Reaching Potential Stakeholders on the Semantic Web

Optimizing investments in face-to-face events can help reduce the cost of acquiring and converting the asset value of key stakeholders. If we take key account acquisition costs as a model, the average for business services is 30% of revenue generated.

Live events, whether you are hosting or participating, are optimal times to expand your potential stakeholder pipeline and to reach beyond your local territory where you have face-to-face representation.

“You”-focused (as opposed to “I”-focused) video and audio content can be used as an organic, non-intrusive way to leverage your current social capital. High-value stakeholders, by forwarding and sharing your materials, will lead you to others like them.

Alumni, investors, board members, advisors and industry pundits form an ecosystem of individuals who resemble themselves.

Why use video and audio content rather than text? Because video links are opened more frequently than audio or text. Video has the added benefit of being percieved as more authentic and engaging. Text is frequently associated with marketing and therefore less authentic.

Your current high-value stakeholders may not be willing to make overt referrals, but are likely to share materials relevant to the avocations of their contacts. By tracking share buttons on materials,for example, you can see a cohort of self-identified potential stakeholders.

Since they have raised their hands and implied interest in your cause/organization by being willing to share, they may have a higher propensity of opting into your stakeholder development pathway. Designed to culitvate, nurture and engage these new contacts towards first engagement and then contribution, your stakeholder pathway will benefit from information about preferences, extracted using semantic web mechanics.

At every step of your development pathway, potential stakeholders will have gateways to give you information about their preferences as to cause, contribution and participation currency. Not only do you end up with great profiling information, but each individual is likely to identify other potential stakeholders through the same mechanism.

You have just gained entree into a highly selective ecosystem in a non-intrusive, cost-effective way.

To say nothing of having accessed an internationally distributed ecosystem, doubtless one of the objectives you had for funding a face-to-face event.