More on Network Building

Here are some more thoughts I have written on the concept of network building, adapted from Blogging Planet.

Networks Matter...

Determining the business benefit of blogs, wikis, RSS and other new communication channels requires a clear understanding of the nature and value of links and connections.

Simply put, the more links one can facilitate among your audience and then generate from that audience to your organization, the more value you will accrue from this web of connections. Put another way, it is the medium -- the network you build -- that matters, not the message -- the content.

The traditional practices of marketing, public relations, advertising, investor relations, community relations, employee relations and crisis management have all been driven by the production of polished content.

The question of content is one of the major barriers to adoption for blogging and other new communications tools, as people ask:

• What shall I write about?
• What can't I write about?
• What are others writing about my company?
• How can I stop them?

We believe that this focus on content is preventing people from seeing the more important issue: the value derived through the creation, maintenance and use of a powerful network of ongoing conversations amongst the widest possible audience, all leading in one form or another back to your organization.

Pure content is losing its importance as a driver of business value.

As new tools such as blogs enable everyone to become a publisher, the resulting glut of information drives down the value of content from any individual source. Furthermore, it is easy for any organization's message to become lost in this sea of information.

What's important is how content links to other content: Within the organization or elsewhere. For example, as more content becomes more linked to your organization, the likelihood of higher search engine ranking increases. Higher search engine ranking is one of the most important ways in which your content gains greater customer credibility and helps build greater trust in you.

Building the networks of connections organizations need...

...requires a deliberate weakening of traditional boundaries within and outside of businesses, encouraging exchange of ideas and information in a multidirectional fashion among the widest possible range of constituencies: employees, partners, customers, suppliers, investors, communities, and so on.

The key to success is scale: the more links the better.

Comments

[David McCulloch]

I’m curious as to hear more about the positive responses you’ve received to your assertion that networks (or more to the point, links) are where the business value of Peer Media resides.

Rather than pin-point the blogosphere's business potential, I fear the position largely misses it! Sure, it’s important to draw traffic to Web sites, but it’s really hard to persuade visitors to return to a Web site if its content is poor.

I believe the business opportunity presented by the blogosphere really resides in the dialogues and discussions blogging technology facilitates between networks, not the networks themselves.

Take the developer blogs of our client, eBay, for example. That eBay has formed a network of users and developers who visit these sites is nice, but for eBay the real value lies in the interaction its blogs facilitate between the company and its customers – and between the customers themselves.

Perhaps this is more of a complementary position than a contradictory one, but I'm interested in your views, nonetheless.

[Elizabeth Albrycht]

When I originally wrote this for Blogging Planet, it got many comments along the same lines of what you said, David, especially about the value of content. I am not denying its value! Far from it. However, there are a wide variety of other things to pay attention to besides content, which was what I was trying to get at with my 10 tools for network building post: http://ringblog.typepad.com/corporatepr/2005/11/ten_tools_for_n.html.

A few points of clarification. One, I am not saying that links are where the business value of peer media resides. We are talking about networks of people connecting with people, not links. Nor am I talking about drawing traffic to websites. The concept is much broader than that - of building a network of people who are talking to you and your organization, but even more importantly, talking to each other about you and your organization (among many many other topics). I think you are focusing on an object view of links/networks as technology not as groups of people, as I am. I do believe there is business value in conversations, of course. I am trying to get at a way of describing this that business people can understand (outside of fuzzy terms like "markets are conversations"). Your example of eBay fits exactly into what I am talking about.