Bloghound

For the past few years IBM has been inviting its employees to be part of 72-hour online innovation jams, brainstorming about everything from IBM values to new product and service ideas. It’s a great example of the business value of social media, which at its core is a platform of participation and sharing.

The Fall 2008 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review has an in-depth article about IBM’s experience: “An Inside View of IBM’s Innovation Jam.” IBM brought 150,000 employees and stakeholders together to help move its latest technologies to market. Both the difficulties it faced and the successes it achieved provide important lessons.

“Campaign 2.008: Politicians Have Yet to Realize the Full Potential of New Media,” featured in the current issue of The Public Relations Strategist, offers some diverse perspectives on how social marketing is effecting the U.S. Presidential campaign. Written by former political reporter Ed Cafasso, managing director of MS&L, the article includes views from:

• Randy Kluver, communications professor, Texas A&M University
• Bill Rice, president, Web Marketing Association
• J. Barbush, associate creating director at at ad agency RPA
• And yours truly, Lois Kelly

Unfortunately the magazine, published by the Public Relations Society of America, isn’t available online, but if you click here and scroll down to Articles you can get a PDF.

Understanding segmentation as it relates to online communities can help us gain insights from our most loyal users and influencers; prioritize community features, content and functionality; and possibly create ways to help customers become more loyal.

Back in 1999 Professor Rob Kozinets published a much-cited academic paper, “E-Tribalized Marketing?” The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption,” that provides some insights that are highly relevant today.

Community involvement: two factors

Two non-independent factor influence how involved a person will become with a community, says Rob in the article.

1. The more central the consumption activity is to the person’s psychological self-concept, the more likely the person will pursue and value membership in the community.

2. The intensity of the social relationships the person has in the community.

Segmenting four types of community members

Community members can then be segmented into four types; two of which matter most to marketers, believes Rob.

1. Tourists: lack strong social ties, maintain only a superficial or passing interest in the consumption activity.

2. Minglers: have strong social ties, but aren’t all that interested in the consumption activity.

3. Devotees: maintain strong interest for consumption activity, but have few social attachments to the group .

4. Insiders: have strong social ties and strong personal ties to consumption activity.

Implications to marketers

Insights: Primary research shows that heavy users and loyal customers are represented in communities by the insiders and devotees. Invaluable business insights from these influencers can be gained from observing community.

Brand relationship development: Tourists and minglers can sometimes be “upgraded” to insiders and devotees as they become involved in the community. The community itself may propagate the development of loyalty and heavy usage, says Rob, by culturally and socially reinforcing consumption. To do this it’s important that the visitor find value and spend time in the community to see ways the consumption activity may be more relevant than she or he had realized.

Different content, activities: Different community member segments want to get different things from the community, which helps guide the community management strategy. In Rob’s view tourists and devotees want to get factual information from the community, while minglers and insiders tend to be much more social and relational, answering people’s questions, adding content. Since insiders are the most loyal customers, it’s important that the community appeal to what they want in information and how they want to socialize in the community.

Do you need a community? This point is mine, not Rob’s. If the business consumption activity is not central to your customers’ “psychological self concept,” do you need a community? To what percentage of your customers is the consumption activity central — and is that percentage large enough to justify the investment required in managing a community? I’ve been collecting communities that are largely abandoned, despite being beautifully designed with great functionality. The reason? People just aren’t into the issue/topic/business category all that much — it’s not central to who they are or what they need to be successful in their job. Sometimes all that’s needed is a souped-up Web site where people can get and share more kinds of information more easily.

All strategic social media initiatives require change management to some degree. To figure out an organization’s social media “readiness” and how much change management will be needed – and in what areas – SAP’s Steve Mann has developed a “social quotient” test/analysis. Where does your company score?

“I don’t want any more friends. But I do want your knowledge. That’s what’s really motivating people to use communities, “ says Tilak Mandadi, VP of Interactive and Travel Technologies for American Express.

Talik – one of the most entertaining IT execs I’ve ever heard in a long time– said seven things matter the most for effective online communities:

1. Social intelligence – learning what other people know — vs. social networking.
2. Specialized context of community
3. Exclusive content
4. Ability to transact
5. Moderate moderation
6. Participant defense of the brand (Let other AMEX customers defend the brand if someone says something negative)
7. Speed to market

The ability to transact is especially important. Tilak said customers using American Express’ “Members Know” travel community have expressed frustration at not being able to act on what they were learning about in the community, which Amex is going about changing.

Many companies are creating communities for awareness, loyalty and word of mouth, but they may be missing a big opportunity for transaction revenue — and frustrating customers in the process.

Today my firm, Beeline Labs, Deloitte, and the Society for New Communications Research released highlights of an online communities study among 140 organizations which create and maintain communities. Some of the highlights, more of which can be found here:

Greatest value of communities:

• increasing word of mouth (35%)
• increasing brand awareness (28%)
• bringing new ideas into the organization faster (24%)
• increasing customer loyalty (24%)

Greatest obstacles

• getting people involved in the community (51%)
• finding enough time to manage the community (45%)
• attracting people to the community (34%)

What contributes most to effectiveness:

• ability for community members to connect with other like-minded people: 54%
• ability for members to help others: 43%
• focusing community  around a hot topic or issue: 41%
• quality of the community manager/community management team: 33%

Advice for others

When asked what their most important piece of advice is for others creating communities, survey participants’ advice focused around these eight areas:

1.    Start with the end in mind: “Start with a business strategy, defining carefully what you want to accomplish through the community.”

2.    Focus on the value to the members:  “Make sure you deliver real, special, unique, obvious value to the core group you’re hoping to attract.”

3.    Don’t start with the technology: “Too often people get drunk with Web 2.0 tool excitement and then try to push their business and customer goals into the wrong tool.”

4.    Keep it simple and intuitive:  “Focus on the least common denominator first. Keep it easy to navigate with simple tools to use.”

5.    Keep it fresh and active:  “Keep activity levels up, constantly add new content.”

6.    Have dynamic community leaders: “Make sure you devote enough time to managing the community; letting it fester is worse than not having it in the first place.”

7.    Think through who to involve – or not. “Get Legal and PR to buy-in and help on design, but keep them out of active management.”

8.    Get a passionate core of participants active before launching:  “Make sure you have a committed core of passionate users before you launch.”
Many thanks to everyone who took the time to take the survey and talk to us as part of the qualitative surveys. The complete results are on their way to you this morning.

Here are 50 pragmatic, do-able, inexpensive ways to use social media to improve marketing from Chris Brogan.  Great job, Chris. Thanks.

If you want to really understand how social media/tools are changing how we work, play, activate change and live, pick up Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And if you are seriously considering communities as part of your marketing strategy, Do Not Pass Go without reading this.

Here are some of my takeaways:

There are three essential pieces of a community, starting with purpose:

1. Why: what’s the the promise of the group/community? Why would anyone want to join or contribute? “Creating a promise that enough people believe in is the basic requirement. The promise creates the basic desire to participate. ” Note: in my experience this is where marketers usually spend too little time. Or, rarely challenge their own. assumptions.

2. How: this is where you figure out which tools will help people do what the community is all about. Note: too many companies are buying tools and then trying to make a community fit the tools. A recipe for disaster — or, at a minimum, enormous frustration.

3. Rules of the road: this the what Shirky calls the bargain: “If you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?”

People have always wanted to share and help one another. Pervasive, easy-to-use communications tools and ” the collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together — so much easier, in fact, that is changing the world.” “Social tools don’t create collective action — they merely remove the obstacles to it. This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple easy-to-use tools like email, mobile phones and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their dauly lives.”

Incentives for participating are not financial: Attention, the desire to see your work spread, the desire to help others and be helped.

Why some communities grow and others don’t: “They grow if enough people care about them, and die if they don’t.” (This goes back to getting the promise right.)

How did you do that?: communities where a group of people help one another get better at some share task or interest — called communities of practice — are especially pervasive and appealing. The basic question that can trigger a community of practice: “How did you do that?”

Not everyone needs to be passionate, participate a lot: in the old model we had to work hard to get people passionate enough to act, because acting was a lot of work. Today you can have a handful of highly-motivated people participating a lot — and “people who care a little participate a little, while being effective in the aggregate.”

A small number needed to get things started: “The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something.” Tap into a small core of passionate people; don’t expect a lot of people to contribute at the get-go. Many are more comfortable adding to what someone else has started.

On Friday, June 27 at 1 p.m. EST, I’m going to be sharing what I’ve learned so far about marketing, social media and word of mouth marketing over at Learn From My Life. (And answering calls and email questions.)

There are some great interviews over at Learn From My Life from people like free-agent author Daniel Pink, former CNN reporter Daryn Kagan, legendary basketball coach Dale Brown, and Dan Ariely, author of the must-read new book, Predictably Irrational.

Hope you can make it!

Is there value in Facebook for businesses? Or is it just a cool way to stay connected with friends? I have no answers but look forward to tuning in to a Webinar on Wed., June 25 at 3 p.m. EST over at The App Gap,
“Should Your Business Be Friends with Facebook?”

The Webinar is based on a research study led by Jenny Ambrozek that looked at the value of Facebook to six different types of business.

I’m hoping Jenny will cut through the social networking hype and hoopla and share some pragmatic advice about specific ways businesses can get value from Facebook — as well as Facebook limitations for business.