I get asked to write for and help a number of large companies who are trying to position themselves to connect with entrepreneurs by creating community sites.
Most of them have no idea what they’re doing.
So I thought I’d create a series to look at what some of the companies are doing across various industries and also hopefully give you some new resources that you can use to grow your business.
Let’s start with the credit card industry. Here’s a quick summary with details below:
- American Express OPEN Forum: B+
- VISA Business Network: C-
- MasterCard Small Business: F
American Express OPEN Forum: B+
Separate Home: A+
American Express created a new website just for its entrepreneur readers at: http://www.openforum.com/
Clear Value Proposition: D
Their value proposition is “Powering small business success.” It’s too generic, does not make me want to stick around, and entrepreneurs don’t like to be called small. At least they tried though, many companies don’t put up anything.
Unique, Original Content: A+
AMEX gets that you need your own original content to get entrepreneurs to visit their site and stick around. All of the articles I read on the site were original and can’t be found elsewhere on the web. It makes a great case for me to want to return if I like the content.
Quality of Content: B+
The site is divided into 7 main categories: Innovation, Lifestyle, Managing, Marketing, Money, Techn0logy, and The World. Most of the articles are written in a how-to format and they’ve tapped credible experts like John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing. What they need more of is the motivational lessons learned content from entrepreneurs who have made it. Business owners love the how-to content but many learn better through success stories. There are a few stories on the site but you have to dig to find them.
Video Content: D
Each category has a series of videos which are kept up to date but the content isn’t original. They’re showing videos from Entrepreneur or from MSNBC. Guys, if I want to watch MSNBC, I’ll go to MSNBC. Give me something original!
Posting Schedule: A+
They have multiple articles coming out every day. You don’t have to worry about signing up and not getting enough content to stay interested!
Engagement with Audience: B
I took a look at a cross section of recent posts and they all have strong social media signals. Each article has Facebook Likes, Tweets, and +1′s. The one glaring component that’s missing is reader comments. Most articles have 0 or 1 comment – hardly a signal of an engaged audience. While their readers are helping to spread the message by social media, they don’t find the content interesting enough to want to share their thoughts by leaving a comment.
Ease of Sharing: A+
If you like an article you won’t have any difficulty finding out how to share it. At the top of every post they give you the option to Facebook Recommend, Tweet, Stumble, LinkedIn Share, +1, or email it. As a result almost every article has at least a 1 for every social media option.
Ability to Connect: A+
If you want to stay in touch or connect with the AMEX team they make it pretty easy. At the very top you have options to subscribe by email, connect on Facebook, follow on Twitter, subscribe via RSS or mobile.
Visible Community Leader: F
Ah, another faceless corporate website. Don’t you know that we buy from people we like and who are like us? Show me who is in charge of the entrepreneur community at AMEX. Make it easy to connect with them. Let me see what they look like so I can relate to your company better. Even their Twitter account doesn’t show who is behind it. It’s a pretty good site overall but this is one area where they fail miserably.
Overall Score: B+ – Pretty good but still have some work to do.
VISA Business Network: C-
Separate Home: A+
VISA also created a separate home just for its entrepreneur clients. You can check it out at: https://www.visabusinessnetwork.com/
Clear Value Proposition: C
Their value proposition is: “small business moving forward together.” The connectivity with other entrepreneurs that’s implied in the message is interesting. It makes me want to read a little more. But please stop calling entrepreneurs small!
Unique, Original Content: F
VISA is just pulling a syndicated content feed from Entrepreneur Magazine and various blogs. Sorry guys, if I want to read Entrepreneur Magazine, I’ll go to their website. Give me a reason to stay and come back to VISA!
Quality of Content: C
The content on this site is divided into 9 main sections: Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing, Networking, Online Business, Sales, Women-Owned Business, Work/Life Balance, and Goals. I don’t understand the Entrepreneurship category, personally. The entire site is about entrepreneurship! Is work/life balance and online business not entrepreneurship? They have more categorization issues. If you click on Goals one would expect to find content relating to setting goals and staying on track. Instead you find articles like: Our favorite tweets of the week Aug 1-Aug 7, 2011 and Weekend Reading: Daily Worth’s Money Rules. Just like AMEX, the content tends to be very how-to focused and it’s hard to find any success stories or motivational content to help entrepreneurs get through those tough times.
Video Content: D
There is some video content here but once again, it’s not original. It’s pulled from 3rd party websites and often promote other companies as sponsors at the beginning. Once again, if I wanted to watch LeapTv videos, I’d go to LeapTV. VISA isn’t giving me any reason to stick around.
Posting Schedule: A+
They do have regular content coming out every day so the site looks up to date. It’s just pulling in feeds from other websites but at least they’re keeping it regular.
Engagement with Audience: F
No big surprise here – if you don’t create your own compelling content, guess what? You don’t get any audience engagement. 0 comments across the board for all their articles because there’s 0 value for entrepreneurs here.
Ease of Sharing: C
If you actually wanted to share one of their articles then you can do it through the Share button that’s in super small font at the top of each article. Make it easy to share by giving us the social media buttons. Most people will never click through on a Share button and you’re making it more difficult for them to spread your content.
Ability to Connect: D
VISA has a decent following on Facebook so there’s an ability to connect there but otherwise we have no options to visit a Twitter account, get email updates, or subscribe by RSS or mobile.
Visible Community Leader: F
Who’s in charge of the VISA Business Network? Who knows? They need to stop talking one-way and give us someone entrepreneurs can connect with and relate to.
Overall Score: C- - Lots of work to do to revive this one but they have the architecture in place to do it.
MasterCard Small Business: F
Separate Home: F
MasterCard opted not to create a separate home for their entrepreneur content. Instead it’s buried on their main website – I doubt they get many visitors and it really makes me think that MasterCard isn’t interested in winning entrepreneurs over to their service.
Clear Value Proposition: D
Their value proposition is: “Solutions for Companies With Revenue Less Than $10 Million.” They’re only getting a D because they at least put something up. Segmenting your customer base by revenue might be a great internal measurement tool but it adds no value to your actual customers. All they’ve told me is that I’m “small” and they’re trying to offer “solutions” – it’s hard to get much worse than this.
Unique, Original Content: A+
The one thing MasterCard got right is they went to get their own original content. One problem I have with it is, apart from the author names, they don’t tell you anything about who wrote the articles or where I can learn more but the content is original to their site which is a great step in the right direction.
Quality of Content: D
The content is divided into 7 main sections: Finance & Accounting, Management, Sales & Marketing, Benefits & Compensation, Strategy& Planning, Women & Minority-Owned Businesses, and Technology. There’s very little in each section and the only photos are really cheesy stock photography pictures. The content is focused on how-to again and doesn’t have any success or motivational stories. We have no idea who the authors are so it’s hard to have any faith that the advice they give you will work.
Video Content: F
There is no video content – end of story.
Posting Schedule: F
There are no dates on the articles. They seem to be fixed posts that are never updated.
Engagement with Audience: F
They don’t even let you comment on articles. I guess they don’t want to Let Word-of-Mouth Marketing Make Their Business the Talk of the Town.
Ease of Sharing: F
There are no options to share.
Ability to Connect: F
No Twitter, Facebook, RSS, email subscriptions, etc. MasterCard doesn’t want to connect with you.
Visible Community Leader: F
We’ve seen enough F’s so it’s not surprising that there isn’t a community leader that entrepreneurs can connect with. You don’t need a community leader when there is no community.
Overall Score: F - Big time fail for MasterCard. If I’m considering which credit card company to go with and I visit these three pages I’m left thinking that MasterCard has no interest in my business so I’m taking it elsewhere.
For my Readers
Have you visited any of these community sites before? What is your impression of them? I’d love to hear your thoughts if you want to leave a comment below!
