Leadership By Numbers

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InformationWeek Executive Editor, Fritz Nelson, writes on the importance of customer engagement as the "future of the web."

Words like "crowdsourced," "social," and "sticky" are simple labels for complicated ingenuity. Anyone who sets out to create The Next Big Thing invariably fails compared with those who create something out of real social need, or passion.

An example of web marketing going awry was Microsoft's Windows 7 Parties, swinging between "the ultimate in banality" and kind of being "like your grandmother spewing a few Snoop Dog lines."

There are, however, interesting lessons, lessons that assume a business already believes in using the Web to listen to, follow, and engage customers -- and most important, get them to act. . . .

We have perfectly good examples in the physical world. Anyone who's ever attended Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) World, SAPPHIRE, IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s Lotusphere or Impact, or Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) Networkers knows that those companies' customers come in droves to sit captive to marketing muscle and messaging, face-to-face with the supplier. The hosts sometimes hear the best anecdotes and customer feedback, forge new relationships, strengthen existing ones, and even conduct transactions.

Of course, there is also the list of Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 technologies to be had with WebSphere, Lotus Notes/Domino, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, LotusLive . . . well, I think these year's Lotusphere has got a lot of promise.

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