Leader Networks blog

Strategy First, Platform Second ... Please!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:00:00 PDT

I don't know how many times I've had to shift a conversation into reverse when an initial business discussion about online communities begins with "We're thinking about starting an online community. What's your opinion of Platform X?"

Too many companies decide they want to invest in an online community -- be it internal or externally-facing -- and then move right to making the community platform acquisition decision without EVER considering the mission, vision and goals for the community. It's like starting a business negotiation with "I want to buy something. What have you got to sell?" instead of "Here's the problem I'm trying to solve ... "

When platform selection comes first, all the essential decisions about the community features, functions and engagement model will be based on whatever widget or components are built into the software package. Ultimately, crucial business needs and objectives have to be retrofitted into the features offered by the selected vendor's product, rather than allowing the business requirements to guide the feature, function and design decisions. It's really a backwards approach, no?

The most common reason for this is social business is still considered just a set of tools, rather than a powerful business process accelerator, innovation catalyst and organizational change agent. Many organizations don't know how or don't realize the necessity of investing time and energy in defining the strategic goals and objectives for the online community BEFORE they settle on features.

Sure, every community software platform has forums and blogs. But each platform deploys them in different ways, with different strengths and weaknesses. Absent a strategic plan on which to base the platform selection criteria, organizations risk making an enormous and expensive mistake if their platform of choice does not support the goals and processes implicit in their business objectives.

For example: A B2B company seeks to build an online community to support their customers' use of an existing, expensive product or service. They will likely want a private (gated) community, a member directory linked to their existing CRM system and a rich analytical back end to identify high-value customers' areas of topical interest in the community so the company can serve those customers better...and make more sales.

These business objectives generate a very specific set of technical and functional requirements, requirements which will only be fully revealed through the creation of a strategic community plan prior to vendor selection. If the vendor is chosen before or without developing the critical use cases and functional requirements specified by the community plan, the whole development process will be a crap shoot. Will the vendor have this feature set in their portfolio? Will the needed functional interconnections be feasible at reasonable cost? Will it scale? Will it be secure? Will you know how to find out ahead of time?

Metrics are another area where software selection prior to strategic planning can come back to haunt an organization. Sure, all software tools can tell you how many hits, likes, views and posts occur on the community. What's missing is integrating with and reporting on business metrics! Most business metrics are unique to the organization or even the business unit. You need to define those business success measures before picking a vendor to be sure the platform's back end can deliver the data you need.

When Boss Bob shows up at your desk 6 months after community launch and asks how many of the members are prospects vs. customers, the average sales for active vs. non-active community members and if buyers of the most recent service line are interested in X, Y, or Z topic in the community, you may have a problem if the software can't help you answer those questions. Answering "I'll have to check with the software vendor on getting that information..." is not a good career move.

Armed with a proper strategic plan, you can turn your business requirements into feature requirements and conduct a detailed and transparent vendor selection evaluation process. Prioritizing feature/function needs and asking the right questions will help you select a vendor who will meet your expectations. For example: if posting to discussions by email is a critical success factor (your users are mobile, email-driven professionals such as doctors and lawyers), you will know to ask for this feature and disqualify any vendor who does not. Extensible search functions which surface both content and discussions in the same search results may be important if your community offers a mix of thought leadership, user postings and training materials. You get the idea!

Treat the creation of online communities as you would any other line of business activity -- a community is not just a marketing vehicle. Define the strategic outcomes you want from the community, specify the audience it will serve, develop the business metrics and measures needed to report outcomes and the operational plans to build and run the community over time. Then you can pick a platform and avoid a very costly and unnecessary mistake.

Time For You To Shine Online!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:58:00 PDT

Photo Credit: bjorn.watland

As more and more individuals become involved in professional online communities, understanding how to engage online becomes increasingly important. While most professionals develop good skills at in-person networking and idea-sharing, when they start looking to use an online group or forum to collaborate with peers the keyboard can sometimes get in the way of effective communication. Here are a few guidelines to help new members of professional communities get the most out their participation in online peer groups.

Find the right online community

Identifying an appropriate online peer community for your needs may take some time. There are professional communities and online groups that serve every imaginable profession and discipline, so you may have several to chose from. Discovering which one will be best for you requires a bit of research and exploration. First, do Google searches on specific terms relevant for your profession and ask your peers where they go online for help and peer collaboration.

With a list of candidate communities in hand, take a moment to visit and explore each community to determine if it will be a good fit. Do the members seem to be people you would like to spend time with in-person? Do the discussion topics interest you? Did you learn something new in the forums or find a topic to which you might contribute a comment of two? If so, chances are you found a viable online home.

Take the first steps

Once you identify a possible community, spend some time filling in your community profile, then post an "introduce yourself" message. Most professional online communities have a "Welcome New Members" discussion or something similar where you can post a short "Hello, I am ..." introduction. My general rule of thumb for online etiquette is behavior that would be effective, welcomed or expected in face-to-face settings is likely to be acceptable online. What works in-person works online, too.

If you're ready to take the plunge and be more visible, the next step is to make a contribution to a discussion topic. Look for an active discussion thread that catches your interest and write a brief response. For some reason, this is sometimes one of the most difficult steps for professionals online. However, just as you wouldn’t join an in-person networking group and never, ever say a word, staying a silent member of an online community is a less-than-rewarding experience. Remember, as with all communities -- in-person and online -- you get what you put into the activity. If you give nothing, you get nothing.

Overcome barriers to participation

There are a number of reasons why professionals hesitate to participate online: they don’t feel they have anything to contribute (maybe this isn’t the right group?), they fear saying something stupid in public (find a safe or neutral discussion for the first few posts), or they are concerned they won’t be able to finish what they started (don’t worry, most online discussion threads only last a few days to a few weeks - tops!). Most community software platforms offer a subscription or notification option for discussions, so you can be notified if someone responds to your posts.

If you are still hesitant to post, there are other ways to establish connections with the group. Participate in quick polls and surveys online. This gives you access to the aggregate wisdom of your peers, and most communities share survey and poll data with community members.

Another approach, if you already have a blog, an article or other information of value to the community, would be to email the community manager and ask if they would be interested in the information. If they have a library or document upload area, you can always make a contribution there. Of course, be sure you have the rights to post it and that it does not contain any confidential information.

Reap the rewards of participation

Once you take these initial steps to participate in an online community, you will unleash the power of a global peer group. Idea exchange, personal experiences and know-how, research and best practices will all be available to you 24X7, wherever you can get online. You'll have a wealth of information and peers to help you be more effective at your work and expand your professional competence. What a great deal!

Remember, the more you participate and connect with other members, the more dependable and responsive the community as a whole will be to you. Online communities offer professionals an opportunity to shine -- sharing what they know, enhancing their reputations, making meaningful professional and business connections with peers. After spending so much time and energy in your career honing your professional know-how, isn't it time to shine online?

A Small Organization Creates a Big Community Success Case Study: ASCA's SCENE for School Counselors

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:02:00 PDT

When you're searching high and low for the next big thing, or scanning the edge for the next new thing, you can miss real success stories. So here's one to contemplate: a free, private online community serving a crucial constituency, aligned with but outside of an existing non-profit organization. And this is one of the most engaged, most active and fastest-growing communities I've seen in awhile. In preparation for a talk I am doing at the DigitalNow conference to a group of association executives, I came across this online community.

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) serves professional school counselors, the individuals who work inside and outside the classroom -- pre-school through college -- helping our children succeed at the crucial work of learning. ASCA member benefits include state and local chapters, professional development resources, legislative advocacy, job listings, legal and ethical guidance and much more, as part of the paid member benefit. However, ASCA also offers a very special extra: ASCA SCENE, their free, private online peer support and collaboration community. And it is fantastic!

In less than four years, ASCA SCENE has grown to over 19,000 active and engaged community members, helping to drive the sponsoring organization's membership to nearly 30,000 paying members. I'll let ASCA Executive Director Richard Wong speak for himself on some of the key factors behind this community's success.

Vanessa: What drove you to start this community?

Richard: We wanted a way to let our members share files such as lesion plans, programs and other things they’ve done. Our folks are eager to do that. We tried a number of things but the technology wasn't there, so when the whole idea of social networks came along, that's what we wanted -- the technology caught up to us! The members were coming up with new things, we wanted to enable them and not control everything. We wanted to say: “We didn't do this, your colleagues did. Have at it!”

Vanessa: Why free? Why open to all school counselors, not just ASCA members?

Richard: The community was never meant to be a money-maker or to market other products and services. It was meant to be a service itself. Initially, we didn’t know whether to limit it to our members or open it to all who are interested. ASCA’s ultimate goal is to get the information out there- we want people to create and share wonderful school programs, so we wanted to open it up to all, even those who choose not to pay us dues.

Vanessa: Were you afraid of cannibalization?

Richard: We haven't really done an analysis to see how it has affected membership. We know that since we introduced the SCENE 3½ years ago, ASCA paid membership has grown by 5,000 members, from about 25K to 30K -- during a recession, so we don’t think it’s had a negative effect.

Vanessa: How did you socialize the community?

Richard: We surveyed members and found low penetration of social network skills. We needed to help our members (median age mid-40s) get into the 21st century. They work with kids and needed to learn these skills. We are doing them a favor by forcing them to get onto our social network, a safe space where they could learn how to relate to it and help students. It's free, safe and you don't have to be an ASCA member.

Vanessa: How do you promote SCENE?

Richard: We promote it in the bi-monthly (print) magazine. Drive people to the community every issue. What's new on the SCENE. We try to integrate our activities into the SCENE - we announce information on SCENE first, it's our main communication vehicle.

One thing we believe in strongly is focusing the community on best practices -- not on the association. We are here to support good school counseling, we didn’t design the community to talk about ASCA. It's completely member-driven. They need to be able to use the information at work. We didn't want the community to be about ASCA. It's about school counselors.

Vanessa: Staffing?

Richard: We don't have any dedicated staff. We have an IT person who makes sure it runs, some staff oversee content because they want to see what is happening. One person approves all member applications and takes down inappropriate content. Our Board members monitor the SCENE regularly.

Members are good about policing themselves. We engaged active association members early and pre-seeded with evangelists – we made sure they were on the SCENE when we first launched and that they were supported.

Vanessa: How did you inspire so much user-generated content and member engagement on the community?

Richard: Our folks were very eager. They wanted a way to share their info and brag about good work, such as an anti-bully program. 'It worked, here it is, take it and use it!' We have many graduate students; the younger folks really latched onto this and drove early engagement.

They posted a lot and asked for help from the senior folks, who come out of the woodwork to help.

Vanessa: How have ASCA benefited from the community?

Richard: Through the monitoring we will periodically say there is a lot of chatter about school climate or whatever, and pull the topic into the magazine or a conference.

A more direct way is our resource center, independent of the SCENE. When people make a formal question, we respond and put it out on our website. We have a staff that monitors the SCENE resources, asks for permission, does a review process, and then puts that into our resource center. This was one of the original purposes of the SCENE, to get submissions and grow our resource center.

We needed a bully policy, we needed a conflict resolution policy. We got very few in response to earlier requests on the website, but once the SCENE was going, we got tons!

Vanessa: What challenges do you face, even though you are succeeding?

Richard: We want to grow a lot more, 19K is great but we have 30K members of the association. We are hitting a small percent of universe. Some of the other groups have 30-40K in their networks. We want to grow it in a way that is manageable for us without a dedicated staff. Without revenue we can't have a dedicated staff.

As the volume of information grows, we also need to make sure information is accurate and vibrant. We would like to explore ways to incorporate the different things we do - they tend to be somewhat siloed (Twitter, Facebook, conference app) but we need to tie them together.

Vanessa: What were the unanticipated outcomes from the SCENE?

Richard: We didn't imagine the level and scale; meeting such an un-met need. The community definitely helped raise the awareness of our organization by allowing people to be active in the association even if they are not an official member. The community generated a lot of buzz among professionals and graduate students. Also, most graduate students join the association and we give them liability insurance -- which they need anyway. And, happily we've won numerous awards for the SCENE.

The reason why I share this community case study is a best practice. Here is my assessment of why it succeeds:

1. It identified an unmet need and serviced it clearly, with integrity

2. Timing was paramount – the topics school counselors focus on are complex and they need each other

3. The community was allowed to grow organically and focused on the members, not on ASCA

4. Size matters – it served a large but focused audience

5. It is evolving – features and focus ebb and flow based on member needs

6. There is a clear mission and vision for the members to convene (on and off line)

Are You Ready For A Discussion Or Do You Want To Have A Monologue?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:30:00 PST

Recently, I blogged about measuring engagement in online communities. The post and accompanying framework were focused on measuring engagement within private online communities - primarily B2B. But there is a wider need for organizations to build engagement with community stakeholders wherever they are on the social channel.

For the moment, marketing and "influence relations" professionals are the primary voices of the company. These professionals measure and define success by their ability to get a corporate message out to the world. Social media can be a fast and effective way to accomplish this goal. But difficulties arise when communications professionals have to shift from monologue to dialog, from broadcasts to authentic conversations.

Today's professional communicators strive to create catchy headlines or visual hooks to snag someone's attention, then deliver a snappy message (text, audio, image, video) into the reader's, listener's or viewer's waiting "attention bucket." The pros have to work fast -- attention spans are short and the bucket keeps moving on. The communicators look for trends and future topics that are just starting to catch fire, hoping to be the first one to snag attention and deliver the message. Almost all their time and effort goes into honing the language, imagery, positioning and channels. The number of attention buckets filled is the key success metric.

The problem is one of engagement. Specifically, what happens AFTER the message has been delivered? What's the follow up activity? Most of the time, the intent of the message is to inspire some action: download a paper, attend an event, re-tweet information, visit a website, make a purchase.

Let's assume the message makes it into the attention bucket. It's a rare message that stimulates immediate action. More often, message recipients (customers, prospects, influencers) take time to discover how the message relates to them, considering the information, educating themselves on the topic, reviewing ideas, formulating or solidifying their opinions, raising questions and weighing pros and cons. This is the decision process. It's the time between information received and taking -- or not taking -- an action. It's a golden opportunity for communications professionals to engage with individual decision-makers. And most of the time it's a missed opportunity.

Too often, communicators fall back on old rules: stay on message, don't answer questions that may reveal vulnerabilities, reiterate the corporate position and brand identity. It's a "better safe than sorry" rule for risk-adverse communicators and their organizations. In today's social milieu, this gets translated into "don't talk back," "don't respond to tough questions" or "don't engage around topics that stray from the message." But today the risks are much greater when organizations fail to engage -- so long as there is a clear strategy and tactical plans for managing engagement.

When professional communicators know how to ask questions, solicit feedback, offer answers and build relationships based on discovering what is on each person' mind during their discovery and decision process, the organization can have far more influence, can clarify the firm's position, overcome objections, dispel myths and respond to hidden agendas.

Here is how the Influence Engagement Cycle works. A communications professional begins by sharing information electronically. But instead of just post-and-go, the professional checks with a few established relationships to gather quick feedback, ideas, information and to monitor the wider reaction. Naturally, someone will surface a question, an issue or a problem. That someone is searching for an answer or a response, directly or indirectly via commentary. This is the golden moment for influence and building engagement, when the communicator responds to the person or to a wider audience. The interaction sets in motion a direct or indirect information flow via social channels and connections to get the problem solved or the question answered.

It's called "social media" for a reason. When we humans are assisted by another we naturally feel gratitude or appreciation. Usually we reciprocate -- one good deed deserves another. In the online milieu, this sense of reciprocity plays out as a need to help another person or share the information we just received. Re-tweets, shared links, comments and discussion group posts are all manifestations of this desire to assist others. The connections flow back to the person or organization who helped us, and forward to those who we have helped. Consider what a company communicator's role might be in this network of reciprocal connections.

Once the information flow begins, connections continue to expand. This persistent information flow creates a robust body of work about the product, service or company. When positive or informative, the company benefits. When it is negative or misleading, the company suffers -- especially if it is not well-represented in the information flow cycle. A company which is getting negative attention through the channel but is unable or unwilling to respond is much more likely to continue to experience negative information flow.

In any case, the influence engagement cycle is the critical aspect of the information flow. When a company becomes involved in the engagement cycle, it can share accurate information in a timely fashion. The firm can foster relationships with influencers to expand the cycle of connected communications, thus increasing the breadth of engagement and the impact these relationships can have on the organization. This can bring the company into the middle of the discovery and decision process as a trusted partner and advisor.

Just think of it as a dialog, not a monologue.

How Do You Measure Member Engagement?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:05:00 PST

Member engagement is a popular term these days, applied to everything from customer loyalty programs to Facebook games to political campaigns. There are tools that purport to track every “like” or tweet as evidence that your members, or customers, or just visitors, are listening and “engaged”.

I’m skeptical. I think this very useful and important term is being misused, applied to a wide range of online activities in today’s engagement-obsessed social media world. Too often, a moment of fleeting attention is classified as an engagement event. In our online community-focused world, such transitory winks of attention might be flirtatious, but they certainly don’t constitute engagement!

As a researcher by training and inclination, I’m taking a closer look at “engagement,” what it means and how it applies to our online social business activities. The dictionary definition is quite clear, and conveys a serious level of attention and commitment.

en·gage [en-geyj] Show IPA verb, -gaged, -gag·ing. verb (used with object)
to occupy the attention or efforts of (a person or persons): He engaged her in conversation.

to secure for aid, employment, use, etc.; hire: to engage a worker; to engage a room

to attract and hold fast: The novel engaged her attention and interest.

to attract or please: His good nature engages everyone.

to bind, as by pledge, promise, contract, or oath; make liable: He engaged himself to repay his debt within a month.

None of these definitions suggest a passing glance or a single, isolated click would qualify as “engagement.” On the contrary, a key aspect of engagement is that it occurs over a span of time, not just for an instant. As with all aspects of human behavior, engagement is not a fixed quantity. It is dynamic and variable. It’s intensity ranges from mild interest to active attention to deep and compelling fascination.

So, armed with a definition and a lot of experience with online communities, here’s a framework for measuring member engagement. We use a calendar quarter (three months) as the measurement period for this example:

Leader Networks Engagement Score for Private Online Communities
Engagement Level -------------------- Engagement Score	None ----------- Score = 0	Low --------- Score =1	Medium ---------- Score = 3	High ----------- Score = 6
Log-ins per quarter	0	0-2	3-5	more than 5
Beta group participation	none	joins, logs in once or twice	joins, logs in more than once, participates	makes active suggestions
Create a profile	visitor only	username and basic info	profile plus photo	profile, photo and connections
Post a message or take a quickpoll	0	1	2-3	4+
Responds to another member’s question	0	1	2-3	4+
Peer referral joins the community	0	1	2	3+
Response to newsletter	0	rarely opens; no clicks	opens 20%+; clicks 20%	opens 40%+; clicks 33%; 1-2 fwds
Responds to personal outreach emails and calls from community manager	0	once	sometimes	often
Asks for help: How do I find this? Can you post that for me?	0	once	sometimes	often
Submits content or responds to a request for an article about them	0	once	sometimes	often
Share unsolicited ideas for improvement, future features, new product concepts		once	sometimes	often
Attends a hosted live event	0	once	sometimes	often
Has brought content or an idea from the community into a meeting	0	once	sometimes	often
Score	0	13	39	78

What do the scores mean?

A member with a score below 10 is not engaged
A score in the 13-26 range signals a member who exploring the community but not fully engaged with other members
Scores in the high 20s to around 50 indicate a member who is grown comfortable sharing with fellow members, and is becoming more fully engaged
A score over 50 points to a member who is highly engaged and involved in the life of the community and someone who is probably considered a leader by other members of the community

How can these scores help you measure and grow your community?

Consider this: if those scores represented the revenue value of a member, which kind of members would most want in your community? Right – the most engaged ones! In this model, a small number of engaged members is worth much more than large number of members with little or no actual engagement.

And this is why defining member engagement more precisely is so important. A visit does not constitute engagement; a newsletter open is not engagement; a “like” or a re-tweet are not, in themselves, an engaged activity. Engagement means continuing attention and activity from the member over time.

Part two of this post discusses the key factors that can create, grow and sustain member engagement.

Eureka! A Strong Social Business Model by AMEX

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:03:00 PST

Just a few days ago I revised an old social friend named Foursquare. I hadn't been there for a while, as I am a digital nomad, often trying new tools to formulate an opinion, and then move on to a new toy as fast as they come unless they really offer something of value. Lately I have been busy pinning images while watching the copy write storm brew.

By my real life friends have called me back to Foursquare through persistent invitations and check-ins. (It seems to have reached mainstream - perhaps a reason why it is no longer the little darling of the Digerati?) So off I went to reacquaint myself with the application. This was on a Saturday morning that was devoted to mundane chores. With my shopping bags forgotten (again) in the backseat of my car, I rolled into Wholefoods and remembered to "checkin." I was thrilled to learn that that my worldwide digital check-in made while perusing the cereal isle was rewarded with a discount.

In order to participate in the rewards program, I needed to link my AMEX to my Foursquare account and would subsequently see a $5.00 refund on my charge card bill. While the act of submitting my credit card number to FourSquare did give me pause, it was the outstanding business model design that really stopped me in my tracks.

By motivating people through discounts and coupons, AMEX - in partnership with key vendors- has enabled a win-win situation that creates viral buzz for the vendor, enables AMEX to gather key data about consumer spending habits and whereabouts, while requiring them to increase their use of their card in places where people are less likely to charge. All this for the price of a digital check-in.

AMEX is also building business linkages on Twitter too. Today, GigaOM covered the AMEX / Twitter partnership in an article and explains how people can leverage the newly formed twitter account to enable people to tap into coupons, but I personally think the FourSquare program has a stronger approach.

Have you seen any remarkable or resilient social business models out there? What did you like about them? What actions did they inspire you to take outside of your norm, and why?

Don't Ask Community Managers To Be Strategists

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:46:00 PST

The enterprise community manager position is sometimes termed a "jack of all trades" role. I know -- I've said it myself. But I think we're starting to take it a bit too far.

Over the past few weeks I have participated in a suite of webinars and talks about online communities and their growing role in functional areas such as customer care. I have listened to, and debated with, countless community management specialists about community management best practices. I've heard a lot about keeping business strategy and community management aligned. There's no question this is a critical success factor for social business -- but the issue is whether or not this responsibility is part of the charter for the online community manager role.

Pity the poor community manager who has been handed a whole range of new and complex tasks, responsibilities, and accountability measures related to managing and monitoring business strategy -- in addition to the normal work of running a community! It won't work. Placing responsibility for business strategy on the community manager will ruin many a promising online community, with lasting negative consequences for the business, the brand and, most of all, community members and customers. Online strategy and online community management are emerging as two distinct roles in the rapidly evolving world of online communities.

Let's look at the role of online community strategy. It starts at the highest level, based on the organization's mission and vision, and then proceeds to the business goals and business processes for the community itself. It is a line-of-business function led by an executive stakeholder responsible for strategic alignment based on the goals, metrics, measures and ROI.

This means the leadership from customer care, the office of strategy management or even product development -- depending on the mission of the online community -- have the charter to ensure that the online community is tracking in support of their organization's strategy.

The second role is that of online community management. The crucial task for this role is delivering value to the community participants - the members. Full stop. If the community serves member needs and builds high-value customer/supplier/prospect relationships, it can achieve the strategic goals established by the business organization.

Adding business strategy leadership to the community manager's role renders them ineffective, unable to succeed at either task. Keep in mind the community manager is the voice of the members back into the organization, and is charged with serving member needs. Asking the community manager to view her community through the lenses of both the business and the members is a prescription for blurred insights, mixed messages and reduced trust on both sides. Community managers can and should take into account the firm's business goals in the programs and engagement models they develop and produce. But determination of which best fit with the overall strategy is best left to those in charge of business leadership.

The reasons for this separation of roles is primarily around skill sets. A seasoned community manager typically grew up through the ranks of communication specialties, and has the unique and invaluable ability to facilitate ideas, grow thought leadership content and listen well. What they do, and the ways they have honed their methodologies and insights, constitute hard-to-find skills based on extensive hands-on experience. In contrast, the skilled strategist has a keen appreciation for the nuances of goal-setting, planning, and measuring results, involving technical, financial and organizational design skills.

Just as HR executives typically aren’t tapped to run adjacent lines of business like finance, the community manager may not be best at driving the business of community. While there should be a dotted line between the business and the community operations, asking online community managers to manage functions that are out of their realm of expertise jeopardizes both the community and the business. The corollary is that for your online community to succeed and deliver business returns, the roles of online community strategy and community management should be treated with the business respect they deserve.

Does Your Company Inspire Trust? How Online Communities Can Help!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:35:00 PST

Just the other day, I said to my 10 year old daughter ‘trust is hard to win and easy to lose.’ She was having a tough time with a good friend who had done something jerky, and she wanted to know if she should trust her friend again just because she was being nice. Once trust is broken, it takes time and evidence to repair the damage. That’s why it’s always best to behave in an honest and trustworthy manner, rather than endeavor to rebuild bridges. While school girl antics usually come and go, life lessons about the formation and maintenance of trust are the foundations on which relationships are built in friendship … and in business.

The dynamics of trust is a topic carefully tracked by Edelman’s TrustBarometer. The 2012 edition measures attitudes about the state of trust in business, government, NGOs, and media across 25 countries. This hot-off-the-press report identifies a number of critical shifts in trust. While government officials are deemed the least credible spokespersons, CEOs also saw a rapid decline in trust.

The chief executive’s voice is no longer the trusted source for information about the company, the industry or service trends. Customers no longer look to executive leadership for vision and facts. Instead, thanks to the information now readily available through social media, peer-peer information and expert points of view have soared to the top of the trust pyramid like a kite in a windstorm!

As these data clearly demonstrate, expert opinions and peers are the drivers of trust. They are where the buyers of both consumer and B2B products and services gather the information they need to make informed decisions. And through the proliferation of user-generated content via self-publishing channels such as blogs, YouTube, microsharing, content curation and reviews, there are ample sources of information.

Current wisdom suggests trust can managed using the role of the Influencer to shape public opinion. These are experts with credentials which demonstrate credibility, are unencumbered by financial bias and, armed with data and experience, can offer feedback, advice and vision to help guide the buyers’ opinions and actions. So for greatest business impact, the obvious answer is to invest heavily in developing thought leadership content and securing strong influencer programs, right? Not really... It’s not that simple where trust is concerned.

The Edelman report takes a hard look at the operational and societal attributes that build trust over time. The study discovered that there are a few key elements that facilitate organizational trust. The ones that stood out to me include:

Listens to customer needs and feedback
Places customers ahead of profits
Takes actions to address issues or crisis
Is transparent
Communicates frequently and honestly

Do these sound familiar? They are the basic tenets for building trust within communities online.

In a 2007 article entitled “What is trust worth?,” published in Qn, the Yale School of Management journal, author Steve LaVoie discusses his company’s experience with the role and value of trust. The founder of Arrowstream, a start-up focused on improving supply-chain management in the restaurant business, LaVoie discovered his firm’s ability to deliver savings for customers and profits to the business required rethinking the relationships between all the parties involved. Establishing and maintaining trusted relationships – and avoiding self-interested behaviors that jeopardized trust -- were the key to unlocking savings for everyone and making the business a success. Arrowstream became, in essence, a community of customers for the benefit of each and for the company as well.

Customer communities have been around for a long time. But the advent of new tools and technologies has greatly expanded their scale and scope. Online communities are now recognized as a key channel for building trusted relationships and engaging with customers, employee and other stakeholders. The ingredients are transparency, active listening, and taking action on expressed issues and needs.

Data points:

49% of businesses report having a customer community. [Business.com Business Social Media Benchmarking study, 2009]
34% said they planned to create a customer community in 2011-12. [Leader Networks New Symbiosis of Professional Networks study, 2010]
24% plan to use an online community to support senior-level client relationships in 2011-12. [Leader Networks New Symbiosis of Professional Networks study, 2010]

So … if your employee engagement survey yields data that gives HR a headache and an agenda, or your NPS scores are not all you had hoped, consider addressing the root cause – lack of trust! Take the time to explore new and innovative experiences such as online communities to engage your audiences, building and supporting trust in your company. And remember, as my daughter’s friend recently learned: it takes time and effort to earn trust.

Community Managers, Unite!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:22:00 PST

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD)!

As I sat down to write a blog post dedicated to celebrating community managers - this fantastic, rewarding and often misunderstood profession, I realized that there are few professions (and professionals) as impassioned as a Community Manager. Left-brain, right-brain, artist, scientist, pioneer, organizational change agent - the job is all that, and more. So, in lieu of trying to write about my appreciative thoughts today, I have gathered a few of my favorite blog posts about being a Community Manager from my blog archives that I believe represent the spirit and joys of the role.

A Day In The Life of a B2B Community Manager
What It Means To Be an Online Community Builder
Interview with a Star Community Manager
Defining the role of a community manager - what to look for when hiring

In celebration of Community Manager Appreciation Day, Dell has pulled together a wonderful, live event on a Google+ Hangout. I am honored to participate and hope you will join us. Here is the agenda and the replay of the session (note: edited to add replay):

· Chief Company Pinata & Cat Herder

Beyond a Day in the Life of a Community Manager

Panelists:

Amy Muller Chief Community Officer & Co-Founder, Get Satisfaction

Mark Harrison Community Manager Google Earth & SketchUp

Patrick O'Keefe Author of Managing Online Forums, iFroggy Networks

· No Matter B2B or B2C; It's P2P!

Whether Business to Business or to Customer; it's always People to People

Panelists

Jim Storer Principal/Founder at The Community Roundtable

Vanessa DiMauro CEO Leader Networks

Lionel Menchaca Chief Blogger, Dell

· Evolving a Social Business

The Future of the Community Manager Role

Panelists:

Jeremiah Owyang Industry Analyst & Partner, Altimeter Group

Bill Johnston Director of Global Online Community

Circle Leader: Connie Bensen, Sr Mgr Community Strategy, Dell

The Social Mind: A New Research Project

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:32:00 PST

Interrelationships between individuals, organizations, thought leaders and influencers are evolving in new and previously unforeseen ways thanks to the advent of social media networks. This paradigm shift represents a major communications innovation in all markets, and is radically changing the way people and organizations engage and behave online.

In order to explore this topic, and give back to the industry, Don Bulmer and Peter Auditore and I are conducting a new study as Fellows of the Society of NewCommunications Research (SNCR) . The Social Mind research project is designed to explore and understand these interrelationships and how they impact the consumption of information across social media channels and influence flow. Social Mind findings are enabling B2B, B2P, B2C or Cause marketers to understand the importance and relevance of content - and - its ultimate impact and influence on behaviors, beliefs, decisions and actions.

Through the Social Mind research we are endeavoring to identify key characteristics and insights into the engagement behaviors of individuals and how organizations can maximize reach and influence to execute on what we call the new Principals of Engagement in the millennium.

To this end we invite you to participate in this study by taking a brief survey. It won't take much time and we will share the results with all who respond. Through SNCR, we are endeavoring to contribute to the industry learning and best practices with much needed research data. The study is open to all. If you have ever searched for data on this topic or bemoaned the fact that social media and social business is still emerging in its identification of hallmarks and best practice, please take a moment to add your voice! Just like with elections, every person's response counts.

And, be sure to check out The Society of New Communication Research. We are a group of researchers and practitioners who come together to help further the understanding and best practices of social. We volunteer our time to further the industry and help raise awareness of social media function in business and society.

Be a part of the social community and take the survey here, And while you are at it, kindly use your social powers for good: forward it to a peer, retweet it, G+ it or share it however you see fit.

Thank you very much for supporting The Social Mind research project!

Online Community Decision: Public, Private or Hybrid?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:21:00 PST

Your organization has decided to develop an online community to serve your customers. Congratulations! This is an important step towards building a social business. As the team gathers in the conference room with whiteboards, markers and lots of coffee, you start by talking about other online community examples the organization might want to emulate, or those that have caught your fancy. Features, content, look and feel are usually a major part of this discussion.

But chances are you haven’t considered a fundamental but critical question: will the online community be public, gated or a hybrid (largely public with a private, members-only area)? This is one of the most important decisions you will have to make, one that shapes virtually every aspect of how your community will operate and, in most cases, determine its success.

The decision to make the community public, private or hybrid depends in large part on the characteristics of the audience you are trying to serve. At Leader Networks, we call this "The Engagement Model." It states that "The who and why of your community will dictate the what and the how." For example, if your organization seeks to reach a wide audience, such as a technical support community -- chances are a public community is the right format. If your audience is small and focused, such as prospective customers of an airplane manufacturing company, a private, gated community is probably a better fit. Serving multiple audience types or needs may require a hybrid format. So what are the benefits, drawbacks, revenue models and other distinguishing factors for each type?

Public Online Communities

Public communities are open to anyone on the web who would like to join the community. While the community may -- and probably should -- require password-protected member registration to join or post a message, anyone with an email address and a web browser can have access. Organizations trying to engage a large audience of consumers or customers (B2C or B2B) with content and conversation online will usually choose a public community.

Audience
Anyone who is interested in the community, company or topics addressed

Growth
Ultimate size is determined by the potential audience universe
Usually (much) larger than private online communities
Need to scale quickly due to (typically) lower participation rates – more readers than posters

Focus
Goals are to educate and inform members about a product, service or issue
Activities includes content creation & distribution, discussions and member sharing
Topics include marketing info, education, product/service support

Common Features
Forums, blogs with comments, simple reviews ("like"), downloadable content, polls, webinars and multimedia

Revenue Models
Advertising, content sponsorships, lead generation, a la carte paid offerings such as webinars or reports, overall cost reductions for support communities, self-service sales

Benefits
Broad reach, enables company to show market penetration, marketing, product or service evangelism

Sample Measures
Member acquisition growth over time, views or likes, content contributions, SEO page rank, PR value
With tech support communities, reduction in support costs (community vs. call center) is a primary measure.

Private Online Communities

Private online communities are gated, often invitation-only communities serving a highly targeted audience. Many B2B professional organizations have private communities. There are membership standards, which can include subscription fees, in-depth profiles, vetting or current member recommendations prior to member acceptance. A gated community can create greater sense of trust and intimacy among members with more information about individual members and shared acceptance criteria. This can lead to more open and substantive engagement and collaboration between members and the sponsoring organization. Content and member contributions are considered privileged and not shared outside the community.

Audience
Highly selective audience based on a clear criteria, including verification of credentials such as title, practice area, certifications and other attributes.

Growth
Absolute size of private communities is less important than achieving high levels of member satisfaction in conjunction with business objectives
Audience selection criteria are crucial to member acquisition, participation and collaboration
Achieving a critical mass of members is necessary to grow collaboration. Can be successful with hundreds to thousands of members.

Focus
Goals are to share knowledge and expertise on mission- and career-critical issues; collaboration for professional advantage
Activities include co-creation, idea-sharing, high-level consultation, expertise development, collaboration and thought leadership.
High level of service and benefits to members

Common Features
Member directory, member-generated content, research and in-depth polling, forums, thought leadership and expertise presentation

Revenue Model
Member subscriptions (may include additional benefits such as special access to content and experts), sponsorships, commissioned research, discount purchasing programs, events (online and offline), thought leadership access

Benefits
Increase customer loyalty, increase in client penetration of product and service purchases, improve R&D and speed to market, gain high-level expertise from members, market foresight.

Risks
Private community members expect high levels of member service, poor execution risks alienating powerful customers and prospects
Audience selection criteria limits ultimate size, high quality content required, active community management.

Sample Measures
Membership revenue & renewals, NPS scores, customer retention, customer purchase increases, new audience targets acquired, PR, actionable expertise and ideas created within community

Hybrid Online Communities

Hybrid online communities have both a public and a gated or private area within the overall community infrastructure. They provide the features of both options at a single destination. Access is determined by the member's role. For example, a hybrid community might have an open, public area for consumer visitors with private, gated areas for suppliers or executives.

Hybrid communities often evolve after an organization is successful with one of the two models (public or private) but then discovers a business need to serve a different audience or segment using the other engagement model. At Leader Networks, we discourage trying to launch both at once; the complexities of initial messaging to prospective members and operational difficulties make this choice very risky. Instead, determine the best model for launch, then evolve the community. Leverage the learning from the first successes to improve the next phase.

Audience
Bifurcated, with both a public (anyone) and a private (selective and targeted) membership

Growth
Aim for rapid growth of the public community. If the private side will be a subset of the public audience, base private audience growth estimates on public audience acquisition rates -- but be prepared for significant variations.

Focus
The biggest challenge will be managing differing messaging and member engagement needs within a single community. Goals and activity expectations must be extremely clear and distinct for each side of a hybrid.

Common Features
A hybrid requires especially strong member management tools to maintain separation within the platform plus a robust, experience operations group to keep similar functions separate for each audience.

Revenue Model
Complex and multifaceted based on the business goals and organizational values. Which community type is the primary business driver?

Benefits
If able to capture the value of both community types, synergies might include reaping the rewards of a private member-driven thought leadership community plus using very selective distribution of the private content to attract a larger audience to the public space.

Risks
Loss of focus, confusing brand identity, channel and message conflicts in audience acquisition, complex technical and operational structures

Sample Measures
Each aspect of the community (public or private) should be measured independently with different, contextual metrics based on the single models.

I will be discussing the topic of "Community Models: Public, Private or Both" during an upcoming Social Media Today "Best Thinkers" webinar moderated by Maggie Fox on Tuesday, Feb 7th at 12:00 noon ET. Please join me to discuss this important topic.

The 20 Minute Social Media Professional

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:20:00 PST

“I don’t have time to participate in social media” is a common cry heard within enterprise. The concern is that social media has a steep learning curve and is a time vacuum preventing more essential work from getting done. In other circles where social media is more widely used, those who haven't started are sometimes in a pickle. They don't know where to start and won't ask for help, worried about exposing that they haven't developed this professional skill yet. Fear not...while we are led to believe that everyone and their uncle is using social media with great skill and acuity, there are many who have yet to take the plunge.

Here is a 20 minute social media activity plan to help you dip your toe in the water while managing your time for efficiencies.There are many different activities you can do once you have started to master the art of social, but this activity plan ensures that the core efforts are covered. But, before you start, you will need to do a few things.

First, go to Google and set up alerts on your name (in quotation marks for best results – e.g. “Tom Smith”) as well as topics that pertain to the work you do (e.g. “airplane parts manufacturing” or “firmware and quality assurance”). Try to be specific so you don’t get too much information or that which is not relevant. Also set up an alert for the name of the company where you work.

Second, create a LinkedIn profile on at least one other network such as Twitter or Google+ if you haven't already. Here are some practical tips to make the most of your social media profile.

Third, if there are a few blogs that you find interesting, subscribe to them. I recommend having the new posts emailed to you so they come to your mailbox for easy access. Most thought leaders publish a blog, so if there is a speaker or author you value, search on their name and most likely you will find their blog. There is usually a way to sign up for email delivery directly on the blog post.

For extra credit, try to find an online community or LinkedIN group that is specific to your subject matter expertise. I have created a big list of professional online communities that can serve as a starting point, but you can also search online or ask peers where they find discussions and resources online. For many professionals, here is where you will find the most value in terms of content and connections to support the work you do.

Now it is time to begin…

1. Read blogs posts sent by email - 2 minutes

2. Check reputation alert, topic or company key word alert – 1 minute

3. Log in to LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+ and see if you have any messages. You may want to vary the network you log into by day of the week– 2 minutes

4. Respond to a blog post you have read or look at the twitter activity to see if anything catches your fancy – 5 minutes

Possible actions include; send email to author of great article & invite to connect if person responds, re-tweet an article or blog post you have read, make a comment or like something one of your colleagues posted on LinkedIN

5. Participate in 1-2 professional networks or online communities once to twice a week. 8-10 minutes

Connect to 1-3 people every few visits
Write a personalized email to 1-2 connections
Comment briefly or post a forum message that is relevant to you

If you are reading this blog post, chances are you are already on your way to social media success. Congratulations! If you know someone who wants to get started but doesn’t how to begin, do a good deed by forwarding these suggestions to them in email. And, if you are a savvy social media user, consider "adopting" someone who isn’t. Offer to set up some time with them to show them how the tools work. Be sure to use searches that evoke professional topics that may catch their interest – as relevancy is the key to success. And if you crave more information, here is a good blog post from the Social Media Examiner offering videos and additional resources to help support the learning curve.

Social Snacking Feeds Online Community

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:02:00 PST

Social snacks are digital tidbits of information, ideas and personal presence which offer a quick taste of an online community's content and personality. An effective way to build awareness of a community, these virtual treats get distributed via the burgeoning ecosystem of online tools that support millions of short, sharing interactions daily.

Sometimes an online community can get overly focused on internal processes such as moderation, content development, member acquisition and engagement, and lose sight of the vast virtual world outside their domain name boundaries. Looking outward and sharing small samples of activities and content via social channels can give a wider audience a taste of the community's thought leadership and tone, fueling additional chatter, traffic and audience awareness for direct and indirect business benefit.

"Serious" community builders may dismiss the social snack as so much "junk content" -- too lightweight to have any value. After all, how could a mere 140 characters represent the mission or the wealth of information riches contained in a true, in-depth online community? Well, just like an appetizer before a meal, the social snack stimulates hunger for more. These bite-size info-bits whet the appetite and raise anticipation of a more substantive meal to come on your community site.

Consider an online community dedicated to serving a cause. This kind of community provides content, resources and connections to an audience which supports the mission. The core membership may be very engaged and passionate, participating in the community with verve and energy. Each time that community publishes a new piece of content or launches an especially vibrant and engaging discussion topic, it is an opportunity to share tidbits of that content or interaction across popular social media applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and many more. A well-phrased tweet about a hot forum topic with a link back to the discussion will go a long way towards driving new visitors, raising overall awareness of the community and showcasing the unique personalities of the membership.

Cause marketers have been perfecting the practice of social snacking for some time. These organizations -- and their supporters -- have a passion-driven perspective. Many in their audience are highly engaged and driven to spread the word, so social amplification occurs naturally. Charity Water is a prime example of how social snacking works. This not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing access to clean water to communities in the developing world has done the majority of its fundraising via social media. Using some traditional marketing efforts in combination with social media, they have created an online community where members who support the mission create their own sub-communities of supporters, building an every-growing cadre of people who connect with each other and contribute to the cause.

Another example of effective social snacking practices can be seen in this simple twitter search.

These short posts all point to online communities, which are using social tidbits to support and encourage online engagement.

This good stuff doesn't happen through magic, however. The key to using social snacks effectively is getting them in front of the snack-ees. For example, if your Twitter account only follows friends of the firm or a limited number of people, the chances that someone seeing your tweets will be new to your community is low. Instead, put in the time to find and follow people who might be interested in the topics and issues your community serves. When they follow you back, they will be much more likely to see your tweets, and even re-tweet to other people they know who share similar interests.

In the same way, some percentage of your current community members have social media accounts. Help them support your community by adding them to your circle of "friends" -- make it easy for them to help share the information you are sending out. Encourage and invite them to support the community by sharing these social snacks with others. After all, your members should be involved in the subject matter at hand, and if they are, they will tell two friends, and those friends will tell two friends ... and scale happens.

Two things to remember when evaluating this strategy: your community's objectives and reach.

If your community's mission or objectives includes private or secure communications, carefully consider what kind of snacks can be shared, and what kind of experience a non-member will have when they visit your site. Creating a public "annex" might be a necessary step for your community so member privacy is not compromised.
While your community can be everywhere on the 'net, you may still need to go where the people are and let them know what you have to offer. For niche communities, using digital chatter and social leverage greatly increases your visibility as compared to the "build it and they will find it" approach. Use your community's depth of knowledge and active membership to attract and retain those interested parties who are likely to visit, join and remain members.

Online Community Beta Groups: Why and How

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:48:00 PST

You wouldn’t throw a party and not invite your closest friends, would you? You might even encourage them to come a wee bit early, right? The other guests who may not know you as well might feel a bit awkward to arrive on time and be the very first ones there. So why not ask your buddies to come early? You can even ask them to bring a bottle of wine or a dessert, or suddenly need to borrow their table cloth or punch bowl. The really good friends even stay after the party to help do the dishes. I think these are key ingredients to successful party-giving.

Knowing this, I wonder why so many organizations launch their online communities without the assistance and involvement of a beta group? Why is this so important?

Beta groups serve a critical function during the initial phases of a new online community. Inviting a hand-selected group of people to experience the community prior to launch leads to a number of wonderful benefits to the community: the member directory, discussion groups and polls start to buzz with activity, so when the doors are opened to new members at the formal launch there are plenty of signs of life already.
Beta group members can also become a leadership team to help you steady the uncertain dynamics of the post-launch period to ensure there are people dedicated to the community’s success.
Beta members are much more likely to link to others and respond to questions in the forums after launch because they already have a vested interest in the outcomes of the community.
They can also serve as community spokespersons, offering testimonials and generating peer referrals.
The early arrivals even perform the function for which the term "beta" was coined -- pointing out problems and issues with the community platform that the community owner may not recognize. We've all had the experience of talking to someone at our party who asks "Why is that ... over there?" -- and realizing that whatever-it-is really shouldn't be over there, after all! We all get accustomed to our environments, virtual and otherwise, but what we're accustomed to many not offer the best experience for new community members.

These are just a few of the "why do I need one?" reasons for a beta group. Now for the "how do I get one?" steps.

Keep the party metaphor foremost in your mind -- you don't want total strangers arriving at your party early! A good way to form a beta membership team is to select candidates from specific segments: friends of the firm, favorite clients, former (non-competing) colleagues, even a few industry opinion leaders. Depending on the anticipated size of the community by the end of the first year, the beta group size can range from 25 to several hundred. It's really up to you, based on your organization's ability to handle a well-structured beta program.

I like to create a fancy title for the beta group -- founding members, ambassadors, pioneers, charter members -- to formalize and confer some authority on the program and its members.

Then follow up with individualized written invitations (yes, you can even use paper!) which sets out the program's goals, benefits and member responsibilities, such as:

Why were they selected?
How long with the beta group run?
What kind of participation is expected of them?
What rewards or benefits will they receive from participating?

Next, create a kickoff event with the group so they can learn more about the community before committing themselves. This could be a webinar, a screen-share session, even a closed-door meeting at an industry gathering. This kind of group orientation gives candidates a chance to see they are in good company, part of a select group, which can help motivate participation.

Make it easy for them to participate. Provide them with access to the community and do whatever it takes to be sure their experience is a positive one. For example:

Give them brief suggestions of things to do first. Don't leave them guessing.
Define a set of activities around the community objectives. Then, monitor their progress.
Specify the parts of the community that might need help. Actively solicit their opinions on these areas.
Divide up the tasks. Ask some to create a profile, others to link to other members and so on.
If the community has a private group feature, create one for beta members. They can join and share feedback about the community with each other -- and you. This can reduce email clutter and redundant communication on issues while revealing shared concerns that might not rise to the surface individually.
If some members are subject matter experts in the community's topic area, invite them to contribute content or be interviewed as a featured member.
Always follow up. With a small beta group, schedule voluntary phone calls with each member to get their impressions of the community. What did they like the best? What challenges did they experience? What was missing from the community that they expected to see?
The most important thing to remember is that you need the good will of your beta members far more than they need you. So be especially grateful and undemanding when conveying your needs on behalf of the community.

Finally, don't forget to thank them, and I mean really thank them for their gift of time. This doesn't mean payment, which detracts from the aura of the beta group as your pre-party posse. Instead, take the time to write a note, recommend them on LinkedIn, post a public tweet or comment of thanks on a social site -- if appropriate -- and give them a badge or special tag within the new community. Yes, a modest Amazon gift card is also nice. You want to let them -- and the world -- know they are truly one of the elite: a community pioneer!

The Rise Of the Digital Doctor

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:58:00 PST

Just the other day, I paid a visited my daughter's pediatrician in his office and saw a strange thing ... his desk was clean and in the far right hand corner of his large desk was a sleek, silver shiny object. A laptop computer. Of course, it was closed, and there were numerous sticky notes posted on top of it. Real change takes time. But there it was on his desk, ready to be used. Later that week one of my best friends, a world-famous rheumatologist, asked me to demonstrate Twitter. We found a number of key opinion leaders in her field with Twitter accounts. I think we're starting to see a pattern emerge – the rise of the digital doctor.

It could be push to electronic medical records or the speed of medical advancements that is propelling so many white-coats into the digital present and future. In any case, today's physicians are adopting digital tools -- including networking and social media -- at ever-increasing speed.

In a Sept. 26, 2011 article, the American Medical Association's amednews.com reported nearly all doctors in the US are now on social media. The article cites a study by research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan conducted between April and May, 2011, which found that 84% of doctors use social media for personal purposes. In August, a survey by QuantiaMD found nearly 90% of physicians reported using at least one social media site personally. Physicians' need for the most current information plus peer-peer networking for ideas and collaboration, coupled with easy-to-use mobile technologies such as smart phones and tablets (iPads) are driving this rapid adoption rocket!

A physician's professional life requires a high degree of mobility -- meeting with patients, working in the lab or a hospital setting, multiple offices, teaching, conferences -- which makes mobile devices ultra-popular. The freedom to compute in motion coupled with the proliferation of medically-focused mobile applications are a great match for medical professionals. There are applications for treatment options, electronic recordkeeping, drug interaction databases and even heart monitors online. A recent article by Jackson and Cooker Research outlines the many reasons why the future doctor will be a mobile computing powerhouse.

Access to up-to-the-minute new drug and treatment information is another reason why doctors are pushing themselves to get online. In FY2011, the FDA approved a record number of new medicines and devices. A recent survey by Manhattan Research found physicians prefer to receive the majority of their pharmaceutical and device product information through online sources.

A doctor's professional survival -- and that of his patients -- requires constant attention to new developments, continuing education and peer networking and collaboration. They need information from experts and peers to ensure they have the most current data to support patient care. Online access offers the fastest and most efficient way to do this. As anyone who has ever tried to call a doctor can attest, they are rarely available by phone. Professional private networks and social collaboration tools provide the means to connect and collaborate when it is most convenient -- often after hours or on weekends.

Continuing medical education (CME) and credentials are also moving to the screen. As budgets shrink, institutionally-sponsored CMEs are disappearing -- fewer hospitals and academic institutions are subsidizing the cost to keep physicians' credits current. The result is a shift to doctors funding their own CMEs and self-educating on topics that pertain to their field well past the minimum needed to keep their credentials current. Pursuing their CMEs online allows physicians to reap the same benefits other online education users have discovered: access to information and education on their own time, at a lower cost than traditional in-person learning, with greater efficiency. This will undoubtedly be the way future post-graduation education is delivered. According to research published in the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions (v30 (1), 2010), online CMEs are likely to be half of all CMEs consumed by practicing physicians within a few years.

So, there you have it. That foreign computing object on my doctor’s desk isn’t just a paperweight, after all. It is the path to better patient care, improving physician skills and increasing the efficiency of the healthcare system. The doctor of today -- and certainly tomorrow -- is likely to be as plugged-in professionally as any Silicon Valley startup maven, all for the benefit of health and humankind. Thanks, Doc. We'll see you online!

Keeping The B2B Customer Satisfied: Why Companies Need Online Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:08:00 PDT

Seminars, publications, market research, and customer care centers are some of the most important tools in every business-to-business firm’s toolbox for understanding, attracting, serving and keeping customers loyal. But in a world of fierce global price competition, increasing transparency of business practices, and ever-rising complexity, these customer interaction channels are no longer enough for many B2B companies.

Today, software companies such as SAP and Taleo, business information providers such as LexisNexis, and consulting firms such as Palladium Group have moved much of these interactions to online communities they have built for their customers. While they are still in the early stages, these online communities are providing these companies with a competitive advantage: the ability to get much closer and become more valuable to customers every day, around the clock.

In the first of a multi-part series, my colleague Bob Buday of the Bloom Group and I review the traditional ways that B2B companies have interacted with customers and their limitations in a world in which change has dramatically accelerated. We then discuss why a number of companies have launched online customer communities in the last few years, defining the core hallmarks of successful communities.

Download the article here or view it online below.

Customer Intimacy on Steroids: Why b2b companies need to build online communities for their customers

View more documents from Vanessa DiMauro

In the next installment this winter, we will review best practices in online communities and the prescriptions on how to build and maintain a vibrant online customer community. We hope you enjoy this article and look forward to your comments and questions. What do you think are the current limitations in the ways that B2B companies interact with customers and how do you think online communities can help?

What It Means To Be An Online Community Builder

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:43:00 PDT

For the past 15 years, cocktail parties were tough. When people would ask what I do for work, my response, "I build online communities for business," would serve as a natural repellant to further conversation. Confused or suspicious about this mysterious response, the martini-holding listener would likely divert the conversation elsewhere in short order, as they had absolutely no idea what an online community-builder is or does.

I am happy to report that my social life is getting better these days, as online communities are all the rage. There are still elements of mystery that shrouds the community-building profession - but there is also a new-found curiosity.

So, late one evening, I tried write a description of what it means to be an online community builder. And instead of developing a cohesive job description, I wound up with a pile of words. (Leave it to a community builder to approach a puzzle with a unique solution!). While my outcome most certainly does not replace the utility of a straightforward party-line, I think it will resonate will community builders worldwide who have evoked a similar suite of words at the dreaded cocktail party... when faced with the question "what do you do for a living?"

The Future Of Online Community

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 06:12:00 PDT

Talk about online communities is everywhere lately. This is good news to those of us who have been building online communities as the core of our profession for many years - sometimes quietly in the shadows of marketing. Recently, community has come to the forefront of customer retention, customer research and other operational functions in ways never before realized. We community builders celebrate this market change and have high hopes for the future. But the question, what will the future look like, dominates our conversations.

Recently I spent some time with a fellow community strategist; Jane Hiscock, CEO of The Farland Group. We spoke at length about what the future may hold for companies, the profession and community's impact on the companies they serve. This lead to a invitation to participate in a blog series on the topic of the future of online communities. Here is a recap of the conversation ....

Perspectives on the Future of Community: Vanessa DiMauro’s View
In this post – one of a new series on the future of community that we will be featuring on this blog in the coming months – we are delighted to have as our guest Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks, a leader in creating social strategies and online communities for B2B businesses. We talked to Vanessa recently about how the concept of community for businesses will evolve and how marketers, strategists and community managers and leaders should think about community in their strategies to connect with customers, peers and others.

Here are the insights Vanessa shared in our conversation.

What are your overall observations on the future of community?
The future of community is definitely an exciting topic and one that has been a long time in the making. As online communities have only recently become popular, many people don’t realize that they have been around and thriving for more than 35 years! Primarily used to support virtual knowledge sharing in professional settings (academics, IT executives, research), they have a proven strength in supporting information exchange and collaboration. So, I believe the history of community will continue to influence their future. The biggest trend I see on the horizon for online communities is the advent of specialized private online communities
In my view, the specialized online community’s day has come! The last 2-3 years have been awash with social network launches and the race for dominance. For most, even the phrase ‘online community’ currently evokes mass professional networking tools, as those tend to be most professionals’ first exposure to online community. And while Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora, for example, are not going away anytime soon, there is an increase in the demand for specialized private online communities which has emerged in part from the success of the broader social networks.

While these large professional networks have been fun and productive to experience, they have grown to unmanageable sizes if they are to be used as a learning environment. This can be noted as LinkedIn has recently launched groups for more targeted connection, and Google’s claim to fame is the ability to create context circles so you can organize your network into different categories and offer them different levels of access and information to your profile. Clearly open communities and large networks are not meeting all the needs of professionals. And this is understandable, as professionals need to engage with peers around specific topics, seek pointed information about those topics and are selective in their collaboration efforts with those peers.

Instead, it is within the gates of private, smaller communities where meaningful peer connections, idea exchange and collaboration can truly take place. Not surprisingly, this mirrors the utility of a strong, intimate in-person meeting versus a large industry conference. Specialized online communities are now coming into their own because more professionals have evolved their requirements through experience with large networks. And there is certainly a growing trend of organizations to create private gated online communities to service the specialized needs of their customers.

How are communities driving the future of marketing?
That is an interesting question – today, I see that people often confuse the role online communities can play as a marketing strategy with a place to market to members. The true business opportunity for online communities to serve marketing is as a channel for customer engagement and as a thought leadership platform with and for the community members. What this means is that when well done, online communities can serve marketing to discover information, trends and opportunities with customers that marketing (as well as other lines of business) can leverage. From gathering information and feedback on new trends, discovering an issue with a product or solution that needs to be addressed, to even identifying unmet needs that could be tended to, online communities can serve all of the functions and more.

Communities also offer a new and more sophisticated opportunity to develop and showcase true thought leadership from the organization that is founding the community and to feature the customers and members who are thought leaders. The goal of using online communities to market to customers is at odds with the expectations of the members who join the community typically in search of information, peer networking, and collaboration – this is especially true in the B2B world. Marketers will need to balance the evolution of how they connect to keep the goal of the community strategy aligned with members’ values and drivers for participating, as well as the company’s for engaging with customers.

What does that mean for marketers looking to the future of marketing innovation?
Using online communities, marketers now have a prolific setting to engage with customers on an interactive playing field. Because of the widespread reach of social media at-large, and online communities in specific, the days where a company can declare victory due to market size are over because customers can now talk and share their experiences publically. Every day brings new challenge for companies to demonstrate their excellence – online. The opportunity to engage customers in a trusted relationship 24X7 is a perfect marriage to online communities.

What is the role of content in creating value in communities? How will that change? Will value come in other ways?
People come for content and stay for community. Access to valuable content (content that people can’t get elsewhere) is the single most compelling driver for participating in an online community. Content serves as the trigger to join, and fuels the community over time by providing contexts for conversations between peers / members. Through the use of social media, and especially online communities, professionals now have the ability to reach, connect with, learn from and influence other professionals who share an interest or a passion in the topics of interest. Thought leadership is the new currency of credibility.

Over time, the role of content and specifically thought leadership content will continue to increase in importance especially for B2B firms as they often use thought leadership platforms to establish and sustain credibility. Many B2B firms struggle to keep up with growing customer demands and more-nimble competitors anxious to capitalize on those nascent needs. Waiting for the annual conference to announce key new-product introductions can now penalize a firm with being very late to market. Holding webinars or publishing journals quarterly or even monthly can risk giving customers information long after others have filled the void. Therefore, these companies increasingly look to real-time customer intimacy channels such as online communities as a new approach to reach and engage their customers.

Will community and social media diverge or converge?
Online communities are the centerpiece of social media. When you think about the goals of social media (or social business as a whole, for that matter), building relationships among people is critical. Online communities are the ultimate manifestation of relationship-building activities. They are the best way to build deep online relationships with the people and organizations that matter to your company – customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and others.

Putting Customer Events On Steroids, Why You Need An Online Customer Community

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:02:00 PDT

You already have a community and you might not even know it. No, those damn developers didn't go creating something under the covers (well ok, maybe the did but that is a different discussion). If your company has an annual conference or customer summit, gather customers for insights, you have already exerted the power to convene. And, through your successful events, your customers relish meeting with each other and with your organization's thought leaders. How often have you heard customers say they wish they didn't have to wait until next year to connect again? They share stories and business cards and promise to stay in touch.But, they often don't because the busy work-a-day life gets in the way. And sales vows to do a better job managing their relationships throughout the year. They do the LinkedIn thing, but really only show up at the customer’s door when it is time to sell again.

It does have to be this way.

Online communities offer traditional businesses an opportunity to bridge the gap with customers and keep them connected to your company and your services through out the year. This is a benefit that customers appreciate because it allows them access to their peers and to the information they need in order to support their purchase around the clock.

Through the use of an online community, customers can be provided with a superior level of support. Especially with big ticket items or those that have a complex deployment environment, such as with technical products or consulting services, the customer needs more than just the annual conference to make the most of their purchases. Community creates ongoing opportunities to learn about the future and from those on-staff experts you pay so well to demonstrate credibility. Community offers a ready-made platform for thought leadership. Also, by having access to their peers they can tap into coveted hand-on experience when their projects encounter difficulties and learn a better way from others like them.

But what if no one participates?

Effective planning cycles can ease the fear of failure. Just as you wouldn't hold an event without inviting people, creating marketing materials and buzz, lining up speakers and content and booking an event venue, you wouldn't just launch a forum software tool and hope for the best. Through the use of proper planning, which includes asking your customers what they want and need from each other and from your organization, you can ensure that the online community will be used and valued by customers.

But an event only happens once a year, and then it is over. Community may take too much time.

Chances are your company is already investing time and resources in creating thought leadership content - and if you are not, well maybe now is the time to start! And, chances are your marketing department is already using a multi-channel approach to connecting with customers. Wouldn't it be more efficient to gather them together in order to reach them in a single place? How much did you spend on focus groups and customer relationship management programs last year? I would bet my bottom dollar that your customers would rather receive access to a lyceum of information than another bag with your company's name on it. And, it is likely your customers do talk to each other and about your company in person and on the social web. Perhaps it would be beneficial to tap into that activity?

Online customer communities are not a foreign idea after all, they are customer events on steroids. All that is missing is the virtual aspect to extend your power to convene online!

Five Ways To Avoid the "Valley of the Social Tools"

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:11:00 PDT

Social strategy and social operations are causing big changes in business today -- online and offline. And, as usual with big changes, there's no shortage of confusion in the market about exactly what's happening, what's working and what's not.

Pundits and industry evangelists have spread their gospel and focused their energies on social media as a new, fast and cheap marketing tool. They've emphasized click-through and followers. They've created mini-plans for mini-opportunities which can yield short-term buzz but often fail to deliver long-term value. The tactical focus of most social media programs -- with an emphasis on the "tool of the moment" -- has caused many senior leadership teams to view social media as a transitory fad, if not downright frivolous. However, well-conceived social business is far from frivolous or transitory.

When confronting a complex issue or decision in the absence of certainty, groups will often move to the lowest common point of familiarity -- usually something concrete and specific. In tech and marketing organizations, this is called "the valley of the tools." So it is with social; everywhere you turn there is a marketing manager or millennial intern reporting (loudly) that the company needs a ... (insert social tool name here.) But these advocates and tool suggestions are often rooted in a desire to play with new things and carve out a mini-speciality, and are just as often completely disconnected from company business goals and strategy.

Some of this comes from confusing the differing needs of consumer and business environments. For example, an individual Facebook enthusiast who has found the platform meaningful may use it as the concrete tool example for achieving a business goal-- the application or tool du jour. But does this tool really match the vision for what social media can – and should – do for the organization?

The disconnect is not surprising; tactical and operational staff are typically not charged with developing a vision for the organization, even in rapidly-evolving areas. This is why it is so important understand and distinguish between the two kinds of work functions: strategy and execution or operations. Senior management has the charter to shape and form a social strategy -- has it has for other key initiatives. They are the ones who architect the plan and define the objectives which, in turn, determine the tactics and tools used for execution.

So ... review this five-step social strategy checklist before you go charging off with your social hammer, lest you end up whacking your thumb, or putting nails into the coffin of a once-promising marketing program ... or your career!

1) Identify 2-3 significant strategic organizational goals a well-executed social operations program can support.
Do you have a strategic customer care objective that could benefit from social media? Are there R&D or innovation requirements in the coming year that would benefit from social input? Are you trying to reach a new audience with your products? A strategic social program could accelerate these activities.

2) Define the operational program.
Answer the key questions as you would with any implementation plan: mission, approach, costs (direct and indirect), program duration and -- most important -- the measures of success.

3) Identify the needed resources.
Who will execute the program? Do they have the skills and capacity to fulfill the duties? Who will oversee the work? Are there KPIs or MBOs associated with delivery?

4) Track progress.
Develop monthly or quarterly reports to assess whether the program is on track and circulate the reports to all who need to know. We recommend developing a RACI diagram to include departments who need to be informed about the outcomes (e.g. sales or customer service).

5) Sunset the project and capture best practices.
Review what worked and what didn't, then document the findings to leverage your results, repeat successes and change those aspects which did not perform well.

Fashion & Social Media: Power to the People or the Publisher?

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:11:00 PDT

Who doesn't love fashion? Whether it be an appreciation for the art form or simply admiring a well-dressed look, good style is, well, always in style! One of the most beautiful things about fashion is it's a participatory sport. From scrutinizing the covers of a magazine to wearing one's favorite T-shirt, each and every person has their own fashion story to tell, which means social media and the fashion industry can be a match made in heaven.

By using social media tools, the fashion industry can uncover a goldmine of consumer inspiration and trend-testing. The ability to identify and capitalize on what's hot and catch rising trends in advance of market saturation can make all the difference to a fashion brand or retailer's margin. The ability to amplify the buzz of a new look at social's warp-speed provides even the most leading edge designers with a strategic weapon. So why, with all this creative energy and market-moving opportunity available to an industry built around trends, do so few fashion organizations take social business beyond the most routine implementation?

Just a few weeks ago, New York's Fall Fashion Week was in full swing. Every morning I would log on at my desk, anticipating Something New. Now, part of my interest was fueled by our work as we advise and speak to the fashion industry on social media strategy, and part of it was just good fun. There was lots of tweeting and a number of well-executed fashion show video streams, but there was not as much digital innovation as I had anticipated -- given the magic of the subject matter. So I took a deeper look to find some examples of "social fashion" and see how this uber-creative industry is applying technology to support its art. Two sites caught my attention; Zara and Voguepedia.

Zara People!

Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories company that offers a budget-level ready-to-wear retail line. They focus on being "fashion imitators" and are well-known for their ability to spot trends and create products at light -- or is it social? -- speed, often going from sketch-pad to in-store within 30 days. They are rumored to employ teams of street-style trend spotters armed with smart phones to roam well-heeled neighborhoods in search of the next-big-thing. Such on-the-spot reporting can take a trend from observation to the design shop in hours. Choosing not to spend on advertising of any kind, they pour their profits into new store openings -- learn more from this case study (PDF). Clearly a company tailor-made for social media!

Recently, Zara enhanced their street watcher strategy by creating Zara People! This web site allows people to upload photos of themselves wearing their products. Zara selects the best and features the actual real-people photos on their website as part of their merchandising strategy. Go to their web store, see your beautiful next-door neighbor sporting that new outfit and have it delivered to your door faster than you can say cupcakes. This could even make the phrase "power to the people" a fashion statement! Zara is using crowd-sourcing together with the art of curation to encourage self-expression, while still maintaining the control needed to define and maintain their brand.

VOGUEPEDIA

Voguepedia is an online resource catering to the fashion academic searching for facts and figures about designers, brands, models and fashion personalities. Chock full of references to the history of fashion, a user can, for example, use the site to trace back ever-changing fashion trends or the evolution of a particular design house.

Besides serving fashion students worldwide, this is the perfect resource for armchair fashionistas who are looking to win the "who is wearing what designer?" game played at many a suburban cocktail party during the Academy Awards.

This site has managed to find a modern, consumer-oriented application for WIKI tools -- which are usually relegated to boring intranets and sprawling encyclopedias. As a bubbling spring of fashion trivia, I was thrilled when I saw the "updates" feature on the navigation bar -- believing I could finally put my facts to good use by adding them to Voguepedia the way topic enthusiasts do on Wikipedia. Alas, the feature only allowed me to receive email updates about the content of the site. So all the wonderful fashion bloggers and writers out there are still waiting for a centralized place to share and aggregate their facts and ideas.

While wiki-lovers will celebrate its cool new adaptation, the Voguepedia missed a fantastic opportunity by failing to open the site to user-generated content. There would need to be a governing board or review team -- as with all authoritative texts -- but the amount of interesting data they could have collected, but chose not to, would have been enormous. It's a pity.

Imagine how powerful Voguepedia would be if Condé Nast Digital and Vogue took a page from the distributed authorship model found in most wikis and let audience members add input to the fashion entries. There could even be a collection of well-respected fashion bloggers from around the globe posting on the site. User-generated information would serve as fuel and fire for future issues of Vogue and guarantee an eternal flame of hot content ideas.

Choosing to control what information is associated with the fashion topics, Voguepedia maintains a "look but don't touch" attitude that is counter to the WIKI tradition. Of course, it also sends the not-so-subtle signal that Vogue is the divine authority on fashion truth -- users are there to read, appreciate and tag their favorites, not to question that authority.

While it offers eye and mind candy for the fashion-lover, it totally misses the social mark. What might have become the world's largest database of fashion ideas, history and trends fueled by passionate people turn out to be just another magazine - online.

I was intrigued by the dialectic of Zara People! and Voguepedia. One for the people, by the people, the other a tightly controlled online reference, glossy and frozen. As we move into an age where content curation leads content, where influencers dictate styles and trends, some organizations really stand out, while others fall flat on the runway.

What It Means To be An Influencer... Online.

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 04:53:00 PDT

Who knew the topic of online influence could be so exciting and, well, complex? Apparently, Social Media Today did when they assembled a panel for their “Best Thinkers Series” which is a weekly discussion style webinar moderated by expert journalist Maggie Fox. I was fortunate to participate in this event with Megan Berry, marketing manager from Klout. Pulling together a vendor and a practitioner is no easy task – as online influence was discussed as a concept- what does it all mean, straight through to how does one achieve it on and offline.

Here is a summary of my key point of view on online influence…

The first question Maggie asked was about how to define influence. I believe that influence is the power to convene and to tell a good story. Influence is the ability to shift a person or group’s thinking on a particular topic or idea. It is often exerted through the creation of thought leadership but it can also manifest a person or group’s ability to shepherd a new idea to popularity. It most frequently achieved through demonstrable credibility and experience.

The relationship to offline and inline influence is a matter of scale and platform. In the past, prior to social media, one’s personal or professional influence was not fundamentally different than what we see today. An influencer earns credibility by having ideas and experiences that stand the test of time. Yet, in certain circles – especially within the communications professions - influence can be magnified through the social channel. Among social media users, the speed by which information can now flow is unprecedented as outstanding content travels very fast due to the social tools. But it is important to remember, that the topic of the content, in order for it to journey online, needs to be relevant to the social media user base. For example, the nuances of a social business’ trials (e.g. Groupon’s possible IPO) will be amplified far greater than, say, pending M&A activity of a traditional business that doesn’t have a strong social presence. Context matters with online influence.

We then turned to talk about whether groups like Klout (or Peer Index) are accurate representations of actual influence as defined by the ability to impact decisions. Megan Barry gave a good description of how Klout is currently measuring influence and some of the heuristics behind the Klout model. But, there are still nuances to be worked out. While influence scores are a good benchmark of activity, it is still unlikely that they represent an actual measure of true influence as they measure activity and amplification over relevance and impact. For example, if I were to tweet a funny comic or a shocking photo, it is likely that I will inspire far greater amplification of that content (e.g. retweets) than if I were to share a thoughtful piece of content about the strategic business impact of B2B online communities. Now, it is far more likely that I can provide content that helps an organization shape their thinking about communities, than influence the world of humor, however, my online influence score will be more positively impacted by my popular-interest tweet than it would be by my thought leadership article. This is an inherent flaw in most reputation management systems.

Similarly, many a marketing manager has tried to calculate ROI of online influence, but they are often trying to measure the wrong things. Too often the focus on influence ROI is focused on counting up transactions – how many times have I been re-tweeted, how many click-throughs did this link get. These are all interesting indicators of interest, but not necessarily significant indicators of influence as the impact on decision-making can vary widely.

Another discussion highlight was around the topic of how B2B and B2C influence differs online. There are different models for online influence. To amplify (B2C model) and the ability to lead or shape ideas (B2B). For both, experience is a measure of influence but there is a difference in scale and depth for each.

In the B2C market, especially with consumer goods of a low to modest price point, decisions are made in a much more rapid cycle. Therefore, online influence can be largely exerted through the formula of reach + frequency + recent experience. Example, amplification of a computer, a restaurant a vacation spot can all lead to wider adoption. Deep experience or passion play a role, but the ability to shepherd an opinion in a rapid cycle is especially critical.

With complex decisions, online influence matters much less than with transactional decisions as the risk of making a wrong decision is tractable. For example, if I were to made a bad decision on a restaurant dinner, that does not have material impact on my life or profession and therefore I am more likely to act upon a recommendation I find online versus making a enterprise-level software purchase or even choosing a wedding venue.

In the B2B world, reach is less important than depth. Decision-makers rely most heavily on peer referrals when making strategic or expensive decisions. One colleague who has hands-on experience will naturally weigh exponentially more heavily than endorsing tweets of 100 strangers! It is the details of practice and depth of insight that helps shape larger decisions and the public social media marketing tools rarely provide an appropriate platform for these kinds of explorations to occur online.

This points squarely at the reasons why many organizations, having tried their hand in social media marketing on the public channels are now turning to develop their own online communities to service customers. Because the audience is smaller and more selective, there is a greater opportunity to actually reach, engage, collaborate with and influence the people that matter the most to the organization.

Influence goes two ways-companies, through a credible and meaningful social presence can amplify their position in the market and often yield tangible ROI and customers have the power exert influence over a company or an outcome. The sweet-spot of online influence is found in the balance of giving and getting.

Here is the link to listen to the webcast recording and also to see the slides in support of the session.

Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Social Business Activities

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:50:00 PDT

There are many good posts on the need for brands and organizations to run their own social media activities. Mia Dand at MarketingMystic recently stated this is one of the top three "inconvenient truths" about social media. The Conversation Agent blog suggests that social outsourcing only makes sense when the CEO doesn’t have the time or interest to engage using the social channel. Way back in 2009, Entrepreneur Magazine tackled this knotty topic. But few articles explore, from a business operations perspective, why it is a bad idea. Let me explain.

All (successful) companies have a strategic plan. Successful companies are marked by both their strategic and operational excellence. They execute in the present while defining the strategic direction for future growth and success. Activities such as entering a new marketplace, refining customer care programs to ensure repeat buyers, engaging in R&D efforts to surface current and future products and services all depend on both current operations and forward-looking strategy. A thriving organization sees sales grow year over year because they can meet market demand in the present and anticipate customer needs well into the future.

Well-designed Social Media programs serve the strategic plan as they integrate into and reinforce the core strategy of an organization. Social programs leverage aspects of the firm's business strategy to impact the bottom line. They are not just another fancy marketing channel. If the firm's strategy includes reaching a new buying audience or launching a new product or service, social media can support that strategy by -- for example -- refining the customer data on which audience targeting and product features are based. The future course of an organization can be often tracked through customer account penetration awareness and satisfaction data.

Through social business integration programs, organizations can get an informed look (beyond standard CRM reporting) at customer demand through a number of different mechanisms. From well-worn social media marketing efforts – using basic tools such as Twitter or Facebook – they can reality-test and evangelize a product or service, even before the primary launch and investment of significant resources. At the same time, they can monitor the social channel to identify changing perceptions, waxing or waning demand and the presence of emerging competitors.

Through the use of owned social channels such as online customer feedback systems, discussion forums and blogs, an organization can discuss with their existing customers what they want or need, identify market gaps along with product or service issues, or even defuse dissatisfaction "bombs" before they destroy sales. Social media enables an organization to act more nimbly using these early signals -- what risk managers call "leading indicators." (I covered this topic in 2010). A constant stream of contextual feedback brings unstructured data into the realm of strategic intelligence through the use of social business metrics.

So ... consider the complexities of interpreting these critical signals in the context of your organization's core strategy. Does the notion that an outside agency will be making the key decisions about which data are important to your organization sound like good business sense? Do you really want a recent graduate with little or no knowledge of your core business values and imperatives deciding which comments or ideas are important to share with your marketing team? Does an agency that doesn’t understand your company’s confidential strategy have the institutional knowledge to accurately parse the data and sift the important stuff from the fluff? Do agency staff even know the right people to contact on your sales or R&D teams, let alone have the relationships and business framework to help them understand and leverage data that may define your company's future? These are just some of the reasons why outsourcing social is not in your organization’s best interests.

Once business leaders get past the misconception that social media marketing is all there is to social media, and start to think about using it as a strategic support tool – then it will be used and valued as the powerful information resource it truly is. Why would you want to outsource this crown jewel of strategic information? Keep those precious jewels inside your company where they belong!

Make B2B Communities Essential Through Process Improvement

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:01:00 PDT

Online community managers often get asked a critical question: what did you do for the company, today? Whenever budgets get tight or CFOs get in a bind, the online community suddenly becomes cost center, and the response is to cut, cut, cut.

No doubt, part of this is due to a lack of understanding (and advocacy?) on the part of the community team and social media group, whose jobs and impact may not be well-understood by more traditional line-of-business managers. But the underlying problem is the strategic impact of many online communities may not be clear to the larger organization that funds the effort. This is especially common with B2B or customer online communities, where the goal is to engage and serve customers, rather than generating revenue by monetizing programs and features directly. All too often, this nuance is forgotten at the end of a tough quarter.

To demonstrate the strategic impact a community can have on an organization, a number of operational needs must be addressed and tended to clarify the value of the community's financial returns. To illustrate this point, let’s look at common operational needs across an organization. For example: Marketing as a discipline raises awareness about products and services, defines audience segments and targets to reach new prospects and builds customer intimacy to retain existing customers.

Now, imagine a world where the online community operations were both pro-active and re-active to the needs of marketing. The community would offer up key product and service trends from online discussions, detailed identification of member segments keenly interested in certain topics or products, and an ever-changing vocabulary for messaging about products and services which resonates with customers -- created by the customers themselves.

Other examples include product development and R&D efforts. The ongoing challenge for these groups is defining and inventing new products, services and enhancements in anticipation of future customer needs and desires. They are the soothsayers and futurists within every organization. Their success depends on an ability to imagine what current and new customers will want -- to read the mind of the market.

Using an online community or social business initiative, the product development team can tap into ongoing conversations -- a dynamic focus group -- to discern what matters to customers and prospects right now, plus get early warning indicators about products or services which may need changes, or will face new competition. Reading discussions, measuring topic clicks, aggregating site and cloud meta-tagging behaviors all provide a kind of crystal ball into customer and prospect needs. But product dev and R&D already have lots to do. Unless the community team can deliver this information in a timely, succinct and actionable form, these insights will go to waste.

To put it another way, fending off the budget-cutters requires that B2B online communities incorporate customer-centric process improvement strategies.

My friend, colleague and process improvement guru, Brad Power, recently wrote a series of blog posts as part of a Harvard Business Review section on "Creating a Customer-Centered Organization."

One of my favorite posts in the series gets to the center of the relationship between process improvement and online communities: "Customer-Centric Continuous Improvement." His shout-out to Leader Networks and the Bloom Group is also a nice touch. Thanks!

Brad argues “Improving customer value continuously is difficult in almost any organization. That's true partly because so many organizations are still organized around functional silos, which are managed to optimize their own performance rather than to deliver value to customers.” He emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach -- successful organizations need to rally around serving the customer, even if it means changing or tearing down silos to do so. We have had long conversations about the role online community can play as a change agent, with the potential -- and responsibility -- to touch, affect, deliver results to and change all aspects of a business.

Brad suggests that online communities are the ears of the organization; they enable the company to listen 24X7 to their customers. I would add that well-executed B2B online communities can be the heart of a company -- where customers come to visit and then stay to learn and share their thoughts online.

Managing Online Social Predators and Bullies

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa DiMauro) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:30:00 PDT

Online social predators and community bullies pervade the internet. You know the type -- out there in the social sphere trying to create chaos and breed discontent. They are the dissatisfied customer, the slighted consumer, the angry applicant who didn't get the job, kids who think social vandalism is fun. Perhaps they got bumped off a flight, your software crashed their system or they got rejected from a club or college. These nay-saying crusaders are everywhere, and they show up again and again in online communities. And, oooh, they are tricky! They use strong language, call your baby ugly and, in extreme cases, change user names and pseudonyms even after they've been banned. Some are crazies and some have a point of view they are determined, to the point of obsession, on sharing whenever and wherever they can.

This is the dark side of online community building, and it doesn't often get discussed. However, about a year ago Peter Auditore wrote an epic blog post what it means to be an online social predator from a first-person point of view. His point is that there is a class of online consumers that are willing and able to use community features to make their needs known, and that every company - whether using the social channel or not - must be ready for "that guy." Let's take the notion of being ready one step further. What should a company -- especially one with an online community or social business presence -- do to prepare for the social predator?

The first line of defense is always to have a plan, and not wait for the problem to show up before figuring out what to do. Acting in the moment, when emotion and blame are running hot, is not the time to make decisions and take actions online to counter the problem, especially if you haven't already considered the issues and implications. Instead, play out a series of "What if" scenarios ahead of time to create effective strategies and involve the chain of command in the event of an emergency. Do you involve PR? Executives? Managers? If so, who? Do you know how to get in touch with them? What will their role be?

What is the definition of a true online emergency for your organization? For example, a leak of strategic company information that could impact the stock price or break regulatory rules constitutes a real emergency. However, an errant swear word or a community member flame war often does not rise to the level of an emergency.

In true militaristic style, the US Air Force created a now-infamous blog triage plan to manage an online crisis. While geared for the government, it is a few clicks and meetings away from being usable by many larger organizations.

(double click to enlarge)

Once the strategic planning is done, the next phase is to determine (usually on a case-by-case basis) what the general range of approaches to the problem should be. Here's where the community manager's judgement and experience come squarely into play. He is likely to know (or, if the community is large, quickly determine) if the social predator is a valued community member, a recurring trouble-maker or a new registrant, which helps determine the intention of the post. Did they mean well and just want to heighten awareness of a situation, or are they trying to create chaos? How trustworthy is the member and the message? Is it written with a rational point of view or clearly the rantings of a crazy person? Community members with a high degree of emotional intelligence (EQ) can often tell the difference - so a poster's intentions do matter and are often clear to the members, though perhaps not at first glance by an outsider.

Then determine whether the matter being raised can be addressed. I do not advocate a blanket "take it down" strategy as this can fan the flames of the issue -- not to mention the social predator's ire -- and drive both the predator and other members to alternative channels. Those channels may be beyond your organization's control - such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+. So consider it a gift if the predator posts on your branded social channel. It signals a genuine desire to get a response to the situation your organization. In some cases, even if the topic is uncomfortable for the organization, the social predator may represent of a commonly-held sentiment that really should be addressed. Often a simple acknowledgement -- it needn't be an admission of guilt-- will help soothe the ruffled feathers. Even if the claim is legit, social media history has proven honestly rarely hurts. A response also means you've followed protocol and reached out to the member.

And if he keeps coming back? Well, there's always the bozo filter!