Connecting the dots between website, search and online media

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The topic of the latest Web Management Round Table, that took place in Stockholm 4 June, was 'Online Intelligence' and how to utilise the knowledge received from analysing and monitoring your website, search engine and online media.

We were happy to see that the participants represented many different types of companies, all with global presence. The companies are in businesses of fast moving consumer goods, global healthcare , B2B manufacturer of industrial tools and appliances, global technical consultancy, world leader in the security industry and a global NGO organization.

Online Intelligence

H&H Executive Partner Staffan Lindgren started the Web Management Round Table by presenting the topic 'Online Intelligence'. The purpose of monitoring and measuring your web presence should always be to achieve effective and efficient communication, i.e. how to get your point out clearly without too much effort. This also included how to measure the value of communication by what others are willing to pay.

Social media is personal

This led the participants to discuss social media and whether they were active in different social media channels or not. Most participants were monitoring their presence in social media but were not active. Yet. One of the conclusions was that social media is personel – as a company you need to consider your credibility when entering worlds of individuals. Guidelines for employees on how to use social media was common among the participants, but the content of these differed a lot. Some had very restrictive use of social media, in the name of the company, whilst others had a more liberate view on this.

It is often hard to regulate against employees being active in social media, and our experience is that by encouraging employees in the right direction, this can be beneficial in the company's presence online.

Centralised vs. decentralised web organisation

The majority of the participants of the round table came from organisations with local web editors situated around the world. Training is an essential tool in making sure that the company’s web presence and brand online is maintained. Web training within the participating companies often included not only CMS training but also how to communicate on and write for the web. The training varied from being a four day session of face to face training to having online training. All were considered successful for each company.

One of the participating companies had a successful centralised web organisation, consisting of a web department responsible for all websites and intranets.

There are no rights and wrongs when it comes to what organisation your company should have. You need to create a web organisation that suits the organisation as a whole. The web organisation, regardless of it being centralised or decentralised, should be ambassadors for the Internet and for the company’s online presence according to whatever guidelines has been set up.

Commitment from top management

In addition we discussed the commitment from top management. One could but agree that to have the top management’s blessing does make life easier for persons responsible for the web. It seems though as if CEOs are either not “interested in Internet stuff, but realises that they need to have it as everybody else has it”, or very much into the details on what functions should be available or in which social media channels the company should be present in. Using statistics could be one way of keeping the management up to date, including helping them to make the analysis on what the statistics means.

See the presentation here: