This week I have been somewhat of a hero. I received quite a few excited calls from clients who perceived the business blogs we created for them to be part of a Web2.0 mega trend heralded by Time Magazine. This week, Time announced that their selection for person of the year was “Us”. To quote their Managing Editor Richard Stengel: “…the idea of the 2006 Person of the Year: that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated (web2.0 ) content are transforming art and politics and commerce… and the consequences of it are both hard to know and impossible to overestimate.”
Web 2.0 is comprised of the second generation of Internet-based tools —such as blogs, social networking sites, wikis, communication tools and work process tools that as a group emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.
Our firm has increasingly focused on the public relations aspects of Web2.0, or Web2.0 PR to address the rise of these web based tools that make PR more effective, interesting and flexible.
Stengel also comments that “blogs bring events to us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media……these new techniques will only enhance what we do as journalists and challenge us to do it in even more innovative ways.” Part of the challenge will come from Web2.0 PR practitioners who now can directly produce compelling narratives about their clients that go directly to customers and prospects as well as journalists. Hence our clients feeling passionately about the bottom line impact of their blogs.
But this is just the start as far as we are concerned. We are very excited about the collaborative power of Web2.0 tools. Tools to build, manage and tune non-standard business processes. I have started to write about Vertabase PRO, an advanced online project management tool that intelligently manages ad hoc teams with different skills, affinities and perspectives. What If What Next™ uses this Web2.0 project management software to manage our larger client engagements. Unlike Microsoft Project which we find cumbersome especially for collaboration; we have been able to get up and running with Vertabase Pro and gain basic mastery in just a few hours of fiddling and a demo from their training person. My team feels very confident that we have found the tool to scale our company significantly as we ride the Web2.0 PR wave.
More detail on the process with follow in subsequent entries.
