TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

community

Consumers and bosses…

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Apologies for the slightly cryptic and unexplored post yesterday – a reminder that sometimes an idea needs a bit more fleshing out before clicking the Publish button!

What was foremost in my mind is something that is vitally important to my current role, and social media/community as a whole. And that’s the fact that, despite the growth in Web 2.0 technology, and adoption of community techniques – it isn’t half as widespread as you might assume from within the tech/blogging bubble. Plenty of people, even within the digital world, find it hard to see the reason for investing time in social networking and how it applies to them – and outside that area or department, it’s even more of a leap.

And what has come out of my work, attending valuable gatherings like Measurementcamp, and reading great blogs such as Web Strategy by Forrester Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang, or KD Paine’s PR Measurement blog, is that it’s the reporting, measurement, and justification of any community work is as vitally important as doing it in the first place.

And being able to show the measurable aspects of community/social media work, and explaining the direct and indirect effects on the bottom line is absolutely essential in changing the way companies think – particularly the larger, more institutional companies.

If you need a refreshing reminder about making things clearer for the rest of your company, and particularly more senior management, bosses, and CEOs, Avinash Kaushik has some good posts on Occam’s Razor which can feel like they pour a bit of cold water on the evangelical aspects of community and social media – but actually really help clarify the most useful methods of making things simple and effective – rather than relying on enthusiasm, buzzwords, and what it’s easy to assume is the inescapable logic of enagaging communities. Particularly this one, and this one!

I certainly don’t have all the answers – although the benefit of facing these challenges to varying extents in my day job means I’m slowly understanding more of the solutions – but what really interests me is how other people are tackling the challenges, what case studies people are willing to share, where people have found value, and what levels of commitment companies, particularly larger institutions, are actually committing to community engagement – is anyone finding the returns and solutions that make community pervasive through their company – or are large companies forever destined to limit it to experimenting via the fringes of what they do? And how much real effect does that have? And is technology – targeting adverts, engaging via Twitter etc, actually moving further ahead of where the biggest value is?

Personally, I think there’s a balance between using the tool of community marketing, and traditional digital and offline marketing. And that the trick is to be ahead of the mainstream by a small amount in order to establish and experiment in a space to ensure you’re on the right track before the crowds turn up – but what views have you got?

So are you in a large or small company? Or working as an individual?

Are you attempting to convince others – particularly management of the value of community and social media?

And are you targeting the early adopter communities right now? (e.g. Twitter, Plurk, Seesmic etc), or are you going with more mainstream efforts? (Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon).

You can’t control communities – but you should inspire them

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I went to an interesting discussion group today – unfortunately I arrived late, so I’m not sure how much I can disclose, and I also missed all the introductions.

But there were a range of people in positions of authority for digital products, services and communities from a range of institutions, both commercial and governmental.

And what I can talk about is the fact that we’re still debating whether brand owners should be prepared to relinquish control of what is created, published and discussed on their digital products.

Here’s something shocking:

You can’t, and you don’t control ‘your’ community. Never have. Never will.

The reason is that ‘your’ community isn’t just the people you moderate on your forum, or the people creating content that you can edit and publish. ‘Your’ community is spread far and wide, and comprises of everyone who has any type of interaction with your brand, product or service. At it’s most tenuous, it’s seeing someone in branded clothing, and your opinion of them informing your opinion about that brand – and discussing that offline, on forums, on Instant  Messaging services, and where-ever your conversations are.

Now try and convince me that you’re able to moderate and control everything someone does, everywhere they go? (Obviously I will accept arguments by Chinese Government officials…)

You should look to inspire communities:

This isn’t a new concept. The ideals of inspirational figures have been remembered and followed long after the names of those who tried to control/persecute/murder them. Pick whichever example is most relevant, from Jesus, through Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

If you want a certain type of content produced, or certain types of interaction, you need to plan to inspire your community to predominantly produce it. Whether it’s seeding a community with the right content, rewarding it (with fame or fortune), or simply being a part of the community in the manner which you would like to see, there are plenty of ways to do it – but don’t expect everyone to follow the example.

The only time I can ever advocate control and moderation is in the face of legal issues or persecution of individuals or groups. But this has to be accompanied by free and open explanation of the reasons for your actions. If not, the best case will be an annoyed user. At worst, you could see a forum revolt. Just look at the example of Sony HD DVD codes on Digg.com.

Measuring marriage – and social media

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I’ve been involved in a lot of discussion about measuring social media and social networks, particularly around readership, influence, and social media and community marketing. And I quite often hear the quote that such measurement is like ‘figuring out if you have a good marriage’, which comes from Ian Schafer of Deep Focus. The Adweek article in which is appears goes on to say: “Quantitative measurements will only get you so far. “You can’t assign a number to that,” he said.”

I’m no analytics or statistics expert, but when I thought about, it occurred to me that there’s actually quite a lot of quantitative measurement of marriages that does go on. And judging whether you’re in a good marriage certainly requires benchmarking in some quantitative or qualitative way. Just the same as social media measurement can go pretty far in indicating whether your audience sees you as their one true love:

Anniversaries: Wedding anniversaries have rules (Paper for the 1st year? Gold for 50) to indicate the length of time to all interested parties – because a general trend would be that longevity equals a good marriage. By the same token, longterm, loyal, returning readers indicate you’re doing something right!

Divorce rates: By the same token, you can watch trends on divorces to see if a group is happy in marriage. And you can watch single visit users, and definitely unsubscribers and users deleting their accounts to gauge the same thing for your site. And unlike general figures for splitting up, you’re able to easily isolate individuals to explore the reasons in more detail.

Holidays and presents: Whether it’s a dowry, or the amount your partner spent on the wedding/honeymoon/Valentine’s Day/Birthday presents etc, at some point even the most romantic soul has probably looked at how much is being spent as a guide to how much their partner cares. That’s why engagement rings are supposed to cost 3 month’s wages, for example. And a key metric in the website/user relationship is definitely click-throughs and sales conversions.

Romantic dinners: One of the big tips about marriages is to make time to go out and spend quality time romancing each other. You could see that couples in a good marriage enjoy this time, chat all night, gaze longingly at each other across the table, etc. By the same token, you can monitor the bounce rate and time on site of your visitors to see if they’re visiting several pages and enjoying your company – or splitting at the earliest opportunity.

Doing the housework: Does your partner invest time and effort in doing their share around the house? Do they help to make it a home? And do your users invest time and effort in submitting User Generated Content? Do they customise their profiles? Do they comment on stories and forums?

Are they faithful?: In the modern digital world, it’s highly unlikely a visitor will use just one site in any area of interest. But rather than sulking about their polygamous ways, it’s about following them and looking at who their affair is with. Figure out what is so attractive about the other websites they visit, and look at whether you can beat it, or use it in some way. Rather than seeing them continue to stray, inject some romance by dressing up your website in the RSS feeds of the other destinations, for example.

Talking about your partner: One of the big qualitative and quantitative benchmarks is seeing how often your friends talk about their partners, and whether it’s normally in a good or bad way. That can be with friends over a coffee or a beer – or in a survey by a magazine. Whatever the source, it’s what prompts you to go home and ask why your partner doesn’t treat you as well, or tell them how badly someone else is doing. And it’s the big one for social media measurement, because it’s all about the referrals and the recommendations. Recommendations and links are the equivalent of public displays of affection.

Now, if you combine all that information about two individuals in a relationship, you start seeing that actually, there’s quite a lot of ways you could build up a reasonable idea of whether a relationship is being enjoyed by the people within it, and then be able to compare it to other marriages. It’s not 100% accurate, and maybe they’re staying together for the children, but metrics never cover ever 100%

And by the same token, there’s a huge wealth of information already available on social media marketing, especially if you’re already tracking the normal metrics via a standard analytics package.

The trick is working out what to add to what is already available (influence of prominent couples/recommendations for example), and how to bring it all together into something that is understandable. That’s the alchemy.

Word of Mouth Marketing and Community Marketing defined

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I’ve read a myriad of works attempting to quantify Word of the Mouth Marketing and Community Marketing, ranging from the likes of the Cluetrain, to Wikipedia. Many attempt a philosophical or pseudo-scientific approach, citing ideas such as messages spreading like viruses, key advocates, and bi-directional customer feedback flow.

That’s fine, and some of those approaches have a lot of worth. But I like to make things simple as possible.

Community Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing is simply helping people to find the solutions to their problems (including finding news/sports/entertainment) by asking around. And it leads to the feeling you get when someone you know recommends a good plumber or carpenter who can fix your house, or a mechanic who can get your car on the road. For half price.

That’s it in the most basic nutshell. As a community marketing person, my job is to make the tools on our websites as simple and easy to use as possible to allow people to get to know each other and ask those questions in whatever is the best way for them at the time, and also to let people not currently on our sites know we exist in order for them to satisfy their needs.

That’s why most of the best Word of Mouth and Community Marketing experts aren’t employed by companies or marketing agencies. That’s why the best Word of Mouth and Community Marketing experts are those people who work for some spare cash as plumbers, electricians and carpenters. Because they can’t advertise, and they totally rely on recommendations.

Nobody likes change – or do they?

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I’ve written before about how you can gain a lot by treating your online communities in the same manner as you would a group in real-life.

And that also applies to change.

I’ve seen a lot of people put a lot of hard work into completely rebuilding a site, only to be surprised by the vitriolic reaction of a lot of the heaviest users.

If you’ve ever been into your usual supermarket to find they’ve moved everything around, you might not be so surprised. Especially if the new signage hasn’t been put up. Or think about what would happen if you went into your local town or city to find it had been totally rebuilt overnight.

Ways to avoid such a strong reaction?

1. Give as much warning of the change as possible. It gives people time to adjust to the idea something new will appear.

2. Show them screen shots of the new design and get their comments. Explain how you think the new site will work and let them feed back. They might raise points you wouldn’t have noticed, or suggest better improvements. And they’ll also be better prepared for when the new site goes live.

3. Best of all, let them play with the new site before it becomes a necessity. Launch it on a different URL, say www.website.com/newsite, and then link to it on your front page. That way the early adopters and advocates can go and experiment, giving you a chance to test with a smaller group, before you switch over and let everyone loose.

4. Make sure that you have enough staff to adequately deal with any queries via email, and forums if you have them. The first few days and weeks are crucial for retaining your audience, and the longer people wait for an answer, the more likely it is they’ll find an alternative.

You may still get some resistance, but it will be more moderate, and easier to deal with if your users are so surprised. And don’t forget the basics of a site when you being.

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