IT Business Edge Moving Toward Greater Audience Engagement
by Bill Ives
I have been mostly writing about It vendors so I thought it would be interesting to write about others who are talking about these vendors and the IT space in general. IT Business Edge has operated a web site since 2004 They provide value added content to IT decision makers and have over 600,000 registered members for the site. I am on their email list. I spoke with Ken Hardin, IT Business Edge’s VP of Subscriber Products and Jeff Yocom, VP of Marketing for IT Business Edge about their latest moves.
The IT Business Edge started as an aggregator of content to which they provided value. With the advent of content sharing sites such as del.icio.us and digg, they realized that they needed to do more. They are now adding a number of collaboration features to gain greater audience engagement. IT Business Edge is offering “cultivated” collaboration that was described by Jeff and Ken as deploying substantial levels of moderation in areas where users can interact with editors, industry experts and peers. From the beginning they have wanted to add value to the content they provide so they are bringing this concept to their newer collaboration initiatives. They understand that their readers still want vetted material so IT Business Edge editors are involved in all phases of the collaboration to ensure quality.
The audience input is extended in a number of areas beyond forums. For example, their downloadable tools are evolved based on community input. Editorial content grows out of and feeds yet more community discussion. The cultivated collaborative approach is designed to build a rich experience for participants while recognizing the demands on their time. They know that readers will not want to wade through volumes of materials but, at the same time, they may want several viewpoints on a topic. Thus a news story will distill the key points and link to two or three sources on item. Here is a sample screen showing the different types of content.
IT Business Edge still provides vendor sponsored white papers but they have segmented this area of the site from their community area, referred to as the knowledge network. No material that has been used in a marketing promotion is can be presented as community content. Also, no community content can be used for lead generation. Much of the site is built on Jive’s Clearspace platform with some .Net and other components. Here is my Jive commentary (Jive Software – Enterprise 2.0 Collaborative Platform). IT Business Edge was helped with the site design by Decision Counsel from the Bay area. Here is an example of search results.
We took a look at their site and it has a clean, well segmented, but comprehensive lay out. The main sections include: topics, resource centers, blogs, news, knowledge network, white papers, and premium tools. They started a group of bloggers a while back and these writers are also engaged in the various forums and other community activities. If you go to blogger’s profile you will not only the blogger’s bio but also all of the recent activity on the site, including modifications to documents, comments, creation of new content, and replies. I like this cross section of activities and the fact that the bloggers are really engaged in the site and each other’s blogs. You can also start a discussion and initiate the creation of a document from the profile page.
I liked the blog post, Skittles Sweetens Its Site with Social Media, but Will It Leave a Bad Taste? There has been a lot of buzz about the Skittles site but Ann All tries to offer a balanced view. As she writes,”Click on “media” and instead of being served up a list of company-penned press releases, you can view a bunch of user-created YouTube videos or flickr photos. (Not all of which have to do with the candy, by the way. Who knew so many people had pets named Skittles?) “Chatter” takes you to a Tweeter feed, “friends” to a Facebook page (with 584,868 fans), ”products” to a Wikipedia page.“ However, as Ann points out, there is no monitoring and a lot of spam or worse has surfaced. I agree with her conclusion that the Skittles site seems like little more than a colorful, fleeting and ultimately unfulfilling diversion. IT Business Edge is taking the opposite tack in their approach to user generated content and input with their heavily monitored engagement. This seems more sensible to me, especially for their market.
Jeff and Ken closed with the thought that in a down market they feel it is important to invest in their company when others might be cutting back. They feel that this gives them a competitive advantage both when the client dollars might be shrinking and it positions them well for when things turn around. I would agree with this move. They also said that fortunately they are now seeing marketing dollars go more for lead generation than broad-brush campaigns as the economy tightens. Lead generation is a large part of what they can offer their sponsors so this trend serves them well. Take a look at their site, see their recent investments in becoming more social, and join the conversations.
