Thursday, May 12, 2005
Web Sites as Quilting Bees
The always excellent and insightful Steve Smith, new media editor for min's b2b (which you should subscribe to) offers his take on one of his favorite b2b web sites, agriculture.com, in the May 9 edition.Key grabs:
Wisely, AgOnline leverages the natural tendencies of the ag-world to swap stories and trust one another's experience in the field, and it should be a model to other b2bs that talk at, rather than with, their customers.
What we really like about AgOnline's approach is the way it validates the audience's expertise.
The lesson: The online community has got to go beyond hosting forums. Genuine interactivity means showing users that their input matters in the very shape and tone of the publication. These days, a Web site is less a magazine than it is a quilting bee.
