Bill Johnston: Online Community Strategy

We still have a few seats available for the Mobile Communities Unconference, this Thursday, March 20th in Palo Alto.

Want to join the conversation? Register here:

http://mcu2008.eventbrite.com

Groups coming include:
3jam, Active Path Solutions, AdMob, AOL, Cisco,Digital Chocolate, FunMobility, Google, HP, Intel, Lithium, LiveWorld, Microsoft, Mixer Labs, MobiHand, MobileLife Inc., NextNow, Nokia, Omega Mobile, Inc., Quest Software, Ribbit, SAP, VMWare, Yahoo!, You Tube

Questions? Call me @ 415.299.9638

We are about a week away from the The Online Community Unconference East. There are a fantastic group of organizations coming, including:

• allfacebook.com
• Alliance to Save Energy
• AOL
• Business Week Digital
• Changing The Present
• Consumers Union
• Cyworld
• EchoDitto
• Family Justice
• Gartner
• Grandparents.com
• IBM
• Mercy Corps
• Patricia Seybold Group
• Showtime Networks Inc
• Socialtext
• Texas Instruments
• TV Guide Online
• Zagat.com

We have about 15 tickets remaining, and we expect to sell out this week. To register, go to http://ocueast.eventbrite.com.

We are holding a handful of “scholarship” tickets for those that are still in school, or those whose budgets are tight. Please email me directly to inquire about one of these tickets.

I just put together a short list of our best interviews from the Online Community Report for 2007. We had a great group of Community experts sharing their experiences, and I think you will agree that the content is worth a second look.
Shawn Morton, CNET
“The big lesson … was to follow the needs of the community first, not the latest new thing that analysts, journalists or bloggers are raving about… unless your community is geared toward analysts, journalists or bloggers.”

Steve Nelson, Clear Ink
“They (communities) form themselves, so what corporations can do is to foster their organic growth, not force it. Understand that they will be equal players at the table, respect them and let them thrive.”

Lee LeFever, Common Craft
“In my experience, there is a much needed focus on the role of the community manager. Companies are starting to understand that community isn’t a technology that you plug in and leave alone - it’s a way of doing business that takes time and hard work. In the best success stories, there is almost always a person or small group that understands community processes, sets expectations, and balances the needs of the community and the organization.”

Scott Moore, Schwab Foundation
Regardless which definition of ROI you want to use (return on investment, information or interaction), I am hearing more and more community managers who are focusing on helping community members increase their return as a main goal. This doesn’t mean that the organization hosting the community gives up on return, but that it’s not the only bottom line (and it’s not just a monetary bottom line).

Bill Binenstock, CBS Interactive
“The good news about our industry and our space is that there are so many incredibly cool things to do and so much innovation taking place. The bad news about our industry and our space is that there are so many incredibly cool ….”

Guy Kawasaki, Garage / Truemors
Not everything has to be a Google or YouTube to be a “success.” Small sites
can be great “lifestyle” businesses: no outside investors, work in your
underwear at home, and use any Macintosh that you want. Life is good in the
garage.
(editors note: my home office is in my garage, but I generally put pants on)

Jake McKee, Ant’s Eye View
“But even as this awareness grows and the tools get better and better (anyone seen Facebook lately??), we still advise our clients of the same thing we have for years: build relationships, don’t implement tools. Relationships are the crucial part of any “social” activity, whether online or offline, whether business focused or personal.”

Joi Podgorny, Ludorum, Inc.
“It has been said before a ton of times, but I will keep saying it until it becomes common knowledge - Communities are hard work. They take resources to design and plan, but more importantly, they take resources to maintain.”

Susan Tenby, TechSoup
“Enlist your most opinionated and helpful volunteers and create a “management group” of sorts. Connect with them every month, outside of the larger group, if possible, through a conference call, take their agenda items and and help them help make the community a success by forming the structure of your community with their ideas and your vision.”

Know an online community expert with an interesting story to tell? Or are you one yourself? Email me, and you may be the next expert interviewee!

We are lining up the final speaker slots for the Marketing & Online Community conference.

We’ve added three folks this week that I am particularly excited about (ok, I’m also excited by the whole lineup).

David Dunne - Edelman
I’ve been a fan of Edelman since a former Autodesk colleague introduced me to their Trust Barometer a couple of years ago. I’m glad to have their perspective a part of the conference.

Thor Muller - Satisfaction
Satisfaction intends to turn customer support, and by extension, brand ownership on it’s ear. If you aren’t familiar with the site, check it out. It turns out our CEO Chris blogged about them several weeks ago.

Richard Weil - Cartoon Network
Richard is working on a very interesting virtual world project. I’m not sure how much I am free to say at this point… so we will just leave it as that.

It is interesting to watch traditional marketing and advertising agencies confront the power of the connected consumer. I’m very excited to get to New York and to explore this topic with the brands, agencies and communities that are coming.

Cross-posted from the OC Report: Following closely on the heels of the Online Community Summit, The Marketing & Online Communities conference is less than a month away.

The Marketing & Online Communities conference is intended to be an in-depth discussion on the current issues and opportunities in marketing to communities. Marketers and brand managers seem to be struggling with effective and appropriate techniques when marketing to the connected consumer. For instance, Edelman, the renowned PR firm that publishes it’s annual Trust Barometer, has had a couple of recent campaigns for Wal-Mart that clearly violate consumer trust. Conversely, online communities seem to be very reluctant to experiment with new and appropriate marketing techniques, and seem to fall back on crude tools like banner ads. Personally, I’m stunned every day at the crass and off-target ads I’m served in Facebook. We can all collectively do better.

In short: the point of the conference is to bring marketing agencies, brand managers and community hosts to the table to talk about how to market more effectively and respectfully.

Our topic list includes:
• Marketing to Communities – The Brand “Us”
• Anatomy of an Integrated Campaign
• Creating Successful Campaigns With Established Communities
• Hosting the premier community for your Brand
• Using Social Media in Your Campaigns
• Measuring The Success of Your Community Campaign
• Children & Tween Communities: Engaging the Future
• Boomer Networks
• The Future of Community-based Marketing

Our session lead list includes:
• Dave Bottoms - Yahoo!
• Betsy Burroughs - Future Catalyst
• Andy Chambers - Digit
• Mary Furlong - Mary Furlong & Associates
• Marcien Jenckes - AOL
• Michael Leifer - guerilla PR, Inc.
• Tim Manners - THE HUB Magazine / Cool News of the Day
• Bree Nguyen - Warner Bros Records
• Jeremy Welt - Warner Bros Records

A partial list of the organizations attending includes:
• AOL
• APC
• David X. Manners Company
• Digit London
• Eastman Kodak
• Fidelity Investments
• Guardian Investment Management
• guerilla PR, Inc.
• Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
• Lightworks New Media, Inc.
• LiveWorld
• Marketmaker Interactive
• Microsoft
• Omidyar Network
• Strategic Marketing
• The Luxury Institute
• United Nations
• WebEx
• Yahoo

Last but not least, we have added a reception following the event in the ultra hip Sanctum lounge. This is the prefect place for both sides of the community and marketing debate to sip a cocktail, relax, and network after what promises to be a full day of heated discussion.

If you would like to request an invitation to the event, please fill out this short form.

A few speaking and sponsorship opportunities are still available. Please let me know if you would like to discuss. bjohnston@forumone.com.

Cross posted from the OC Report:

The topic of online community team organizational structures seems to be getting increasingly hot.

The two main questions seem to be:

• Where does the community team “belong” in a corporate structure?
• What are the roles on that team?

I’ve explored the former a couple of times, so I thought I would spend some time on the roles of the team, and in particular, the community manager. I would really love to hear what you think about this. I know leaving comments on this blog can be a bit of a pain (working on it), so if you have any issues, please email me.

The role of Community Manager seems to be evolving in the following ways:

• The role is less about moderation and more about product management.
Most thriving communities need little action by the moderators. Management tools are (in general) sufficient enough to combat spam, and most communities have empowered the members with tools to flag abusive or inappropriate posts. Simply put: with adequate and findable community guidelines, active moderation can (and should) be in the hands of the members. strategy, features, UX, platform, budgets, marketing (and a hundred other things). In short, very much like the role of a product manager.

• An expectation of communicating value (ROI) rather than stats
Community managers are now expected to not just report stats (page views, membership growth), but also to report on other points of value, and to contextualize that value, at least in part, in terms of progress on business goals.

• Community managers are expected to grow relationships with the influencers in the community
Community managers are increasingly expected to know who their lead members are, and what effect their influence has on other community members.

• Community managers should be thinking about “portability” of their team
In some companies, sources of community funding, and even the reporting structure of the community team is changing every few quarters. We live in evolutionary times, so it is good for community managers to reach out to senior staff on teams outside their immediate reporting structures.

In some cases, seasoned community managers are evolving into the Community Director, with several functions reporting in to him / her. My Community dream team would look something like this (YMMV):
• Moderators
• UX
• Analytics
• Content Manager / Community Editor
• Marketing
• Developer / Ops

I’d like to hear from the community managers out there. What are you experiencing in your day to day work? What am I missing here?

Just saw a tweet that Jeremiah Owyang is going to Forrester. Wow, big news.

Seems like a natural progression for him. He works awfully hard at staying up to date (and updating everyone else) on the social media space.

Congratulations Jeremiah!