Kudos to the smart marketers at Alacra.
The company launched the Alacra Wiki today which provides a service to the professional information industry. The Alacra Wiki is a hub for industry participants who are responsible for delivering professional content to large organizations to find sources, people, commentary and other information on this fluid and dynamic market. Signs of industry interest are strong—in just a few hours, the Wiki has been added to, edited, and updated by many people.
Alacra found much of the information for the initial content on the Wiki from the Web. Alacra Web Editors (who are all accredited information professionals) update the Industry Spotlights section and anyone can register and update content on other sections.
The concept of an industry Wiki is pure thought leadership. Rather then just the same old, same old product information that most organizations deliver, Alacra management understands that people will gravitate towards valuable content around an industry. Alacra is betting that a strong rub-off effect will put their company into the forefront of the information industry as a result. I think that they are right. Like well-done white papers, speeches at conferences, Webinars, and other valuable thought leadership, people gravitate to the information that they need to do their jobs whatever the source. Alacra will be seen as a leader as a result without resorting to heavy handed product-centric marketing.
Alacra CEO Steve Goldstein was an early blogger and his corporate blog is well trafficked. To push into a new area of Web content is pure genius. This kind of Wiki would be of interest to virtually any industry, but the rules are simple—the Wiki needs to be open and "self policing". The company sponsoring a Wiki needs to let market participants take over and do updates and not resort to one-viewpoint editing to push the sponsors message.
Congratulations to Alacra. It will be fun to revisit this in the months to come.
