Aaron Strout:             

I’d like to introduce today’s special guest.  We have Sylvia Marino.  Sylvia is the Executive Director for Community Operations at Edmunds.com.  Welcome, Sylvia.

Sylvia Marino:           

Thank you very much.

Aaron Strout:             

So, Sylvia, let’s jump in.  You’ve got a wonderful background.  You’ve actually been in community I think a lot longer than most people.  According to your bio I think you’ve been at Edmunds since 1997, and what impressed me the most was before that it said you were actually doing online community consulting for some fairly well known companies, like Intuit.  Can you give us a little bit of your background, how you came into this space and what’s kept you at it all these years?

Sylvia Marino:           

Absolutely.  I actually started in the early ‘90s as a member of one of the original online communities from The WELL, out of the dial-up bulletin board systems, and went to work for one of their software spin-offs, Well Engaged, on the software side for community applications, and came to meet Edmunds through that, as Edmunds was one of the first customers.  And just over the course of the years had been a friend and advisor to Edmunds.com before becoming a full-time employee, and during that time was doing some consulting work for other outfits, such as the Wall Street Journal and Intuit QuickBooks and KB Toys and some others. 

So having consumers talk about, you know, a product or services on a Web site and brands has been something that I’ve been doing for now well over a decade.  But I would have to say that Edmunds.com had a very strong vision.  When I met their chairman and founder back in 1996 he was very clear about his mission, which was to allow consumers to discuss the types of deals that they were seeing in their car-buying experiences, to share their experiences with each other, and to really provide a transparent online area for community exchange and community dialogue, and has really stayed true to that original community mission regarding empowering the automotive consumer.

Aaron Strout:             

So to that end, we did a previous podcast with you at our Community 2.0 event, which now belongs to IAR.  But you were kind enough to come and be a speaker at the event, and one of the things that you talked about that really, I still to this day I think I mentioned it at the Web Guild, Web 2.0 event, when we bumped into each other, you talk about the importance on that interview, and I’ve heard some other interviews with you, about user-generated content or user reviews being stacked up against expert reviews.  And I still point people to that podcast because it’s such a great explanation of the importance of that.  Can you talk a little bit about how you guys do that and why you see the value of that and how your users see the value of putting user reviews against expert reviews?

Sylvia Marino:           

Oh, absolutely.  You know, when we think about car buying we think of any type of purchase that we’re making.  You always want to go to the expert and you also want to know what your neighbors or peers think about the purchase.  You look for different opinions.  And what has become very important to us is at Edmunds we have really three types of content; we have our data, we have our expert or editorial content from our rather large editorial resource, and then we have our large online community.  So when you go to make a car buying decision and you’re researching vehicles it’s so important to know what the data says and it’s important to know what the experts think, and then to look at what the consumers – what your fellow consumers are thinking and what their experiences have been.  It really provides a full, well-rounded experience.

And what we see out there so often is that you have to go to one Web site to get the expert opinion, and then you have to go to another Web site to get the consumer opinion, and then perhaps yet another Web site to go get the data.  So by providing this in one easy to use site it really does provide the consumer with everything that they’re looking for in that one space.

Aaron Strout:             

Now I think one of the things too that you’ve mentioned is because of the fact that the experts – one of the examples I want to say was like a minivan – and maybe I was just having this conversation with someone.  Just because a minivan may be right for me, maybe it’s not right for my friend that has one child, and so I think because of the fact that it does that it really has an ability for people to get a much better, more well-rounded view of things, and I think obviously this is the power of communities.

Sylvia Marino:           

Sure.  You know, as deep as our editors have this automotive expertise, every single family and everyone’s needs are going to be a little bit different.  So what you do is you can look at well what do the editors think. 

And we actually have launched over the past year an Edmunds road test blog, where our team of editors take out vehicles that we have in our fleet for testing, and they apply it to their everyday lives.  So you might find one day that Kelly, with her kids, is driving a particular minivan, and she’ll talk about her experiences, “It was easy getting kids in and out.  It was great for hauling the Girl Scout cookies.”  And for somebody else you might find that they took the minivan and they went on a long road trip, and you get their everyday experiences, but from that authoritative expert point of view.

And at the same time you can start to read across the consumer reviews and in the forums to see, you know, how does this vehicle perform for somebody else’s family after three months, after six months, after 12 months.  And that’s just something that you’re not going to get in a test drive.

Aaron Strout:             

The long tale I guess, so to speak.

Sylvia Marino:           

Absolute long tale.  Absolute long tale.

Aaron Strout:             

So talk a little bit about – this is the good side of it, what are some of the challenges that you face?  Obviously introducing the third party, the user-generated reviews I’m sure does get challenging.  I know beyond the expletives or the sort of nonsense that people put up there, what are some of the things that you all face in terms of day-to-day issues?

Sylvia Marino:           

You know, because we’ve been doing this for so long we almost forget about what some of the early fears and challenges were.  Not to say that we don’t have them, but they’ve just become so second nature.  One, because we’ve always had a commitment to quality, we read all new content on a daily basis.  If you click on a discussion that says it’s going to be about the 2008 Honda Accord, it will be about the 2008 Honda Accord, because if our members go off topic, you know, we take those posts and we move them to the appropriate discussion.

So a lot of it has to do with the community management, that we look at the content, we look at where it’s been placed, make sure it’s in the right place so that people clicking into it are getting exactly what they expected, and people who are looking to ask a question are having it asked in the right place. 

So that said, because we’ve been doing that since 1996 there is a great example set there for new users coming in.  You know, we kind of set the bar, so when that new person comes in and they’re reading, they know by example, if they need to post a question or they’re going to post a review, there’s an example already set as far as how to do that.

Aaron Strout:             

That’s wonderful.  Thank you for throwing that out there.  I guess building on that a little bit, because you’ve been doing this for such a long time, really well beyond most people who are in the community or social media space, starting with your experience at The WELL, could you share some of your best practices?  One of the things that we do on this podcast series is we do try to talk to people that have either been thinking about writing about this space for a long time or actual business practitioners that have lived it with the idea of imparting two people, trying to start up a community, or people that are actively managing their communities, how do they do it best?  How do the best community practitioners do it these days?

Sylvia Marino:           

Well, we spend a lot of time listening to our users.  You know, we make mistakes; we’re going to put in a new feature that we think is just going to be perfect, and you know, that the community is going not love, and they absolutely hate it.  And we have to kind of, you know, listen, take it back out, and do a retry.  So we do spend a lot of time listening to what their needs are; where they’re having difficulty finding information; if we do a redesign, how to do it better; if they’re looking for a new tool or a new feature, getting very clear understanding of what it is they want and why. 

So there’s a great deal that we actively listen to and try and act upon, and we do that both in our customer support, whether it’s for the entire Web site experience, and we also do it actively within each community area regarding the users who are key to providing input, as well as to looking at metrics to those who aren’t posting, who aren’t contributing content.  We will look at padding.  We will look at the metrics as to why are people dropping out of that process and trying to maybe identify where we might be losing someone who did want to ask a question or provide an answer and making sure that we’re actively looking at the user experience and what it is that potential community member or that active community member is looking for.

Aaron Strout:             

So it sounds like you guys are doing all the right things, and for many companies this would be a dream come true because I think people are starting to understand the power of community and understanding the power of listening and really collaborating with their customers and partners to get it.  Why did they get it?  What was that light that went off for them 10 years ago that said, “Guys, this is really important.  We need to be listening to that”?  Was there a particular background or a moment or, you know, someone that they followed that really made that light click?  You know, is that something that’s repeatable for some of the folks that are listening to share with their management to get them to really see the light in terms of the power of community?

Sylvia Marino:           

You know, I have to say it was our chairman, Peter Steinlauf.  From day one he said – I guarantee you, this is what people want to do.  They walk over to their neighbor and they say, “So how do you like your new car?”  They may not be willing to say, “So what did you pay for it,” but every person who’s thinking about going to the dealership would love to know what the ten people before them paid.  They want that transparency.  So for us it really came from our founder and his vision of just saying, “There needs to be transparency in the marketplace.  Consumers want to, they already do, they do it in their everyday lives, they do it at the coffee shop, they do it wherever they’re socializing they are asking peoples’ opinions and advice.  So if you’re going to provide information online about such a major purchase decision it almost became very common sense that you should be providing them with a place to have dialogue about it as well.

Aaron Strout:             

If only everyone could be so fortunate.  That’s great.

So I have one last question for you, and it’s more of a personal nature, but I like to ask a lot of the folks that I interview if you had one blog that you could read and it was one blog only – I know that’s a tough one because there are so many good ones out there- whose blog would it be and why?

Sylvia Marino:           

Well, you know, of course, because people from my company might be listening, I have to say our professional automotive blogs, whether it be Auto Observer or Straight Line or Carl on Cars or Green Car Advisor.  I mean that’s almost too easy.

So, you know, I was just thinking, when I go to read blogs on a daily basis, whether I read them for news or entertainment, I really look at the ones that almost poke fun at the industry.  They poke fun at us, people in high tech, people who’ve been doing it for a long time, where you have days where you think, “I’ve invented it all” or “I’ve invented something new and it’s really more of just an improvement on the evolution of people and technology and how we use information.” 

So I really like Fake Steve, the blog where you have the gentleman impersonating Steve Jobs.  I just think it’s hilarious and it pokes fun at us as an industry in high tech and everything that we do.  So that’s the one that makes me laugh every single day.

Aaron Strout:             

That’s great.  And I have to admit, I’m always amazed at how much of a phenomena that has become and how many people like the fake Steve Jobs blog and how many people sort of follow that, so you’re not alone in that regard. 

Sylvia Marino:           

Well, you know when you read it and you say, “Gosh, I wish I had thought of this.  I wish I could be this funny,” that’s when you know it’s a great blog, and he certainly does a great job with it.

Aaron Strout:             

It is very clever.  Well, Sylvia, we are just about out of time, so I wanted to thank you for your time today and I really appreciate the insights you were able to share.

Sylvia Marino:           

Thank you very much for having me.

Aaron Strout:             

It’s our pleasure.  And so we look forward to having more conversations with you in the future.

Sylvia Marino:           

Absolutely.  Thank you very much.