 Jim Storer
Sr. Director, Social Media Strategy
Return on Community
Jim Storer : Return on Community |
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Q&A from Webinar with Josh Bernoff
I hosted a webinar on Wednesday with Josh Bernoff from Forrester that had over 450 people sign on. We talked about the book Groundswell he authored with Charlene Li and what enterprises need to think about when they decide to embrace community. The great turnout really showed the thirst for information when it comes to getting started in social media and community. In fact, I've hosted hundreds of webinars over the years and have never seen the volume and quality of questions we saw on Wednesday. My colleague Aaron and I tried to keep up with the steady stream, but invariably couldn't do the questions justice in the time we had to answer them.
What I'd like to do is ask YOU to help with the answers. The folks I follow (and follow me) on social media applications (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are a smart bunch and surely have some terrific ideas to offer. I'll keep tabs on our progress and make sure to keep adding my answers over the coming week (I'm technically on vacation next week, but that hasn't stopped me in the past).
Please note: I realized the comments functionality here is not great. Please note the question # you're responding to and leave your name/Twitter handle in the comment and I'll make sure to edit the blog and give you credit. Thanks for your patience... we're working on it.
Q1: Do you find that B2B companies tend to focus on one of the 5 themes more than others (marketing, support, sales, development, research)?
Q2: Are there any resources to map demographics (our customers) to technologies that would be appropriate for them?
A2: We offer that as a service here at Mzinga. There isn't a tool per se, but we have a number of techniques and strategies to help with this process...
Q3: When you begin talking about fostering a community of creators and/or critics, you start putting your IP into the hands of strangers. What are the implications of this, and why shouldn't we be scared?
Q4: Shouldn't there be a distinction between communities and networks?
A4: We can ask Josh but there definitely is a distinction. Traditionally "networks" deal more with the social graph vs. a community which provides tools and conversations around the network or social graph.
Q5: is it like a focus group?
A5: It can be like a focus group - except much bigger with the capability of providing deeper, longer lasting feedback.
Q6: What are the legal risks with social networks (i.e. how responsible would a corporation be for threads/insights/perspective in their community?) Curious if there are any red flags that others struggle with? Thank you!
Q7: can communities have multiple objectives - supporting, embracing, marketing, etc.?
Q8: Meg Wheatley and Etienne Wenger both have excellent things to say on the topic...
Q9: How much activity are you seeing related to reaching upper management audiences? Who is being successful with these? Suggestions for getting these started?
Q10: Should we plan to be active in the community so that it doesn't go off in another direction (or even against us)?
A10: Absolutely - but don't make your participation "salesy" or too marketing heavy - ideally you have customer support and product people participating. They need leeway to be open and honest with your customers.
Q11: What best practices are there for kick starting a community (getting people to the community, and interacting)?
A11: Two of the most important best practices we've see are: 1) making sure you have a community manager (or someone managing/moderating your community for you) and 2) providing ongoing content (blogs, podcasts) and programming (webinars, conf. calls).
Q12: What if you need to worry about client confidentiality? Is it possible to create a community where your clients are anonymous, but still contribute and interact with one another?
A12: It is possible to have private companies AND/OR allow people to post anonomously - it's a fine line though because there are numerous documented cases of people abusing anonymity.
Q13: Thinking about b2b, but aren't those people less passionate? Harder to motivate?
Q14: Is there a specific market in which someone can promote the sale of a social network they have developed?
Q15: In b2b applications, what happens if customers start complaining en masse?!
A15: If you customers start complaining en masse, it usually means you have bigger problems and the complaints in your community are symptomatic - if you are honest and open and doing the right thing, your customers will defend you!
Q16: How do you manage confidentiality of company information? There are concerns of sharing confidential company information outside of the firewalls? Are there B2B companies that have communities that are external + internal?
A16: Best Buy and Intel both have well-documented internal communities. They work similar to external communities but are for employees only.
Q17: What is your opinion on monitoring input before allowing it to be viewed by the community?
Q18: What do you think of Second Life? Do you think that it is a good way to network?
Q19: There is at least one and possibly two US airline mergers in the works. How would you approach combining two communities?
Q20: For internal communities, how do you create autonomous audiences where employees have less fear of their comments being tracked by IT? I'm thinking of an example where communities can be used to gather employee feedback.
Q21: To what extent should a B2C organization (nonprofit) go out and network with the clients' social media? E.g. the org sets up a blog ... how much time/energy do we invest in going out to others' blogs and commenting, etc.?
Q22: How can I convince my exec team that our internal social networking tools need to be written in a casual, conversational fashion and style? I work in a very conservative industry.
A22: This question was answered during the live Q&A. Check out the archive.
Q23: Is the idea exchange run by an outside company or using external software?
A23: The idea management tool we talked about on the session is external software.
Q24: What is the social networking applications that can create the Salesforce.com example?
A24: For Salesforce, they used things like blogs and discussion forums. However, they also used a new type of tool that Dell has popularized called an "Ideashare" or "Ideastorm" tool - it's like a discussion forum that allows comments and digg style voting.
Q25: When launching an internal community at work, do you recommend an open-ended, "anyone can join in" approach, or would you recommend that the creator "invite" members/groups first?
A25: It really depends of what your goal is for the community. For broad collaboration or innovation, that makes sense. For communities of practice you might launch a series of communities with specific charters.
Q26: Should companies represent themselves to public/customer communities using a dedicated voice/representative, or is it recommended to get more employees engaging with coustomers. Is there a preference?
A26: This question was answered during the live Q&A. Check out the archive.
Q27: I've heard of companies that "plant" employees within communities to act as customers and help either push or discuss company products. Can you speak to this?
A27: This question was answered during the live Q&A. Check out the archive.
Q28: How effective is it to have a ghostwriter for broadcasts like twitter? (I'm sure that Obama does not do his own twittering.)
Q29: What is the groundswell URL please?
A29: http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell
Q30: What about the Workplace Community and Customer Community relationship? Can one exist without the other in a B2B context?
Q31: I bought the book while we were here online. :-)
Q32: How do I search using Twitter hash tags?
A32: http://hashtags.org/tag/mzinga/
Q33: Are the stats the same in EMEA or just applicable in US?
Q34: Aren't fans and evangelists more important than critics in the devt of community?
Q35: Josh: You are talking about Consumers.. What about Corporate Customers? As in if a Business wanted to start a community for its B2B clients? What advice do you give? Any examples?
A35: This question was answered during the live Q&A. Check out the archive.
Q36: Does anyone really want to be a part of this type of corporate community? Isn't this a way for Tampax to win awards for being so innovative? I just don't buy that girls want to spend their time on a tampon website.
A36: I tend to agree with you, but if they can share with people dealing with the same issues it might work well. misery loves company?
Q37: How did P&G drive users into the Being Girl community? What was the hook? What contact points were used to make people aware of the community?
Q38: Do you have any examples of creating communities within an organization?
Q39: Understanding your demogrpahics is key to targeting your community and its potential growth, but how do you instigate both the interest and posts/responses to get the ball rolling? What are some best practices?
Q40: Is there a chance of communities becoming skewed to those people who, frankly have more time than say, someone with both spouses working, 3 kids and 2 dogs? Can this bias be filtered out ? if so, how? and lastly, do you anticipate "community overload" or wearout especially in the B2C world?
Q41: Hi - that didn't really cover the LMS question and how to use communities in learning. Can you speak to that?
Q42: This is more of a general one, do participants in internal SN's fear retribution from above for being brutally honest?...how do they convince people to participate and get them over being involved, particularly in cultures which have a lot of internal politics?
Q43: Are there pros/cons of using a domain name different from that of the main site?
Q44: Can you make suggestions for smaller organizations that want to develop communities, but may not have all of the staff that is being recommended?
Thanks in advance for your help!!! Let's crowdsource this one!
Sat, Apr 19 2008
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