Building Communities Around Content

BUILDING COMMUNITY AROUND CONTENT WORKSHOP PREPARED FOR O’REILLY’S TOC CONFERENCE 02/09/09

MEET THE TEAMS ( EXPERIENTIAL ) WHAT IS COMMUNITY? ( EXPERIENTIAL ) LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRIBALIZATION STUDY ( LECTURE ) LET’S BRAINSTORM ABOUT OUR FUTURE ( EXPERIENTIAL ) OVERCOMING COMMON OBSTACLES ( LECTURE ) WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU GET BACK? ( EXPERIENTIAL )
ON THE MENU TODAY (MAYBE)

THINK OF A COMMUNITY GROUP YOU LOVED… WHAT MADE IT GREAT? SHARE WITH YOUR GROUP…
WHAT IS COMMUNITY?

TRIBALIZATION OF BUSINESS STUDY CONDUCTED BY BEELINE LABS, DELOITTE AND THE SOCIETY FOR NEW COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH LOOKED AT 140 COMPANIES LEVERAGING COMMUNITY AS PART OF THEIR BUSINESS
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRIBALIZATION STUDY

UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS AT WORK WITHIN COMMUNITIES A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE FINDINGS OF THE STUDY THE MAJOR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE STUDY SOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITIES IN PUBLISHING
OVERVIEW:

What’s this tribal thing all about? TRIBALISM IS THE VERY FIRST SOCIAL SYSTEM THAT HUMAN BEINGS EVER LIVED IN, AND IT HAS LASTED MUCH LONGER THAN ANY OTHER KIND OF SOCIETY TO DATE. (WIKIPEDIA)

Why now? SOCIAL MEDIA HAPPENED… A PLATFORM AND CULTURE OF PARTICIPATION HAS EMERGED – GIVING POWER TO ALL YOUR EMPLOYEES, CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS TO BEHAVE THE WAY THEY WERE HARDWIRED TO BEHAVE – HUMANLY, TRIBALY

The motivations allowing this to work…
People want to connect with other people
People want to help and be helped – it’s a reflex!
People operate either in one of two frameworks:
social framework
market framework

Understanding the driving forces of communities
The more CONTENT you have the more MEMBERS you will get.
The more MEMBERS you have the more CONTENT you will get.
The better you match CONTENT and MEMBERS to MEMBER PROFILES the more MEMBERS and CONTENT you will get.
The easier it is to do TRANSACTIONS the more MEMBERS you will attract.
THOSE PILLARS CREATE THE DYNAMICS OF INCREASING RETURNS WHICH HELP COMMUNITIES DELIVER GAME CHANGING RESULTS

And of course…
The Technology Infrastructure of the community is important
The Social Infrastructure of the community is MORE important
BUT THEY ARE NOT AFFECTING THE ECONOMICS OF INCREASING RETURNS THAT DELIVER GAME CHANGING RESULTS

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
SECOND ACT:

Top usage scenarios: New Product Development Customer service Idea generation Market research Developer relations Amplifying Word of Mouth Employee communications General Marketing Reputation management Product testing Public relations LONG TAIL SALES CANARY IN THE COALMINE Co-innovation

Top business objectives: Generate word of mouth Bring outside ideas into the organization faster Increase customer loyalty Increase brand awareness Improve PR effectiveness Reduce market research costs Decrease customer acquisition cost Reduce customer support cost Increase new product success ratios

Why are companies setting up communities?
Speed of innovation – extending the edges of the organization
Learning organization
Reducing cost
Building trusted relations
Transformational power and game-changing nature of communities

Who’s in charge? MARKETING Sales Customer service Finance Public Relations Employee communications IT Product development R&D

Measuring progress and success – web analytics DISCONNECT: Not in support of any goal…

Measuring progress and success - business measures

Measuring progress and success – qualitative Activity levels Tonality Impact on sales Impact on cost Participation rate Sustainability Software downloads engagement Amount of learning Anecdotal stories Growth Sentiment

Community features contributing the most to effectiveness

The biggest obstacles to making communities work Could lead to premature shutdown of community

How long has your community been running?

How many active members do you have?

How many full time people manage this community?

What is the approximate annual operating budget?

Over the next 12 months will your investment in the community:

THE MAJOR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE STUDY
THIRD ACT:

Takeaway #1: Communities are about delivering game-changing results
Communities can increase revenue per customer dramatically – i.e., 50%
Communities will increase product introduction success ratios
Communities amplify everything you do – increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs

Takeaway #2: The rise of the CMO 2.0?
Communities should be an important part of the CMO’s toolset (but for many large companies – there is an under-investment and scale problem)
Communities should evolve the role of the CMO into Chief Community Officer (but that will require drastic changes in attitude and approach to marketing)
If done properly, communities will transform the way marketing works (reduced costs, improved effectiveness, new opportunities)

Takeaway #3: The need for new management thinking
Mismatch between community goals and associated investments
Major gaps between community goals and what is being measured
Communities have to combine with major talent initiatives
Communities will transform most business processes

Takeaway #3.5: The worst practices enjoy wide adoption
The build it and they will come (again) fallacy
The let’s keep it small so it doesn’t move the needle phenomenon
The not invented here syndrome (especially applicable for newspaper and magazine publishers – people ALREADY HAVE A VIBRANT SOCIAL NETWORK ON FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, BEBO…they do not want to rebuild a new on your site – integrate where they are)

SOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITIES
FINAL ACT:

Early predictions:
Many community initiatives will continue to fail
Communities will eventually transform the role of the CMO
Early adopters will force industry-wide changes
Companies will find out how to build predictable communities

Prediction #1 for Publishing Industry: Have your community cell-phone ready (*)
A third of US consumers are using their cell phone to entertain themselves, over half of Millennials
Almost 50% of consumers, 40% of Boomers, and a surprising 35% of Matures are interested in ease of access to product information via product bar code scanning on their cell phone/hand-held
Although a very small percentage, almost 5% of every generation considers cell phone advertising as being the MOST influential form of online advertising
(*) Based on data from Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition

Prediction #2 for Publishing Industry: Media will never travel alone
In order to optimize subscription and ad revenue potential, media companies must develop new product development and advertising strategies
(*) Based on data from Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition Traditional Content Composition Future Content Composition Linear Broadcast Ads Promos Chat Games Behind the Scenes Information Core Content Content Package Newspaper Magazine Music Games Books

Prediction #3 for Publishing Industry: You will need to provide the full capabilities of the “digital media menu” Personal- ization Content Platform / Device Supporting Technology (*) Based on data from Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition Customizable interface Personalized content Personalized recommendations Extensive content selection from all sources Sophisticated content search Active/Passive viewing Free/Ad supported option Supports multiple platforms Same menu on each platform Transfer content license across platforms Integrated cross-platform billing Purchase, rental, free w/ads Off-line viewing Single integrated sign-on High speed, real-time streaming High reliability

Some case studies + lessons learned

Best practices > 1,000 members logged in over a 24 hour period

Scientific Journals under attack?

The encyclopedia market case study

What happened?

Integrating the new with the old
Social bookmarking
Social networking
Integration LinkedIn
Integration with
print publication

Thought leadership communities – the new custom pubs

An innovative approach to finding sources

Open source book development

LET’S BRAINSTORM ABOUT OUR FUTURE…

Why are so many people on twitter excited about publishing?

There is clearly something afoot in this industry…

YOU ARE A BOOK PUBLISHER YOU ARE A MAGAZINE PUBLISHER YOU ARE A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER YOU ARE AN INHOUSE PUBLISHER
2 ND EXERCISE: LEVERAGING COMMUNITY IN YOUR BUSINESS

OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS THAT YOU ARE LIKELY TO ENCOUNTER KNOCKING DOWN THE TOP 8 OBSTACLES

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED? WHAT ARE THE MAIN OBSTACLES? HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THEM?
ON THE MENU

How do you get started? S A M Strategize Activate Manage -to- scale

Strategize
What are the business goals of your community efforts?
PR and Thought Leadership
Co-creation
Traffic generation
Sales
Determine your audience and what makes them tick
What are some of the common passions or pains that connect them?
Can you align the community goals with your business goals?
Perform an external scan to map out your ecosystem:
Where do your audiences hang out?
How do they communicate with one another?
what are they talking about?
What are your competitors doing?
Make an internal readiness assessment

Obstacle #1: Aligning the Community Value Prop with the Business Goals
More McKinsey, less McCann
Hard data, analysis and questions
No fluffiness and pretty web sites
Forget about how you are organized
Put your members in the center
Find a member value prop first – align it with the business goals second

Obstacle #2: Finding what will motivate your members to participate Source: Rob Kozinets, “E-Tribalized Marketing?” The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption” “ The most potent tribes are built in the interstices, in the margins, on the fringes.”

Questions that may help overcome the obstacle
How much do people care about this topic/issue? Why?
On a scale of 1-10 how passionate are people about getting and giving help?
Why would people prefer to connecting with people like them vs. “official channels”?
Are there ”fringe” topics, groups that are underserved?
What business value is there be for us to be associated with this issue?

Obstacle #3 The Company Culture
Are you driven by selling more papers, more magazines or more books?
Do you think of yourself as selling tangible bits?
Do you have a culture of talking at your community instead of with them?

Obstacle #4 Managing to a 100 year old cost structure instead of to the future

Activate
Who will you engage with first? How will you scale beyond that?
Who will develop the initial content for your community?
How will the community affect all of your business processes? Get ready to deal with the impact on processes that are not part of the original business goals
How will you measure success?

Obstacle #5: Creating a pilot that will scale and from which you can learn
The dynamics to make small pilots work are often very different from the large scale community efforts
Pilots are often underfunded and understaffed – people will want to hear from you and if they invest social capital and you’re not listening they will get mad
The lessons learned from small pilots will not always teach you anything about large scale communities

Manage-to-scale
Build the processes to scale the effort
Ensure the right measurements and reporting processes
Launch plan
Events
Time based activities
Communications plan

Obstacle #6 Legal fears and “pilotitis”
Fear of litigation around
Liability
Labor laws
Project in permanent state of pilot

Obstacle #7 Who’s job is it anyway?
It will cross functions, you have no choice
Cannot be siloed
Cross-functional team or Center for Excellence?
Community manager skills vary depending on need
Functional expertise
Industry experience
Communications
Networking
Content
Analytical
Strategy
Empathy

Obstacle #8 Build it and they don’t come

It’s all about CONTENT, dummy “ The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something.” Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky Advocates Pro Content UGC Facilitation

Conclusion What were the big aha moments for you and what will YOU DO when you go back to work?

Any questions? Francois Gossieaux Partner, Beeline Labs e. [email_address] w. http://www.beelinelabs.com b. http://www.emergergencemarketing.com c. http://www.marketingtwo.net p. http://www.cmotwo.com Ed Moran Director of New Product Innovation, Deloitte e. [email_address] w. http://www.deloitte.com Upcoming Tribalization Site http://www.tribalizationofbusiness.com

Building Communities Around Content

by Francois Gossieaux on Feb 09, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Embed Views

Statistics

Building Communities Around Content — Presentation Transcript

Get analytics right now with SlideShare PRO

An effective way to find out who is viewing your content