just talking about these social sites but holistic community engagement. For instance, Starbucks, which goes as far as to include MyStarbucksIdea on its homepage, seems to get to a much deeper level than they get credit for here.
In the end, there won't be a difference between the community platform and social networking site as their already starting to share and spread data. Many of them allow for community content to be spread to FB and back.
Most community platforms aren't even integrated into the website, most are stand-alone.
A wonderful deck Jeremy, thanks for sharing. I do, however, disagree with a comment you placed in the comments:
When humans use URL, it's an example of us speaking “machine language”. That'll eventually go away.
What if you'd written:
When humans use telephone numbers, it's an example of us speaking “machine language”. That'll eventually go away.
I really don't see a difference.
I've always considered URLs something that, when implemented with care, can be very human-friendly. That, of course, is a when.
Both telephone numbers and URLs will fade into the background
Expect next generation address books to be centered around profiles based on social networks. I rarely deal with dialing numbers, I use voice recognition on my iPhone, and it auto dials for me!
Agree with you on what's important, it's “When”.
I love when you create slides – very useful! Great timing too…I've share this with our web and social team. Thank you!
Awesome. I've got teams like yours in mind as I work on this stuff. I hope you use it as a roadmap.
Thanks Jeremiah – do you think these steps are just as relevant for b2b as they are for b2c?
I've got clients dealing with these issues right now. Thanks for your continued insight. Keep em coming.
Jeremiah – grateful for the thoughtful and generous sharing of your keynote slides. Critical to keep kpi's in mind. They can, however, be elusive throughout the climb you describe. Should your prediction for URL's to go away be accurate then what happens to search relevance and the online advertising models? What about the struggle for traffic based analytics and it's relationship to business valuation?
CRM and SFA driven around customer-centric process and modern (digital) relationship development strategy already assumes this? thoughts?
Great insights Jeremiah.
We have been working on a platform for integrating social content into brands domain at GizaPage. Some of our customers who integrated all their social footprints into their corporate websites are http://social.fastrack.in/ , http://social.nasscom.in/ , http://social.prathambooks.org/ etc. Your feedback is most welcome.
Jeremiah, nice slideshow. In the end we seem to be coming around to questions we were asking back in 1997. Who are my influencers online, the limited number of people I actually know or the like-minded people I meet in fourms, my virtual community. People who are searching for the same answers I am vs someone who clicked on a “like” button. Like most people I communicate with less than 10% of my facebook friends, a little higher on linked-in.
I'd like to see a broader discussion of all of this space, not just the current front runners of facebook and twitter.
Thanks for your always great posts!
Social Media has changed lot in last 2 years and mindset changed dramatically of the people
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Thanks for uploading your presentation, it makes good reading. One of the best sites I've seen recently to try and integrate the social channels into the site in the Samsung US site at http://www.samsung.com/us/ as it uses the tools to start conversations, connect with Samsung staff and ask questions to the brand.
The the machine language remains but is relegated to the machines to process and present in a more human friendly user interface. Does this not coincide with a greater concern and market for UX design?