Web 2.0 Marketing

The Impact of Web 2.0 on International Marketing Practices

This essay is about Web 2.0 and its impact on international market. Before going in detail we will see what actually Web 2.0 is. The Web 2.0 is basically a term that is used for describing a variety of different web sites along with different applications that mainly allow the users to create and at the same time share their online information or any material that they have created. One of the key elements of the technology since the beginning of time was that it allows the users to share what they create, collaborate and also actively communicate. The Web 2.0 specifically differs from the other types of websites due to the fact that it does not need any additional web designing or even publishing skills for participating and this makes it very easy for the people to create and also to publish and throughout the world (Thomson 2008).

To go in detail, the Web 2.0 is more commonly referred to as the second generation of World Wide Web and it is basically a set of tools allowing the people build up their personal social or business connection and share information along with collaboration of their project online. Its common features include wiki along with social- networking sites, online communities, virtual worlds and many others (Parise, Guinan & Weinberg 2008).

Since the emergence of the Internet back in the 1990’s, it has created tremendous global effects on mostly every human being, learning inclusive. In terms of globalization, it has stimulated a wide shift mainly in the traditional boundaries in terms of teaching and this has further broadened the act of education horizon greatly. At the end of 20th century, the gradual switching mainly from monopolistic (Web 1.0) to the democratic (Web 2.0) eventually stimulated radical changes most importantly in the fields of learning and teaching (Enobun 2010).

Like many new software, this new generation of Web 2.0 basically includes many new features along with many new functions that were not available during the past years. However, this Web 2.0 is not any specific version of Web, but it is rather a set of series of different technological improvements (Tech Terms, 2008).

The most remarkable contributions of Web 2.0 are listed here with further detail discussions later on. Firstly, there are blogs which are also known as the Web logs and these are mostly involved in allowing the users to post their thoughts, their updates and stories related to their lives on the web. Secondly, there are the Wikis. These are mostly the sites like Wikipedia and many others which enable the users from all across the world to write, add and update their content regularly. Thirdly, there are the social networking sites. Different sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace offer the users in building and customizing their own profiles and also to communicate with their friends situated all around the world (Tech Terms, 2008).

Web 2.0 Marketing
Web 2.0 Marketing

Fourthly, there are the web applications. These are a broad range of modern and new applications which makes it possible for the users that they run their desired programs directly in any of the Web browser. The fifth most important contribution is the podcasting. Podcasting is basically a way in which the users make audio or even video files that are available on the internet and which can either be listened or viewed on any portable PC or any hand-held devices like an iPod or any mp3 player. The sixth major contribution is content hosting services. The content hosting or better called as the content sharing sites mainly allow the users to upload their content and these mostly includes YouTube, Flickr, etc. The next major contribution can be the sites which allow online shopping and lastly sites which allow users to book their hotel rooms, their flights simply through internet and drop the idea of going personally.

To go in detail of the above mentioned contributions, there are many soft drink companies which use the internet fir their marketing. The company, which greatly relies on the internet for its local and international marketing, has eventually brought every Web 2.0 technology into play to gain more profit and customers. Until recently, many of its ‘social media’ steps and efforts have openly been engaged in different blogging sites. Most commonly, the companies own historians are making daily posts on their Coca-Cola Conversations blogs; which are mostly included in the virtual worlds as discussed above. The company also employs sites like Facebook and Twitter to increase their publicity by creating their own company’s page to increase consumers and fans.

Secondly, if we talk about social networking sites in detail, then in this paragraph we will discuss about Facebook. It is the most popular site of recent times mostly in terms of social networking that is included in the Web 2.0. It actively allows the users in creating their own personalized profiles; share their profiles with many other users with similar choices and tastes hence increase the act of social networking. Besides this, the user can also choose to create their own profiles and later on make them private or even public. Facebook is known to allow the users to post their photographs, their videos, articles, music, statuses and many other things. Moreover, some of the users can also find their close friends simply by typing their names in the search box (Swabey 2008).

In order to gain popularity, Facebook and the companies who seek to increase their marketing value should efficiently achieve the following objectives. Their pages should be visually very attractive, they should be easy-recognizable and most importantly they should post content regularly. The companies should actively advertise their pages to gain more fans and more supporters otherwise no one would know of the page. Thirdly, it is very important to communicate with the fellow followers in a well-mannered and in an appropriate way. The main reason behind this is that the users will be able to open themselves and also provide feedback to the company (Podobnik, Ackermann, Grubisic and Lovrek 2013).

Web 2.0 Marketing

There are many sports company which also uses social networking sites. An example of includes Nike. Like many other global brands, Nike also has a number of Facebook pages for their fans for each of its famous product categories, including the golf line, their shoes, cloths, snowboarding along with football. Nike also has its own famous official website which mainly includes all the important product categories where the consumers can easily search for their review content for instance such as the buyer’s feedback, the number of people who has already bought any particular product or even the list of the people who has viewed any particular item before they can decide what to buy and what not to. Similarly, the users can also click on the button that is present under each item and this tells the users which product is popular and which are not. This is mostly seen in the Facebook pages (Moth 2013).

Twitter is another example of Web 2.0 with its social media marketing sites and this is also very similar to the Facebook page. Here different companies can edit their own official Twitter profile along with their backgrounds mainly as the brand image promotion. Moreover, the associated administrator of the related company can also upload different Tweets which are only allowed up to 140 characters, and eventually every user can give their feedbacks in the form of replies and even follow them just as in the case of Facebook (Moth 2013).

Another major contribution as discussed above include sites like Media toolkit which is a very useful web service that was initially developed in Croatia and it enables only real-time discovery most commonly on the global scale for most of the popular as well as some of the shared content that mainly originates from web sites in which the user seems interested in. Additionally, this Media toolkit site also predicts which of the contents will become popular in the near time. It is a very common fact that the SNSs like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many others are known to influence the overall consumption of the news mainly on the web. So we should know that whatever is shared is also being read, thus this generates more traffic to the different web sites that are sharing friendly content (Podobnik, Ackermann, Grubisic and Lovrek 2013).

Another common example which lies under the contribution of Web 2.0 includes Foursquare which is a common location that is based in SNS with around more than 1 million brands and they are using it as their SMM channel. The most common difference between this and other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is that the users cannot exchange their status updates along with tweets about their day to day activities but they can only exchange information that is related to their current location by simply checking into those places. Although this feature is available in Facebook, many users still prefer this site. (Podobnik, Ackermann, Grubisic and Lovrek 2013)

If we look ahead, then this Web 2.0 used by different companies may be developing some hardy roots. Over around half of the companies all across the world still plan increasing their investments mainly in different Web 2.0 technologies just to increase their international value and to gain profit (Mckinsey 2009).

References

Thomson, H. (2008) What is Web 2.0 Technology? Wikis, Blogs & Web 2.0 technology, 1, 1-5.

Parise, S., Guinan, P. J., & Weinberg, B. D. (2008) The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.

Enonbun, O. (2010) Constructivism and Web 2.0 in the Emerging Learning Era: A Global Perspective. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 6(4), 17-25.

Swabey, P. (2008) Coca Cola stays young with Web2.0.

Podobnik, V., Ackermann, D., Grubisic, T., & Lovrek, I. (2013) Web 2.0 as a foundation for Social Media Marketing: global perspectives and the local case of Croatia. Cases on Web 2.0 in Developing Countries: Studies on Implementation, Application and Use.

Moth, D. (2013) How Nike uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

Mckinsey (2009) How companies are benefiting from Web 2.

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