Web 2.0 and soccer moms

There was a day when it took thousands of dollars to put up a website. A content management system? Multiply that by ten. Those days are gone. I amazed these days how the so called "Web 2.0" technologies are driving innovation in communication at the lowest levels. I preach about this stuff at work but it still is exciting to me when I find it in my "other" life.

I'm an avid youth soccer fan. Any one who knows me knows I talk about the team I coach or my kid's playing a lot. I'm a big believer in getting involved in what my kids do as a way to deepen our relationship. Plus, it's a whole lot of fun. My daughter joined a soccer club. I volunteered to be the "team manager", which basically means I collect money and keep everyone on the team informed of the practice schedule, games, etc.

The team recently put up a new website that at first appearance, it's not that big of deal. Team information, and pages for the different teams. What's really cool, however, is hidden underneath the hood. As an administrator of the site, I can add photo galleries, embed YouTube videos, placed team bios and news, etc. Each administrator has a different access level. All the pages are available via RSS feeds and calendars are available in iCalender format.

OK, so a lot of sites can do this. What I think is great is that this is for a relatively small club in Texas with limited resources. The site pays for itself through advertising that is owned by the people who built the site. Advertising is also available for the club and individual teams to sell. The whole site is controlled through a tagging system that really allows you to select the content that you're interested based on available tags. Basically allowing you to create your own page.

We talk so much about these type of technologies that you forget how they change things until they surprise us in areas of our lives that aren't really digital. Kinda like Cam buying an iPhone.

What disheartening is how few big companies, outside whose business is 100% internet based, take advantage of these tools. I'm not sure if it's the complexity of the problems or the bureaucracy. Maybe limited resources forces innovation. - Paul Herring

Comments

[Allin Bond]

Web 2.0 in a week?

I recently came across a post Is it a blog or website? on duct tape marketing that highlighted the emerging value of Wordpress as a web tool. Users are utilizing Wordpress’ capability as a CMS to bypass the technical expertise necessary to build out a quality site.

As an internet marketing consultant I talk to people everyday who are confused and uncertain on how they want to move their business forward in a web 2.0 world. “Should I spend money on a blog or should I consider building a high functioning website? Is there any way that I can bypass doing an SEO project?” The short answer is to be doing all of these things to position your business correctly. Wordpress lets the inexperienced and experienced test the web 2.0 waters without breaking the bank or driving themselves crazy. And now with the emergence of third party developers the sky is the limit on what Wordpress can do.

Web 2.0 is more than just blogs, widgets, social networking and podcast. It has become a mentality and a way of life for the masses that spend a majority of their day connected to the internet. I have personally thrown around and heard web 2.5 and web 3.0. So what are you to do if you just mastered text messaging and the concept of an RSS feed blows your mind? All you have to do is change your way of thinking and web 2.0 will follow.

On February 6, Exclusive Concepts re-launched our webinar series. The event itself was a success, focusing on SEO basics for yahoo stores. However, what was most surprising was the feedback from our audience. Everyone had an opinion and appreciated our follow up. The audience was filled with internet savvy marketers but there were also many first timers. For these first timers our webinar was their first taste of web 2.0 and they loved it and all they had to do was go to www.gotomeeting.com.

The lesson learned is that we are social creatures; whether we fly across the country to go to a conference or log on to a webinar, we all want to be a part of something. The web 2.0 rookie can now go back to his cohorts and brag about his webinar experience.

[Madison]

Hello!Some great tips & tricks here.I really liked it.The number of web sites on the web is increasing at a very fast pace and so is the level of competition amongst the web sites. You need to promote your web site and your web based business in order to get more web traffic.I think web2.0 pages plays a crucial role in driving traffic.