Bloghound

I love and hate shopping. Love finding quality products at bargain prices, but hate having to go to stores and wade through all the stuff. Now one of my favorite bargain-hunting haunts, Marshalls, the big off-price retailer, has opened an online community that hopefully will cure what ails me — and others.

Called What’s In, the site has plenty of features — maybe even too many. (Note: it’s in beta so I’m sure the kinks are being worked out.)

The feature that seems most appealing:

You can set up personalized alerts for your favorite brands and local stores; when someone posts that they’ve found that brand at that store, an alert is sent to your mobile phone or email, and you can then hurry on over to the store and get the deal before it’s gone. Due to its relationship with the brands Marshalls can’t advertise brands. So for the alerts to work people who shop the stores will have to go online and post what they’re seeing in the stores. Otherwise quasi-shoppers like me won’t get any alerts.

Two that have potential, but need work:

1. Blogs from buyers about what they’re seeing at shows and on their buying trips. Done right, these insights into what’s coming could be really fun to read. Who doesn’t want to be an trends insider? The Marshalls folks should think about more descriptive names of the blogs and profiles of the people behind the blogs. The two buyer blogs are currently titled like “MoJr15’s Blog” or MelSki17’s Blog.” Ugh. Turns out one blog is by Melissa who buys Ladies Activewear, and another is a nameless junior sportswear buyer. (Melissa, tell us more about the yoga clothing trend!)

2. Forum section, where people can post comments on different topics like “trends of the season.” This section has potential as so many of us are looking for advice and ideas from other women like us. What’s not working is that the Forum categories seem forced, like they were written by advertising copywriters vs. real shoppers for real shoppers. It may be me but Forums named, A Price Tag To Remember, Designer Dish and Star Style sound phony. Again, I think this could be easily fixed.

Overkill?

I’m not sure the Fashion Finds, Member Blogs and Photo Albums add value. They seem either redundant with other parts of the community or just unnecessary. I’m a pretty savvy Web user but I have to admit the navigation around “what’s in” lost me. There’s just too much going on. For the hard launch of this community I’d like to see just three great things:

1. Alerts (send and get)

2. Forums (sharing fashion finds, advice mong members)

3. Buyer blogs ( sharing insider views of what’s happening by Marshalls buyers)

Time to get back to work — unless of course I get an alert from the local Marshalls that a new shipment of Theory is in.

While many organizations are beginning to use online communities for a range of purposes — from market research and customer support to thought leadership and product innovation, there’s a lot of frustration about how to measure communities. The Society of New Communications Research, Deloitte, and my new firm, Beeline Labs, is conducting a study to learn how organizations are measuring the success and progress of their online communities.

If you or someone you know is involved in managing a community, we’d very much appreciate your input. This survey takes about three minutes to complete and results will be shared with all who participate.

Thanks!

Why is social networking a really big deal? It fulfills six fundamental human social needs, says a new Communispace study, “Meeting Business Needs by Meeting Social Needs.”

1. Expressing personal identity

2. Status and self-esteem

3. Giving and getting help

4. Affiliation and belonging

5. Sense of community

6. Reassurance of value and worth

When developing social networking strategies as part of our marketing plans, it behooves us to make sure that we meet these social needs. Doing so, say the authors, helps companies gain customer trust and insight.

Fulfilling the sixth need is especially valuable. When companies listen to what people tell them in social networks and act on those ideas, companies validate people’s sense of value and self-worth. The result? “ A deeper emotional bond than usually exists between companies and customers, which in turn results in greater advocacy and customer loyalty,” say the authors.

People are sick of being polled and surveyed, as Ad Age’s Jack Neff has been reporting , with articles like “Consumers Rebel Against Marketers Endless Surveys. “ (Survey response rates average 10 percent and are falling.)

But seems like people do want to have a say and help companies. New research to be released tomorrow by Communispace finds that people participate more when companies give them more interesting ways to participate — chats, video sharing, brainstorming, going mystery shopping, posting day in the life diary posts, etc. People also like to be able to weigh in on more topics.

This study of 26,500 people in 57 communities follows up Communispace research earlier this year that found that monthly participation in by-invitation communities ranged from 33 to 84 percent, with an average of 56 percent of community members contributing. In other words, half of the people asked to help, helped. What a difference compared to conventional research’s 10 percent participation, if that.

This is another good example of business disruption — and of people opting out of a blah experiences (surveys) and opting in to experiences that they find interesting, fun or valuable.

It’s hard for marketers and PR professionals to let go of trying to control the message and what customers say. But new research from Communispace finds that ceding control and letting customers initiate and control the conversation in online communities results in valuable insights and brand engagement.

Based on analyzing activity in 84 online customer communities the study, Beyond the Other Box: Giving Customers an Independent Voice in Your Community, found that:

1. When customers initiate dialogue they end up saying and contributing more to a community. (vs. the company starting conversation threads about what they want to talk about)

2. The more that people feel like they own the community (vs. the sponsoring company) the more likely they are to talk with the company when the company asks a question or invites people to take a poll, upload videos related to the brand, etc.

My takeaway: if we really want to tap into our customers we should back off and let them own the community and talk about ideas that matter to them. Maybe we’ll learn that those ideas should matter to us too.

New research from Communispace shows that people participate much more in private communities — up to 86 percent — than public social networks, just one percent.

Key findings, based on behavioral research among 26,539 members of 66 private online communities:

The more intimate the community, the more people participate. Up to 86 percent of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities (average community size: 300-500 people) made contributions: they posted comments, initiated dialogues, participated in chats, brainstormed ideas, shared photos, etc. Only 14 percent logged in and “lurked.” In contrast, on public social networks the ratio is typically reversed; one percent of site visitors contribute and the other 99 percent lurk.

Why people participate: social glue, shared passion, having a voice

• Communities of parents get the highest involvement: of the 66 communities analyzed, parent communities, as a group, had the highest levels of participation. In general, the research found that the stronger the “social glue” – common interests and passions among members– the greater the participation.

• Differences between how men and women participate: based on analysis of single-sex communities, the research found that although members of women’s communities participated more frequently than men, men seemed to have more to say when they did participate: 4.8 weekly contributions for men compared to 4.1 for the women.

• Homogeneity triggers participation:the research found that communities based around a particular demographic tended to have higher participation rates. Women and men each participated more in single-sex communities than they did on average in co-ed communities. African-Americans participated at a higher overall level in an all African-American community than they did in other, multi-racial communities. This suggests that people have more in common and are more interactive with a homogeneous group in an online community setting.

• Education and household income were not related to community member participation. Again, the passion around the community’s purpose or its social glue appears to influence participation more than traditional demographics like education and income.

• Having a voice, productive leisure: One of the implications from the research is that people may get more involved in private, intimate communities because they feel like they can have a say and that community members and the sponsoring company hear their views. Another implication is thatpeople may view the time spent as “productive leisure.” They see participating as an interesting or fun outlet for communicating with other people who love what they love. It’s a bridge from what they do in real life to their passions.

People get more involved when they know who they’re talking to and why

• The study also compared participation levels of branded vs. unbranded communities. While the contribution and lurker rates were fairly consistent, branded sites showed a higher volume of participation.
• When potential members were considering whether to participate in a community, they were 30 percent more likely to log on when the welcome notice disclosed the company sponsoring the community. Branded sites had an initial log in rate of 71 percent, compared with 55 percent for unbranded sites. This suggests that transparency – being upfront about who’s behind the community – is a key factor for companies that want to engage with customers in a community.

The research analyzed participation behavior along three factors : frequency (how often members contribute), volume (the number of contributions made by each member), and bystander or “lurker” rate (what percentage of members observe versus participate.)

For more on Communispace’s “Community Participation Trends and Drivers” study, go here to get the white paper.

social netowrking online communities Communispace research

After digesting last week’s Community 2.0 conference in Las Vegas, here are the top 10 ideas that emerged from the wisdom (and energy) of the crowd.

1. Community must have a specific purpose. And that purpose must be clear and transparent to members. The purpose of the community shapes the form of the community and success metrics.

2. Measurement and demonstrating quantifiable business value is critical. Peter Friedman of Live World suggested that if the community purpose is clear, the ROI should be easy to calculate. e.g., if the purpose is to engage customers of a major cable subscriber service in such a way that they will extend their contracts for one additional month, the incremental revenue will be $100 million.

3. Passion and complexity engage people. People are most drawn to communities around topics that they are either passionate about – or are so complex that people want to get involved to get advice from others.

4. The experience needs to be interesting and fun. While some agreed that communities don’t need to be functionally complex—a Yahoo Group could be considered a community – most concurred that the overall user experience needs to be really fun, intuitive, and offer activities from posting to video sharing. MySpace believes this is one reason it zoomed passed Friendster.

5. Analytics and archiving to make sense of what’s going on the community are the killer apps. Only with these tools can marketers more quickly see patterns, glean valuable insights from what’s going in the community. Appears to be big pent up interest in these analytics.

6. People matter more than the tools. In other words, the people who design and facilitate the community are more crucial to the community’s success than the technology platform and tools on which the community runs. Several people noted that companies need new types of talent to oversee communities, and that talent is in short supply.

7. It takes a while for a community to gel. You can’t say the community is open and expect lots of activity to happen overnight. People need to get to know the community, the people in it, the brand behind it, and the value in it for them before they will get actively involved.

8. Authenticity rules. If the community’s raison d’etre is not sincere and real, people in the community will sniff it out and kill the community.

9. Community is the second most important brand asset after your product/service. People often interact with your community more than any other part of your brand except the product/service itself. Hence, don’t screw up your community – it’s becoming an essential part of your brand.

10. People want to connect with people: this is the reason why 2.0 communities emerging. People don’t want to engage with ads, anonymous help desks, or focus groups. They want to connect with other people who share the same passions or interests. Several people noted that communities aren’t just online, many are likely to be hybrids, say meeting once a year face-to-face, and then carrying on conversations online.

Community 2.0

Kudos to Australians Kristin Hickey and Derek Leddie of The Leading Edge and David Jenkinson of Fosters Group for their ESOMAR award winning paper, “The Heart Transplant — Customers at the Heart of Your Business.” The authors liken marketing’s obsession with brands to a worn-out, struggling heart and suggest that a customer-centric focus offers the equivalent of a heart transplant.

In an interview with Jesse Blackadder, editor of “Research News,” Kristin said managers see consumer-centricity as a source of sustainable comeptitive advantage for three reasons:

1. It allows an organization to get closer to the customer, increasing the relevance of innovation, communications and other marketing.

2. It provides ane lement of consistent objectivity in the business. There are fewer push-and-pull struggeles between departments based on opinions of differing priorities. The Customer insight and advice provides incontestable direction.

3. Customer-centricity can be a source of bargaining power with trade or retailers.

The paper shows Foster’s journey from being brand centric to customer centric, explores the six barriers to adopting a customer centric vision in an organization, and suggests a five step process for leading a customer-centric revolution.

“Business are already increasing their expenditure on consumer insights, which is creating buoyancy in the research industry,” said Kristin. “However, on closer inspection this buoyancy should be a significant cause for concern. Our industry holds itself up as the expert in the field of consumer insights. Yet to date we have failed to provide strong, compelling leaderhip for businesses searching for consumer-centricity.”

An interesting note: to become customer-centric Fosters took customer insights out of market research and created a new organization which is part of the senior leaderships team, working closely with the CEO and senior business strategists.

Are online customer communities an undervalued marketing approach?

A new research study released today by Communispace, “What
Companies Gain from Listening: The Effect of Community Membership on
Members’ Attitudes and Behavior in Relation to the Sponsoring Company,” found that:

• 82
  percent of the surveyed community members said they were more likely to
  recommend a company’s products since joining its community.
• 76 percent felt more positively about the company.
• 75 percent felt more respect for the company.
• 63 percent said that membership had increased their trust of the company.
• 52 percent were more inclined to purchase products from the company.

Why do communities affect people so much? One reason may be that it
provides a way for people to talk with a company and feel heard: 91
percent said they felt that their community allowed them to give candid
feedback and suggestions to the company.

What can real estate developers do to avoid negative media coverage and protests by community and environmental groups?

First
and foremost understand the opposition’s point-of-view: they believe
that real estate development projects are the community’s projects, not
the developers’ projects. Without understanding this perspective,
developers are highly likely to face delays, protests or have a project
killed altogether.This was one finding from a study, “This Land
Is My Land…But Could Be our Land: Developing Influencer Relationships
to Accelerate Developer Success,” that Northeastern University communications professor Walter Carl and I recently completed for the NAIOP Foundation.
We interviewed 30 commercial real estate developers and representatives
from environmental, community, government and Smart Growth
organizations to learn what it takes for developers to build effective
relationships with influencers.

We also uncovered the seven most
common characteristics of effective relationships between developers
and those influential people who can affect a development project,
positively or negatively. Here are highlights, most of which apply to
all businesses that must build effective working relationships with
external constituencies.

1. Early engagement:
for most influencers the most irritating practice of developers was not
involving the community early enough in the project process.

2. Effective listening:
people want their viewpoints to be acknowledged and respected, even if
those viewpoints can’t be accommodated. They need to feel listened to.

3. Education & understanding:
educating friends and potential foes pays off. The more knowledgeable
people are, the more likely they are to have realistic expectations,
engage in construction discussions, and brainstorm ways to work around
sticky points.

4. Trust and credibility: trust
is based on the principle that each person feels like the other person
truly understands their point of view. To build trust, present the
whole picture, candidly discussing drawbacks as well as benefits. And
always deliver on promises.

5. Accommodation:
Be flexible and willing to give up some control. Adopt the 3Rs: respond
to criticisms, redesign if necessary, and reach accommodations. If you
can’t accommodate all requests, explain why.

6. Adapting:
Adapt your communication style to the other party to foster
understanding. Avoid industry jargon. Adapt the professional skills of
coalition builders and educators.

7. Transparency: Always communicate in an open, direct and honest way.

A
final point to note: building relationships isn’t about asking for
influencers’ approval, but creating understanding. Similarly, it’s not
about getting 100% consensus, but determining whether people can live
with the proposed project.