Are today’s static corporate websites the mistrusted adverts of tomorrow?

• How do you select applications in the Mac apps store?
• How do you select books to buy online?
• How do you chose a hotel?

If like me – and almost everyone else – you flick to the reviews then you are an advocate of social media and a natural believer in the wisdom of crowds. As I am sure you already know.

The depressing thing is the low number of UK B2B company sites that directly give these kind of potential customers the information they so obviously look for when making purchasing decisions.

There are several possible reasons :

•    The company has so little traffic that the minimal level of engagement would actually influence such buyers in a negative way. No feedback looks to impatient prospects like bad feedback.

•    Engagement takes energy – but recession and continued political incompetence in the area of encouraging business has hit energy levels hard in the UK.

•    Engagement takes a strategy – but the whole world of corporate social media is too unfamiliar for most UK SME companies to set strategies for engaging with it.

•    They don’t have an appropriate technology platform.

•    They are genuinely a local business – anything more than a cursory presence on the internet is perceived as a distraction.

•    Companies are just too afraid of what the public will say about them.

I am sure there are others, and I look forward to any comments and suggestions,  but is the last one that I want to focus on – fear of opinions. In general I have noticed a hierarchy of comfort across the main audience lines as follows:

•    Intranets – companies allow engagement provided this is moderated by a ‘manager’ – which amounts to paying lip service to engagement and frustrating contributors.
•    Public – companies remain scared of negative perceptions on lead generation
•    Extranets – marketing view : our customers are the most important assets we have and we will totally control that space to make sure all content is on message.

Modern intranets are at least some way down this path of increasing user engagement, even though very few employees are comfortable engaging with blogs on the corporate intranet compared with the large number that are interested in reading them.

I have already posted on the depressing lag in the UK compared to the USA in adopting openness and engagement, so I will refrain from comparing engagement levels across these spaces. But for interest, in the best of the USA extranets the customers are welcomed to provide feedback precisely because they are the most valued asset – the company wants to learn to do a better job and has identified senior staff ready to engage with and work through any negative feedback in exactly the same public arena.

Lets go back to my original point. We use reviews. But the truth is we also use the content. We look at photos of the hotel, a location map and then read the comments. We know of an author, find their books, then read the reviews. It is a question of balance.

Balance

This is how it should be in corporate B2B websites and extranets as well as intranets – and not just in public large scale e-commerce B2C sectors. The information and the interaction both have an important role to play, but should be directly complimenting each other – and for that reason products like Claromentis Innovate are of great interest. When you can follow a document that is actually in your own corporate infrastructure, and by doing so extend the information layer seamlessly – the results are much greater participation and increased innovation.

In my view significant interaction through corporate social media but without adequate information is just as useless as lots of marketing information with no interaction. Both are increasingly liable to generate a cynical response from the visitor.

The companies that develop strategies to balance the two in a truly integrated environment will provide not just a more engaging and informative online presence, but  generate significant innovation benefits that will ultimately feed through into higher margins and increased sales.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions corporate social media, engagement, extranet, intranet software