Top Web Marketing 2.0 Tools, Tactics & Resources Resource Center 

CNBC's Fast Money program/world is the addiction of Web Digest For Marketer's publisher Larry Chase, who spends at least one hour a day with the program and its interactive components. Basically, in addition to listening to inside chatter about what's going on in the marketplace in real time, the program reaches out to its audience in myriad ways. You can text message a question, you can email a question, you can play "Grade the Trade", where you appear on the actual program via your Webcam and you can download podcasts of different segments.

The show's email newsletter also sends you links that lead you to videos of breaking news. Additionally, there is a feature called "Web Extra" (which is heavily promoted on the TV show itself) which gives you additional hot tips that aren't aired on the actual program. In short, they are providing lots of different touch points and therefore creating an inviting multimedia experience - which, after all, is what Web 2.0 is all about.

This site is a fantastic search engine and directory for everything Web 2.0. It's worth a visit just to look at the on-site search function. It is tag- and keyword cloud-based, which in English means that the search field box asks you to select a keyword tag. Click on the arrow to do so, and you see a keyword cloud of written keywords, in which the most popular are in larger font sizes. Search results are presented in a grid where each square shows the logo of the company whose business involves your chosen keyword. As you mouse over each logo you see a bubble with a description of what that company does. It's very Web 2.0-ish.

For example, we chose "collaboration" and were served up dozens of companies. Businesses ranged from project collaboration software to research communities to websites which allow families to jointly create and build their family trees or plan family trips. A must-visit for anyone interested in Web 2.0 marketing, businesses and software.

KickApps enables any company to quickly add advanced social media functionality to its website. This is accomplished via a customizable hosted platform. The platform is a content management system and a viral syndication engine for community content, all rolled into one.

Visitors to your custom community can create profiles and upload videos, photos and audio which live alongside your own content. They can invite friends to your website and hook up with new friends within your site who share their interests. They can subscribe to RSS feeds that alert them when their friends have left a message or when new content of interest is uploaded. And much more. On the client side, you control which content makes it to your site, and you can syndicate this content through what the company calls "viral marketing widgets". Clients include HBO, Cinemax, BET Networks, Kraft Foods, P&G and the Arena Football League.

LEGO takes customer-built products to the max with a complete site and tools offered to give visitors everything they need to create new products or new features for existing products. BTW, the vast majority of members are adults. For example, LEGO Market Street is part of the "Modular Houses" section, which invites aspiring house designers to use the LEGO Factory publishing platform to create their own LEGO house models and admire and purchase those designed by other members. These house models are built using the LEGO Digital Designer tool. Customers build entire houses, streets and towns with their LEGOs. Basically, this is a virtual world within a virtual world, which is a frequently seen aspect of Web 2.0 technology.

This editor was afraid to explore Second Life too deeply lest she get drawn into the virtual world and never return. SL (as in Second Life) is an Internet-based virtual world. A downloadable program called the Second Life Viewer enables users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars. Residents can explore, meet others, socialize, participate in activities and create and trade items and services. SL's virtual currency is the Linden Dollar (Linden, or L$) and is exchangeable for US dollars in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab (the SL parent company - residents go to Linden Village to discuss SL issues, to complain and to request new features) and real-life companies.

Before we show you how SL is used by marketers, we thought it would be helpful to explain how this world works, if you don't know already. At the time of writing, SL had more than 8.5 million registered accounts. Daily stats on the home page included the fact that 1,638,492 members had logged in within the last 60 days, 38,817 were online at the time of my site visit and $1,418,000 US dollars had been spent within the past 24 hours. While you can join the community at no cost, a $9.95/month membership gets you into the fray of trading, buying and land grabbing. The more land you buy/own, the higher your monthly fee...and the more perks you get within the community. (The entire SL concept is actually quite complex and sophisticated, and this explanation is really the most basic way of understanding SL.)

Real-world companies can either use the technology themselves or immerse themselves into the SL world. For example, retailer American Apparel has a store in SL on Lerappa Island (Lerappa is apparel spelled backwards). The store sells merchandise to SL residents and they also drive traffic into their real-world stores. When you make a purchase in the real-world American Apparel store, you get a notecard with a promotional code offering a discount at their online store or within SL.

Non-retail companies can also get involved. The GeekSquad keeps regular SL "inworld" hours from 6PM to 3AM (within SL) to offer technical support. Pontiac allows visitors to its snazzy SL corporate park to test drive new models or offer "pimp your ride" services to other SL members. Cisco demos its new products to the SL community. Dell and Vodaphone also have presences, as does the Amazon checkout window (through member incorporation of Amazon Web services in selling their wares). Sire Records holds listening parties for SL residents to introduce and promote new artists. Some may be skeptical of the marketing value of SL. But according to its website, a million dollars or more is spent every day, so there must be some there there.

Social Media TODAY is a moderated online business community for social media bloggers, marketers, PR and media professionals. You can browse through the copious, very informative content to get up to speed on the social media marketing phenomenon. However, as fitting for a social media marketing website, you are encouraged to create a profile, tell everyone about yourself, rate posts and even blog directly within this blog. Categories include social networking, blogging, podcasting, communities and more. The content is fascinating, whether it's short posts and conversations or longer submitted articles such as (at the time of writing) "10 Secrets of Successful Online Community" or "The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the Web Strategist". The list of contributors/members who are experts in this space is quite impressive as well.

Should you want a wiki (in other words, a group-editable website) Socialtext is one company that enables you to create an enterprise-level wiki easily and quickly. On a B2B level, wikis are frequently used as project collaboration tools instead of the endless back-and-forth and confusion of email and document updates. Socialtext clients such as Kodak, Nokia and use their custom, private wikis for group research and development projects and as a central knowledge management space. Many case studies at the site mention the fact that clients have saved weeks or even months in development time through their use of wikis.

SocialText's wiki tool starts with the creation of your own secure, private wiki-enabled website. Their wiki widgets then allow you to pick and choose wiki functionality, and you need no technical expertise to do so. Functionality choices include team blog publishing integrated with email and IM, advanced search, tagging and organizational tools and more. We particularly like the aspect called Socialtext Miki, which allows members to collaborative with their group via mobile device.

BTW, the word "wiki" comes from a Hawaiian word for "quick". Wikis were invented many years ago by Socialtext advisor Ward Cunningham. Clients include Nokia, Kodak, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, USC Annenberg Center for Communication and Ziff Davis. At the time of writing, a complimentary trial was available at the site.

Here's an excellent example of customer reviews and recommendations in action in a B2B site. TradeKing is an online broker dealer offering the ability to conduct flat-fee trading online. It also features a number of community features to connect like-minded traders, who share strategies and information. Some have created profiles and therefore can introduce themselves to other members who have similar financial interests. Others blog about their strategies and trades, and some are actually publishing their trades using a Certified Trades section. The Certified Trades feature verifies that each published trade has actually occurred and then makes the details publicly, transparently available to site members.

At the time of writing, TradeKing said of their website, "As the market has experienced increased volatility in recent days, our community has demonstrated an even higher level of activity, indicating perhaps an added comfort-factor social networking provides during times of fluctuation".

Widgipedia is a search engine and directory for what appears to be every widget under the sun. (A widget is a small application that runs on your desktop or in a Web page.) You can find widgets in a number of different ways. Tools include the ability to use a traditional search field, or choose a tag/keyword from the keyword cloud posted at the top of the site, or review the widget gallery or choose the directory that features your chosen widget platform (desktop for Mac or PC, Web-based or mobile).

A brief cruise through the site revealed widgets designed for an astounding number of reasons, all of which must be essential to someone out there. There are widgets to insert into a blog that allow visitors to rate the blog or add the blog to their Bloglines account. There are widgets that allow you to see Tennessee traffic live on your iPhone. There are widgets that will show you the top 30 search terms for various search engines and metacrawlers over the past 48 hours. There are also many ways to become part of this widget community, especially if you are a widget creator. For example, you can upload the widgets you've designed, review and analyze the code of other widget makers and much more.