I feel the need to write a quick post on co-creation of value; a concept I really never even thought about until a year ago. Since moving some of my websites to WordPress, most notably my Effective CRM site, it’s become blatantly apparent that only providing a solution for content co-creation is not enough. It’s wonderful and all that, and I’ve been using it for years – and no, it’s not simply comment forms. I’ve been letting users on my product review sites contribute entire pages to my sites, each of which allows comments and is properly interlinked into my content hierarchy. This generates massive long-tail keyword content creation, and I don’t have to lift a finger to do it. Yes, it’s co-creation.
However, being the guy in the middle, the one who is providing the medium to web searchers, I want to add more value than that. Currently, I had value to my vendor by subscribing to (and promoting) a service which gives me a finite set of tools. Sure, it’s an evolving set of tools, but they’ve been built into a proprietary platform which has no API, and I’m afraid to guess that an API is not even possible at this point. At least not in the form I would want to see it. It does what it does, and I can’t extend or change it at all.
With WordPress, not only can I replicate every implementation feature of SiteSell, I can create more features. This benefits WordPress, my visitors and other WordPress users since I can create a plugin and put in their version of an app store. That’s co-creation. What do I give up? The brainstorming tools at SiteSell are second to none, so I won’t be giving them up anytime soon. In fact, I have no intention of removing my existing content sites from SiteSell since they either doing well, or I’m well down the build out path.
How does this relate to CRM? Actually, it’s very closely related. Newer platforms like Nimble are going to offer massively powerful co-creation opportunities – which is one reason I think it will become an extremely viral CRM platform over the next few years. It enables innovative contributions without the vendor having to think it up, implement it and support it. The traditional names in CRM will attempt to replicate it, but they’re not quite as Nimble, so I’m not going to hold my breath. There’s room for both models, but more and more, I’m becoming a huge proponent of co-creation enablement.
Just a rambling thought for a Sunday morning.
