Online Community and Social Media Trends, Topics and Best Practices
Updated: 27 min 14 sec ago
3 Sacred Cows About Online Community That Need to Be Challenged
3 Online Community Misconceptions and how to stop them
You don’t own community, the community owns the community
Original intention: To stop (mostly brand) community hosts from being overly-controlling of the community
Why it is bad: No ownership = no responsibility, and no long term stewardship.
Start by listening
Original intent: Listening was an easy (and fairly passive) way to get familiar with the social web.
Why it is bad: Ok, this one isn’t necessarily bad, just a bit misguided. Start with a conversation about your goals for engaging on the social web.
Go where your community is
Original intent: Don’t just buy a platform and expect your community to show up
Why this is b
Photo cred: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skinnyde/146763376/
The sacred cows I mention below have been on my mind for several months now, but I was inspired to take action after a community management panel that I attended at SxSWi. My intention with this post is not to suggest that we do away these sacred cows, but to start to be critical of them. I fear that these 3 cows, in particular, are being accepted as gospel, and those new (and not so new) to online community building really don’t challenge them.
As with many good things gone wrong, these cows all began with good intentions.
Cow #1: You don’t own the community, the community owns the community
Original intention: To stop (mostly brand) community hosts from being overly-controlling of the community, and being too directive of community interactions.
Why this cow should be challenged: No ownership = absolution of responsibility, and weak or no long term stewardship. The host *does* own parts of the community experience, and certainly has the responsibility to create a virtual “clean, well-lit place” for their brand or organization. Perhaps a better cow would be: “You don’t own the community, but you have a responsibility to be a good host, leader and listener”. Speaking of listening…
Cow #2: Start by listening
Original intent: Listening was an easy (and fairly passive) way to get brands and organizations familiar with the social web.
Why this cow should be challenged: Ok, this one isn’t necessarily bad, just a bit misguided. My recommendation to clients is to start with a conversation about your goals for engaging on the social web. A listening strategy is key to managing a successful online presence, but brands and organizations also need to interact. Another disturbing trend I see with “just listening” is that some brands are wholesale farming out listening and interaction to their agency of choice, as opposed to creating direct brand to customer or organization to stakeholder relationships.
Cow #3: Go where your community is
Original intent: Don’t just buy a platform and expect your community to show up – (a.k.a. Build it and they will come).
Why this cow should be challenged: Many organizations are doing a poor job of evaluating the opportunity for community on their own domain, and are setting up outposts on large social sites like Facebook because it is relatively easy and (initially) inexpensive. In our “Participating int he Social Media Ecosystem” research project from January of 2010, we saw that only about 1/2 (56%) of the participants had a comprehensive social strategy in place – meaning, only 1/2 of the organizations had spent time assessing and researching where their community currently was, and the opportunities for on and off domain engagement.
Assuming that the best place to engage members of your online community is offsite (say, a Facebook fan page) is probably a big mistake, and a lost opportunity to help transform a static corporate site into a more social experience.
Those are my top 3 Sacred Cows. What do you think? And, more importantly, what are yours?
SxSWi 2010: The Good Stuff (so far)
I’m in Austin for SxSWi (South by Southwest interactive) with several colleagues from Forum One and several thousand colleagues from around the world working in the digital and interactive fields. The “festival” is a nonstop series of keynotes and panel discussions during the day, and social events and meetups during the off hours (and in between sessions). What is the common thread tying everyone together? A strong interest in digital technology and a desire to connect with other like minded people.
As with any whirlwind experience, I will be processing the event for weeks to come, but I wanted to share some of the sessions that have been particularly thought-provoking or insightful.
Jaron Lanier’s Keynote
This has been, by far, the most thought provoking session I have attended at SxSW. Jaron Lanier started by inviting everyone to put away their laptops and smartphones, and to experience the session fully. It was a great idea, but also means there isn’t a good record of the session. Below are my notes and impressions:
- Wind instruments were the first computers, with the notes and silence being binary information. Flute-like instruments evolved into pipe organs, which evolved into self playing organs and pianos.
- Jaron referenced Project Xanadu as an idealized state for the Internet, where everyone would have 1 password (1 account) and there would only be one logical copy of a document. Infomediaries would disappear, every person would be a “first class citizen” and content creator, and content creators would be paid directly for their work.
- Real-time is the opposite of (human) dignity. Stated another way: machines are consumers and producers of real time streams, humans are not.
- People are “mean” online when they switch from an individual context to a pack context, where there is a natural pecking order, and a natural “loser” (person on the bottom of the totem pole”
- Jaron recommended reading: When the Machine Stops
See also:
The Monday Keynote SxSW Should Have Had
Danah Boyd’s on Privacy and Publicity
Danah Boyd gave an interesting talk on the current state of online privacy, and unpacked recent events concerning Facebook privacy issues as well as the privacy issues surrounding the Google Buzz launch.
See:
Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity (full text of presentation)
danah boyd’s Opening Remarks on Privacy and Publicity
Danah Boyd SXSW Keynote: Privacy is History
Chris Messina: ActivityStrea.ms: Is it Getting Streamy in Here?
Chris Messina from Google gave a solid review of the history of online streams, with his take being that we are essentially stuck in the RSS / late 90s portal mentality. He went on to articulate a vision for intelligent lifestreams, and more specifically, to give an overview of activitystrea.ms, an extension of the Atom feed format that supports social activity.
See:
ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?
Chris Messina on ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here? at SXSW
Social Marketing Compensation Research
The Social Marketing Compensation Study was initiated in December of 2009 as a joint research project between the Online Community Research Network and WOMMA. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the emerging field of social media marketing, and specifically, to explore issues related to compensation and satisfaction in the area of social marketing. Forum One released a report based on the study this week.
We received approximately 224 responses. Participants represent a wide swath of the types of organizations participating in online community building activities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, interactive marketing firms and independent consultants.
A sample of the 220+ organizations that participated include (with their permission):
HP, Nielsen, Community Partners, Satmetrix, ComBlu, Avid, Fanscape, ZAGG, Bumbleride Inc., Vemma, PEMCO Insurance, Xorcom, Procter & Gamble, GlobalGiving, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Culligan, and Open Text.
Several key issues pertaining to the compensation of marketers working in social media surfaced during this report, including:
• On average, the female participants earned an annual salary of $64k, which is significantly lower than the average annual salary for men, which was close to $104k. (Our data set was 58% male and 42% female).
• Less than a third of the respondents, 31% (69), indicated that they received a salary increase in the past 12 months, and 19% (42) said they had actually taken a decrease in salary within the last year.
• On average, participants are somewhat satisfied with their current salary, with an average satisfaction score of 3.2 (where 1 = Dissatisfied and 5 = Very Satisfied) and a median score of 3.5. The male participants, on average, are slightly more satisfied with their overall salary amounts than the female participants.
Other Highlights Include:
Salaries by Gender
On average, the female participants earned an annual salary of $64k, which is significantly lower than the average annual salary for men, which was close to $104k. A large number of female participants indicated that they had a salary range that was less than $50k which brought the average salary lower for the women, whereas the male respondents, taken as a whole, had a much more evenly distributed salary ranges.
Salaries by Age
According to the respondents that participated in our survey, people who are in the age category of 41 – 50 are making the highest annual salary of $117k. The respondents aged 51 – 59 were the second highest salary earners, with an average salary of $109.5k. The lower salary averages belong to the 21 – 25 respondents, who earn an average salary of $28k. The overall average annual salary for all participants was $80.7k.
Salary Increases
Less than a third of the respondents, 31% (69), indicated that they received a salary increase in the past 12 months, and 19% (42) said they had actually taken a decrease in salary within the last year.
The Full Report
The full Social Marketing Compensation report includes additional information about job descriptions, departments in charge of social marketing, job satisfaction and other areas related to the emergent role of Social Marketing. To purchase the report ($99), please go to our Research Store.
Developing a Social Strategy: Research Project Open for Participation
The next Online Community Research Network project is open for participation. In January, OCRN members discussed and prioritized a long list of topics, and the issue that made top of the list was “Developing Social a Strategy”.
The OCRN chose to study how social media strategy is developed, communicated and implemented because, frankly, so many organizations are actively struggling with the topic. We hope that by getting real-world feedback, advice and experiences from practitioners (read: the folks ACTUALLY doing the work), we can all gain insight in to this important topic.
If you are involved in the development of your organizations Social Media and Community strategy, I would encourage you to participate in a short survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ocr_socstrat
The topics we are exploring in this project include:
- The definition of social media strategy;
- The current scope of community and social media efforts;
- The current state of strategy development;
- The process organizations are using to develop strategy;
- Ownership and governance of social strategy;
- The biggest challenges that executives and teams are facing
I would ask that you please complete the survey by next Friday, 3/12. All participants will get a copy of the results.
The tag for this research project is: #socstrat
Share/BookmarkBack to Basics: Ecosystem Research – Find Your Community
This post is part of an ongoing series about developing an online community strategy. As a reminder, all posts are being tagged #ocb2b.
In my last post, “Want to Know What Community Members Need? Just Ask” I discussed the importance of asking your members what they need from you as a community host, and what they need from other community members, as part of your extended community.
In this post, I will discuss the methodology for conducting a discovery exercise of the relevant parts of the social web to find out where your community (or potential community) is already working and playing. .
Most community strategies have traditionally focused on the hosted properties of the organization. The reality is that there is an ever expanding universe of online touchpoints that an organization’s community members are participating in off-domain. An ecosystem research exercise should be conducting as part of a strategy development (or strategy course correction) exercise in order to discover where the off domain centers or activity are, and who the most vocal and active participants are. The discovery exercise is essentially an audit of the current community ecosystem, including customer, prospect, partner and competitor touch points. This information will help establish a baseline of market-oriented sites and activity, which will be important to understand the opportunities for new community activity by your (or your client’s) brand.
What Should You Look For?
The purpose of this discovery exercise is to look for existing signs of life for your community “off domain”. Signs of life include conversations about your company, product, or issues related to your particular market or issue area. What should you specifically search for as part of your discovery process? The following list is a jumping off point for starting your discovery process:
- Mentions of company name
- Mentions of brand or product names
- Issues related to you market
- Topics related to your market
- Mentions of key employees
- Advocates or spokespeople
- Mentions of competitors
Where Should You Look?
Using tools like Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, Delicious, and Ice Rocket, conduct searches for brand mentions in news, the mass social media sphere (blogs, twitter) and on smaller niche communities. You will quickly come up a list of the communities hosting conversations about your organization, products or brand, and the members (often time bloggers) engaging in those conversations.
It’s also important to research activity on the “walled garden” communities, and larger social media sites that some times don’t surface in search results. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, Get Satisfaction, etc. In particular, look for ad-hoc groups that have sprung up around your brand, or content tagged with your brand and/or products.
Key Sites:
Google Blog Search The goal of Blog Search is to include every blog that publishes a site feed. Casts a wide net, but will return some irrelevant content depending on the specificity of your search.
Technorati Technorati was the first blog search engine and directory. Though its popularity is waning, it is still a valuable tool for determining a blog’s reach and influence via “Technorati Authority.”
Ice Rocket The new kid on the block in blog search engines. Comparable to Google in simplicity of interface, with the added benefit of keyword trend analysis.
Twitter Search Advanced search allows you to search for Tweets by keyword, people, location, and sentiment (based on usage of emoticons).
Backtweets Allows you to search for links to any URL published on Twitter. Automatically converts URL shorteners like bit.ly and ow.ly.
Klout Assigns a score to Twitter profiles to help you assess the reach, influence, and content of Twitter users.
BoardTracker Best search engine for public discussion forums (e.g. Yahoo Groups). Will return interesting, but sometimes inappropriate content.
Digg Social bookmarking site for News-related content, where users vote for their favorite articles.
Delicious Social bookmarking site for all content. Frequently bookmarking and tagging your content on Delicious will boost your prominence in Google search results.
YouTube The largest video-sharing site. Allows you to create a channel, upload original video, embed videos on your web site, and monitor videos related to your brand.
Flickr A photo sharing site with more than 4 billion images. You can upload and organize sets of photos, and monitor photos related to your brand.
Slideshare The largest presentation-sharing site.
Scribd One of the largest social document sites, with laods of white papers and articles.
Quantcast Provides rough traffic estimates and demographic usage information for most sites of relative prominence on the web.
Outputs of the Ecosystem Audit
Insights that will likely emerge from your ecosystem audit include:
- Key news sites
- List of most active members (potential community members)
- List of influential users (potential community members)
- Thought leaders (personalities shaping your industry)
- List of active groups (potential partner communities)
- Independent community sites (potential partner communities)
- Key blogs (Niche bloggers and group blogs)
- In-person meetups and events (you might consider participating)
- A list of spaces where your community *isn’t* (helpful in prioritizing where to participate)
One helpful by-product of conducting an ecosystem audit is the set of fundamental elements for an ongoing listening strategy: search terms, topics and relevant online sources. The ecosystem audit process forces a team to experiment with and refine search terms and topics in order to discover content sources. Many of the tools mentioned above support RSS feeds with near real-time results. So, wether you use a simple tool, like google reader for your listening strategy, or something more industrial strength like a Radian6 or Scoutlabs, you have completed a lot of the prerequisite work for ongoing listening and monitoring.
In the next two upcoming posts “Designing an Online Presence Architecture” and “Engagement Planning” I will describe how to take the inputs of goal definition, member research and the ecosystem audit to create an Online Presence Architecture and to develop an engagement plan.
Recommended Reading:
Participating in the Social Media Ecosystem
Online Community Expert Interview: Jordan Williams, REI
This month’s Online Community Expert interview is with Jordan Williams, Manager of Digital Engagement at REI. In this role, Jordan is responsible for creating deeper customer engagement through the creation of content and community touch points on REI.com and throughout the social web.
Though firmly planted in the digital world, Jordan is a believer in well-roundedness and previously led REI’s national advertising and marketing strategic planning programs. Prior to REI he was Director of Collegiate Marketing at Red Bull North America and worked on the agency side creating experiential marketing programs for clients such as Sony Music, Mercedes Benz, Wells Fargo and American Express. Finally as a holder of a fine arts degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts he’d like to offer the perspective that marketing is pretty much just theater with better analytics.
Q: What excites you most about your role at REI?
What excites me most about my role at REI is two-fold:
First and foremost it’s the delight and challenge organizationally of helping to move a venerable 70-year old co-op forward in the digital age, especially into increasingly social spaces online. I find that we, like most large brands outside the tech world, are experiencing the strategic and operational challenges of transforming from a push-marketing organization to one embracing a truly customer-centric, two-way marketing and communication model – as many of us have surely experienced: it’s one thing to sign off on the concepts or strategies that drive social media success, but another thing to embrace them at their fundamental core on a day-to-day basis.
Secondly, as a mission driven retail co-op focused on getting people outside it’s exciting to be working on online community because it’s such a natural fit. We’ve been a member-based organization from the day we were founded, we have retail locations around the country where members gather and connect, and we have an extensive outreach program connecting with hundreds of local non-profits, etc. Indeed our troubles are rarely about building a sustainable social media strategy from the ground up, but rather building one that can connect the multitude of connection points, interactions, and content pools we already have in place in the real world.
Q: As a Co-Op, REI already has a passionate and active offline member community. How has the existing community factored in to your online community and social media strategy?
Well you’ve hit the nail on the head as for us it’s really about how we build on the community we already have in place. We want to honor what’s already there while at the same time enable online and mobile connections that will allow it to grow organically and for us that means being able to take a more long term approach. As we’re already supporting our members desire to connect via all of our traditional retail events, classes, outings, etc, on the digital side of things we’re in the enviable place of being able to work on building lasting and meaningful online interactions rather than feeling pressured simply to launch something quickly because of it’s the hot trend right now.
Q. What is the most valuable external (off domain) online community or social media touch point for REI that provides clear and compelling value to both your customer and REI?
We’ve been finding that Facebook is our most valuable external social touch point. The nature of how we want to connect and share with our fans/followers, and they with one another, largely means being more interactive and multimedia that say Twitter might allow. That said we certainly see the opportunity for crafting increasingly platform specific interactions, for example as a retailer we’re certainly aware of the success that Dell has had with their Twitter specific sales strategy.
Q: What advice would you have for a beginning community manager?
For me I see how easy it is to get caught up in the exciting side of the business, e.g. the technology, the platform, the shiny, bleeding edge new feature. But from my experience the way to make an impact is absolutely on the strategic planning and organizational development side of things. It’s not sexy and it’s certainly not easy, but ultimately the real impact if you work on the brand side is found through fundamental organizational transformation.
As an added bonus, I was able to spend a few minutes with Jordan at the Online Community Summit in Sonoma last fall. The video below is from our conversation.
Share/BookmarkOnline Community Unconference East 2010 – A Report Back
Forum One hosted the Online Community Unconference East last Wednesday, February 10th in NYC at the Digital Sandbox. Most of the attendees were able to make it despite the snowy conditions.
Moving Forward, Together
Although it was cold and snowy outside, we had a warm and cheery group to kick off the morning. I ordered extra hot chocolate to further brighten the mood. We felt like this event was particularly well-timed. Boosted by recovery from the great recession, interest in online communities and social media is at an all time high. Most organizations are actively developing or refining community and social media strategies, and are trying to figure out what to build and where to engage. For many organizations, the goal is to develop a holistic social web strategy that refines based on learning from previous years of experimentation and many experiments strewn across the social web. The real question for me coming in to this Unconference: How do we move forward? This question framed the Unconference, and played out in our theme “Moving forward, together”.
I asked the participants to use the theme as a lens for their discussions. Specifically, I encouraged participants to think about this: what do you need to move forward personally, professionally, at your organization, and as an industry?
Setting the Agenda
Heidi Nobantu Saul was our facilitator for the Unconference, and she did a masterful job of explaining the concepts of Open Space and guiding the group through the agenda setting process. The essence of Open Space is that participants are free to suggest a session topic, and those who host a topic are responsible for hosting the conversation. Participants are responsible for placing themselves in sessions that they are learning from and / or contributing to the most. In short: if you are in a session that you are not contributing to or getting value from, then go find another one.
Session Topics
The final agenda had approximately 30 sessions on topics including:
Are we creating community really?
Douglas Atkin hosted a session that asked the simple question: are we REALLY creating “community” online? The group was somewhat divided over the topic, but most eventually agreed that online communities do foster a certain level of connectedness that qualifies as community.
Notes for the session can be found here.
Integrating Social into the Enterprise
Pauline Ores of IBM convened this session to explore the integration of the social web into the Enterprise. Two key theme from the session: 1. Organizational transformation is needed to get real value out of social/community initiatives and 2. The results/benefits of social/community initiatives are useless if not tied directly to clear business objectives and integrated back into the enterprise.
Online Community & SEO
David Flores of Everyday Health hosted a session to discuss taking advantage of the SEO value of online communities and social media. The group discussed the implications of tailoring social content like blog posts to be more SEO friendly, like formatting blog post titles similar to how members might construct a search query. The key takaway: Job #1 is to write good content – and it will be found.
Does Validation / Verification Help Grow/Engage Communities?
Mike Mostransky hosted a session to explore the role of verification, identity and reputation in online communities. One key question was verifying purchase / use of a product in product-based communities.
Other sessions included:
- Getting Past “No” – Social Media in Non-Social
- Structuring Incentives: What Works Best? (Points, Cash, Stuff, Status)
- Defending Value of Your Online Community: Competing with Other SM Platforms
- B2B Subscription Based $ Models / (Low Hanging) Revenge for B2B Networks
- Node XL Online Community (Twitter!)
- Members & Advertisers Product Testing / Advocacy Programs
- Dichotomy Between Control & Awareness in Social Media
- Best Practices / Tips for Creating Viral Marketing
- Legal Issues with Overzealous Critical Content from Members
Key Takeaways:
Moving Forward – while we didn’t get to the tangible outcomes I had hoped for, particularly a community metrics standard, we did make some progress. An initial conversation was had about the challenges with creating a set of generally agreed upon community metrics (GACM), and we will continue to push this forward over the spring, with plans to have a solid draft by the Online Community Unconference West on June 10th.
Social Infusion – one key theme was that social media is invading every department, not just marketing, products or support. With growing awareness and interest, there is also a genreal lack of leadership and strategy at most organizations. As I said in my opening remarks to the attendees – most organizations need to think more holistically about their social strategy, and the group of internal stakeholders required for ongoing management and governance. Which leads to…
Holistic Online Presence – most organizations are struggling with how to prioritize off-domain (think Facebook) engagement, and how to combine off-domain with on-domain activities.
Increasing Rays of Sunlight – Even with the sustained interest in social media during the recession, many folks were affected by layoffs and downsizing. It was encouraging to see old friends with new jobs, as well as the number of companies at the OCU seeking new employees (including Forum One).
Twitter Stream
The twitter stream was going strong with lots of good tidbits, ideas, and discussions from the event.
#OCUE10 Twitter Stream
Flick Stream From #OCUE10
Blog Reactions
Notes from the Online Community Unconference East 2010 – Matthew Lees / Impact Interactions
Takeaways from Online Community Unconference East 2010 – Marshall Sponder / Web Metrics Guru
A BIG thanks to our Sponsors:
#OCUE10
Share/BookmarkOnline Community Unconference East – Wiki, Tweets, and Snow, Oh My!
The Online Community Unconference East is in full swing today. We’re very happy that most of the attendees were able to make it despite the snowy conditions. For those of you that were planning to attend, but couldn’t make it due to the weather, we’ve made the Wiki public and we’re updating the notes as they come in from each session.
The agenda has over 30 sessions on topics including:
- How to drive end-user participation / engagement
- Lurker to Contributor
- B2B User Content Creation
- My Grandma Friended Me on Facebook: Family & Social Networking
- Getting Past “No” – Social Media in Non-Social
- Structuring Incentives: What Works Best? (Points, Cash, Stuff, Status)
- Defending Value of Your Online Community: Competing with Other SM Platforms
- Does Validation / Verification Help Grow/Engage Communities?
- B2B Subscription Based $ Models / (Low Hanging) Revenge for B2B Networks
- Node XL Online Community (Twitter!)
- Members & Advertisers Product Testing / Advocacy Programs
- Dichotomy Between Control & Awareness in Social Media
- Best Practices / Tips for Creating Viral Marketing
- Legal Issues with Overzealous Critical Content from Members
The twitter stream is also going strong with lots of good tidbits, ideas, and discussions from the event. We’re adding session notes as they come in, so keep your eye on the wiki for regular updates.
Online Community Unconference East Wiki
#OCUE10 Twitter Stream
There are two meetups after the event tonight:
Roger Smith Hotel, 501 Lexington Avenue – 7pm @RSHotel
Bobby Vans, 25 Broad St – the Grill (downstairs) – 5:30pm
#OCUE10
Share/BookmarkUnconference East: Moving Forward, Together
We are less than 48 hours from the Online Community Unconference East (yeah!). This is the third year we've run the Online Community Unconference in New York, and we've had great events both years.
On think I wanted to be a bit more mindful of for this year's Unconference was to really be mindful of focusing the group's energy on specific outcomes. Our theme for this year's Uncoference reflects this intention:
"Moving forward, together"
We will use the theme as a guiding principle for the sessions on Wednesday, and ask that participants think about what is needed to move forward personally, professionally, and to move community and social media forward as an industry. We will also explore what progress (moving forward) looks like.
Our notional topic list from the Unconference wiki (which will be open to the public after the Unconference) reflects the "moving forward" intention:
There are still tickets available for the Unconference. For more information (including attendee list), please go here:
http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/
On think I wanted to be a bit more mindful of for this year's Unconference was to really be mindful of focusing the group's energy on specific outcomes. Our theme for this year's Uncoference reflects this intention:
"Moving forward, together"
We will use the theme as a guiding principle for the sessions on Wednesday, and ask that participants think about what is needed to move forward personally, professionally, and to move community and social media forward as an industry. We will also explore what progress (moving forward) looks like.
Our notional topic list from the Unconference wiki (which will be open to the public after the Unconference) reflects the "moving forward" intention:
- Online Community & Social Media Metrics: Getting to Standards
- Monetizing industry communities (not related to a single brand or company)
- The Community Team: Roles, Responsibilities, Job Descriptions and Reporting Structures
- Using Community and Collaboration Tools Within the Enterprise
- Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building
- How to hire community & Social Media staff
- Online Presence: Creating a social strategy on and beyond your domain
- "Social Shopping" Communities (focus on online brand advocacy, product reviews and ratings, "social" information search, etc.)
- Leaving (too many) online footprints in (too many) communities
- How to interest and keep volunteers in a commercial environment?
- Beyond "Listening" - Comprehensive Community & Social Media monitoring and engagement
- Community and Social Media reporting and insights
- Case Studies for the class of 2009: Successful community engagements and social media campaigns from 2009 (bring yours to share)
- Validation: Do verified accounts make a difference in communities for better engagement?
There are still tickets available for the Unconference. For more information (including attendee list), please go here:
http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/
Unconference East: Moving Forward, Together
We are less than 48 hours from the Online Community Unconference East (yeah!). This is the third year we’ve run the Online Community Unconference in New York, and we’ve had great events both years.
On think I wanted to be a bit more mindful of for this year’s Unconference was to really be mindful of focusing the group’s energy on specific outcomes. Our theme for this year’s Unconference reflects this intention:
“Moving forward, together”
We will use the theme as a guiding principle for the sessions on Wednesday, and ask that participants think about what is needed to move forward personally, professionally, and to move community and social media forward as an industry. We will also explore what progress (moving forward) looks like.
Our notional topic list from the Unconference wiki (which will be open to the public after the Unconference) reflects the “moving forward” intention:
- Online Community & Social Media Metrics: Getting to Standards
- Monetizing industry communities (not related to a single brand or company)
- The Community Team: Roles, Responsibilities, Job Descriptions and Reporting Structures
- Using Community and Collaboration Tools Within the Enterprise
- Lessons Learned: Pitfalls and Best Practices in Community-Building
- How to hire community & Social Media staff
- Online Presence: Creating a social strategy on and beyond your domain
- “Social Shopping” Communities (focus on online brand advocacy, product reviews and ratings, “social” information search, etc.)
- Leaving (too many) online footprints in (too many) communities
- How to interest and keep volunteers in a commercial environment?
- Beyond “Listening” – Comprehensive Community & Social Media monitoring and engagement
- Community and Social Media reporting and insights
- Case Studies for the class of 2009: Successful community engagements and social media campaigns from 2009 (bring yours to share)
- Validation: Do verified accounts make a difference in communities for better engagement?
There are still tickets available for the Unconference. For more information (including attendee list), please go here:
http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/
Social Media Week February 1 through 5, 2010
February 1st through 5th is Social Media Week. Social Media Week features a week of social media events, including, conferences, discussions, and meet-ups that take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors. Check out the event schedule to see a listing of all of the social media events in San Francisco this week.
We’re very excited to co-host a panel discussion with Autodesk on Social Media for Social Impact on February 4th. The panel will explore the use of social media in making progress on social causes, and panelists will review case studies, criteria for success and lessons learned from each of the panelists.
Our panelists include:
Connie Chan, Yahoo! / Yahoo! for Good
Connie Chan is manager of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s Social Responsibility department. Connie is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s online cause marketing initiatives and managing social media for Yahoo! Green.
Amy Skoczlas Cole, eBay
Amy is the Director of the eBay Green Team, Amy leads eBay’s efforts to engage their 89 million active users in a movement to use products that exist in world, saving consumers money as well as helping protect the planet.
Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth
Peggy Duvette, Executive Director of WiserEarth, advocates for building online community capacity in the nonprofit sector. Since 2005, she has managed WiserEarth, an online community space that allows organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate around social and environmental issues.
Susan Tenby, TechSoup
Susan Tenby is the Online Community Director at San Francisco-based nonprofit TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life.
All proceeds from the event will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.
hashtag: #sm4si
The Social Media Club is featuring a panel discussion on Innovation Through Real-Time Feedback Loops on February 4th, 6:30pm – 9:00pm.
Go here to register: http://smwloops.eventbrite.com/
In this interactive panel event, we will discuss and demonstrate:
- What new prescriptions for human interaction should media practitioners embrace to leverage through real-time feedback loops
- How Social Media tools can be used to facilitate idea generation
- How to employ a the Real-Time Feedback Loop methodology for competitive advantage
The panelists are:
- Ravit Lichtenberg, CEO Ustrategy
- Sylvia L. Marino, Executive Director – Community Operations & Social Media, Edmunds.com
- Liza Sperling, Real-Time Sentiment & Trends Analyst, Scout Labs
- Tom Foremski, Founder & Editor, Silicon Valley Watcher
- Van Riper, Founder & Leader, Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group
- Bill Johnston, Director, Online Community Research Network, ForumOne
- David Libby, SVP, MS&L Worldwide
- Evan Solomon, VP of Marketing, JustinTV
- Marc Smolowitz, Executive Producer – Media & Technology Consultant
Social Media Week February 1-5
February 1st through 5th is Social Media Week. Social Media Week features a week of social media events, including, conferences, discussions, and meet-ups that take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors. Check out the event schedule to see a listing of all of the social media events in San Francisco this week.
We're very excited to co-host a panel discussion with Autodesk on Social Media for Social Impact on February 4th. The panel will explore the use of social media in making progress on social causes, and panelists will review case studies, criteria for success and lessons learned from each of the panelists.
Our panelists include:
Connie Chan, Yahoo! / Yahoo! for Good
Connie Chan is manager of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s Social Responsibility department. Connie is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s online cause marketing initiatives and managing social media for Yahoo! Green.
Amy Skoczlas Cole, eBay
Amy is the Director of the eBay Green Team, Amy leads eBay’s efforts to engage their 89 million active users in a movement to use products that exist in world, saving consumers money as well as helping protect the planet.
Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth
Peggy Duvette, Executive Director of WiserEarth, advocates for building online community capacity in the nonprofit sector. Since 2005, she has managed WiserEarth, an online community space that allows organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate around social and environmental issues.
Susan Tenby, TechSoup
Susan Tenby is the Online Community Director at San Francisco-based nonprofit TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life.
All proceeds from the event will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.
hashtag: #sm4si
The Social Media Club is featuring a panel discussion on Innovation Through Real-Time Feedback Loops on February 4th, 6:30pm - 9:00pm.
Go here to register: http://smwloops.eventbrite.com/
In this interactive panel event, we will discuss and demonstrate:
The panelists are:
We're very excited to co-host a panel discussion with Autodesk on Social Media for Social Impact on February 4th. The panel will explore the use of social media in making progress on social causes, and panelists will review case studies, criteria for success and lessons learned from each of the panelists.
Our panelists include:
Connie Chan, Yahoo! / Yahoo! for Good
Connie Chan is manager of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s Social Responsibility department. Connie is responsible for leading Yahoo!’s online cause marketing initiatives and managing social media for Yahoo! Green.
Amy Skoczlas Cole, eBay
Amy is the Director of the eBay Green Team, Amy leads eBay’s efforts to engage their 89 million active users in a movement to use products that exist in world, saving consumers money as well as helping protect the planet.
Peggy Duvette, WiserEarth
Peggy Duvette, Executive Director of WiserEarth, advocates for building online community capacity in the nonprofit sector. Since 2005, she has managed WiserEarth, an online community space that allows organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate around social and environmental issues.
Susan Tenby, TechSoup
Susan Tenby is the Online Community Director at San Francisco-based nonprofit TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life.
All proceeds from the event will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.
hashtag: #sm4si
The Social Media Club is featuring a panel discussion on Innovation Through Real-Time Feedback Loops on February 4th, 6:30pm - 9:00pm.
Go here to register: http://smwloops.eventbrite.com/
In this interactive panel event, we will discuss and demonstrate:
- What new prescriptions for human interaction should media practitioners embrace to leverage through real-time feedback loops
- How Social Media tools can be used to facilitate idea generation
- How to employ a the Real-Time Feedback Loop methodology for competitive advantage
The panelists are:
- Ravit Lichtenberg, CEO Ustrategy
- Sylvia L. Marino, Executive Director - Community Operations & Social Media, Edmunds.com
- Liza Sperling, Real-Time Sentiment & Trends Analyst, Scout Labs
- Tom Foremski, Founder & Editor, Silicon Valley Watcher
- Van Riper, Founder & Leader, Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group
- Bill Johnston, Director, Online Community Research Network, ForumOne
- David Libby, SVP, MS&L Worldwide
- Evan Solomon, VP of Marketing, JustinTV
- Marc Smolowitz, Executive Producer - Media & Technology Consultant
Why You Should Sponsor the Online Community Unconference East
I'll start with a caveat: this is a flat out, unapologetic (but hopefully entertaining) pitch. That's me in the photo below, the unapologetic pitcher.
As you know, Forum One is hosting the Online Community Unconference East in New York City on February 10th. The Unconference is an open space gathering of online community and social media professionals from the commercial and non profit sectors. We expect over 200 participants (our biggest east coast event yet).
A partial list of organizations coming includes AARP, Answers.com, Autodesk, Bloomberg, Cisco, Consumer Reports, Examiner.com, Google, HP, Huffington Post, IBM, iVillage / NBC, kgb, Microsoft, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Scotttrade and TripAdvisor (to name a few). Pretty great group, no?
The Pitch - 3 Reasons
We feel like our Unconference events represent one of the best sponsorship values for events around, for three main reasons:
1. Fantastic (but appropriate) Visibility
As a sponsor, you will receive the "normal" event perks - your logo on conference materials, acknowledgement at the event, a sponsor banner. The key to our sponsors' success is that we don't oversell our sponsorships, and we limit the number of service providers attending the event so that the ratio of practitioners to service providers is favorable (which also makes for a better attendee experience). You will also have an opportunity to address the full conference for 5 minutes shortly after lunch. In short: Limited competition for attention, you are free to participate as an attendee, and you get the events full attention shortly after lunch.
2. Good Value
Our packages start at $5k, with our premiere package at $10k. Many events with smaller, less qualified audiences charge twice that, and typically try to cram in as many sponsors in as possible.
3. Attendees are Senior Staff and Have Purchase Power / Influence
Forum One has been hosting online community and social media events for almost 10 years. Over the years, we have curated a very senior network of community practitioners and executives. Most of the attendees at our conferences have direct purchase influence, and many have purchase authority. Business gets done at our events between sponsors and attendees.
That's it in a nutshell: great event, great visibility, solid value and an awesome attendee list.
I want to be clear about our intentions with sponsorship sales: sponsorship helps us continue to run these events at a modest profit, which ensures a sustainable business. By sponsoring, you help support the larger community of social media and online community professionals.
Thanks for listening to my pitch. I really do appreciate your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing terms, please contact me and Chloe Caviness (our sales manager).
Now back to our regularly scheduled community programing
As you know, Forum One is hosting the Online Community Unconference East in New York City on February 10th. The Unconference is an open space gathering of online community and social media professionals from the commercial and non profit sectors. We expect over 200 participants (our biggest east coast event yet).
A partial list of organizations coming includes AARP, Answers.com, Autodesk, Bloomberg, Cisco, Consumer Reports, Examiner.com, Google, HP, Huffington Post, IBM, iVillage / NBC, kgb, Microsoft, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Scotttrade and TripAdvisor (to name a few). Pretty great group, no?
The Pitch - 3 Reasons
We feel like our Unconference events represent one of the best sponsorship values for events around, for three main reasons:
1. Fantastic (but appropriate) Visibility
As a sponsor, you will receive the "normal" event perks - your logo on conference materials, acknowledgement at the event, a sponsor banner. The key to our sponsors' success is that we don't oversell our sponsorships, and we limit the number of service providers attending the event so that the ratio of practitioners to service providers is favorable (which also makes for a better attendee experience). You will also have an opportunity to address the full conference for 5 minutes shortly after lunch. In short: Limited competition for attention, you are free to participate as an attendee, and you get the events full attention shortly after lunch.
2. Good Value
Our packages start at $5k, with our premiere package at $10k. Many events with smaller, less qualified audiences charge twice that, and typically try to cram in as many sponsors in as possible.
3. Attendees are Senior Staff and Have Purchase Power / Influence
Forum One has been hosting online community and social media events for almost 10 years. Over the years, we have curated a very senior network of community practitioners and executives. Most of the attendees at our conferences have direct purchase influence, and many have purchase authority. Business gets done at our events between sponsors and attendees.
That's it in a nutshell: great event, great visibility, solid value and an awesome attendee list.
I want to be clear about our intentions with sponsorship sales: sponsorship helps us continue to run these events at a modest profit, which ensures a sustainable business. By sponsoring, you help support the larger community of social media and online community professionals.
Thanks for listening to my pitch. I really do appreciate your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing terms, please contact me and Chloe Caviness (our sales manager).
Now back to our regularly scheduled community programing
Why You Should Sponsor the Online Community Unconference East
I’ll start with a caveat: this is a flat out, unapologetic (but hopefully entertaining) pitch. That’s me in the photo below, the unapologetic pitcher.
As you know, Forum One is hosting the Online Community Unconference East in New York City on February 10th. The Unconference is an open space gathering of online community and social media professionals from the commercial and non profit sectors. We expect over 200 participants (our biggest east coast event yet).
A partial list of organizations coming includes AARP, Answers.com, Autodesk, Bloomberg, Cisco, Consumer Reports, Examiner.com, Google, HP, Huffington Post, IBM, iVillage / NBC, kgb, Microsoft, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Scotttrade and TripAdvisor (to name a few). Pretty great group, no?
The Pitch – 3 Reasons
We feel like our Unconference events represent one of the best sponsorship values for events around, for three main reasons:
1. Fantastic (but appropriate) Visibility
As a sponsor, you will receive the “normal” event perks – your logo on conference materials, acknowledgement at the event, a sponsor banner. The key to our sponsors’ success is that we don’t oversell our sponsorships, and we limit the number of service providers attending the event so that the ratio of practitioners to service providers is favorable (which also makes for a better attendee experience). You will also have an opportunity to address the full conference for 5 minutes shortly after lunch. In short: Limited competition for attention, you are free to participate as an attendee, and you get the events full attention shortly after lunch.
2. Good Value
Our packages start at $5k, with our premiere package at $10k. Many events with smaller, less qualified audiences charge twice that, and typically try to cram in as many sponsors in as possible.
3. Attendees are Senior Staff and Have Purchase Power / Influence
Forum One has been hosting online community and social media events for almost 10 years. Over the years, we have curated a very senior network of community practitioners and executives. Most of the attendees at our conferences have direct purchase influence, and many have purchase authority. Business *gets done* at our events between sponsors and attendees.
That’s it in a nutshell: great event, great visibility, solid value and an awesome attendee list.
I want to be clear about our intentions with sponsorship sales: sponsorship helps us continue to run these events at a modest profit, which ensures a sustainable business. By sponsoring, you help support the larger community of social media and online community professionals.
Thanks for listening to my pitch. I really do appreciate your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing terms, please contact me and Chloe Caviness (our sales manager).
Now back to our regularly scheduled community programing
Share/BookmarkOnline Community Expert Interview: Rawn Shah, IBM
This month's Online Community Expert interview is with Rawn Shah, Practice lead with the Social Software Adoption team in IBM. He has worked in various roles as a software developer, production manager, a journalist and community program manager in his career. His current focus is on understanding and measuring business value of social computing within the enterprise. As a writer and journalist he has written or contributed to over 280 articles and 7 books, including his latest Social Networking for Business (Wharton School Press, 2010) released this January and available through Amazon and other bookstores and retailers.
Q: What excites you most about your current community work?
Working across the IBM enterprise, we have a fairly extensive network of social ecosystems involving hundreds of thousands of members across many geographical regions. It allows me to investigate the differences in how people use social software and participate in online communities from different job roles, cultures, languages, and attitudes. Within the 400,000 or so employees in IBM, there are several thousand communities of various combinations of users. In addition, social software is receiving a great deal of interest and support from our executives and managers, which makes my job significantly easier. It opens the opportunities to work with smart people in the CIO Infrastructure and Innovation organizations, IBM Research, the many product groups, and social software developers and users worldwide. In my focus on metrics and business value, there is so much social computing going on that we have tons of data provides truly invaluable research and analysis opportunities. I certainly also have the freedom to work with brilliant minds outside the company, and wherever I go, the IBM brand helps to open the way. People want to know what we are thinking and doing and that makes me feel useful. I get the best of both worlds.
Q: How are the areas of internal collaboration (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0), Online Community and Social Media intersecting in your work?
While I work primarily on internal collaboration these day--in contrast to my prior job as Community Program Manager for our external developerWorks community--I brainstorm weekly with my peers focused on social media and marketing on topics ranging from metrics to tactics to governance. What this brings is different perspectives on how internal and external collaboration consider business value and what they count as metrics.
For example, internally we have a closed, albeit large, population of users where we know all the individuals involved. Therefore our internal metrics can be focused down to the activities of specific groups and populations of individuals--we avoid getting down to specific individuals to protect privacy. In other words, we can get data on how all people in, for example, sales roles globally or even in a specific region, use social software applications. Externally however, the population is much more mixed and rarely do we have data per specifically identified people. This leads us to very different types of behavioral information: internally we can categorize users by their level of participation (zero, low, medium, high, elite) in our social environments, and then examine the actions or distribution of these members across the geographies. With the external environment, social media monitoring tools and services from other companies allow us to take the pulse of activity along different topics. We then have to infer behavior based on the level of interest in topics across the Web.
That is not the only intersection of course. Very often we have IBMers who are active in social environments within our company as well as externally in many different levels or roles in the company. They do this on a personal or even a professional basis for their own reasons but the key value is that they help to communicate ideas back and forth. There is no hard communications firewall or who is allowed to speak but we do have official blogs and sources, and social computing guidelines for all other employees.
Q: Can you talk about the evolving role of online communities at IBM?
Online communities have existed inside IBM in many shapes and forms for decades. The oldest began as instruments to share wide-scale announcements across business units, as well as specific interest discussions in newsgroups. We went from a multitude separate systems at the department level towards standard online community and collaboration services from the CIO’s organization.
Today most online communities and social computing systems are available commonly across our global intranet. It has changed from being regional discussions that isolated who was talking to whom to global venues. Local discussions and communities still continue of course, but there are no artificial borders for the majority of our systems.
Our challenge today is more in trying to figure out ways of working across the differences in cultures and attitudes: job-role specific cultures, geographical or national cultures, and generational cultures. This is ongoing work to learn and understand and, in my view, likely something that will never end. This challenge is what keeps communities isolated, whether in the physical world or online.
In the past two years, we have looked substantially into how social computing fits into many different core business processes. Using social media and computing for marketing is becoming quite common in many businesses. IBM applies social computing into our innovation process both internal and with customers to discover new opportunities, business areas or products to focus on through social brainstorming methods. We use it in many different steps of the sales process to mine and manage opportunities, work on request for proposals from customers, present and confer on options for customers. IBM Research uses it to prepare and present at conferences, investigate ideas for patents, and collaborate across research teams. We also use it to identify and discover skills and expertise across our 400,000 employees across the dozens of countries in which IBMers are located across the world. Even our HR and Learning organizations are investigating how to shift from formal classroom and module-based education to the informal mechanisms of online communities.
The general feeling is that social computing is now finding its way into improving the core way we do business, from everyday interactions to complex decisions. While the software is there to help us manage how we interact, the core issue is still on learning how to improve how people interact with each other to productive ends.
Q. What is the most valuable online community or social media touchpoint for IBM that provides clear and compelling value to both your customer and IBM?
I’d say its IBM developerWorks, our community for developers, designers and software users. We have about 7 to 8 million registered members who take part in the community, and learn from IBM as well as each other. In particular, I use MydeveloperWorks as the home for my external blog as well as some of the communities in which I participate. This customized Lotus Connections environment integrates the learning environment of developerWorks with its community mechanisms to present and distribute ideas. Members from IBM, our partners, customers and even non-customers create blogs, forums and other communities as relevant to the many topics covered in developerWorks.
To IBM, it serves to support the many topics around the different technologies and products across the IBM software portfolio, as well as serve as a channel towards becoming product users. While this community is not filled with marketing messages, the marketing groups provide offerings to the members, and track these tactics, thereby integrating the online community alongside the other standard marketing processes in the company.
Q: What role do you feel online communities play for businesses, in the context of the current economic environment?
I think people across the world have now solidly felt the impact of adversities to the vast network of business factors as a result of globalization. Now more than ever we are interdependent of each other, and our successes depend on how well we work with our relationships and how we deliver to them. Online communities are a manifestation of these relationships, allowing us to feel the pulse of the community as it happens. The advantages that online environments offer relative to their offline counterpart is a wider scale of relationship networks, faster communications out to your network, and better tracking of your history of interactions. If you’re not participating in the online communities that matter to your business, then you become that person at a party who’s perennially asking “What did I miss?” This impacts your character and your brand both as an individual and per the organization you represent.
Regardless of the economic environment, online communities are also the trend towards a new approach to working with people both within and beyond the organization. Gary Hammel refers to this as Management 2.0 but that word, “management” itself is a legacy artifact. Rather than hierarchical reporting structures in most organizations, it is closer to partnerships with individuals both on your team and outside it. This trend towards partnering depends strongly on influencing opinions and shepherding ideas to get results; quite different than handing out assignments. It also applies to different models of conducting tasks or projects and knowing what approach works in each model. The structure of such institutional changes and business models are the core of my book Social Networking for Business (Wharton School Press, 2010).
Q: What advice would you have for a beginning community manager?
Community management is both a learnable skill and a personality trait. The best community managers (CMs) that I know have survived the long term are active listeners, strong relationship builders, and see themselves as a voice for the members. They are resourceful people and always looking to find ways how members can help others rather than trying to be gatekeepers or central clearinghouses of information. CMs generally “work” for the sponsor, whether officially or otherwise. They voice the ideas, feelings and pulse of the community to the sponsoring organization, but they are also not “willows” who bend entirely to the will of the community.
As a new CM it is important to understand not just how you are to serve people, but also what you need to produce or deliver and how to measure them. If these are countable in distinct ways, then you have a way to capture metrics. Otherwise, if these are qualitative ideas and results, then you have relevant stories that may be representative or repeated across the community. My suggestion when it comes to metrics is to look for repeatable ideas or artifacts relative to what your community is doing. They should be meaningful towards delivering the end business goals, even if they are only parts of the whole picture.
Again, Rawn's book "Social Networking for Business" is available at Amazon and other booksellers.
Q: What excites you most about your current community work?
Working across the IBM enterprise, we have a fairly extensive network of social ecosystems involving hundreds of thousands of members across many geographical regions. It allows me to investigate the differences in how people use social software and participate in online communities from different job roles, cultures, languages, and attitudes. Within the 400,000 or so employees in IBM, there are several thousand communities of various combinations of users. In addition, social software is receiving a great deal of interest and support from our executives and managers, which makes my job significantly easier. It opens the opportunities to work with smart people in the CIO Infrastructure and Innovation organizations, IBM Research, the many product groups, and social software developers and users worldwide. In my focus on metrics and business value, there is so much social computing going on that we have tons of data provides truly invaluable research and analysis opportunities. I certainly also have the freedom to work with brilliant minds outside the company, and wherever I go, the IBM brand helps to open the way. People want to know what we are thinking and doing and that makes me feel useful. I get the best of both worlds.
Q: How are the areas of internal collaboration (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0), Online Community and Social Media intersecting in your work?
While I work primarily on internal collaboration these day--in contrast to my prior job as Community Program Manager for our external developerWorks community--I brainstorm weekly with my peers focused on social media and marketing on topics ranging from metrics to tactics to governance. What this brings is different perspectives on how internal and external collaboration consider business value and what they count as metrics.
For example, internally we have a closed, albeit large, population of users where we know all the individuals involved. Therefore our internal metrics can be focused down to the activities of specific groups and populations of individuals--we avoid getting down to specific individuals to protect privacy. In other words, we can get data on how all people in, for example, sales roles globally or even in a specific region, use social software applications. Externally however, the population is much more mixed and rarely do we have data per specifically identified people. This leads us to very different types of behavioral information: internally we can categorize users by their level of participation (zero, low, medium, high, elite) in our social environments, and then examine the actions or distribution of these members across the geographies. With the external environment, social media monitoring tools and services from other companies allow us to take the pulse of activity along different topics. We then have to infer behavior based on the level of interest in topics across the Web.
That is not the only intersection of course. Very often we have IBMers who are active in social environments within our company as well as externally in many different levels or roles in the company. They do this on a personal or even a professional basis for their own reasons but the key value is that they help to communicate ideas back and forth. There is no hard communications firewall or who is allowed to speak but we do have official blogs and sources, and social computing guidelines for all other employees.
Q: Can you talk about the evolving role of online communities at IBM?
Online communities have existed inside IBM in many shapes and forms for decades. The oldest began as instruments to share wide-scale announcements across business units, as well as specific interest discussions in newsgroups. We went from a multitude separate systems at the department level towards standard online community and collaboration services from the CIO’s organization.
Today most online communities and social computing systems are available commonly across our global intranet. It has changed from being regional discussions that isolated who was talking to whom to global venues. Local discussions and communities still continue of course, but there are no artificial borders for the majority of our systems.
Our challenge today is more in trying to figure out ways of working across the differences in cultures and attitudes: job-role specific cultures, geographical or national cultures, and generational cultures. This is ongoing work to learn and understand and, in my view, likely something that will never end. This challenge is what keeps communities isolated, whether in the physical world or online.
In the past two years, we have looked substantially into how social computing fits into many different core business processes. Using social media and computing for marketing is becoming quite common in many businesses. IBM applies social computing into our innovation process both internal and with customers to discover new opportunities, business areas or products to focus on through social brainstorming methods. We use it in many different steps of the sales process to mine and manage opportunities, work on request for proposals from customers, present and confer on options for customers. IBM Research uses it to prepare and present at conferences, investigate ideas for patents, and collaborate across research teams. We also use it to identify and discover skills and expertise across our 400,000 employees across the dozens of countries in which IBMers are located across the world. Even our HR and Learning organizations are investigating how to shift from formal classroom and module-based education to the informal mechanisms of online communities.
The general feeling is that social computing is now finding its way into improving the core way we do business, from everyday interactions to complex decisions. While the software is there to help us manage how we interact, the core issue is still on learning how to improve how people interact with each other to productive ends.
Q. What is the most valuable online community or social media touchpoint for IBM that provides clear and compelling value to both your customer and IBM?
I’d say its IBM developerWorks, our community for developers, designers and software users. We have about 7 to 8 million registered members who take part in the community, and learn from IBM as well as each other. In particular, I use MydeveloperWorks as the home for my external blog as well as some of the communities in which I participate. This customized Lotus Connections environment integrates the learning environment of developerWorks with its community mechanisms to present and distribute ideas. Members from IBM, our partners, customers and even non-customers create blogs, forums and other communities as relevant to the many topics covered in developerWorks.
To IBM, it serves to support the many topics around the different technologies and products across the IBM software portfolio, as well as serve as a channel towards becoming product users. While this community is not filled with marketing messages, the marketing groups provide offerings to the members, and track these tactics, thereby integrating the online community alongside the other standard marketing processes in the company.
Q: What role do you feel online communities play for businesses, in the context of the current economic environment?
I think people across the world have now solidly felt the impact of adversities to the vast network of business factors as a result of globalization. Now more than ever we are interdependent of each other, and our successes depend on how well we work with our relationships and how we deliver to them. Online communities are a manifestation of these relationships, allowing us to feel the pulse of the community as it happens. The advantages that online environments offer relative to their offline counterpart is a wider scale of relationship networks, faster communications out to your network, and better tracking of your history of interactions. If you’re not participating in the online communities that matter to your business, then you become that person at a party who’s perennially asking “What did I miss?” This impacts your character and your brand both as an individual and per the organization you represent.
Regardless of the economic environment, online communities are also the trend towards a new approach to working with people both within and beyond the organization. Gary Hammel refers to this as Management 2.0 but that word, “management” itself is a legacy artifact. Rather than hierarchical reporting structures in most organizations, it is closer to partnerships with individuals both on your team and outside it. This trend towards partnering depends strongly on influencing opinions and shepherding ideas to get results; quite different than handing out assignments. It also applies to different models of conducting tasks or projects and knowing what approach works in each model. The structure of such institutional changes and business models are the core of my book Social Networking for Business (Wharton School Press, 2010).
Q: What advice would you have for a beginning community manager?
Community management is both a learnable skill and a personality trait. The best community managers (CMs) that I know have survived the long term are active listeners, strong relationship builders, and see themselves as a voice for the members. They are resourceful people and always looking to find ways how members can help others rather than trying to be gatekeepers or central clearinghouses of information. CMs generally “work” for the sponsor, whether officially or otherwise. They voice the ideas, feelings and pulse of the community to the sponsoring organization, but they are also not “willows” who bend entirely to the will of the community.
As a new CM it is important to understand not just how you are to serve people, but also what you need to produce or deliver and how to measure them. If these are countable in distinct ways, then you have a way to capture metrics. Otherwise, if these are qualitative ideas and results, then you have relevant stories that may be representative or repeated across the community. My suggestion when it comes to metrics is to look for repeatable ideas or artifacts relative to what your community is doing. They should be meaningful towards delivering the end business goals, even if they are only parts of the whole picture.
Again, Rawn's book "Social Networking for Business" is available at Amazon and other booksellers.
Online Community Expert Interview: Rawn Shah, IBM
This month’s Online Community Expert interview is with Rawn Shah, Practice lead with the Social Software Adoption team in IBM. He has worked in various roles as a software developer, production manager, a journalist and community program manager in his career. His current focus is on understanding and measuring business value of social computing within the enterprise. As a writer and journalist he has written or contributed to over 280 articles and 7 books, including his latest Social Networking for Business (Wharton School Press, 2010) released this January and available through Amazon and other bookstores and retailers.
Q: What excites you most about your current community work?
Working across the IBM enterprise, we have a fairly extensive network of social ecosystems involving hundreds of thousands of members across many geographical regions. It allows me to investigate the differences in how people use social software and participate in online communities from different job roles, cultures, languages, and attitudes. Within the 400,000 or so employees in IBM, there are several thousand communities of various combinations of users. In addition, social software is receiving a great deal of interest and support from our executives and managers, which makes my job significantly easier. It opens the opportunities to work with smart people in the CIO Infrastructure and Innovation organizations, IBM Research, the many product groups, and social software developers and users worldwide. In my focus on metrics and business value, there is so much social computing going on that we have tons of data provides truly invaluable research and analysis opportunities. I certainly also have the freedom to work with brilliant minds outside the company, and wherever I go, the IBM brand helps to open the way. People want to know what we are thinking and doing and that makes me feel useful. I get the best of both worlds.
Q: How are the areas of internal collaboration (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0), Online Community and Social Media intersecting in your work?
While I work primarily on internal collaboration these day–in contrast to my prior job as Community Program Manager for our external developerWorks community–I brainstorm weekly with my peers focused on social media and marketing on topics ranging from metrics to tactics to governance. What this brings is different perspectives on how internal and external collaboration consider business value and what they count as metrics.
For example, internally we have a closed, albeit large, population of users where we know all the individuals involved. Therefore our internal metrics can be focused down to the activities of specific groups and populations of individuals–we avoid getting down to specific individuals to protect privacy. In other words, we can get data on how all people in, for example, sales roles globally or even in a specific region, use social software applications. Externally however, the population is much more mixed and rarely do we have data per specifically identified people. This leads us to very different types of behavioral information: internally we can categorize users by their level of participation (zero, low, medium, high, elite) in our social environments, and then examine the actions or distribution of these members across the geographies. With the external environment, social media monitoring tools and services from other companies allow us to take the pulse of activity along different topics. We then have to infer behavior based on the level of interest in topics across the Web.
That is not the only intersection of course. Very often we have IBMers who are active in social environments within our company as well as externally in many different levels or roles in the company. They do this on a personal or even a professional basis for their own reasons but the key value is that they help to communicate ideas back and forth. There is no hard communications firewall or who is allowed to speak but we do have official blogs and sources, and social computing guidelines for all other employees.
Q: Can you talk about the evolving role of online communities at IBM?
Online communities have existed inside IBM in many shapes and forms for decades. The oldest began as instruments to share wide-scale announcements across business units, as well as specific interest discussions in newsgroups. We went from a multitude separate systems at the department level towards standard online community and collaboration services from the CIO’s organization.
Today most online communities and social computing systems are available commonly across our global intranet. It has changed from being regional discussions that isolated who was talking to whom to global venues. Local discussions and communities still continue of course, but there are no artificial borders for the majority of our systems.
Our challenge today is more in trying to figure out ways of working across the differences in cultures and attitudes: job-role specific cultures, geographical or national cultures, and generational cultures. This is ongoing work to learn and understand and, in my view, likely something that will never end. This challenge is what keeps communities isolated, whether in the physical world or online.
In the past two years, we have looked substantially into how social computing fits into many different core business processes. Using social media and computing for marketing is becoming quite common in many businesses. IBM applies social computing into our innovation process both internal and with customers to discover new opportunities, business areas or products to focus on through social brainstorming methods. We use it in many different steps of the sales process to mine and manage opportunities, work on request for proposals from customers, present and confer on options for customers. IBM Research uses it to prepare and present at conferences, investigate ideas for patents, and collaborate across research teams. We also use it to identify and discover skills and expertise across our 400,000 employees across the dozens of countries in which IBMers are located across the world. Even our HR and Learning organizations are investigating how to shift from formal classroom and module-based education to the informal mechanisms of online communities.
The general feeling is that social computing is now finding its way into improving the core way we do business, from everyday interactions to complex decisions. While the software is there to help us manage how we interact, the core issue is still on learning how to improve how people interact with each other to productive ends.
Q. What is the most valuable online community or social media touchpoint for IBM that provides clear and compelling value to both your customer and IBM?
I’d say its IBM developerWorks, our community for developers, designers and software users. We have about 7 to 8 million registered members who take part in the community, and learn from IBM as well as each other. In particular, I use MydeveloperWorks as the home for my external blog as well as some of the communities in which I participate. This customized Lotus Connections environment integrates the learning environment of developerWorks with its community mechanisms to present and distribute ideas. Members from IBM, our partners, customers and even non-customers create blogs, forums and other communities as relevant to the many topics covered in developerWorks.
To IBM, it serves to support the many topics around the different technologies and products across the IBM software portfolio, as well as serve as a channel towards becoming product users. While this community is not filled with marketing messages, the marketing groups provide offerings to the members, and track these tactics, thereby integrating the online community alongside the other standard marketing processes in the company.
Q: What role do you feel online communities play for businesses, in the context of the current economic environment?
I think people across the world have now solidly felt the impact of adversities to the vast network of business factors as a result of globalization. Now more than ever we are interdependent of each other, and our successes depend on how well we work with our relationships and how we deliver to them. Online communities are a manifestation of these relationships, allowing us to feel the pulse of the community as it happens. The advantages that online environments offer relative to their offline counterpart is a wider scale of relationship networks, faster communications out to your network, and better tracking of your history of interactions. If you’re not participating in the online communities that matter to your business, then you become that person at a party who’s perennially asking “What did I miss?” This impacts your character and your brand both as an individual and per the organization you represent.
Regardless of the economic environment, online communities are also the trend towards a new approach to working with people both within and beyond the organization. Gary Hammel refers to this as Management 2.0 but that word, “management” itself is a legacy artifact. Rather than hierarchical reporting structures in most organizations, it is closer to partnerships with individuals both on your team and outside it. This trend towards partnering depends strongly on influencing opinions and shepherding ideas to get results; quite different than handing out assignments. It also applies to different models of conducting tasks or projects and knowing what approach works in each model. The structure of such institutional changes and business models are the core of my book Social Networking for Business (Wharton School Press, 2010).
Q: What advice would you have for a beginning community manager?
Community management is both a learnable skill and a personality trait. The best community managers (CMs) that I know have survived the long term are active listeners, strong relationship builders, and see themselves as a voice for the members. They are resourceful people and always looking to find ways how members can help others rather than trying to be gatekeepers or central clearinghouses of information. CMs generally “work” for the sponsor, whether officially or otherwise. They voice the ideas, feelings and pulse of the community to the sponsoring organization, but they are also not “willows” who bend entirely to the will of the community.
As a new CM it is important to understand not just how you are to serve people, but also what you need to produce or deliver and how to measure them. If these are countable in distinct ways, then you have a way to capture metrics. Otherwise, if these are qualitative ideas and results, then you have relevant stories that may be representative or repeated across the community. My suggestion when it comes to metrics is to look for repeatable ideas or artifacts relative to what your community is doing. They should be meaningful towards delivering the end business goals, even if they are only parts of the whole picture.
Again, Rawn’s book “Social Networking for Business” is available at Amazon and other booksellers.
Share/BookmarkWhat to expect at the Online Community Unconference East
The Online Community Unconference East will be held February 10th in New York City. To learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/ .
So, how does this Unconference thing work?
The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on online communities and social media is the community of practitioners actually doing the hands on work. The Unconference format provides a venue for participants to lead discussions about topics they are most passionate and knowledgeable about. At the end of the day, attendees walk away with new ideas, perspectives, and a long list of new professional connections.
One of the most amazing parts of the day at our Unconferences is the topic selection process. Our Unconference uses the organizing principals of Open Space Technology to create the event agenda. Said another way, the topics discussed during the day are suggested and lead by Unconference attendees. At the start of the morning, any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.
Attendees announce session topics
The agenda begins to form
Within about 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics
Once all the topics are announced, we begin the Unconference sessions. The agenda grid plays the role of gathering place and ideamarketplace throughout the day, as attendees come back to the agenda to check for any updates, changes, or new sessions.
Outputs
If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out a few of these resrouces:
- The Online Community Unconference 2009 wiki
- The The Online Community Unconference East 2009 wiki
- The Online Community Unconference 2009 Book of Procedings (.pdf)
I would encourage you to spend some time looking through the session notes and the book of proceedings, as there is a lot of great content.
Pictures from the Online Community Unconference East 2009
Again, to learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/.
Share/BookmarkWhat to expect at the Online Community Unconference East
The Online Community Unconference East will be held February 10th in New York City. To learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/ .
So, how does this Unconference thing work?
The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on online communities and social media is the community of practitioners actually doing the hands on work. The Unconference format provides a venue for participants to lead discussions about topics they are most passionate and knowledgeable about. At the end of the day, attendees walk away with new ideas, perspectives, and a long list of new professional connections.
One of the most amazing parts of the day at our Unconferences is the topic selection process. Our Unconference uses the organizing principals of Open Space Technology to create the event agenda. Said another way, the topics discussed during the day are suggested and lead by Unconference attendees. At the start of the morning, any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.
Attendees announce session topics
The agenda begins to form
Within about 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics
Once all the topics are announced, we begin the Unconference sessions. The agenda grid plays the role of gathering place and ideamarketplace throughout the day, as attendees come back to the agenda to check for any updates, changes, or new sessions.
Outputs
If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out a few of these resrouces:
I would encourage you to spend some time looking through the session notes and the book of proceedings, as there is a lot of great content.
Pictures from the Online Community Unconference East 2009
Again, to learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/.
So, how does this Unconference thing work?
The premise of our Unconference series is that the best source of information on online communities and social media is the community of practitioners actually doing the hands on work. The Unconference format provides a venue for participants to lead discussions about topics they are most passionate and knowledgeable about. At the end of the day, attendees walk away with new ideas, perspectives, and a long list of new professional connections.
One of the most amazing parts of the day at our Unconferences is the topic selection process. Our Unconference uses the organizing principals of Open Space Technology to create the event agenda. Said another way, the topics discussed during the day are suggested and lead by Unconference attendees. At the start of the morning, any attendee who wishes can come forward, announce a topic, and claim one of the 50+ open slots on the grid.
Attendees announce session topics
The agenda begins to form
Within about 35-40 minutes the grid fills up with topics
Once all the topics are announced, we begin the Unconference sessions. The agenda grid plays the role of gathering place and ideamarketplace throughout the day, as attendees come back to the agenda to check for any updates, changes, or new sessions.
Outputs
If you would like to see an example of the great content that comes out of an Unconference, please check out a few of these resrouces:
- The Online Community Unconference 2009 wiki
- The The Online Community Unconference East 2009 wiki
- The Online Community Unconference 2009 Book of Procedings (.pdf)
I would encourage you to spend some time looking through the session notes and the book of proceedings, as there is a lot of great content.
Pictures from the Online Community Unconference East 2009
Again, to learn more about the event, or to register, go here: http://ocue2010.eventbrite.com/.
Announcing Community Manager Appreciation Day
Last Friday, Jeremiah Owyang had a simple question: Is there a national day recognizing the work of Community Managers? The question spawned a conversation, which spawned a proposal for the day of recognition:
That days is today. Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day!
Every fourth Monday in January will be Community Manager Appreciation Day.
Community Managers have a challenging and exciting role. One the one hand, they are called on to be the personification of their organization to the online communities that they manage. One the other hand, they are also charged with being the advocate for the community back to the organization. Sort of like a benevolent double agent. The role of the community manager is evolving quickly as well, and we are starting to see the “swiss army knife” aspects of the role mature in to distinct roles on the community team: community product manager, moderator, internal community manager, social media manager, social ux designer, and many more disciplines.
We should take time to celebrate the folks doing the hands on work of shaping, supporting and nurturing online communities.
Background about Community Manager Appreciation Day from Jeremiah’s blog:
Now, Recognize A Community Manager, Every 4th Monday of January
While we agree with common manners to always thank someone after they’ve helped you, just take a moment to pause.. and think. Why would someone willingly go through the above mentioned challenges? Because of their passion to improve the company, and help customers have a better relationship. In many cases, a genuine ‘thank you’ can mean more than a yearly customer satisfaction survey. Take the time to recognize and thank the community manager that may have helped you while you during your time of need.
If you’re a customer, and your problem was solved by a community manager be sure to thank them in the medium that helped you in. Use the hashtag #CMAD.
If you’re a colleague with community manager, take the time to understand their passion to improve the customer –and company experience. Copy their boss.
If you’re a community manager, stop and breathe for a second, and know that you’re appreciated. Hug your family.
This isn’t just about a single role, but a bigger trend of making product and services more efficient, and thereby our world a little bit more efficient and sustainable.
I happily endorsed this proposal along with the following community leaders Jeremiah pulled together over the weekend:
Connie Benson, Rachel Happe, Jake McKee, Sean O’Driscoll, Lane Becker, Dawn Foster, Thor Muller, Amy Muller and Jeremiah Owyang.
That days is today. Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day!
Every fourth Monday in January will be Community Manager Appreciation Day.
Community Managers have a challenging and exciting role. One the one hand, they are called on to be the personification of their organization to the online communities that they manage. One the other hand, they are also charged with being the advocate for the community back to the organization. Sort of like a benevolent double agent. The role of the community manager is evolving quickly as well, and we are starting to see the “swiss army knife” aspects of the role mature in to distinct roles on the community team: community product manager, moderator, internal community manager, social media manager, social ux designer, and many more disciplines.
We should take time to celebrate the folks doing the hands on work of shaping, supporting and nurturing online communities.
Background about Community Manager Appreciation Day from Jeremiah’s blog:
Now, Recognize A Community Manager, Every 4th Monday of January
While we agree with common manners to always thank someone after they’ve helped you, just take a moment to pause.. and think. Why would someone willingly go through the above mentioned challenges? Because of their passion to improve the company, and help customers have a better relationship. In many cases, a genuine ‘thank you’ can mean more than a yearly customer satisfaction survey. Take the time to recognize and thank the community manager that may have helped you while you during your time of need.
If you’re a customer, and your problem was solved by a community manager be sure to thank them in the medium that helped you in. Use the hashtag #CMAD.
If you’re a colleague with community manager, take the time to understand their passion to improve the customer –and company experience. Copy their boss.
If you’re a community manager, stop and breathe for a second, and know that you’re appreciated. Hug your family.
This isn’t just about a single role, but a bigger trend of making product and services more efficient, and thereby our world a little bit more efficient and sustainable.
I happily endorsed this proposal along with the following community leaders Jeremiah pulled together over the weekend:
Connie Benson, Rachel Happe, Jake McKee, Sean O’Driscoll, Lane Becker, Dawn Foster, Thor Muller, Amy Muller and Jeremiah Owyang.
Announcing Community Manager Appreciation Day
Last Friday, Jeremiah Owyang had a simple question: Is there a national day recognizing the work of Community Managers? The question spawned a conversation, which spawned a proposal for the day of recognition:
That days is today. Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day!
Every fourth Monday in January will be Community Manager Appreciation Day.
Community Managers have a challenging and exciting role. One the one hand, they are called on to be the personification of their organization to the online communities that they manage. One the other hand, they are also charged with being the advocate for the community back to the organization. Sort of like a benevolent double agent. The role of the community manager is evolving quickly as well, and we are starting to see the “swiss army knife” aspects of the role mature in to distinct roles on the community team: community product manager, moderator, internal community manager, social media manager, social ux designer, and many more disciplines.
We should take time to celebrate the folks doing the hands on work of shaping, supporting and nurturing online communities.
Background about Community Manager Appreciation Day from Jeremiah’s blog:
Now, Recognize A Community Manager, Every 4th Monday of January
While we agree with common manners to always thank someone after they’ve helped you, just take a moment to pause.. and think. Why would someone willingly go through the above mentioned challenges? Because of their passion to improve the company, and help customers have a better relationship. In many cases, a genuine ‘thank you’ can mean more than a yearly customer satisfaction survey. Take the time to recognize and thank the community manager that may have helped you while you during your time of need.
If you’re a customer, and your problem was solved by a community manager be sure to thank them in the medium that helped you in. Use the hashtag #CMAD.
If you’re a colleague with community manager, take the time to understand their passion to improve the customer –and company experience. Copy their boss.
If you’re a community manager, stop and breathe for a second, and know that you’re appreciated. Hug your family.
This isn’t just about a single role, but a bigger trend of making product and services more efficient, and thereby our world a little bit more efficient and sustainable.
I happily endorsed this proposal along with the following community leaders Jeremiah pulled together over the weekend:
Connie Benson, Rachel Happe, Jake McKee, Sean O’Driscoll, Lane Becker, Dawn Foster, Thor Muller, Amy Muller and Jeremiah Owyang.