Next Online Community Roundtable: July 8th – Washington DC

Are you a community manager or social media strategist or are you in charge of online community & social media at your organization? Are you in the Washington DC Area?

If so, you might find the Online Community Roundtable of interest. This is a small networking group / event that meets regularly to discuss issues, opportunities and trends with online communities, and represents leading organizations (large and small). This will be our first meeting in the DC area, and I’m very excited to be “taking the show” to the east coast.

The format is an hour of networking, followed by two hours of presentation and discussion about online communities and social media. The Roundtable is free, but you need to RSVP.

Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Center for Global Development
Street: 1800 Massachusetts Ave NW
City/Town: Washington, DC

You must RSVP to attend:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128815474008#/event.php?eid=128815474008
Please note: even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can still rsvp to the event.

If you have any questions, please email me .

Online Community Unconference 2009 Wiki Open & Session Highlights

Cross-posted from the Online Community Report.

One of the most exciting things about the Unconference format is the fact that there are so many sessions running simultaneously. This can also be on of the most frustrating, as it is impossible to be everywhere at once. Thankfully, participants generally try to take thorought notes of their sessions to share back with the group.

We had over 50 sessions at the Online Community Unconference, and notes for most are captured on the Unconference wiki. The wiki is now open for public reading (editing and commenting are reserved for Unconference attendees).

The Online Community Unconference wiki can be found here:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2009

A few highlights from the session notes include:

Managing the Mob: What to do when things go wrong
Melissa Daniels of Yahoo! convened this session to discuss how to integrate your community into the organization’s decision making process, even when the community mood is dark.

Social CRM : Mapping Social ID’s, Behavioral Targeting & Common Profiles
A session about managing customer relationships across multiple domains, convened by Ajay Ramachandran of SourceN.

Using Community in Strategy Development
Nilofer Merchant of Rubicon Consulting convened this session to explore how companies can use communities as a strategic tool and integrate feedback and learning from communities into product development and company strategy.

Community Driven Product Design – Collecting Feedback from your Community
Siko Bouterse of hi5 convened this session to explore the best ways to build feedback systems.

B2B Communities – What works, Best Practices
Mike Rowland of Impact Interactions led a session sharing community management best practices based on his firm’s experience over the last 10 years.

What is Community Leadership?
Scott Moore convened this session to explore the attributes of leadership in communities.

Social Network Analysis (in excel!)
Marc Smith of Telligent led a session on social network mapping and analysis, and offered a demo of NodeXL, a free, excel-based tool.

Mission Aligned Twittering
Jill Finlayson of Social Edge led a discussion on a holistic approach to Twittering: figure out how the whole organization can get value.

Are we a Community Too? Ways Community Practitioners Stay Connected. What’s next?
Gail Williams of Salon Media Group and Scott Moore explore the concept of a community manager and strategists “tribe”.

Please feel free to share the link to the wiki, or to link to the source session notes from your blogs / tweets.

Highlights from Unconferences Past

Cross posted from the Online Community Report.

We are just over 2 weeks away from our Online Community Unconference, to be held 6/10 in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum.

One of the most valuable resources that comes out of our Unconference series is the set of session notes that are posted to the event wiki. We generally have between 40-60 sessions at each of the Unconferences, and many of the sessions are captured and posted. The wiki (and session notes) are open to the public shortly after we complete each Unconference.

In preparing for this year’s Unconference, I’ve looked back over our previous event’s wikis, and I (re)discovered the following gems that I thought I would share.

Key Sessions from Previous Online Community Unconferences:
Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world
An excellent overview of how to get started in community management.

Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers
Useful notes that apply social psychology theory to the context of online community.

Worst Case Scenerios – What to do when things go terribly wrong
Lessons learned from challenging community management situations.

Twitter for Business
A thorough look at use cases for Twitter use in and for the enterprise.

Managing + Motivating Community leaders
A discussion on how to energize and engage super users and moderators.

Unconference 2009
If you currently drive the community or social media strategy for your organization, and you are in (or will be in) the SF Bay Area on 6/10, I would encourage you to come check it out!

Current attendees include: Google, REI, Get Satisfaction, Intuit, Microsoft, TechSoup, Symantec, and many others.

Registration
To register at the pre-event rate of $195 ($245 on site) please go here:
http://ocu2009-rpm526.eventbrite.com

OCU 2008 Wiki
The wiki is available if you would like to read the session notes:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu08/

You can see pictures from the 2008 Unconference here:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008&w=all&s=int

We also have several sponsor opportunities open for this Unconference. If you are looking for a cost-effective way to reach community and social media professionals, please contact me about our sponsorship options.

Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving Webcast

The archive for Online Communities: Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar”>Online Communities: Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar is now available.

You can view an archive of the video / audio from the webcast here:
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/webcasts/OCSVTV/index.htm

On the webcast today, I was joined by Thor Muller of Satisfaction, Chris Kenton of SocialRep and Scott Wilder of Intuit. Topics discussed in the webcast include:

- Buffalo culture as a new metaphor for your online business
- The customer relationship as a currently squandered opportunity
- Rethinking “ROI”
- The social history of marketing and media
- Setting social media policy and training staff – “Guidelines and guardrails”
- and much more.

Participant bios:

Thor Muller – CEO & Co-founder, Satisfaction

Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering “people-powered customer service for absolutely everything.”

He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm. Since its founding in 2005, Rubyred has developed social software for a range of startups and leading portals.

Prior to Rubyred, Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, later acquired by Frog Design where he served as VP Digital Media. He subsequently founded Trapezo, a venture-funded company that made Web software for syndicating content, acquired by Perfect Commerce in 2002.

Christopher Kenton – CEO & Founder, SocialRep

Christopher Kenton is founder and CEO of the enterprise social media SaaS startup SocialRep, and cofounder and consulting partner at MotiveLab a social media marketing agency. Chris was formerly Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) Council, and its corporate parent, the international PR firm GlobalFluency, where he managed global business development, client consulting services and program development for business communities including the CMO Council, the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME).

With an extensive background in strategic marketing and software development, Chris specializes in market development, competitive positioning, marketing effectiveness and measurement, with a special emphasis on marketing technology and social media.

Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Intuit

Scott K. Wilder is currently the Group Manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Community and User-Collaboration Web site. Previously, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at KBtoys.com and eToys. He also has held numerous senior management positions at America Online, Apple Computer, Borders.com, and American Express. While working at America Online, Scott helped create the first Web-based online advertisement and commercial Web site. Wilder has a Master degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, The New York University Leonard Stern School of Business and Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program.

Bill Johnston, Chief Community Officer, Forum One Networks

Bill Johnston works as Forum One Network’s Chief Community Officer. In this role, Bill drives the editorial vision for Forum One’s series of conferences related to online community, leads the Online Community Research Network, and leads the commercial community consulting practice.

Johnston has been building large-scale online communities since 1999. He came to Forum One from Autodesk, where he served as the Online Strategy Manager, with responsibilities including a portfolio of online communities and blogs. Previously he oversaw user experience tasks at TechRepublic, an IT professionals community (now part of Cnet). He also directs the Online Community Roundtable, an invitation-based professional networking series for online community professionals to share best practices and experiences.

Social Media Strategy: Getting Beyond the Hype

I gave this presentation at the Geneva Web Meetup on May 1st. The net of the presentation is that I encourage the use of a comprehensive strategy as a lens to evaluate opportunities for engagement in the social media ecosystem.

Webinar – Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving in the Economic Downturn

Online Communities: Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar
A FREE webinar sponsored by Forum One Networks
May 7, 2009 @ 11:00 am PDT
Register here: http://thrivesurvive-rpm.eventbrite.com

The economy is in a state of flux, but interest in and use of online communities and social media has never been higher. Hear from a panel of experienced community executives about how they are guiding their community-based businesses through the economic challenges, and hear about the opportunities they see on the horizon.

I’ll be leading an incredible panel that includes Thor Muller of Satisfaction, Chris Kenton of SocialRep and Scott Wilder of Intuit for an in-depth discussion around social media and online community strategies and tactics for surviving and thriving in the economic downturn. Session highlights will include:

- Buffalo culture as a new metaphor for your online business
- How stakeholder attitudes are changing in light of economic pressures
- Why solid community engagement strategies have never been more important (or valuable)
- Rethinking “ROI”
- Advice on how to navigate the downturn
- Budget & staffing implications during the downturn

Please note: Attendance is limited to 200 people. Register early to reserve your spot!

Thor Muller – CEO & Co-founder, Satisfaction
Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering “people-powered customer service for absolutely everything.”

He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm. Since its founding in 2005, Rubyred has developed social software for a range of startups and leading portals.

Prior to Rubyred, Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, later acquired by Frog Design where he served as VP Digital Media. He subsequently founded Trapezo, a venture-funded company that made Web software for syndicating content, acquired by Perfect Commerce in 2002.

Christopher Kenton – CEO & Founder, SocialRep
Christopher Kenton is founder and CEO of the enterprise social media SaaS startup SocialRep, and cofounder and consulting partner at MotiveLab a social media marketing agency. Chris was formerly Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) Council, and its corporate parent, the international PR firm GlobalFluency, where he managed global business development, client consulting services and program development for business communities including the CMO Council, the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME).

With an extensive background in strategic marketing and software development, Chris specializes in market development, competitive positioning, marketing effectiveness and measurement, with a special emphasis on marketing technology and social media.

Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Intuit
Scott K. Wilder is currently the Group Manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Community and User-Collaboration Web site. Previously, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at KBtoys.com and eToys. He also has held numerous senior management positions at America Online, Apple Computer, Borders.com, and American Express. While working at America Online, Scott helped create the first Web-based online advertisement and commercial Web site. Wilder has a Master degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, The New York University Leonard Stern School of Business and Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program.

Are you going to SxSWi?

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve never been to SxSWi.

I’m planning on fixing that this year. Are you going? If so, I would love to connect!

Contact info:

Cell: 415.299.9638
Twitter: @billjohnston

A few posts I’ve found helpful in planning my trip:

SXSW Survival: 2009 Edition – Community Guy
SXSW ‘09: Updates – Being Peter Kim
Razorfish SXSW Guide – Razorfish (AWESOME + optimized for mobile)

Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving – Part 3

Cross-posted from the Online Community Report.

This post is the third in a series of blog posts exploring our recent research into the effect of the down economy on Online Community and social media programs. In this post, I’d like to focus on the advice that the research respondents gave for thriving during the downturn, and what key resources they are relying on for advice and support. Keep in mind, this advice comes from community managers, executives and social media strategists (not analysts or observers) who are currently in the trenches dealing with issues firsthand.

First, A Bit of Background
We’ve been tracking the economies effect on community and social media programs since late fall of 2008. For background, I would recommend reading (or re-reading) the first two posts in the series:

Online Communities: Surviving and Thriving in a Downturn (Part 1)
My initial thoughts, from October of 2008, about the mounting pressure from the economy on community and social media programs, and suggestions for social media strategists and community managers on how to best navigate the issues.

Online Communities: Thriving in the Downturn (Part 2)
A post the highlighted several key findings from our Online Community Research Network project conducted late November and early December of 2008 . The intention of the study was to get a broad look at how online community programs are fairing within organizations in light of the recent economic changes. As noted in the previous post, we saw plenty to be concerned about. We saw layoffs, budget freezes and cuts, and in some cases program abandonment. But, we also saw a lot of data to be optimistic about including the fact that the majority of respondents reported continued support of their community activities, and in some cases, increased support.

Advice & Support
One key piece of information we were seeking in the study was what advice would the practitioners we interviewed give other peers? In the research survey we asked: “What advice would you give to your peers in regards to thriving during a slow economic period?”

Respondents gave varied advice to peers in regards to thriving during the down economy. The most common responses were related to streamlining their resources / costs and focusing on bottom line objectives.

The top pieces of advice that respondents wanted to offer to their peers in helping them thrive during an economy downturn are to:

• Focus on Bottom line Objectives (15),
• Be Creative (9) and
• Offer Value / Uniqueness (8) and
• Don’t Give Up / Stay the Course (8)

Graph: Categorized responses to the question: “What advice would you give to your peers in regards to thriving during a slow economic period?”

I’ve included some of the key respondent quotes, categorized below.

1. Stay Focused on Bottom Line Objectives:
“Focus on objectives that impact the bottom line…and on those easiest to quantify (e.g., self-serve support via community reduces our support Cost Per Incident by >50%)”

2. Be Creative – Work With the Constraints, Not Against
“With a reduced headcount in your organization, your (external) community power users become a critical resource, and more so than before, in helping other users. Recognize and reward the behavior of helping other users.”
“You have to be creative. Now is the time that truly inventive things can come about.”
“Embrace change and make yourself an asset to all departments, not soley content creation and UGC.”

3. Offer Value / Uniqueness
“Community professionals have the most valuable resource of all — we know our members/customers/users the best. Emphasize that knowledge whenever you can.”
“Make sure what you offer provides value to the customer. Encouraging peer-to-peer support in the community will reduce the need for extensive staffing – Remind decision makers what a bargain online communities are when compared to similar in-person activity.”
“Do the math and show your Management Team the ROI regarding community staff. Build a volunteer program (which should happen regardless of economic times). Keep in mind that people turn to each other, their communities, and entertainment in tough economic times.”
“Feature community content that pertains to the economy; ask for personal stories and conversation and offer community a place to share and solve financial challenges (e.g., online coupons, budgeting, creating handmade gifts; portfolio info), with contextual links to community message boards, blogs, polls, etc.”

4. Don’t Give Up / Stay the Course
“Continue to make decisions based upon your overall strategy, even within economic constraints, rather than just based upon economics. It’s possible to get clever and get more ‘bang’ for your buck. So focus on the long term.”
“Stick to your core. Analyze what you do best that differentiates yourself from competitors and focus on improving community features that tie into that”

The Most Important Resources
As part of the research project, we also asked respondents to rank a series of resources based on their personal sense of the value of the resource. Data below is from the question “How important are the following resources to you personally in ensuring the survival of your online community during a slow economy?”

Graph: Ranked responses to the question: “How important are the following resources to you personally in ensuring the survival of your online community during a slow economy?”

It is no surprise that access to support from other peers (read: other practitioners) and relationships with other Community Managers and Strategists ranked the highest.

The final report has been published to our Online Community Research Network members and research participants.

The full report (~45 pages) includes all collected data, charts from the date, and all write in responses. The full report expands on the content above, as well covering specific budget items that will likely be affected in 2009, tactics that community executives are employing in the downturn, and peer advice on thriving in the downturn.

The full report is also available for purchase here.

Session Notes from the OC Unconference East (and the wiki is open)

Cross posted from the Online Community Report:

We just opened up the wiki from the Online Community Unconference East, held 2/12 at Baruch College in New York.

The wiki can be found here:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/ You will find notes for many of the sessions on the wiki, and folks are still adding, so be sure and check back.

In particular, I wanted to highlight a handful of session notes that I thought were particulalry valuable. I woudl encourage you to check out the following:

Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers
Scott Moore, Independent
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/index.cgi?social_psychology_101_for_community_managers

Social Networking in the Enterprise
Cody Burke, Basex
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/index.cgi?social_networking_in_the_enterprise

Twitter for Business
Ron Casalotti,BusinessWeek Digital
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/index.cgi?twitter_for_business

Managing + Motivating Community leaders
Sara Stefanik, Google
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/index.cgi?managing_motivating_community_leaders

Moderation Strategies
Bryan Person, LiveWorld
http://www.socialtext.net/ocue2009/index.cgi?moderation_strategies

Community Platform & Services Satisfaction Research

The Online Community Research Network is currently conducting our next research project to assess the level of satisfaction with online community platforms, and platform and service providers.

The research targets online community executives, strategists, and managers, working both in the commercial and non-profit space.

If you would like to participate in the study, you can find the research survey here:
http://bit.ly/487DWj

All participants that submit a complete (and valid) survey will receive a copy of the final report, to be published at the end of February.

Again, the survey is intended for community managers and strategists only, please. This person is on the “customer” side of the customer / vendor relationship. If this describes you, please proceed. Responses from online community platform and service vendors will be factored out of the final data set, if submitted.