Embracing & Sustaining Your
Community Ecosystem
Bill Johnston - @BillJohnston
Director of Global Online Community

ecosystem
2 Confidential Global Marketing

Social Media:
Describes a large spectrum of
tools and activities.
Online Community:
Intention to foster a network
of relationships around
common interests, over time.
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Mass Social Media
Market
External External
Community Community
Community
External
External
Community Hosted Community
Communities
Support
Mastery & Use
Affinity
Ideation
External
Extranets
Topical
Experts
Internal
Internal
Networks /
Workgroups
Enterprise
Global Marketing
Collaboration

Dell’s Social
Journey
Online Community Strategy &
5 Global Marketing
Planning

Five years of experiments and experience
Global Marketing

Social Media & Community Team (SMaC)
Goal: Embed Social Media
into the fabric of the
company.
• Centralized Team (Hub & Spoke) SMaC
• Range of social disciplines
• Strategic advisors
• Governance
• Operations for key infrastructure
• Training
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Listening: The Heart of our Social
Strategy
A critical first step, a social “trojan
horse”, and the social radio for all.
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3/21/

Social Media & Community
University:
Employees = Social Rock Stars
Principles
Policy
Governance
Training, Certification &
Tools
Global Marketing

SMaC Talk
Unconferences:
Social Media Live!
10 Confidential Global Marketing

Community
Planning
1. Business Goals
2. Customer Needs
3. Social Ecosystem
4. Prioritize Social
Presence
5. Metrics
6. Governance
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Discuss Goals
1. Define your • Intention
business goals • Value
• Risks
• Staffing / Overhead
• Leadership / Culture change
Process
• Stakeholder Interviews
• Working Sessions
• Synthesis
12 Online Community Strategy & Planning Global Marketing

Research
2. Customer • Surveys
Needs: Research &
• Interviews
Listen
• Online discussions
Member Needs
• Expectations of you (the
host)
• Role & Facilitation
• Content & Features
• On domain or ecosystem
• Member types
• Desired culture
• Activities & contributions
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Outputs
3. Social Ecosystem • Influencers
Audit & Listening
• Existing communities
• Key blogs
Social Ecosystem Research • Active groups
• Discovery, either via your listening
platform, or
• Online tools like Google Blog
Search, Twitter, Delicious ,etc
• Looking for:
– Company and product brands
– Issues & topics
– Execs & Employees
– Existing user & affinity groups
• http://bit.ly/ocb2beco
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4. Prioritize based
on opportunity
15 Online Community Strategy & Planning Global Marketing

• Business Value (examples)
5. Community – Brand: Net promoter score,
Metrics sentiment, satisfaction, advocacy
– Support: Questions, answers,
time to answer, % answered by
you, views of answered content
– Content: Content created, views
of content, comments
– Web Traffic: Pageviews, uniques,
referrers, domains
– Innovation: ideas
• Community Health
– Velocity of Change: Registrations,
content creation, content
consumption
– Population Segmentation: 90/9/1
– Creators: posts, answers,
comments,
– Watchers: views, page depth, time
on site, bounce rate
Global Marketing

Considering ROI
• Value has to be expressed in Value can be:
the context of your • Direct Sales
organization.
• Indirect (Relationship) Sales Support
• Value will be multi- • Cost Reduction
dimensional.
• Influence on Purchase
• There in no single silver • Increased Attention by Customers / Prospects
bullet. (no shortcuts) • Increased Loyalty
• Increased Presence
• Content Creation
• Customer / Market Insight
• Impacts to CSR / Sustainability Initiatives
• Cost of NOT Participating
Global Marketing

6. Establish
Governance
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Programs
1. Engagement
2. Community
Management &
Moderation
3. Advocacy
19 Online Community Strategy & Planning Global Marketing

Engagement Planning
Community • Content, Content, Content
Engagement: (did I mention content?)
Oxygen • Engagement Calendar
• Active Community
Management
• Regular Communication
• Acknowledge Contributions
“Sorry it took so long for me to • Feature Members
vote on this one. I haven't
been on here much lately.
This site had so much • Reputation Management
potential but Dell doesn't
seem to want to support it
properly. I feel bad for the
• Incentives
mods who put a lot of effort
into the site.”
Cy Jervis (jervis961)
20 Confidential Global Marketing

Engagement
Engagement Tactics
• Content, Content, Content
(did I mention content?)
• Activity Calendar
• Active Community
Management
• Regular Communication
• Acknowledge Contributions
• Feature Members
• Incentives
• Reputation
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Community
Management &
Moderation
(hint: not the
same thing)
Global Marketing

Planning Framework: Management & Moderation
Key Roles Management & moderation
• Community Manager • Staff for 24x7 coverage M-F /
– Host ~ ½ time on weekends
– Guide • Coverage needs will depend
– Conversation Starter on:
– Cultural Model • Platform(s)
– Cheerleader • Features
– Ombudsman
• Volume of content
• Moderator
• Configure anti-spam / smut
– Authority capabilities
– Security
• Add features to allow
– TOS Enforcement members to flag content
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Management & Moderation
• Terms of Use & Guidelines
– TOS to satisfy Legal
– Guidelines to shape community culture
• Guidelines
– Add link in registration
– Persistent location: Consider footer or right sash
– Manage to them
• Moderation
– Separate moderation from facilitation and engagement
– Have one “moderator” account just for rules and enforcement
– Have a visible and persistent means to allow members to flag and escalate questionable
content
– Remove content that violates guidelines
– Set policy and threshold for timeouts and banning members
– Create escalation paths for content that challenges HSG principals
Global Marketing

Advocates
~1% will drive 90% content
& engagement
Global Marketing

Advocacy Program & Benefits Framework
Program Benefits
• Identity • Logo / Badge
• Definition of Benefits • Annual Gift
• Program Guidelines • Dedicated Program Manager
• Annual Scoring & Renewal • Enhanced Privelages
• NDA • Enhanced Access to Dell /
Dell Information
• Quarterly Councils
• Private Forums
• Event Participation
Global Marketing

Building the
Internal
Community
* Councils
* Communication
* Listening
* Events
* Internal Social Media
* Training
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Internal Community & Communications
• Councils
– SMaC Council
– Community Leadership Council
• Communications
– Weekly SMaC Digest
• Listening to Accelerate Adoption
– R6 Content to many employees
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Internal Social Media & Collaboration
• Blogs
• Chatter
• EmployeeStorm
• Sharepoint
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Training & Events
• SMaC University
– Over 10 training modules
– Community, Facebook, Twitter,
etc
• SMaC Talk Unconferences
– Open Space
– Global (Austin, London, Xiamen)
– 150-400 employees at each
– Social media reach of over 100k
30 Confidential Global Marketing

Market
Social Media &
Community External External
Community
Toolset:
Community
Centralized Community
Platform, External
Community Hosted
External
Community
Distributed
Communities
Support
Mastery & Use
Participation Affinity
Ideation
External
Advocates
Internal
Internal
Networks /
Workgroups
Collaboration
31 Online Community Strategy & Planning
Enterprise
Global Marketing

Online Communities
Centralized platform,
distributed engagement.
• Telligent Platform Features
– Forums
– Blogs
– Wikis
– Networking
• Key Programs for Community
– Listening
– Management & Moderation
– Advocacy
– Reputation Management
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IdeaStorm
Evolving from the “Social
Suggestion Box”
• Better alignment w/ PG planning
• Idea Partner program
• Storm Sessions
– Time bound, topic-specific
ideation sessions
• Storm Projects & Challenges (Future
State)
– Sequential Storm Sessions
planned for a design cycle
– Ex: Develop the “Sustainable
Laptop”
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Internal Collaboration
Myriad tools to support internal
collaboration.
• Chatter
• EmployeeStorm
• Internal Communities w/ Telligent
Enterprise
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ROI = A Mosaic of Value
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Social Media is valuable across the entire
customer lifecycle.
• Insight: Social media improves
Dell’s reach and share of voice
• Insight: SM keeps customers
engaged, provides solutions
and improves loyalty.
Dell.com
• Insight: Established causality
• Insight: Social media based Our External between social media activity
Communities Communities
support improves sentiment and purchase
and reduces operating
expenses
• Insight: Social Media provides
high Business Value and
contributes to demand gen lift
Global Marketing

Social Media ROI:
Popular assertions/beliefs vs. Dell findings to date:
Popular notions about Social Our Findings
Media
Works only for Consumer Impacts each of the Dell Businesses:
Consumer, Public, SMB, LE and Services
Relevant only for “top of the funnel” – good for Impacts every part of the marketing funnel.
brand awareness, not effective at acquisition Being harnessed for lead gen and driving
conversion
Cannot impact Brand building Social listening, support and research content
establishes brand credibility.
Can be measured (Social Net Advocacy)
Social Media ROI cannot be measured as a Run-the-business metrics can be applied on
business metric – is more like PR – can “assist”, Social Media and integrated into business
but cannot be tied to revenue operations. Has been tied to Consideration and
Revenue
Global Marketing

Your Customer
Community is
part of a
powerful &
valuable social
ecosystem.
Are you
enabling or
ignoring it?
38 Confidential Global Marketing

Thank You!
Recommended Resources Contact Info
• “The Power of Pull” – Hagel • Bill_Johnston@Dell.com
& Brown • @BillJohnston
• “Connected” – Christakis & • http://www.BillJohnston.net
Fowler
• “Engage” (2nd Ed.) – Brian
Solis
• #TheCR, #octribe,
#cmtychat tags
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