Joi Podgorny is the Director of Community Engagement at Animal Jam who has over a decade of experience in online community management. She discusses her background working with kids media properties and provides tips on developing social media strategies, considering community management and gamification, and using business analytics for brands. Her presentation covers identifying target audiences, creating engaging content, selecting appropriate channels, and best practices for community building and measurement.

1. .
Joi Podgorny
Director, Community Engagement
Animal Jam, Smart Bomb Interactive
May 16, 2012

2. Who is this “Joi” character?
• Online Community Vet
for over a decade
– Actuary turn Chat Monitor
• Kids Media aficionado
(aka “expert”)
– Worked on dozens of
brands and properties
• Remote teams champion
• Project
Management, Productivity
joi@animaljam.com
& Efficiency nerd
Skype:joipodgorny
• International travel junkie Twitter: @joipod
http://joipodgorny.com

3. Who is this “Joi” character?
• I am a professional
Community Manager
• I believe that
Communities are:
- Helpful through the
tough times
- GMTA, but
Arguments/Disagreem
ents are healthy
- Collaborative, tide that
raises all the boats
• My goal in talks is to joi@animaljam.com
get the room talking to Skype:joipodgorny
each other Twitter: @joipod
http://joipodgorny.com

4. What should we
chat about?
• Social Media Strategy
Development for
kids media properties
• Community Management
&GamificationConsideraions
• How Business Analytics is used
for our brands

5. Who is your
target audience?
• Who is your average customer? What are their
habits?
• Who do you picture using/interacting with your
brand? Multiple kinds of customers?
• How often are they seeking or needing your
online offerings?
• Have you don’t this exercise before? Yes – how
can you enhance/tweak?

6. KIDS
-Gender/Age groups - What ways are they
- All boys or girls? Both? interacting and playing
- All ages or mixtures? with your brand?
- Do kids in different geographic markets interact with your brand
differently (US/Europe/Asia)? How so?

7. PARENTS/GRANDPARENTS
- Do you see your parent audience as primary or secondary?
- Are they playing/interacting with your brand with your kids? Is
their experience different? How so?
- What are their needs and how are they different than your kid
audience needs?

8. PARENTS/GRANDPARENTS
- Education and Safety are important areas to fall back on when
you need filler content with this audience.
- Parents are an interesting demo, because there are so many
generations to consider.
- Each generation may interact with your brand online in a
different way, so it’s important to consider it as a factor

9. PARENTS/GRANDPARENTS
- This demo has more access than children but they can not only access
different channels, they may use different devices on each channel
-Do they need to be able to purchase things on every channel?
- Think about how accessible you want and need your content to be?
- Is the availability of some info more powerful of a point than them
actually using them?

10. BUSINESS/B2B
Advertising Messaging – Banners, partnerships, sponsorships, revenue
shares, affiliate programs
Contests – easier to partner, big legal considerations, i.e. skill based tests
Licensing/ Product Sales – selling products online? Build your own or join
another site? Partner with other sites?
Different Markets – locals will know their audiences, trends, nuances best

11. What are your
Goooooooals?
- Are you looking for new users?
- Enagaging with existing?
- Opening up new demos?
- Getting research?
- Offering new/exclusive features?

12. Content
Things to consider:
• New Content
• Events
• Push Marketing messages or more
Conversational with your audience
• Sharing – allow audience to
comment? Moderated or not?

13. Content
Things to consider:
• Length – actual characters, told all
at once or over time
• Multi-channel – same brand
story/messaging on each site? Or
Different experience/content in
each place? Mixture? How so?
• Frequency

14. So many channels…
Traditional – Facebook, Google Plus
Existing Communities – Bloggers, Fan Sites, Parenting
Video – Youtube, Vimeo, Kidsbop, Kidzui
Microblogging– Twitter, Tumblr
Photo Sharing – Pinterest, Flickr, Picasa
Location Based – Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla
Kid Sites – Everloop, Kidzui, Poptropica, Whyville
Game Aggregators – Addicting Games, Miniclip, Spil

15. Different people are drawn to different networks.
To make it more complicated, one person can be in a
multitude of different SM moods at any given moment.

16. Community Management
- Internal versus External Communities
-Insourcing versus Outsourcing
- Voice, Tone, Frequency
- Organizational Structure
-Mktg? Tech? Operations? Autonomous?
- Corporate Communication Plan
- Crisis Management
- Human Resources
- Privacy, SM Policies
- Legalities
- COPPA, DPA, International

17. Gamification
Guess what?!
Kids like games
but so do grownups
Making standard site operations
more fun leads to:
• better adoption rates
• higher retention
• less bounce
• more conversions

18. Gamification
Areas for gamification
•Regsitration
• Email Verification/Validation
• Parent Communications
• Newsletters
• Reports/ Controls
• Contests
• Bragging rights
• Incentive based play

19. Business Analytics
Acquistion> Retention > Conversion
 Unique Visitors  Unique logins  Subscriptions
 Registrations  Submissions  Cancellations
 Referring Sites  Duration  Upgrades
 Geography  Heat Maps  Addt’l Purchases
 Computer Stats  Repeat plays  Family/Group
 Demographics  Depth of Views Membership
 Bounce  Demographic Diff’s  Churn
Rates/Points  Referral Programs  Charge Backs
 Click thrus  Bounce  Incentives
Rates/Points  Micro-trans
 Chat/Game
Activity
 Disciplines

20. Thanks!
joi@animaljam.com
Skype: joipodgorny
Twitter: @joipod
http://joipodgorny.com