Stanley Bing, columnist for Fortune magazine, now has his own blog: the online home of all things Bing. Other than describing himself as an executive, it isn’t entirely clear what Mr. Bing does for a living. Whatever it is, though, he has a fabulously witty way of talking about the working world. The Dilbert for the C-suite.
“Nobody know you’re a dog on the Web–or a mechanic, athlete, hacker, marketing whiz, zealot, or SQL programmer. That is, unless you tell them.”
So begins an article in the June 4th issue of InformationWeek on credibility and authenticity on the web.
How do customers authenticate companies, employees, etc., when the only experience they’ve had with them is on the web? We often rely on others’ testimonials and reviews. Of course, these can be faked. This is true of any medium, really, so is the web any different? The article goes on to discuss web identity systems and programs for validation, but for many companies, especially smaller ones, this kind of investment doesn’t really make sense.
The lesson is: be as open and up front as you can be. Be honest and transparent in all your dealings, on- or off-line. Most of your online communication with customers is through the written word. What you say, and how you say it, matters.
The article concludes: “Which goes to show that Web cred–a measure of authority and influence–is also a delicate thing. It’s tricky to define, hard to earn, and easy to lose”
As the web gets bigger, it gets more complicated and it gets easier to get lost. Estimates state that there are anywhere from 11.5 billion to over 29 billion web pages; and I’m sure you can find even higher estimates. No matter what number you believe, the web is likely at least 2 web pages per person on the planet. And the web isn’t indexed the way your local library’s catalogue is. So it’s very easy for content to get lost.
Search engines build their businesses on making the web accessible. Yet each of them has serious limitations. Websites struggle to rank high on search engines, sometimes employing questionable tactics. As a trained librarian, I wish the web had a standardized index, standard subject categories. It works for books, why not the web? Sites like Facebook, MySpace (name your social networking site) exist for just this purpose–to reign in the content and make it accessible. None of this has to take away from the independent, run by no one nature of the web.
Now if we could just find a way to make this easy. Maybe we could all find the websites we want, and our own sites would be more easily found.