Online Community Strategy Framework

ONLINE Community strategy framework
Ensuring an engaged online community

COMMUNITY STRATEGY FRAMEWORK

BUSINESS GOALS
SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE
MEMBER NEEDS

BUSINESS GOALS
LAUNCH PLAN
Content Plan
Event Plan
Promotion/Outreach Plan
Member-to-Member Interaction
MEMBER NEEDS

BUSINESS GOALS
LAUNCH PLAN
Content Plan
Event Plan
Promotion/Outreach Plan
Member-to-Member Interaction
METRICS/ROI
MEMBER NEEDS

1) Business Goal
What is your business objective? Boil it down to one sentence that gets to the core of your objective.
Increase Sales
Increase Brand Awareness
Decrease Cost of Customer Service
Co-creation of New Products
Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Better Search Results
Provide Additional Information
Educate Customers
Enable Customers to Collaborate and Share Knowledge

1- Business Goal (communities need a reason)
King Research, June 2007

1) Business Goal
The business goal of PD 360 was to raise student achievement . They accomplished a lift of 11.3% improvement in student achievement through an online learning community for teachers with on demand professional development .

1) Business Goal …know who you are, what type of online community would you be?

2) Social Media Landscape
What is Social Media Anyway?From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

What does social media look like? Where are your customers having conversations?
Online Customer Communities

How is your brand or the competition’s brand represented in the social ecosystem, where are there gaps, and what is your plan to position your brand accordingly?
Search for Brand Mention
Blog Pulse
Technorati
Delicious
Google Blog Search
Monitor Activity Levels
Facebook
MySpace
YouTube
Ning
Flickr
LinkedIn
Competitive Analysis and Tracking

3) Member Needs Analysis
Share Knowledge: Explore ideas and participate in one-on-one private discussions or public group threads. Access actionable experienced-based solutions from like minds
Connect With Peers: Network with one another to find exactly the individual you need who shares your passion. Combat isolation, share emotions and experience a sense of camaraderie.
Access Tools:find resources that allow you to do your job better, shorten decision times, decrease risk

3) Member Needs Analysis (profile your audience)
INTERVIEW OR SURVEY MEMBERS
Gain insight on their specific needs.
What member types or personas exist?
Predict their needs.
Do their needs vary?
What are they looking for?
How do they like to interact?
How willing are they to share openly?
Do they want exposure?
Do they want to influence others?
Do they want to shape the industry?
Are they time crunched?
Prepared by www.InnerCircleCommunities.com

CUSTOMIZE YOUR ENGAGEMENT MODEL
Announce new members in a group
Invite members in a group to read relevant articles and comment
Invite members to participate in relevant webcasts or teleconferences

LAUNCH

4) Engagement Model
What will you publish?
Where will you publish?
How often will you publish?
Balance (content, events, 1:1, outreach)
Integrate with traditional channels

4) Engagement Model…strive to balance the elements

4) Engagement Model…plan for active readers or ‘lurkers’
Make it easier to contribute.Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating
Make participation a side effect.For example, Amazon's "people who bought this book, bought these other books”
Edit, don't create.Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating new
Reward — but don't over-reward — participants.Don't give too much to the most active participants, or you'll simply encourage them to dominate the system even more.
Promote quality contributors.Give extra prominence to good contributions
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006

4) Engagement Model …promote quality contributors and create ways to spotlight good contributions

4) Engagement Model
…active and relevant moderation engages members

4) Engagement Model
3 Key Factors to Creating Community Atmosphere
Quality, up to date content
Clear objective value
Strong moderation and facilitation
The Host’s Role in Establishing Culture
Recognize positive participation
Solicit and respond to member feedback
Communicate with members
Takeaways
Value statement
Clear code of conduct
Open lines of communication
Host plays a visible role
User experience/feature set tailored to audience
Content – quality, relevant and up to date
Acknowledge positive contribution
Create welcoming culture. A welcomed member is more likely to come back, contribute and tell others

4) Engagement Model
…a moderator is instrumental in creating the culture
Establish Rules
Create Guidelines for Contributing
Be Prepared to be a Bouncer at Times

Recruit a Variety of Hosts
Editorial Board
Frequent Contributors
Former Speakers
Affinity Group Chairs
4) Engagement Model…build your bench of hosts or “creators”

4) Engagement Model…create awareness by highlighting members and promote/invite using traditional channels
CIO Magazine has a monthly column highlighting interviews with their community members. This is a great way to drive membership and promote your community. Drive traffic from traditional channels to your community. Some members might want exposure.

4) Engagement Model…facilitate ways for introductions
Member profiles reflect interests, activities and needs
New members need a place to introduce themselves

4) Engagement Model …seed the community with events, content etc.
Communities thrive on connection
Events offer members a chance to come together
Online or offline, maintain variety, keep it fresh
Leverage existing assets
Monthly member-led webinars, save the recordings
Target webinars for each affinity group, Q&A via discussions
Local round table events
Content, articles, research, white papers, podcasts

4) Engagement ModelCommunities Need Ways for Attendees to Pitch In
Communities love to solve a problem
They want to help, your community will give them a chance

4) Engagement Model Discover ways for attendees to pitch in, executives enjoy working together
15 CIOs worked in a collaborative environment for nine months to create the IT Value Matrix, advance the profession, and positively influence the next generation.
Benchmarking Tool
Marketing the Value of IT Study
Running Start: How to Succeed in Your First 90 Days – collaborative project
Career Path Model – started as knowledge center content, then webinar
Business Continuity – started as knowledge center content, then webinar, then regional hosted event
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) playbook, a how-to guide and resource to help CIOs better manage the SOX compliance process

4) Engagement Model …create multiple ways to participate
Chair an affinity group or task force
Member-led webinars and teleconferences
Small group calls, intimate setting, like-minded peers
Collaborative projects and tools, showcase them at events
Member-hosted regional events
Annual meetings
Get interviewed for publication
Dedicated column in publication
Member spotlights
Awards
Leadership Development: video series on leaders
Develop a course taught by members
Speakers Bureau – introduce members to exposure opportunities
Newsletter – highlight new members, upcoming events, speaker opportunities
Enable members to display a measure of their experience - provides context and builds trust

MEASURE

5) Success Metrics/ROI
Build an ROI set based on your dimensions of value. Include a mix of qualitative and quantitative… you don’t need a laundry list like below. Pick a few relevant ones.
Unique Visitors
New Member Registrations
Page Views
Retention/Attrition
Member Loyalty
Member Satisfaction
Most Active Members
Top Searches
Message Posts
Conversion
Advertising Performance
Influencer/Evangelism
Identification
Member Lifecycle
First Time Contributors
Content Rating
Ratio: Unregistered to Registered
Visitors
Ratio: Page Views per Post
Reputation Changes
Ratio: Post per Thread
Content Tagging
Comments per Blog Post
Ratio: Searches Per Post
Podcasts and Video (links, uploads)
Member Blog Posts
Size of Networks/Buddy Lists
Sales
Customer service tickets
Cost savings for customer service
Tech support tickets
Cost savings for tech support
Product feedback for R&D
Product trial downloads
Mentions on other sites
Ratios of comments per post
Forum posts answers
Average response time
Referrals to community
Renewals and upsells
Participation in online tools
User complaints
# of users leaving / deleting accounts
Leads provided to partners

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Online Community Takeaways
Trust and Respect
Moderation : critical to entice lurkers to participate
Ecosystem: strive for balance (content, events, interaction, and outreach)
Profile: understand your groups, predict needs, and communicate appropriately
Create Atmosphere or Community Culture: provide forums for group collaboration and small group interactions (chats, calls, member hosted events)
Plan:Goals, metrics, outcomes and monetization
Organizational Buy-In: leverage corporate assets
Share: communicate what you learn with the organization
Variety:keep it interesting, fresh content on front page (news, articles etc.)
Heroes:pick heroes to benchmark your community against, not necessarily in your industry

Social Media Takeaways
Listen first
Be respectful, human, considerate and passionate
What is in it for your customer? If nothing, don’t bother.
Community before commerce
It is a cocktail party not a lecture
Tolerate criticism
Encourage personalities
People congregate around relevance and value

Do you feel socially fatigued?
Bring it back to the basics
Listen | Learn | Launch

1. LISTEN

2. LEARN

3. LAUNCH

Thank you
Lauren DeLong
www.InnerCircleCommunities.com
Private | Trusted | Relevant
207.752.7298
ldelong@InnerCircleCommunities.com

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Online Community Strategy Framework

by Lauren DeLong

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