And while we’re truly excited to see just how communities will develop around sites using LiveBar, we also know this: true community isn’t about the tools. Instead, community is about people connecting and building relationships around shared interests/goals/values.
LiveBar makes it drop-dead easy for companies to provide gathering points around the compelling content on their sites. But turning those gatherings into genuine communities requires a commitment to the best practices of community management, too: serving as engaging hosts in the discussions, offering fresh content, recognizing and rewarding members for their contributions, welcoming new points of view, etc. We look forward to watching that happen.
At first, this might sound counter-intuitive, but think about it: If you're looking to buy a new book, CD, or gadget (I confess that the Amazon Kindle is on my mind for the coming holiday season) and every piece of feedback is positively glowing, don't you smell a rat and suspect that comment sanitizing is at work? I know I do.
But when customer reviews are balanced, as Mitch notes, you're more likely to trust that feedback site and make a purchase from that site.
The value of negative comments The same can be said of critical remarks by members in branded communities, too, and it's the primary reason we advise our customers to adopt an inclusive commenting and posting policy.
"Originally, most clients will say, 'No, no, no,'" to that recommendation, says Julia McDonald, LiveWorld's senior manager of moderation services. "But we tell them, 'Those comments are just as important as the positive ones.' It lets [the companies] know what the issues are."
Kristie Wells, the founder and president of the Social Media Club, has a similar take. "It shows a confident company, that they can take a little criticism," Kristie says. "Allowing negative comments to stand could build a level of trust in the customer base that says, 'This company is not trying to sugarcoat everyone.'"
On her own blog, Kristie is guided by her own "no-[expletive] policy." As long as commenters are adding to the discussion at hand and not resorting to personal attacks or harassment in the process, their contributions stay.
The 'Rules of the Road' As companies launch new communities, we exhort them to post community standards, or "rules of the road," to a page that's easy for members to find and refer back to. Good community standards make clear the kind of content, language, tone that is encouraged and allowed, and what isn't acceptable. They should also note whether comments are moderated before or after they're published (we generally recommend that latter, but every community is different).
Companies that advocate for and then actually embrace a full range of voices -- complimentary and dissenting alike -- are well on their way to building strong communities.
I've just finished reading "18 Ways to Engage Users Online: A Guide for Community Managers," a short eBook (eight pages) from GOLO.com managing editor Angela Connor.
It's a quick and easy read -- and a good one. Whether you're a longtime community manager or a newcomer to the profession, you're sure to come away with some practical recommendations that will apply to your own community.
Here are a few suggestions from Angela that stood out to me:
Encourage communication between members Just like the host of a good party, a community manager works to connect members with similar interests to each other.
For example: If Kevin posts about his plans to attend a NASCAR race in Miami this weekend and Kathy is asking on a separate forum how she might score tickets to the event, a plugged-in community manager will spot the link and introduce Kathy to Kevin.
Acknowledge good work publicly From Angela:
When you come across a great blog, interesting comment or great photo, send your compliments to the author, and do it publicly on their profile page or directly on the content. Remember, you’re the community leader and your opinion matters a great deal. So don’t be stingy with it. Positive reinforcement goes a long way, and it will make that member feel valued and vested
Get to know the community On the surface, your members may be coming together around a product or service from a brand, but what really keeps them coming back again and again is the strength of the personal connections they make within the community.
As a community manager, you can help build those relationships by learning -- and then talking about -- just what makes your members tick. Is it their kids? Their job? Their church? Their pets? Dig into the topics that really matter to your community, and the members will stick around.
This is the third in a series of interviews recorded at the MarketingProfs Digital Mixer, held in Scottsdale, Arizona on October 22-23, 2008.
Mack Collier is a social media consultant and blogger at The Viral Garden.
One of the most popular features on The Viral Garden is the "Company Blog Checkups," where Mack grades corporate bloggers on their efforts in creating content, generating and responding to comments, and posting regularly on their sites. And in this SocialVoice Conversation, recorded at the 2008 MarketingProfs Digital Mixer (MPDM), Mack explains some of those corporate blogging best practices
SHOW NOTES
* Mack offers his impressions on the MPDM conference.
* Bryan asks Mack what questions companies need to consider when deciding whether to blog.
* Mack explains why a blog shouldn't be an "island."
* Mack discusses how companies can start to create compelling content on their blogs.
Community managers Tiffany Childs, from Yelp Denver, and Tim Poindexter, from Disaboom, sat on the panel. They fielded a series of questions from both me and the 30-plus participants who had crowded into the basement of the Whiskey Bar. The result, I thought, was a solid hour's worth of informative and engaging discussion on community best practices.
Below are some of highlights from the panel discussion:
Defining community
Tim said his Disaboom community "empowers people to be who they are and connect with people like them;" it provides a place for members to build "genuine and meaningful relationships."
Tiffany noted that her members can meet and communicate can meet with people they know -- or don't know.
Role of the community manager
Tiffany is charged with raising the awareness of Yelp Denver and growing the membership ranks of her 7-month-old community (other Yelp communities have been around for longer). She supports and connects members to each other by jumping into relevant online community discussions and hosting regular offline events around town. She also writes and publishes a weekly newsletter that highlights members and businesses.
Tim helps keep the online discussions on Disaboom informative, engaging, and civil (more on this third point later in the post). He's also recruited outside disability experts to contribute content to the community, and more recently, he's been charged with managing the site's analytics.
Metrics of success and advertising dollars
Disaboom, a site and community which connects individuals touched by disability, is free to members but is supported by contextually-relevant advertising. Tim said that unique visitors and page views are the key drivers of ad revenue revenue.
For Yelp Denver, according to Tiffany, advertising won't kick in until the community has reached "critical mass."
Managing community conflict
On this front, Tim had the line of the night: "We don't legislate morality; we mandate dignity." While Disaboom supports a full spectrum of opinions and beliefs, it does not welcome or allow personal personal attacks or harassment from its community discussions. Tim said that members who violate the site's terms of use and don't heed the warning to change their behavior will be suspended or barred from the community.
Rewarding members
Good community managers reward their key contributors, and Disaboom and Yelp Denver are no exception. Tiffany organizes special events for members of the Yelp Elite Squad, while Disaboom sends an occasional gift of thanks through the mail.
Following the community managers
Here's where to keep up with Tim and Tiffany on a daily basis:
It's December -- and that means plenty of blogging and chatter about the year that's been in social media, as well as what's potentially in store for 2009. (In fact, had Mother Nature not interviewed last week, I would have been doing just that at a Social Media Breakfast 5 in Ottawa.)
This morning, Peter Kim published Social Media Predictions 2009, a crystal-ball-gazing collaboration from 14 marketers.
Here are some of favorite takeaways:
David Armano reminds organizations Web 2.0 marketing programs need "qualified and passionate people to make them successful."
Rohit Bharvaga predicts that marketers will shift from expensive focus groups to social media "listening programs."
Pete Blackshaw, Charlene Li, and Greg Verdino expect online social networkers suffering from "indigestion" (Blackshaw) to shrink their social graph and focus more on the quality of their connections than quantity.
Chris Brogan eyes a social media shakeout ("lots and lots of consolidation and shuttering") in 2009, as flimsy business models collapse.
Todd Defren worries that the already reluctant Fortune 1000 companies may keep their marketing spend away from social media "if negative examples outweigh positive examples."
Jason Falls calls for Google to scoop up Twitter, giving some juice and kick-in-the-pants stability to the "single-most useful communications software and social utility in recent memory."
Ann Handley suggests that "dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball."
Joseph Jaffe hails community as the "killer app" for 2009.
Scott Monty and Andy Sernovitz argue that top-notch customer service will be a requirement for brands that want to rise above mediocrity.
Jeremiah Owyang predicts that new e-commerce widgets will connect consumers to reviews from "people they actually know and trust."
Ben McConnell thinks Matt Bacak is headed for a new line of work.
Bernoff joined five other panelists to review and debate the key findings and recommendations in the study. Among them: Only 16 percent of respondents to a survey this year said they trusted corporate blogs.
Scroll to the CoverItLive widget at the bottom of this post to see my notes from the discussion.
Building corporate blogs that rock!
So just what should you do if you're a company or brand that wants to publish an engaging and trustworthy blog? Here are some suggestions:
Don't just write about your products and services. While there are exceptions, readers aren't coming to your blog to hear all about release version 4.2 from your product line. They can head to your main corporate website for that kind of information. Instead, blog about the goings-on in your industry, and the issues and events that your customers really care about.
Listen to the community. If you're not sure what your readers want to hear from you, just ask them. And then, make sure you listen.
Kill the jargon; find your SocialVoice. Use natural, human-sounding language in your writing, not marketing gobbledegook or corporate-speak (so, mentions of best-in-class or integrated, all-purpose solutions are out.) From time to time, you might include posts related to your personal interests (your kids, your favorite sports team, a recent vacation, etc.), too.
Show your passion. If you're not genuinely excited about the content of your blog and connecting with your readers, you'll wind up with a site that nobody wants to read.
Venture out beyond your borders. One of the very best ways to drive readers to your blog is to comment on the blogs of others. Research other blogs in your industry -- yes, your competitors', too -- and become a regular contributor to those discussions. Also, give strong consideration to joining relevant social networks and building relationships there. When it's appropriate, you can point your new friends and colleagues back to your blog.
These are my top five recommendations. Have any to add?
While you chew on that, have a look at the liveblog notes below.
Yesterday, as part of a comment thread to a blog post by Dawn Foster about the potential value of corporate blogging, I shared the highlights of LiveWorld's Social Media Content Guidelines.
It only makes sense that I do the same in this space.
Why we have guidelines
As a company that's all about online social networking and community building, LiveWorld has plenty of employees who regularly communicate across the social web -- here on SocialVoice, on their personal blogs, on client sites, on Facebook, etc. It's a natural part of our DNA.
Sometimes we're representing the company in an obvious way by the nature of what we write or comment about on social sites. On other occasions, we're producing seemingly unrelated content around own hobbies or personal interests (movie reviews, gardening, family lives, our own athletic accomplishments, etc.) -- but we're mindful that our work is always a reflection of the company as a whole.
We created these guidelines both to support the talents and online freedom of expression of LiveWorlders and to reflect the best interests and reputation of the company.
We think they're easy to understand, straightforward, and free of corporate mumbo-jumbo or legalese. See if you agree.
LiveWorld Social Media Content Guidelines
Be transparent
If you’re writing or commenting about Company business, always identify yourself and LiveWorld by name.
If you contribute to or maintain a personal blog or website that covers the Company’s business space, make clear that your opinions are your own and not LiveWorld’s.
Be respectful
We encourage you express your opinions, but we ask that you don’t resort to personal attacks, harassment, cultural insensitivity, or discrimination in the process.
Be yourself
We value your personality and individual interests, including those that fall outside of your primary work responsibilities. Let that personality shine in your online content!
Be smart
Some company projects, lessons learned, and success stories are fine to share; others aren’t. Don’t reveal company secrets or proprietary information, and make sure you have permission from our clients and partners before mentioning them by name.
Your words and statements online are a reflection of LiveWorld. Use your best judgment when deciding whether content is appropriate to publish. If you have any doubts, ask your company executive.
Tools and technology account for only 20% of a community's success
Forums are merely a technological tool that is featured in many online communities -- including many of those that we build and manage for clients. As Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang often points out (disclosure: LiveWorld is a Forrester client) -- and we happen to agree with him -- technology contributes to but a small part of a community's success or failure (20%). The people/services part -- the planning and strategy, the relationship building, etc. -- is far more important (80%) in the long run.
The choice of tools should always come after the strategy, and not the other way around. The needs of the business and the community drive the choice of technologies.
But when you are deciding on the tools...
Forums are certainly one way to go, but there are plenty of other tools that can be used -- often in concert -- for supporting online communities. Among them:
User profiles
Ratings and reviews
Photos
Widgets
Blogs
Videos
Microblogs
Podcasts
Answer boards
Live events
And more are on the way as social media evolves.
Online tools make it easier than ever to connect with people (often in geographically-dispersed areas) around shared interests. But you still need the engagement of people -- usually on the community management side, and always on the membership side -- for your community to grow and thrive.
Thanks to the continued proliferation of Twittersquatting and the relative ease of acting as a "brand impostor," just how are we to know that a company is who it says it is on Twitter?
I have four suggestions:
1. Give out your e-mail address.
If you're a product manager at BrandLMNOP, share your @BrandLMNOP.com address in replies or direct messages, when appropriate. That gives your followers an easy way to connect with you independently from the Twitter platform.
2. Point your followers to other non-Twitter pages where you have an online presence
A related tactic is to direct people to your blog(s) (company and/or personal), bio on your corporate website, public LinkedIn page, or other social networking profile -- all places where your name, image, position within the company, etc. can be cross-referenced.
3. Offer your followers some behind-the-scenes insights in your Twitter stream that they would never get from a squatter.
Point to a video conversation with co-workers that you've just posted on YouTube.
Offer to host a Lunch 2.0 session at company HQ, and then follow up with a confirmation/invitation through a separate channel (e-mail, Eventbrite, etc.).
4. Confirm your corporate Twitter account by leaving a comment for Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang.
Jeremiah is an influential Forrester analyst (disclosure: LiveWorld is a Forrester client) who's covered Twitter brandjacking in great detail. He invites brands to leave a comment on this open post to help validate their Twitter identity.
Multiple connection points
In short, confirming your corporate Twitter identity is easiest to do when you can give your followers several outposts for connecting with you online.
And of course, a distributed content/relationship-building strategy just makes good business since any way you slice it. But you already knew part, right?
One reason why? Businesses don't taken the time to craft a strategy around their blogging efforts.
In this audio conversation from the 2009 SXSW Conference, Matt Ceniceros, senior communications specialist at FedEx, explains the folly of that directionless approach to blogging, arguing that organizations must "define [their] success" before launching a social media initiative.
SHOW NOTES
* Matt talks about FedEx's efforts in adding new-media elements to the online newsroom and explains how the project paved the way for the the FedEx Citizenship Blog.
* Matt discusses the importance of "small wins" when trying to secure executive buy-in for the implementation of social media.
* Matt addresses the general lack of trust in corporate blogs; he contends that each brand must define its own success with blogging.
* Matt explains how the FedEx Citizenship Blog, with some 120 employee bloggers, reflects the company's mission and corporate culture.
* Matt shares the story of how a suggestion on the corporate blog ultimately lead to FedEx Office Free Resume Printing Day, held on March 10, 2009.
The week-old Google Sidewiki has a potentially far-reaching impact for brands.
Of note:
1. A Sidewiki comment can be left to any web page of any brand site. All that's needed to use Sidewiki is a relatively simple download of the free product (for Firefox and Internet Explorer now, with Google Chrome still to come) and keeping the Google Toolbar open in the web browser. From there, all websites become instantly social, with a comment window appearing alongside each page enabling commenting and voting.
2. Brands don't have much say over the content that appears in a Sidewiki. Apart from an initial post that a publisher/content creator can leave in a Sidewiki, all comments are ultimately displayed according to a Google algorithm. Users--and site owners--can rate comments as not "useful" and flag spam comments/hate speech for abuse, but at least so far, doing so will not necessarily make those comments disappear. There are also no moderation controls or options for brands and publishers in Sitewiki.
3. Brand monitoring is as important as ever. Sidewiki is the latest product giving consumers the power to talk about brands in a public space online. Brand managers, agencies, and community managers should be diligent in reviewing Sidewiki commentary to key pages on their websites to gauge customer, fan, and detractor sentiment, and then engage when and where appropriate. Robust monitoring tools haven't yet been developed, but since an API is available, expect that to change soon.
I wanted to share my slides from a "Best Practices in Online Engagement" presentation I delivered last Thursday, October 8, at the Integrated Marketing Summit in Kansas City. I was part of a three-person panel on social media best practices with Virginia Miracle of Ogilvy PR and IBM's Rebecca Butler.
As with many of my presentations, the slides are mostly images that are meant to complement the stories that I'm telling; they aren't always meaningful when viewed in isolation, outside the event. To help, I'm including some of my speaking notes as they correspond to the individual slides. I've also turned most of the slide images above into links.
Slide 2 I knew I had a friendly audience in Kansas City when my remark about the Red Sox cap draw a thunderous applause from several attendees. Sports fandom can be good for business, because it offers an immediate human point in comon. A few hours after my presentation, in fact, I was watching the Red Sox-Angels playoff game with a fellow former New Englander.
Slide 3 So what shouldn't be rocket science about engaging with customers in social media but yet is often forgotten: being genuinely helpful, being around before the sale, not force-feeding marketing messages down someone's throat in an online community or online social network. It's an argument Chris Brogan makes all the time.
Slide 4 Mitch Joel is one of the very best content marketers I know. When he blogs and podcasts, he rarely--if ever--talks about his own company's services and projects. Instead, he serves as a voice and resource for his industry of digital marketing. He becomes the thoughtful, insightful marketer that we want to do business with. This approach has helped Mitch's agency, Twist Image, to grow and thrive in recent years.
Slides 5-6 We don't really talk to brands. We talk to the people who work for those brands. When I want to talk to Ford, I hunt down Scott Monty.
Slide 7 More brands should consider employing or talking to someone like Jeremy Pepper to help them find and express their social voice. A big reason why corporate blogs lie at the bottom of the trust ladder is their blandess and lack of any real opinion. Jeremy Pepper? He certainly ain't bland, and he isn't shy about writing what he really thinks.
Slide 8 Chase Jarvis is a professional photographer who understands the importance of giving back to his community online. This screenshot comes from a "story behind the story" video answering blog reader and Facebook fan questions about how Chases uses a tripod. It was recorded on the set of Chase's recent photo shoot in New Zealand.
Slide 9 How does a brand like Starbucks show that it's really listening to its customers and fans? By reporting back on the progress of suggestions submitted through the My Starbucks Ideas site. The Mini Starbucks Card was one of the first community-generated ideas carried through to production, and this announcement from Chuck Davidson has become one of the community's most highly-trafficked and interacted-on posts.
Slide 10 eBay (disclosure: a LiveWorld client) runs a program called Voices for some 150 power members in its online communities. These members are included in communications--and their feedback is sought and incorporated--for potential new eBay products and changes to the community. The result? A "small army" of brand advocates, according to our conversations with eBay.
Slide 11 Businesses and brands need to set "house rules"--for their digital properties. These could take the form of a comment policy on a blog or easy-to-find community standards in a destination community and outline what is acceptable/unacceptable behavior/commentary/etc.
Slide 12 What's one option in a community or social channel where long-time members have "poisoned" the well and are unwelcoming and downright unhelpful to newcomers? Firing those members. It's a risky tactic but sometimes a necessary one to ensure the community's long-term survival.
Slide 13 This is Bill Johnston's graphical representation of the "presence framework" that Chris Brogan laid out earlier this year. It indicates the importance of creating a digital "home base" (corporate website, corporate blog, etc.) while also connecting with customers and community members in other distributed social channels ("outposts" and "passports" across the social web) across the social media landscape.
Slides 14-15 The presence framework in action: examples of Chase Jarvis's outposts--his Twitter account (@ChaseJarvis) and Facebook Page.
Slides 16-17 Possible to give back to your community on the most "boring subject imaginable" and generate substantial revenue in the process? Christopher S. Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast has demonstrated that it is!
I got a glimpse into Kodak's social media efforts during last week's 140 Conference in Los Angeles, and came away impressed.
Kodak was the primary sponsor of the event, so its presence was impossible to miss. Heck, even name of the conference venue itself -- the Kodak Theatre -- ensured we'd have the brand top of mind.
A couple of key takeaways for me:
* Kodak recognizes that social media engagement by brand helps to create customer evangelists. Case in point: Kodak's contest this past summer to rename its "lame"-sounding Zi8 pocket camera (disclosure: I was so impressed with the camera while testing it at the conference sponsor table for five minutes that I ordered one over the weekend).
CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett (pictured above) explained how the marketing group turned to their -- and his (@JeffreyHayzlett) -- Twitter followers and to the readers of their Thousand Words blog, for suggestions. The response was overwhelming. Kodak received thousands of recommendations and will announce the winning entry and camera renaming during a formal launch in January.
* Kodak's content-and-engagement approach to Social Everywhere is both centralized and distributed.
Here, on Kodak's "home turf," staffers can share their industry insights and "tell [their] story," as chief blogger Jenny Cisney (above) put it to me after the 140 Conference.
"No longer can you wait for customers to come to your website and come to you," Cisney said. "So that's why we're going to where our customers are. If they're on Facebook, well, we'll have a Facebook page. If they're on Twitter, we're going to have Twitter accounts. That's how we determine where we're going to participate."
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