We were combing through some data a few weeks ago and discovered something interesting: Over 1/3 of the Fortune 500 has used PBwiki. This is great news for our Small Business Edition — with so many Fortune 500 users, we’ve already seen small business users feeling more comfortable about security and safety.
So we’re turning to our PBwiki community: How should we spread the word about PBwiki in the Fortune 500 to small businesses?
Leave a comment on this post with a suggestion or example of how you would spread the word to business users. The best suggestion will win one free year of the PBwiki Small Business Edition!
PBworks Official Blog 
Call it a shared workspace for collaborative purposes.
the term ‘wiki’ is wallowing in doubt or its credibility. So emphasize/use a new term at least for now.
If you can get permission from the customer, publicize company names. Develop and promote case studies from representative customers in the PBwiki target markets.
Your primary audience are young firms, not necessarily IT, but with good internet skills.
So: Use media that this audience appreciates: Google, e.g., has a great way of putting news into nice little videos. Likewise, you could do that. If you have happy customers, ask them if they’d like to contribute, showing off their favorite feature or just stating their opinion (or, for that matter, smiling blankly into the camera with a sign that reads “Dunno what to say. Can I put it into the wiki later?”). The main thing convincing the firms that I perceive as your main audience is, I believe, sympathy. Video is a great way of getting that across (your chat serves a similar purpose. I hope you didn’t think people read it for information. Sorry).
The hard facts about PBwiki are undeniable (secure, available, handy), what you need to sell is LOVE š
(By the way, that’s what Apple always managed, quite opposed to MS).
Oh, and you need quicker servers, at least for the pay-thingies. The business page builds up way too slowly.
Give premium packages away free to their IT departments for their internal stuff. IT are most likely not to run from the word ‘wiki’. And if they like it, they might suggest its use for other workgroups / departments within the company. Offer hefty bulk-license discounts so it’s attractive to create wikis for each of these other groups. Make sure the first year is an absolute bargain. The key would be to get people using it. Once people have their work on it, they’ll pay a lot to keep using it.
Traditional media. Many small businesses are still offline and read magazines for insight. Put an ad in a magazine read by businessowners, or some other print ad that gets in their face. Also, say something about the uniqueness of PBwiki, and how it will save their business time and money.
I’d like to suggest a feature to PBwiki, where should I do it?
PBWiki’s promotional problems are two-fold. First, when IT people hear the term ‘wiki’, they often cringe in memory of an urban legend about some guy named “Bob” who wrote an encyclopedia entry on “Expert Systems” after taking two hits of LSD. And second, when many major decision makers (aka – Baby Boomers) hear the term ‘wiki’, they think you’re talking about an Ewok.
In order to boost usage amongst Fortune 500 companies, you have got to hit people when they are young and in the process of making brand loyalty choices. Personally, I use a wiki for every single group project I work on – it is, quite simply, the easiest way to share information, files, and those 4am ideas. Through actively promoting PBWiki in Universities/Colleges, you are going to condition the next generation of decision makers to use the internet to faciliate group communication and information exchange. University/College students are especially prone to tune out traditional media, so if you are going to reach this group, you would be best to consider a funny viral campaign. In my opinion, the viral campaign of ‘the future’ is one in which product placements and promotions are so incredibly ‘in your face’ as to border on melodramatic.
As Baby Boomers retire, crops of young students are going to enter the work force. If they are wiki savvy, they will recognize the need for wikis and communicate that to their new supervisors. These supervisors will pass the word up the chain and you will have created a massive word of mouth network.
Sadly, traditional advertising really isn’t going to work. People are becoming conditioned to tune out all but the best advertisements.
As a fortune 500 company employee my issue is security. Can PBwiki software be installed inside the firewall?? on our servers?? No one is going to trust an external server with corporate information even if it is password protected.
I suggest targeting specific companies to provide a free wiki and include setup and support. Use PR releases (or whatever means necessary) to have respected industry blogs broadcast your successes.
Security is a big issue that should be addressed for the 500’s as well as us small guys. A single password for entry is not sufficient for many of the Fortune 500’s. Something like limiting access to an allow list of source IP’s or VPN access for the more security conscious companies may calm their fears.
How about “2/3 of Fortune 500 Companies are not using PBWiki – What are they missing?”