All went well until I asked a business whether I could email some photos of my sofa to them for a quote.  ”Sure just use the email address on the web site”, came the reply.  When I pointed out that there wasn’t an email address listed,  the response was “bloody hell, I’ve been waiting ages for that to get done!” 

So here was a small business that had the wherewithal to advertise itself on Google and yet struggled to keep its basic contact information up to date on its principal web site.   

Which brings me to the new .tel top-level domain and its promise that businesses can “join a global online directory that provides you instant worldwide exposure…” and the ability to “integrate all your means of communication in a single place under your control…”

So will the .Tel TLD make life easier for SMEs?  At first glance it looks pretty useful in that it allows a business or individual to add all their contact data easily, control who has access to it and update it as they need.   

Moreover, .Tel is unlike other TLDs in that it stores a user’s information right in the DNS.

But so what? Going back to my search for a reupholstery service, as I didn’t have a personal recommendation to go on, I needed to find out more than just simple contact info.  That’s one reason why I went to Google and not a directory listings site … I wanted to look at company web sites or customer reviews to get some perspective on the businesses.  

In this regard, .Tel contact data would not have materially helped me at this stage of my search as a consumer looking for a business.  In fact it would have been no better than a standard directory listing, particularly as there is no reason why data accuracy should be any better for a self-administered listing on .Tel than a directory entry.  Looked at in this way, .Tel seems like the Net-savvy younger brother of the BT OSIS database which provides the backbone data for print and online listings in the UK.  Whereas OSIS uses the telephone number as the anchor point for its business and residential listings, .Tel uses the DNS … different technologies, same end point.

Another open issue in my mind is how the .Tel approach sits with the most recent developments in personal data/profile sharing from the likes of Google, Myspace and most of all Facebook which has built some serious momentum with Facebook Connect.   What these forms of data portability offer is not just sharing of singular contact information between networks, but richer contextual data about me and my contacts.  They deliver not just information but context about the information – i.e. the sort of added value I went searching on the Web for when looking for my reupholstery service.

Now .Tel could interface back into the social graph by supporting one or more of these data portability initiatives and this does seem to be on the cards.  Being able to keep a single set of profile information updated that would then feed into all my other online profiles and Web sites would be very handy indeed.  This is the sort of service a business like the one I spoke to Saturday would likely pay for.  However, couldn’t this service equally be provided by a profile/network holder such Plaxo or Linked In for businesses and a Myspace or Facebook for consumers?

It’s early days for .Tel and it’s going to be interesting to watch how it develops as right now it seems to be poised somewhere between a legacy directory model, Web 1.0 TLDs and Web 2.0 data portability.

A quick comment on the Small Business 2.0 event: I enjoyed it very much and hats off to Dan and the Conference People team for putting it together.  It was a very telling sign of the times that the audience was not a bunch of “2.0″ nerds, but small businesses either looking at how to branch out from established marketplaces and become really multi-channel, or wanting to get more from the Internet than their traditional web site has given them to date.  There is a clear convergence of interest from SMEs with very different online backgrounds looking into how the Web can become a more effective part of their marketing and sales strategy.  I sincerely hope there will be more Small Business 2.0 events because the need is evident.  

And on that note, I will no longer feel like a miserable sinner and am getting back into the blogging saddle again … yeehaa!

Agencies, hosting companies, and domain registrars will all be rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to breathe new life into their business models. But I can’t quite help feeling that the whole shebang seems just a little passé …

On the Web the first time round, we all rushed onto the beach flinging our towels down and claiming our individual space. After a while we caught on that actually everyone was having fun at the bar, so we left our umbrellas where they were and joined the party. That’s Web 2.0.

Social networking is largely domainless (who cares or knows what my Facebook URL is!). What matters are the interactions on the platform and between platforms through data porting. So my Tweet is syndicated to my Friendfeed and then displayed on my Facebook profile. The ‘address’ of this information is actually irrelevant. The important bit is the community with which I am sharing my content and time.

The social Web is changing the landscape of ecommerce too. Some recent research from Quidco found that 62% of shoppers consult online communities before making a purchase. And that only 27% of consumers go directly to the retailer. And the top three reasons …

1. communities offer me unbiased facts about products and services (32%);

2. I trust the views of communities more than merchants (27%);

3. communities help me find the best deal available (27%).

Given the above, is spending a fortune to ‘protect the brand’ with a custom domain (and then spending even more to drive traffic to it) a worthwhile activity? Or should businesses take part in the communities where customers are already talking about their brand, engage them and turn them into advocates? In other words, will a hotel chain get more customer value out of a .hotel TLD, or a series of positive reviews on Tripadvisor? I strongly suspect the latter.

This is really a big business dilemma as SMEs won’t typically have the marketing budgets to worry about securing a new TLD. That could turn out to be an advantage, as whilst the big brands buy better picks and shovels to take part in the new gold rush, small business can be down at the saloon mixing it up with their customers and doing real business.

The article gives a good overview of how a blog can help a small business to market itself and build its brand and has some very nice supporting case studies. But the NYT does suggest that not all companies will be suited to using blogs as a marketing tool for a bunch of reasons, including that they may not have “enough to say”.

I don’t think the latter’s really the issue. Rather blogging (just like podcasting or using video) is a very new marketing tool for small businesses and the rule book hasn’t yet been written. As I’ve seen at BT Tradespace, SMEs are already using blogs in a variety of ways from a direct sales pitch, to source of advice, to general discussion. The level of experimentation is very high.

What is likely to happen is that in the hands of many thousands of small businesses, (the majority of whom will be coming to the medium for the first time), blogging itself is going to change. In fact many of the discussions about what is an appropriate use of blogging for marketing purposes may soon seem quite quaint as SMEs claim the medium for themselves.

As William Gibson said “the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed”. My prediction for 2008 is that the use of blogging and other forms of social media as marketing tools will go well beyond the current niches and become mass market and that as a result we will see a new type and style of online marketing emerge with SMEs in the driving seat.

1. It’s an ad platform for SMEs – now there’s quite some debate about whether Myspace is the right context for small business, and for many it undoubtedly isn’t. But the fact that Myspace has invested in Selfserve suggests that it believes it has the base already to make it a success.

2. Selfserve is about making online advertising accessible to SMEs -That means cheap (apparently pricing starts at $10) and easy – the ad platform has been designed for small businesses to set up and run their own campaigns. If Myspace achieves the latter it will have made a breakthrough as, despite Google’s efforts to date, online advertising is too damn complex for SMEs to master. Myspace acknowledged this in its release when it says that of over 23 million SMEs in the US less than 1 million advertise online.

3. Selfserve is about driving traffic to a Myspace profile – usage stays within the community and is not taken off site. This is quite a revolutionary change from traditional net marketing that is all about driving traffic to a web site. In Myspace’s model, not only is the SME spending their ad money in the network, they also have to invest time keeping their profile engaging and up to date in order to convert leads. A Selfserve advertiser will therefore be a very active Myspacer.

I’m going to be following Selfserve with interest as it’s a clear sign that Net marketing is going to be increasingly about managing a constellation of online assets in relevant communities, than sucking traffic into a stand-alone web site. It’s also an indication that engagement and quality of participation in a community will be at least as important as ad spend in driving campaign success.

Small businesses are starting to adopt web 2.0 tools to market themselves online precisely because traditional net marketing built on the ‘big iron’ of integrated campaigns using paid search and display ads and supported by a comprehensive SEO strategy is beyond the skill sets and resources (time and money) of most SMEs.

SMEs are struggling with online marketing and sales today and this is shown in the numbers. >40% don’t have web sites, <20% sell online and the percentage that make any significant sales online is much less than this. Running a web site is a costly, complex business that often requires the support of third parties to build, maintain and market.

Now look at the tools of web 2.0 – blogging, podcasting, photo and video sharing – adopted by millions of consumers because they are simple and powerful communication tools. These characteristics make them ideal for small businesses to build their net marketing strategy on.

SMEs have a direct connection with their customers in a way that larger enterprises struggle to mimic. That same piece of research from BT Business also found that 52% of small businesses get up to half of their revenue is from referrals, with 31% obtaining 75% of their work from word of mouth.

Now, if we put the costs and complexity of traditional online marketing alongside the growing importance of the Internet as a research and purchasing medium for consumers, it is apparent that SMEs desperately need to find a better way to market themselves online. This is provided through the tools of social media that are very well suited to the personal and conversational marketing style of small businesses that already works to their benefit offline.

I really believe SMEs have the need and incentive to drive innovation in online marketing using web 2.0 – much more so than big companies. We are starting to see this happen already with businesses as diverse as florists and PR experimenting with new forms of conversational marketing. And there’s much more to come.

Galileo was right … our view of our place in the universe is no longer geocentric, in fact we understand that our planet is part of a solar system. Blindingly obvious today, revolutionary back in the 17th century.

We are starting to witness a Galilean revolution in online marketing. Our perspective on Internet marketing is still site-centric. We believe our web site should be the centre of our net marketing strategy. However, given the sheer number of sites and the very high costs of driving traffic to a single entity on the web, this strategy is not working for many businesses, especially SMEs, many of whom are not even trying.

I believe that we will soon see that marketing efforts (SEO, SEM, display …) that aim to make the Internet revolve around your web site are as absurd as thinking that the sun revolves around the earth. So what has changed?

The explosive growth in online communities has started to reveal on the net the social graph and relationships between people on a massive scale. To attract customers it is now necessary to participate in communities relevant to your business. By participation that means taking part in a conversation with prospects on terms understood and accepted by the community. We are very far from ‘traditional’ online marketing here.

Audiences are fragmented and this means customers are distributed and harder to reach. Online this means they are present in many different contexts, often behaving differently in each. So not only is it now necessary to be present in may different communities, we also have to adapt our behaviour and engagement accordingly to be relevant. This poses a stiff challenge to the concept of a strong unified brand.

So net marketing is going to move from being web site-centric to generating customer engagement through multiple, highly contextual ‘profiles’ – in other words a constellation of online assets. Online marketing will also shift from being ‘advertising’ driven to ‘participation’ based.

Some big brands have already seen the way the wind is blowing and are being successful. Most haven’t. And I also am convinced that smaller businesses are best placed to leverage this revolution in online marketing … but more on that later.