This article explores what a Web Presence really is in the Web 2.0 world, and how establishing your own community, as well as becoming part of others’ communities (i.e.: making use of Social Networking) is now really a critical part of the recipe. Future articles will delve deeper into Designing for the Community Experience (CX) itself.

First of all, let’s have a look around at where we are today. Since the dawn of the web, we’ve all just had web sites. Some have been nice, some have not, and we’ve seen everything in between. New tools began to emerge, and the sites became more interactive. A web site deployed the previous year, began to look out of date very quickly, as many web properties raced to keep pace with a continuous stream of web innovation. This steady stream of available functionality continually widened the chasm between the web site, and the direction of the web tomorrow.

As a species, we have an intrinsic need for categorizing and labeling everything we know about. It’s our nature to put things in boxes so they are neat, and tidy, and we can more easily reference them. So it’s no surprise, that our ever-evolving life online now has version numbers to delineate various passages through internet time. Consequently, planning for the web has changed, now that we have the term “Web 2.0”.

“I have a web site. Now I need a ‘Presence’?”

Well, yes, you do.

There are a few important factors at play here, (1) the notion of the web site, (2) the pervasive use of the internet today and tomorrow, and (3) the horizontal information flow between individual nodes on the internet.

The Web Site, a.k.a., Web 1.0.

As Lou Rosenfeld has said, ‘Users don’t care about your org chart.’ And that was, the way web sites were deployed. They reflect the authoritative, top-down, structured nature of organizations:

The organization controlled the information, and any communication flow. Each user participated exclusive of other users.

The prevailing extension to this implementation was Web 1.5. It was the use of the discussion forum, which allowed users to read what other users were saying, but topics and messages usually remained moderated (i.e.: controlled) by the organization.

Web 2.0

This label categorizes a number of important changes to the web 1.0 site, some of which are:

>> Highly Interactive on different levels (one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many)
>> Instantaneous
>> Multi-media rich content
>> User-generated content
>> User to user connectivity
>> Rewards, status
>> Widgets
>> Personalized
>> Safe
>> Addictive
>> Nielsen-Norman 1:9:90 rule[1] for participation generally, but higher when sub-networks are available.

Web 2.0 substantially changes the organization’s role on the web. While depicted at the center, as the host of the party, Web 2.0 becomes a collective experience, where inter-user communication and sub-networks are available which can exclude the host organization altogether.

Where Community Fits Into the Organizational Web Presence

I define the organizational web presence as a blend of a number of components:

At the center of the Web Presence is the Community eXperience (CX), further discussed below. The organization is now at the bottom of the pecking order, but remains responsible for the experience of the Web Presence.

Web Presence Framework Components

The major components, and the elements which comprise these components are described here as questions which the organization must answer to complete the Web Presence picture. Many of these exist as part of any good web project, or any project, for that matter, but use these questions to start defining your Web Presence.

But two key framework components are more important than ever: External Online Targets and the Community eXperience. Consequently, the interfaces to these components are now also crucial.

Organizational Drivers and Definition:

- Purpose – why does this online presence exist?

- Vision – what will the online presence be?

- Objectives and success criteria – what does the online presence need to achieve and how will we know when that happens?

- Governance & Project Management

o Reporting requirements – how closely will we watch the web presence to see if it is doing what it is intended?

- Resources

o Budget – what funding is required?

o Time – how many person hours are we looking at? Over what time period?

o Personnel and/or expertise – do we have the skills we need, or do we need to resource externally?

o Technology – what technology do we need, and how will this be implemented?

- Product Management – are there new and/or changed products, electronic or physical, that need to be considered?

Process

- Content management – how will content creation and provision change? do we have an inventory, and how will maintenance of the inventory change with our new web presence?

- Communications – do we have a need for more immediate messages and/or editorial approval? Translation?

- Marketing – what extra channels and collateral is needed for the new web presence?

- IT management – will we develop and operate in house? What are the impacts?

Measures

- Scorecard alignment – what organizational measures will this web presence affect and contribute to?

- Long and short term – are there a range of measures we can refer to in managing the web presence?

Community eXperience (CX)

As mentioned earlier, CX Design is worthy of its own article, and will be shortly in the future. But as a starting point, there are 3 basic questions to answer, which are crucial to guiding the deployment of your community:

(1) What do you want your citizens to do? This question helps you define purpose. What is this community-thing all about, and why are we doing it?

(2) What will your citizens want to do? This question helps you define audience. What levels of membership/participation/leadership do we want/can we expect?

(3) What are you willing to do? This is likely the toughest question. Decision will need to be made regarding what tools or widgets are needed, what leaders or experts need to be recruited, what time and money is required to seed and nurture the community. It takes an on-going commitment on your part to not only make sure your community has a heartbeat, but is vibrant and alive.

These questions will also help you understand the relationships that will exist in your community:

And, at the center of purpose and relationships, is the Community eXperience.

Content that you create, purchase, or is created by your citizens. What type of content is envisioned? Text, podcasts, streamed? Will we host it or embed it?

Functions that are deployed to enable user behaviour – blogs, wikis, discussion forums, IM, sub-network building, profile parameters, security and privacy controls.

Commerce defines what monetary exchange(s) will be enabled. Payment online, offline, through a third party, applicable taxes and shipping and return charges, other tariffs, or, donations, site/organization dues, and subscription fees.

Branding – closely tied to the UX, branding ensures the web presence maintains and presents consistent brand elements to the user, and to external online and offline destinations.

User eXperience (UX) – ensures the entrance ways to the web presence have been carefully constructed according to the audience, regardless of what access device they are using (keyboard, PDA, other wireless device), as well as consideration of UX offline, such as at events, ensuring the UX with the organization is continually satisfactory.

External Online Targets

The other critical piece to your web presence is how you exist online outside your own firewall. The audiences you are trying to reach have virtual lives in many places throughout the internet. You need a strategy to become visible, and in some cases participatory, in the places your audiences exist.

More questions:

- What are the Top 5 places your audience already hangs out on the internet? Are they competitor communities? Social or professional communities?

- Passive and active involvement – What level of visibility and/or involvement would be appropriate in these other worlds? Should you watch what they do and say, or create sub-networks and content within these other worlds. Do you establish information flow to the other worlds, from the other worlds, or both?

Offline Strategy

- Conferences and trade shows – predictably, part of your web presence strategy will also include marketing the purpose and value of your community anywhere you have the real world opportunity to do so. It may be, that a few of these real world opportunities, are as a direct result of your web presence.

- Products shipping and returns, and other real world transfers – the world (luckily) remains a physical existence. Your web presence needs to consider any related activity which involves the real world transfer of anything physical.

In Epitome

The concept of the Web Presence catapults the organization beyond the traditional web site, however well organized, presented, or interactive. The Web Presence is a concept which forces the organization to think about their online implementation as a blend of several orchestrated existences, which are not necessarily neatly controlled under the company URL.

The organization’s audiences exist quite well outside the organizational web site. It is the organization that must realize, they must now bring themselves to their audiences, wherever they may be on the internet, in order to get and keep their attention.

[1] With apologies to Nielsen-Norman – I feel 1:9:90 reads easier than 90:9:1. :^)