Analyst surveys often seem to quantify the obvious. That seemed to be the case recently, when Forrester revealed that most of its analysts don’t like using walled-garden AR portals on vendor websites. Not surprising — few people like to register for content. That’s why we have things like BugMeNot and Anonymous Cowards.
Yet, a debate of sorts rose up around this point among some of the AR bloggers. Anonymous AR bloggers at the ARmadgeddon blog took issue with the Forrester thumbs-down on AR portals, and cited agreement from a Hill & Knowlton AR expert. They believe access to privileged vendor content justifies access hassles.
Aren’t AR portals a bit retro? We’re well into the Web 2.0 and UGC window, and it has implications for AR just as it does for everything else. Some AR pro’s — like Catherine Helzerman and Skip MacAskill — are willing to experiment in Second Life while they keep the conventional paradigm running. Many more are turning onto blogging. Meanwhile, fundamental changes are already beginning to appear out in the mainstream — in press rooms, websites, collaboration environments.
So here’s what I would do instead of investing in a legacy walled-garden AR portal. Start-ups, multinationals — doesn’t matter.
First, collaborate with my media relations colleagues. Focus on making sure the online press room is properly designed and always freshly stocked with content. The idea is to create a high-value reference resource with documents, audio, video, photos, contact information, blog links, archives, targeted search, email alerts, and feeds. For help with priorities, check out TEKgroup International’s free annual study on what journalists want in a corporate press room. (Caveat: high tech represents less than 15% of respondents this year.)
Next, collaborate with my corporate web teams to make sure company websites and site maps support the way that analysts perform online research. Embed supplemental content, links, keywords, titles, tags, share widgets, and feed opt-ins right on the very product and services pages where analysts are likely to land. Use SEO techniques to optimize content visibility within the corporate websites and beyond — in search engines, bookmarking sites, aggregation sites. Informal testing with hand-picked analysts can really help.
Last step: start looking at Web 2.0-style collaboration tools for sharing my proprietary content with analysts on the fly. Shared spreadsheets, wikis, chatrooms, videoconferencing - the list of choices is awesome. A good place to start looking is the Office 2.0 Conference website.
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