The State of Online Community 2008

I developed the first draft of this presentation for the Communities Exchange Summit. I plan on presenting to the member base of the Online Community Research Network in November, and then to hold a couple of public webinars in late November and early December.

The content is based on Forum One’s research and consulting work this year, and factors in content from over 1000 global organizations.

Marketing & Online Communities: Final Agenda Set

We are just over a week away from the Marketing & Online Communities conference, which will be held November 5th at the Tribeca Grand in New York City. The event promises to be an informative and interactive discussion of the intersection of marketing and online communities. We still have a few seats left, so if you would like to participate in the event, please register here: http://moc08.eventbrite.com .

Our intention with holding the Marketing & Online Communities conference is to explore of the intersection of marketing and online communities. Marketing agencies and teams are playing a key role in the development of online communities, and more generally, in the use of social media. But, there are several key issues, including:

• Many marketing teams are still focused on quarterly-driven results and think in a campaign mentality, versus building long term relationships.
• Many community hosts are struggling with appropriate forms of marketing, and in developing appropriate engagement programs.
• Community members don’t want to feel manipulated or interrupted in their community experiences, and they want to have conversations, as opposed to being “talked at” by brands.

We chose our topic and speaker lineup to highlight healthy attitudes and best practices in building relationships with online communities.

Our session and breakout topics, and session leads will include:

• Designing for Conversation
  Heather Gold, Subvert.com
• The Social Web: How Consumers and Brands are Connecting Online
  Elisa Camahort Page – BlogHer
  Kendra Bracken – Fleishman-Hillard
• Secrets of Successful Community Campaigns
  Heather Lutrell – 3jane / indieclick
  Belinda Lang – American Express
• Community Generated Media: Giving Customers a Voice and Companies Insight
  David Rubinstein – ExpoTV
  Michael Liefer – Swirl
• The Role of PR: “Public Relationships “
  Brad B McCormick – Porter Novelli
• Moderating Your Brand
  Mike Passcucci – Mzinga
• Brand Monitoring in A Web 2.0 World
  Steve Broback – Parnassus Group
• Integrating Customer Communities in to the Marketing Mix
  Peter Friedman, Moderator – LiveWorld

Again, if you would like to participate in the event, please register here: http://moc08.eventbrite.com .

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

The tag for the event is #moc2008

Online Community Summit 2008 – A Report Back

Cross posted from the Online Community Report.

The seventh annual Online Community Summit was held October 9-10 in Sonoma, CA, at Ramekins culinary school. The beautiful Sonoma setting was the perfect backdrop for two days of in depth discussion about engaging and growing online communities.

Participants were senior practitioners and from a diverse set of industries. Companies represented included: AARP, BusinessWeek, Cisco, Consumers Union (Consumer Reports), Current TV, Ebay, iVillage, Logictech, Loopt, Salon.com, Sony, Yahoo and many more.

We cover a lot of ground in the two days of discussion, but to my mind, three key points stick out:

Value & Metrics
The conversation around dimensions of value of online communities seems to be getting more sophisticated. In general, it seems most organizations are comfortable with accepting that there is intrinsic value in community-building activities. Reporting on that value requires a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. The most successful community strategies include clear goals for the organizations community activities that tie back to larger organizational goals. Most teams aren’t getting pressure to “justify the existence” of the online community, but rather, are getting pressure to provide more in depth analysis of the type of value that is being created with the community.

Metaphor: Beyond Destination to Ecosystem
Most community strategies that were discussed involved a more sophisticated engagement plan that went beyond a destination site, and included not only the destination site, but other independent community sites, key bloggers, mass social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Etc.) and even offline groups and events.

Mobile is Coming
If for no other reason than the shear adoption of mobile devices, mobile social networking will play a clear role in the industry soon. Not only are mobile devices deployed at scale, but the sophistication of the devices, and the networks that they run on, are getting faster and more sophisticated. A theme with many in the room at the Summit was about augmented their existing communities with a mobile version.

Blog & Podcast coverage:
We were blessed with several talented bloggers, podcasters and twitterers for this year’s Summit, and as such, I have a lot of follow up content to point you to.

Aaron Strout and Jim Storer of Mzinga did several key interviews. Jim shares his thoughts, and has teh embedded interviews on his blog:
http://www.mzinga.com/en/Community/Blogs/Jim-Storer/Conversations-w-Mzinga-at-OCS08/

Bryan Person of LiveWorld has a nice summary post of the Summit, as well:
http://socialvoice.liveworld.com/blog-entry/Bryan-Persons-Blog/Recapping-2008-Online/1100000180

Brian also conducted a series of interviews:
• Chrystie Hill, director of community services for WebJunction.org.
• Kathy O’Sullivan, product manager of online community for the education team at Autodesk.
• Ron Casalotti, director of user participation at BusinessWeek.
• Christine Perey, market-research and business-development consultant for technology providers.

Chrystie Hill’s of Web Junction shares her thoughts:
http://blog.webjunctionworks.org/index.php/2008/10/18/online-community-summit-2008/

Pictures of the Summit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/forumone/tags/ocs08

Twitter Stream:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=ocs08

Online Community Research: Community Culture

The Online Community Research Network is kicking off our next research project to study how online community cultures form, what factors effect change, and how hosts maintain a desired culture.

We have found that the best source of information about community best practice and strategy comes from the collective experience of real-world practitioners.

If you would like to participate in the study, you can find the research survey here:
http://moourl.com/occulture

Again, the survey is intended for experienced community managers and strategists only, please.

Online Communities: Surviving and Thriving in a Downturn (Part 1)

Note: this is cross posted from the Online Community Report

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of very grim economic news of late. The purpose of this post isn’t to give an overview of the current situation, but to highlight possible implications of a slower economy on business, and by extension on online community budgets. More importantly, I want to start a discussion about Community Managers can help their community’s survive and thrive during the downturn.

We have seen this cycle before, and relatively recently. When the web 1.0 bubble burst, many “community”-based startups ceased to exist, and spending on online community development in the enterprise all but dried up. From personal experience, most of the community initiatives at Autodesk were suspended in the closing months of 2001, and we shifted focus to our discussion groups and some customer-generated content activities.

What was different with Community 2.0?
By late 2004 and early 2005, key changes in in the marketplace, in organizations attitudes and in customer (user / people online / etc) behavior led to an explosive growth of social media, use of social networking and increased online community building activities by many organizations.

Key factors were (IMHO, I won’t list all):
• Cost of platforms dramatically decreased, and in some cases fell to zero
• Consumer and workplace broadband reached ~100% penetration
• Consumers accepted less formal content, trust in “people like me” exceeded authoritities
• A certain segment of the group formerly known as “the audience” decided they wanted to actively create, participate and connect
• Many companies started to accept and practice the principals outlined in the Cluetrain Manifesto, and in the many key books, blogs and conference that followed, evangelizing the metaphor of conversation

Things Were Going So Well, What Happened?
Earlier this year, we started to hear significant rumblings from wall street that things were not ok, particularly with the credit markets. Over the last two weeks, the markets have been in turmoil. Many organizations are seeing the dark shadow of a recession. Some argue we are already there. One thing is clear: most organizations have shifted to a more conservative outlook for 2009.

As organizations take a more sober look at the last quarter of 2008 and make projections for 2009, there are some likely implications for online community programs:
• Budgets will likely shrink
• Headcount will likely be frozen
• Positions may be consolidated (merging of roles)
• Layoffs may happen
• It will be harder to upgrade / make improvements to infrastructure
• Pressure will increase quickly and dramatically for some articulation of value
• Programs may be cut back
• In extreme cases, some community programs may be abandoned

Thriving in the Downturn
I want to be very clear here: I don’t think the global economic circumstances mean gloom and despair for the entire online community sector. The circumstances for Community 2.0 that I outlined above still generally hold true, and I still believe most organizations can create real value by engaging in online community activity. Signs that interest in online community is still high are all around. For instance, demand for qualified community managers and strategists is at an all time high (even though we are starting to see the first hints of staff reduction).

However, I do think that Community Managers have some work to do in order to navigate some of the potential challenges I outlined above. I’ve outlined the following tactics that can help (and I’d love to here your suggestions via the comments).

• Focus on Defining / and Reporting Value
In order for your community strategy to be sustainable, you need to be able to articulate value back to the organization. This value has to be articulated, at least in part, in the cultural language of your organization. In some organizations, it’s all about impact to customer loyalty, it some organizations, this value is growing an audience (member registrations). You will likely wind up with a report that is a mosaic of quantitative and qualitative sources. We’ve studied this issue in the Online Community Research Network, and you can see a report excerpt here:

Online Community ROI and Revenue Techniques

• Reach Out to Other Departments (CSR / Marketing / Support)
Online Communities offer value to almost every department in the organization, from HR (recruiting), to Support (call avoidance), to Marketing (awareness / reach), to the Product team (feedback, customer led innovation). Now is the time to reach out to other teams and create cross-organizations ties, and involve other teams in community building and engagement activities.

• Show the Cost of Not Participating
One way to show value back to management is to paint a picture of not having a community or community engagement strategy, and the associated costs and losses. These hypothetical costs can range from increased awareness of competitors to decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Be Honest About Your Strategy
Take a look at the community touchpoints and programs you are engaging in. Are there a few that have little or no participation? Are there features that score consistently low on your community research? Now is a good time to look at shedding these features and programs that are not creating value for your community. This is also an opportunity to involve the community in continuing to shape the experience and ongoing direction. Lastly, are there features or programs that you are struggling to maintain, that would be better served out in the community ecosystem? For instance, a particularly strong, independent Facebook group for your brand that you have been struggling with, or a user group that has a competitive feature on their site? Let it go.

• Stick Together
The worst feeling in trying times is feeling alone and isolated. If you and / or your team don’t have peers at other companies to talk to and share strategies and tactics with, start making those connections now. There are lots of meetups (like my Online Community Roundtable), conferences and organizations (like the social media club and the online community research network) to help support you.

What do you think?
I would love to hear what you think, either via comments or email. Are you seeing changing attitudes towards your online community initiatives? Have you been affected by the downturn? Do you have advice or suggestions to help other navigate these issues?