Building communities

Building Communities
Techniques, Technologies & Best Practices
Connie Bensen
Online Marketing Summit
June 8, 2011

Introduction
Educator
Creative Marketer
Change Agent

Definitions
Community
Social Business
Challenges
Culture shift
Industry Dependencies
Executive Buy-in
Executive Support
Budget

Every Company Needs a Digital Footprint

Get to know your People
1. Listen

Choose Listening Tools
Basic
Google Alerts
Twitter – Hootsuite, Seismic, Tweetdeck
Premium
Trackur
Alterian SM2
Radian6
Sysomos
Visible Technologies

What to listen for
Brand Name
Products
Key Executives
Competitors
If no conversations…
Industry terms
* Identify patterns & trends

Get to Know Them
Identify where consumers are at
Which social networks
The influencers (beyond top tier)
Topics of interest & context
* Create consumer profiles and understand
what motivates them

Online Preferences
Time of day
Social Networks
Formats – chat, video, forums, games, etc

Planning
Create a Strategy & Metrics
2. Planning

Plan Based on Objective(s)
Choose One that Meets Your Business Goals
% Reduced spend on PR, Marketing & Advertising
% Increase in Sales
% Reduction in Customer Service Costs
% Reduction Product Development Costs
% Increased SEO Presence
% Increase in Leads from Campaign
% Increase in Brand Visibility
* Note: the objectives drive
the metrics which need to be
measureable.

Platforms
Build
Hosted
Social network (Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn)
Items to consider:
Do you own your data?
Is the platform scalable?
How difficult will it be to migrate it?

Content is King & SEO is Queen
3. Digital Marketing

Social Media has radically changed Marketing
Company-centric (old) Buyer-centric (new)
Identify buyer
Search & find info, links
Outbound
Inbound
Send an Email
Visit website
Call prospect
Download a resource
Assess the need
Request a call
Determine budget
Describe a project
Give a demo
Give spec’s & budget
Participate in a demo
Submit proposal
Request a proposal

One Event/Piece of Content Assets in Many Formats
Repurpose content
Make it conversational
Create for variety of formats
Data sheets
Sales guides
Previous campaigns
Whitepapers
Webinars
Place in existing social channels
Map content& create a content Library

Encourage User Generated Content

Build Word of Mouth
Use Shareable sites
Encourage sharing of content in emails
Send newsletters with links

Build an Inbound Strategy
Share Your Story
Create Interesting Content
Add Value & Provide Resources
Syndicate your content – help it grow legs
Widgets (Slideshare.net)
LinkedIn, Facebook
SocialMediaToday.com, MyVenturePad.com
* Set information free

Create a Party
4. Engagement

Kicking it off
Seed the community
Provide guidelines that suit the community
Start with a simple profile
Add additional fields over time
Set expectations

Connect with them early on
Evangelists
Advocates
Influencers

Advocates
Reward them
Give them more privileges
Encourage them to moderate
Provide a private place for discussions
* Identify what motivates them

Dealing with Trolls

Measuring Success
4. Reporting

Measure what meets the Objective
% Reduced spend on PR, Marketing & Advertising
% Increase in Brand Visibility
Amount of increased conversation
% Increase in Sales
Overlay sales performance on volume of conversation
% Reduction in Customer Service Costs
Number of uses of online content
Number of issues resolved online by peers
Increased customer satisfaction - qualitative
% Reduction Product Development Costs
Number of ideas gathered/implemented
Compare previous cycle cost to present
Reduced cost due to beta
% Increased SEO Presence
Google your brand/product!
% Increase in Leads from Campaign

Calculating ROI
Decide on the objective (it needs to be measurable).
2. What is the % increase or decrease change in behavior that is wanted. (Need to know the value of increment)
3. Measure the baseline.
After a given period (or campaign time)
take the measurement
5. Calculate the ROI based on the cost
* Remember! It’s about building relationships.

Possible quantitative data
Number of active members
Percent with complete profile
Number of new members
Number of new threads started
Number of mentions
Number of comments
Number of views (YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr)
Number of embeds
Number of downloads
Number of followers (*careful!)
Rank (Google, Twitter, Technorati, Klout, etc)

Possible qualitative data
Sentiment and/or tone
Quote from advocate
Issues (frequency)
Topics frequently discussed
Recommendations (velocity)
Brand differentiators

Monthly Reporting
Report on Objectives
Established from goals of the position
Qualitative
Trends in members, topics, discovery of new communities
Quantitative
Benchmark based on previous report
Web Analytics
unless someone else is tracking them
Recommendations
Based on interactions with customers

Growing Your Community
Provide thought leadership
Comment on related posts
Guest blog
Participate in related communities
Organize industry related events online & offline

Fail Fast
Learn from Mistakes
Build on What Worked
Grow the Engagement
Get More Teams Involved
Train Willing Teams

Team Exercise

Connie Bensen
Community Strategist
ConnieBensen@gmail.com
@cbensen
www.communitystrategist.com
www.slideshare.net/conniebensen

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Building communities

by Connie Bensen on Jun 20, 2011

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Building communities — Presentation Transcript