Never too early: Making the most of Google Sidewiki
Heard of Google Sidewiki? It’s a Google toolbar that enables anyone to comment on any Web page for the world to see. Yes, any Web page. Including yours.
At less than three months old, Google Sidewiki has garnered mixed reviews. Some have said it has had little notable impact, and others argue that it is simply a retread of the StumbleUpon and Digg technologies. There’s a vocal contingent who suggest that SideWiki runs contrary to Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra. What matters to marketers, though, is that Google Sidewiki is here, and there are some very interesting applications of Sidewiki worthy of our attention. In our opinion, it has the potential to be a game changer.
If you fancy yourself a progressive marketer, here are some tips to help you get ahead of the curve:
- Claim your site: By registering yourself as the site’s owner, your comments will be shown at the top of all Sidewiki comments collected. The folks at Vizion Interactive put together the video below to guide you towards official site ownership.
- Track your properties. Just as you are now monitoring Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., be sure to add SideWiki to the mix. After all, customer/user comments ride alongside your brand — on your turf — so awareness is critical. Sidewiki will soon be added to many of the social media monitoring tools out there, but in the meantime, the easiest way to see what’s going is via your site’s feed. Here’s a great post about how to grab your site’s Sidewiki feed.
- Monitor your competitors. If you can spot a chink in the armor of the competition via Google Sidewiki, you may be able to take advantage of the opportunity.
- Address customer service issues via the Sidewiki. What is your audience telling you? Are they unable to find contact information on your site? Comment right back with a phone number or e-mail address. Or take it a step further by making the appropriate changes to your site and note the updates via Sidewiki.
- Promote it. You ask for product feedback on Facebook, Twitter and on your blog. Why wouldn’t you ask for suggestions on your own site? Right now, your homepage tells your company’s story the way you want it told. But if you push happy customers to participate via Sidewiki-- those messages might just ring truer than ever.
So get to it. It’s still early, so chances are your comment will be the first. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
Related posts:
Tags: comments, Google, sidewiki, user opinion
Categories: Ideas in Action
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Posted by Twitter Trackbacks for SmartBlog On Social Media » Never too early: Making the most of Google Sidewiki [smartblogs.com] on Topsy.com on December 7th, 2009 at 8:09 am
[...] SmartBlog On Social Media » Never too early: Making the most of Google Sidewiki smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/12/07/never-too-early-making-the-most-of-google-sidewiki – view page – cached Heard of Google Sidewiki? It’s a Google toolbar that enables anyone to comment on any Web page for the world to see. Yes, any Web page. Including [...]
Posted by Peter Kehoe on December 7th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Nice to see some optimism out there about this.
Sidewiki may not be the best possible implementation of the concepts that underpin it, but it’s good to see not everyone is frightened of the kind of disruption they embraced so eagerly elsewhere (e.g. with print media).
Posted by uberVU - social comments on December 7th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by sbosm: 5 steps to make the most of Google Sidewiki: http://bit.ly/5dqzxj...
Posted by Jen Travis on December 7th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Google Sidewiki necessitates more than just a better website, but a better online brand experience–one that delivers on people’s expectations and engages them in a dialog. Good on Google for creating this impetus!
Posted by Scott on December 7th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Ironically there’s no Sidewiki entry for this page. But thanks for the heads up! Always good to be informed.
Posted by Rob Birgfeld on December 7th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Ha! Great point Scott. As you can see, we’re still learning ourselves. I had created an entry for our blog’s homepage– but not this individual post. But alas, an entry has been created.
Posted by Integrated Brand » Blog Archive » Google Sidewiki = pressure to create a great online experience on December 7th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
[...] thoughts on their favorite social media sites. Don’t fear, however, as there are some great business use cases that demonstrate use of it to start conversations and allow your users to co-create content for [...]
Posted by Rob Birgfeld on December 7th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
And yet another great point brought about via Google Sidewiki in this article about Google Sidewiki…and I’m getting dizzy just writing that. It appears as though “claiming” your site is proving difficult. Apparently, it’s an issue that Google has been having off and on– but it appears that it’s still an option:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Toolbar/thread?tid=1c86b9a609ee3c56&hl=en#all
Posted by Making the most of Google Sidewiki | The Perfect Storm Team on December 8th, 2009 at 4:02 am
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Posted by Marcel LeBrun on December 8th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Great post… I noticed that you mentioned that SideWiki support will likely be added to the social media monitoring tools.
It is, in fact, something that our customers have been asking about. We do now have support for SideWiki in the Radian6 tool. It is all described in this post – http://bit.ly/SideWiki
It will be interesting to see how Sidewiki takes hold in the long run.
Cheers,
Marcel
Radian6
Posted by Zak on December 8th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Monitoring Sidewiki is certainly an interesting prospect, and should this new innovation from Google takeoff I’m sure it’ll be an indispensable part of social media monitoring.
Zak
http://www.moreover.com
Posted by W. Ian Blanton on December 8th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Unfortunately, since Google doesn’t allow any op-out or options for a site to manage the comments posted on your website, I’m simply blocking anyone using Google Toolbar, since I can’t block JUST Sidewiki easily.
Posted by google sidewiki–are they out of their minds? « barbara t nelles on December 9th, 2009 at 5:24 am
[...] and what makes it a “wiki”? you can’t rewrite others’ comments. Never too early: Making the most of Google Sidewiki. [...]
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[...] add anything new beyond what bookmark sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon offer? Some say no. But SmartBlog’s Rob Birgfeld says “It has the potential to be a game changer.” Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine [...]
Posted by Wednesday Web Resources: The Social Media Edition | Free Business Pages on SMEpages.com on December 9th, 2009 at 11:45 am
[...] add anything new beyond what bookmark sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon offer? Some say no. But SmartBlog’s Rob Birgfeld says “It has the potential to be a game changer.” Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine [...]
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[...] add anything new beyond what bookmark sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon offer? Some say no. But SmartBlog’s Rob Birgfeld says “It has the potential to be a game changer.” Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine thinks the [...]