The Engaged Consumer

The web, from a technical perspective, is orders of magnitude more complex than it used to be. What used to amount to the creation and layout of graphic files and text on a page has blossomed into a network of websites that look more like applications than publications.

Most of this complexity is due to the fact that interactive has gotten more, well, interactive - with users putting as much content into websites as they are getting out. (this is of course referred to in many circles as "Web 2.0"  <shudder>)

In the area of marketing this has introduced the need for technology investment. When the interactive agency of the Year 2000 built a website, they essentially started from the ground up or with a very basic content management system every time.

In short order, website marketing evolved into CRM and loyalty/relationship marketing - where users were registering, taking polls/surveys, receiving automated emails, and being served custom content based on their preferences. It was at this stage that it became more efficient to reuse technology, as many relationship marketing programs had these common elements that supported interaction between the user and the brand.

As a result, many agencies created platforms, some investing so much in their platforms that they found they could specialize in executing loyalty/relationship marketing strategies specifically - companies like Brierley and LoyaltyLab.

Social technology continues this evolution in the same direction, from content management to relationship management to now, social management. Not only are even deeper user-to-brand interactions supported, but user-to-user interactions as well. And the technology is more complex than ever.

In fact, the benefits of platform development have escalated to the point where now the platforms are businesses in and of themselves, no longer requiring an agency shell to remain viable. Companies like Jive, Mzinga, Lithium, and many, many others dot the interactive landscape.

The issue is that not all community technologies followed the marketing evolutionary path - many didn't cut their teeth on the Mean Streets of Web 1.0. In this case, when technology comes from the "Social Suburbs," it often lacks many web marketing fundamentals - things like content management, email campaign management, robust analytics, a contextual product/call-to-action catalog and ad placement engine, and contextual site search.

Don't get me wrong, marketing is certainly not the only goal for building an online community. With objectives that are more networking-oriented, the technology doesn't need to be a hardened marketing platform. Social point solutions and standalone social tools (many of them free) work well to build community for non-marketing purposes - intranets, niche enthusiast groups, etc.  This is why Ning, the ad-supported  social networking platform, is popular and works from a business perspective. It didn't require the investment that a marketing platform would require.

It also contributes to the reason why companies that separate the platform business from an agency shell are profitable endeavors - they can sell to the non-marketing side of their propective customers.

But in order to build community for the purpose of marketing, the new-school social widgets must be integrated and layered over an old-school enterprise-class content and relationship management foundation. It must add new types of interactions on to the legacy built by earlier versions of interactive marketing, and the platform must still be  tightly integrated with the functions of an agency (strategy/creative/measurement), either through a partnership or one-stop shop approach.

The key, as with any technological decision, is simply to pick the right tool for the job, not to buy a hammer and treat every community like a nail. And from a corporate perspective, it's not to overspend for networking or underspend for marketing.