LIVING LARGE: Creating Online Communities for Collaboration

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LIVING LARGE Creating Online Communities for
Collaboration Commerce 

• Vanessa DiMauro
• President
• Leader Networks

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The New Communications headache Opportunity

• Why is no one blogging about my company? Can you
  promote my company to these 500 bloggers?
• OH NO! someone is blogging about my company!
• I need crisis management
• A client asked me to get him one of those online
  communities.
• We need a myspace/facebook account
• Wikipedia has wrong/bad/no info about my company
  can you fix it?
• Can you do some Web 2.0 marketing because we have
  no budget?

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The Puzzle of Now

• PR and Marketing professionals face the
  challenge of regaining credibility for themselves
  and for their clients. The old, reliable media
  processes no longer are effective. At the very
  least, they are not enough. You dont see a lot
  of people reading press releases on YouTube. Two
  challenges are particularly severe. First, whats
  the role for intermediaries in the
  disintermediated world of the Web? Second, whos
  going to believe paid partisans when we can now
  talk with other customers like us?
• -- David Weinberger 2007

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Communities are changing the rules
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What are Online Communities?

• What is an online community?
• Any group of people who purposefully use
  telecommunications to discussion issues,
  questions, solve problems, share information,
  develop trust and communicate with a degree of
  frequency. (DiMauro and Gal, 1992)
• FAST FACT Online community can take place in a
  discussion forum, a wiki, a social network,
  through a blog, and over e-mail

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Three Types of Online Communities

• 1. Information Dissemination The organizing
  body defines content, message and outcome.
  Highly controlled, paternalistic environment
• Forrester.com, whitehouse.gov
• 2. Shop-Talk Discussion groups that focus on
  accomplishing a task, exchange of transactional
  information or getting help. How can I? Where
  do I?
• WEGOhealth.com, myspace.com
• 3. Professional Collaboration / learning
  communities
• A safe, online space purposefully designed
  to foster conversation. Tends to be membership
  driven or subscription based.
• Society for Organizational Learning, SERMO,
  INMobile.org

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Typical Community Programs

• Driving Participation Discussion group
  management and facilitation. (Only 10 of
  membership will participate in discussion groups)
• Driving Conversion All other site interaction.
  IE polls / surveys, answering specific
  questions, rating content, participating in
  eventsetc

• Member-Generated Content
• Profiles / home pages
• Product ratings
• Product reviews
• Interviews and high-value content creation

• Member-To-Member Interaction
• Discussion Forums
• Blogs, Wikis and social media entries
• Member created podcasts
• Phone calls

• Events
• Guest events
• Expert Seminars
• Virtual meetings / Trade Shows

• Outreach
• Newsletters
• Volunteer / Leader programs
• Polls / surveys

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Three General Models of Online Community
Small gated
Public
Hybrid
Open call, all interested Member directed Public
forum Big bang Ad generated support
Select, narrow target audience Acceptance
criteria Protected dialog Managed topical agenda
Sponsor supported
Tiered membership Consensus/Trend driven Public
forum w/ private area Thought leadership
(responsive) Hybrid Revenues
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Online Communities are Good Business

• Attract new and different audience/clients/prospec
  ts/users
• Shorten product development cycles
• Get the message right the first time!
• Build trust relationships with clients
• Yield two-sided competitive analysis
• Learn what your customers are talking about
• When was the last time you were able to talk to
  2,000 of your clients?

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Community Business Model in Action
1. Member has an idea 2. Member seeks advice 3.
Member evaluates options 4. Member builds plan
budget 5. Member makes purchase
Goes to discussions or content Buys research or
advisory service Joins buying pack Leverages
discounts Orders from partners
create value
get benefit
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Online Communities are The Centerfold

• Online communities are the centerfold of Web 2.0
  because they bring together all social media
  efforts into a thriving organic ecosystem of
  collaboration
• Processes Digital Marketing, Online Customer
  Care, E-Marketplace, Net Promoter (NP score)
• Tools Blogs, WiKis, Polls, Ranking, Social
  Networks, Podcasting and Webcasting, Mashups,
  forums

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What is different (Not everything)

• Ownership and power
• Freelance journalists, bloggers, consumers,
  Citizen Journalism
• Costs
• Monitoring and outreach mainly manual and
  expensive
• Demographics
• Traditionally overlooked constituents now have a
  voice
• New rules of engagements
• New ethics and codes of conduct
• OReily Blogger Rules
• Changing roles for PR and Marketing
• New responsibility need to innovate

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A Key Question

• Do you want to start the conversation with a
  formalized community plan or join the
  conversation of ongoing efforts?

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Build Community Creation Cycle

• Create Vision
• Target Segment Audience
• Query Potential Members
• Build Value Proposition
• Architect Business Value Justification
  Measurements
• Benchmark Competition Best of Breed
• Determine Brand Positioning
• Design Features Functionality

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Participate Practical Examples

• Quarterly blogger cadre program
• Find relevant online communities and be a
  participatory sponsor
• Not just banner ads but join the conversation
  long-term
• Use interactive media on website to create a
  community
• Patricia Seybold Group
• Launch a customer care forum online/extend
  in-person events to 24X7
• CAMEXPO
• Enter new market segments through interactive
  media
• BigCo does SMB
• WOMM program to serve sponsors and users
• WEGOhealth
• UGC

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Managing (client/company) Expectations

• Online Community takes time
• Roadmaps and process exposure is key
• Online Community takes planning
• Clients need to know where they want to go
• Online Community takes effort
• Executives and key spokespeople need to be more
  involved than with traditional PR and Marketing
• Online Community is less structured
• Embrace serendipity
• Online Community outcomes CAN be measured
• Buzzmetrics, ROI, customer retention, revenue
  generation, cross-sell/up sell, competitive
  information value, new client acquisition

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Case Study

• WEGOHealth needed to
• evangelize their site and
• leverage WOMMA
• How?
• Careful outreach to community
• Online community of consumers
• Leveraging the power of community leaders
• Blogger cadre
• COL focus groups
• Results Happy sponsors and smarter health
  consumers

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Case Study

• INmobile is the premier
• community for wireless
• Executives worldwide
• Only the top 10 of all
• Wireless leaders are accepted for membership
• Matching buyers and sellers together online
• Founded by a headhunter who specializes in
  wireless
• executive placement
• Stay on top of key trends, issues and industry
  movements
• Actively generating revenue

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Top 10 Rules of Online Community Engagement

• 1) No gaming, no scheming, no fake people
• 2) No one-night stands (cultivate relationships)
  
• 3) Observe, enculturate then act
• 4) Be responsive and brave
• 5) Be trustworthy and aware
• 6) No tools for the sake of tools
• 7) No blog litter
• 8) No marketing
• 9) Return what you learn
• 10) Match plans with metrics

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Guiding Principals for Community Programs

• It is important to integrate interactivity into
  the traditional PR and Marcomm model
• Companies need to examine how to bring
  interactivity into their business models in ways
  that serve the business and the customer goals
  alike.
• Peoples expectations are changing.. They no
  longer want to be passive recipients of
  information and experiences.
• The human process trust factor can not be
  overlooked
• What works in the face world will work in an
  online environment
• Need clear definition about what are the
  behaviors the business wants to support before
  launching a tool to support it.

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THANK YOU! Vanessa DiMauro President, Leader
Networks 617-484-0778 Vdimauro_at_leadernetworks.com
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These were the best of times, these were the
worst of times

• Good intentions gone bad
• Loctite the ballpoint pen
• Bad intentions got caught
• WholeFoods vs. Wild Oats
• Hurray for the longtail social media!
• Microbrews, specialty products, travel sites,
  consumer health