3 Tips to Evaluate Your “Web 2.0″ Consultant
February 11th, 2009
How do you evaluate the Consultant 2.0?
Just about everyone that is even remotely Web-savvy these days throws around the term “Web 2.0″ (or “social media”) to evoke the evolutionary Web technologies that are enabling rich, interactive and collaborative Web experiences. These experiences are changing the way we interact with people and information. But what is not well understood is how these experiences and enabling technologies should change and elevate your expectations of consultants that you hire to help grow your business. If you are in the market for consulting services in the areas of marketing, communications, sales, business development or recruiting, you should expect a deeply engrained understanding and daily use of the very Web 2.0 ideas that may have left your business behind.
Here are three things you should look for when evaluating your prospective business partner’s understanding of the brave new Web:
1. To be an expert, they have to use it extensively. You wouldn’t hire a landscaper if you drove by their house and saw a weedy front lawn and untrimmed hedges. And you wouldn’t hire a personal trainer that is overweight. If someone says they believe in the transformative potential of Web 2.0, then you need to see proof that they understand it deeply and that they leverage it for the benefit of their own benefit. Do they have a Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace presence? Do they use Twitter or conventional blogs to communicate and collaborate? Or do they have a boring, static Web page that’s difficult to find in search engines? If they don’t understand Web 2.0 enough to raise the awareness of their business, then they can’t do it for yours.
2. If they believe in it, they should stick with it. Your candidate consultants have doubtlessly faced questions about Web 2.0, social networking, etc. so they have likely looked into it and started using it, getting past the first criterion. However, did they just sign up for all of these things to check off items on their Web presence to-do list? Did they create accounts everywhere to get started, then fell quiet? Is their information on all of the various social media and social networking sites stale and abandoned? If they signed up for Twitter and use it once every three weeks, they don’t understand it. If they created a blog, but the last post is from 2006, they don’t believe in it. If they have a corporate MySpace presence but no friends, they don’t see the value in it. If they don’t believe in this stuff for their own benefit, then they will not do you any good with it.
3. How careful are they with their social media identity? For those that do have a modern Web presence, you should peer into their online identity to catch a glimpse of what they think about themselves and their customers. What are they writing about? Who do they associate with? Are there other people talking about them? Are they careful about potentially sensitive information? If they’re not smart caretakers of their own online identity, then they definitely won’t be responsible with yours.
What do you think?