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Lessons from real world communities

December 16, 2008 By 2 Comments

To open our workshops about creating online communities, we at Beeline Labs start with an exercise that asks people to reflect on what it was like to be part of a real world community or group that they loved — could be anything from a summer camp to a college group to  a sports team.

After people share what was great about their group experiences, we explain that those same attributes are what make online communities great.  The magic is the experience with people, not the technology/venue, not the number of members or the amount of participation or activities.

Here’s what people at the Web 2.0 Expo/New York loved about their real world groups and communities:

  • Shared purpose and experience
  • Trust
  • Feel like it’s safe place to share
  • Respect for differences of opinion
  • Passion for purpose or vision
  • Friendship
  • Ability to take or give
  • Cool place to hang out
  • Failure-free zones
  • Excitement of finding diversity in a common group
  • Openness of people in group
  • Constantly something new going on
  • Affirming: being part of group adds to your own identity
  • Opportunity to learn
  • Common ground rules respected by all
  • Common problems
  • Thrill of achieving something big together
  • Initial investment, emotional or monetary, needed
  • Good coordinator of leader

Filed Under: Communities, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

Savvy Auntie, First Wives World communities get it

September 9, 2008 By 1 Comment

New online communities SavvyAuntie and FirstWivesWorld are good examples of successful communities. Each:

  1. Focuses on a niche group of people who share a passionate bond:  women who love children and relish their roles as “aunties,” and women who have gone through a divorce or are in the throes.
  2. Allows people to connect with other people and ask questions, share stories, and just be social.
  3. Provides lots of helpful advice, resources, and experts on topics related to the community’s theme.
  4. Adds some fun: both have entertainment sections and some celebrity angle. (Did you know Hulk Hogan and his ex have just added a 5th team of lawyers to their divorce proceedings?)
  5. Has a fairly simple technology platform with an easy-to-use interface and lots of easy ways for people to get involved, from creating a profile and uploading photos to starting a blog or creating a group. Then again, just reading these rich, content-filled would be fulfilling for many.

In any cateogry there are always niches of opportunity. Many businesses are approaching communities too broadly, trying to serve everyone about everything, and ending up with rather bland communities that have no real community. Auntie and First Wives show the power of going narrow.

Filed Under: Communities, Smart company stories Tagged With: , ,

No more friends says American Express executive

August 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

“I don’t want any more friends. But I do want your knowledge. That’s what’s really motivating people to use communities, “ says Tilak Mandadi, VP of Interactive and Travel Technologies for American Express.

Talik – one of the most entertaining IT execs I’ve ever heard in a long time– said seven things matter the most for effective online communities:

1. Social intelligence – learning what other people know — vs. social networking.
2. Specialized context of community
3. Exclusive content
4. Ability to transact
5. Moderate moderation
6. Participant defense of the brand (Let other AMEX customers defend the brand if someone says something negative)
7. Speed to market

The ability to transact is especially important. Tilak said customers using American Express’ “Members Know” travel community have expressed frustration at not being able to act on what they were learning about in the community, which Amex is going about changing.

Many companies are creating communities for awareness, loyalty and word of mouth, but they may be missing a big opportunity for transaction revenue — and frustrating customers in the process.

Filed Under: Communities, Social media strategy Tagged With: ,

Here Comes Everybody — Maybe

July 14, 2008 By 1 Comment

[photopress:Here_Comes_Everybody.jpg,full,pp_image] If you want to really understand how social media/tools are changing how we work, play, activate change and live, pick up Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And if you are seriously considering communities as part of your marketing strategy, Do Not Pass Go without reading this.

Here are some of my takeaways:

There are three essential pieces of a community, starting with purpose:

1. Why: what’s the the promise of the group/community? Why would anyone want to join or contribute? “Creating a promise that enough people believe in is the basic requirement. The promise creates the basic desire to participate. ” Note: in my experience this is where marketers usually spend too little time. Or, rarely challenge their own. assumptions.

2. How: this is where you figure out which tools will help people do what the community is all about. Note: too many companies are buying tools and then trying to make a community fit the tools. A recipe for disaster — or, at a minimum, enormous frustration.

3. Rules of the road: this the what Shirky calls the bargain: “If you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?”

People have always wanted to share and help one another. Pervasive, easy-to-use communications tools and ” the collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together — so much easier, in fact, that is changing the world.” “Social tools don’t create collective action — they merely remove the obstacles to it. This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple easy-to-use tools like email, mobile phones and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their dauly lives.”

Incentives for participating are not financial: Attention, the desire to see your work spread, the desire to help others and be helped.

Why some communities grow and others don’t: “They grow if enough people care about them, and die if they don’t.” (This goes back to getting the promise right.)

How did you do that?: communities where a group of people help one another get better at some share task or interest — called communities of practice — are especially pervasive and appealing. The basic question that can trigger a community of practice: “How did you do that?”

Not everyone needs to be passionate, participate a lot: in the old model we had to work hard to get people passionate enough to act, because acting was a lot of work. Today you can have a handful of highly-motivated people participating a lot — and “people who care a little participate a little, while being effective in the aggregate.”

A small number needed to get things started: “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.” Tap into a small core of passionate people; don’t expect a lot of people to contribute at the get-go. Many are more comfortable adding to what someone else has started.

Filed Under: Activating change, Books, Communities, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , ,

New model for news organizations — and customer communities

May 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

[photopress:News_Ecology_Map.jpg,full,pp_image]

This is a new map of what the emerging news ecology looks like, based on a Value Network Mapping and Analysis tool developed by Verna Allee for the recent NewsTools2008 conference among 150 journalists, technologists and educators. Talk about change!

According to journalists and bloggers Chris Peck, Peggy Holman and Stephen Silha over at Journalism That Matters, here’s what’s emerging:

  • Some reporters become “beat bloggers” tapping into networks of bloggers to bring complex stories into focus.
  • “Community weavers” create a sense of community among the former audience and with formal news entities.
  • “Information architects” make intelligible the vast amounts of data and images now available.
  • While editors continue to be sense makers, connecting facts and making story lines visible, ultimately who filters news from noise, how it happens, and who pays for it is still unfolding.
  • Even the definition of “news” is up for grabs as memes — cultural units of information equivalent to genes in the body — replace an event orientation to story.

Fascinating model that can be applied to traditional media, online communities and social networks, or company communities for customers or employees.

Last week I had lunch with an editor of a major daily newspaper who is trying to innovate his paper. The question his execs keep asking: “How do we make money on a different kind of model?” As with this news ecology model, no one has figured out a magic money making model. In fact, if newspapers don’t downsize fixed operational costs like printing presses and distribution assets, they may never be able to make model in this new world.

What is clear is that if newspapers do nothing as they wait for the magic model, they will continue to lose their customers, many of whom are no longer just “readers” but active participants. Ditto for marketers and corporate communications execs.

Filed Under: Communities, Innovation, Marketing trends, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Marshalls new "what's in" online community

April 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I love and hate shopping. Love finding quality products at bargain prices, but hate having to go to stores and wade through all the stuff. Now one of my favorite bargain-hunting haunts, Marshalls, the big off-price retailer, has opened an online community that hopefully will cure what ails me — and others.

Called What’s In, the site has plenty of features — maybe even too many. (Note: it’s in beta so I’m sure the kinks are being worked out.)

The feature that seems most appealing:

You can set up personalized alerts for your favorite brands and local stores; when someone posts that they’ve found that brand at that store, an alert is sent to your mobile phone or email, and you can then hurry on over to the store and get the deal before it’s gone. Due to its relationship with the brands Marshalls can’t advertise brands. So for the alerts to work people who shop the stores will have to go online and post what they’re seeing in the stores. Otherwise quasi-shoppers like me won’t get any alerts.

Two that have potential, but need work:

1. Blogs from buyers about what they’re seeing at shows and on their buying trips. Done right, these insights into what’s coming could be really fun to read. Who doesn’t want to be an trends insider? The Marshalls folks should think about more descriptive names of the blogs and profiles of the people behind the blogs. The two buyer blogs are currently titled like “MoJr15′s Blog” or MelSki17′s Blog.” Ugh. Turns out one blog is by Melissa who buys Ladies Activewear, and another is a nameless junior sportswear buyer. (Melissa, tell us more about the yoga clothing trend!)

2. Forum section, where people can post comments on different topics like “trends of the season.” This section has potential as so many of us are looking for advice and ideas from other women like us. What’s not working is that the Forum categories seem forced, like they were written by advertising copywriters vs. real shoppers for real shoppers. It may be me but Forums named, A Price Tag To Remember, Designer Dish and Star Style sound phony. Again, I think this could be easily fixed.

Overkill?

I’m not sure the Fashion Finds, Member Blogs and Photo Albums add value. They seem either redundant with other parts of the community or just unnecessary. I’m a pretty savvy Web user but I have to admit the navigation around “what’s in” lost me. There’s just too much going on. For the hard launch of this community I’d like to see just three great things:

1. Alerts (send and get)

2. Forums (sharing fashion finds, advice mong members)

3. Buyer blogs ( sharing insider views of what’s happening by Marshalls buyers)

Time to get back to work — unless of course I get an alert from the local Marshalls that a new shipment of Theory is in.

Filed Under: Communities, Social media strategy Tagged With: , ,

Mute slaves no more

March 21, 2008 By Leave a Comment

During a recent call with Rob Kozinets, a marketing professor at York University in Toronto and a leading mind on online communities, we talked about the changes in marketing and Rob remarked that consumers use to be like mute slaves to businesses, listening passively while the one-way messages came at them.

As a follow up to our call, Rob reflected more about the mute slave metaphor — and its relationship to the character Nova from Planet of the Apes on his blog.

(The wild slave character Nova eventually gets her voice, much as people have today through social media, creating new relationships with businesses, new business models, and social change. Go Nova, go!)

PS — Rob’s book is Consumer Tribes.

Filed Under: Conversational Marketing, Marketing trends, Social media strategy Tagged With: ,