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E-Consultancy cites a recent survey from Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) this morning - see image.

“79% of respondents saw Web 2.0 features such as blogs and social networks as a good way to increase revenues and reduce costs.”

The results did suggest that IT departments may struggle to implement any Web 2.0 solutions and this is something E-Consultancy highlighted as a potential stumbling block.

I would suggest that any bottleneck may actually come from management and marketing - why?

It’s Time To Lose Control!

Well, not lose control, rather let go of it a bit. The thing is, it’s already happening online but many companies still won’t embrace the web 2.0 culture.

Reputation management is important (especially with the viral nature online) but it can’t be controlled with a big stick.

Web 2.0 is a buzz word yes, but it does encapsulate a sea change in online participation. We all suddenly have a voice - including your customers - and you can’t necessarily control what they say.

Bad Plumber Leaves My Mouth Flowing

I recently tried to get a plumber to do some work at home. Two weeks on the trot the guy didn’t turn up to take a look at the job, despite the fact that I had to be at home early to ‘meet him’ both times.When I chased him (yes I had to chase him) he didn’t even seem sympathetic.

Am I going to use him? Of Course Not. Am I going to tell all my friends and people I meet locally who ‘isn’t’ a good plumber - damn right!

It may seem petty but I’m not alone. We all do it every day whether it’s at the water cooler, to our family over Sunday dinner. We make judgements on services or products and tell our friends and anyone who will listen. It just so happens that we now have blogs, forums and websites, etc. to moan about bad (and good) experiences - whether it be Tiscali or Lush.

Test yourself with this question:

What would you do if someone blogged something bad about you? Would you:

1. Threaten To sue them
2. Leave an angry comment
3. Embrace the author’s opinion and act on the fact that they may have a point. Work out what you could do about it and turn the negative into a positive PR exercise whilst getting some valuable customer feedback that may change a current business procedure to make your business eve better?

The thing is, people will say what they say anyway and the mass of voices tend to be so much louder - especially with social interaction through web 2.0 websites.

Yes, you do need the IT infrastructure to deliver some web 2.0 solutions - you also need the balls within an organisation to embrace the change first place. The point is though - before you worry how big your balls really are and if you can buy into social participation - you need to realise that it’s happening already - maybe without you!