by David Wilmot
[Semi-live blogging. I am uploading this after the talk from the Blogger’s lounge. I’ve tried to correct spelling but grammar may be a little lacking. I wanted to keep the immediacy.]
No power cords so I will have to post this later. This could be a good start. The panel has some very strong members including Jeremiah Owyand from Forrester and Dawn Foster from Jive.
Jeremiah started with a nice easy question about what each panel member wore in the 80s. Lots of people using Twitter for the session.
Tools not important. It is the people and why they connect. Kellie Parker discussed gathering together to exchange ideas. Dawn – feedback on products. Bob – brand loyalty and 2-way communication.
Nothing new, right? just customer support.Kellie – old way is one to one. this is one to many or many to many. Collaboration provides support. Dawn – not just company providing solutions. Other members of community can. Bob – moving beyond support.
Jeremiah – asks audience to provide some answers on background. Do I great a new community or join an old one? Kellie – need to do both.set something on Facebook, twitter and on their own.
Bob – discussed Slash.dot almost too earlier since it was on before many web 2.0 came to maturity. need to use your own assets to create – train bloggers, etc. It is different from traditional marketing. Dawn – marketing messages are different from community. It is people who work for the organization not the organization. It is people not companies.
Kellie – community manager is the landlord, set up the space and take care of it but does not own it. She is just Kellie.
What is skill set for community manager? Bob – passion. need to have it not just be an expert. Helps but not required. needs to understand the community and the company. wants people who touch the technology. Dawn – a good networker. in real life and on the web. Kellie – tact and diplomacy. good people skills.here to serve community. Dawn – advocate to company and to community. [an effective ombudsman]
Bad – How? afraid of losing control. Bob – need to protect brand. but know culture. Need for risk may be more important than maintaining brand. for external deal with legal. biggest was company resource restraints when dealing with silos that need to communicate.
deployed tools, hired people but no one is coming. Dawn – how do you build initial community. in case of customer space, tap existing customers. Find outside evangelists. get early adopters on board early. if starting from scratch, find early adopters and use them to spread the word. Use marketing channels and other social media.
How flexible should community be with coporate rigidity? Kellie – keep goals in mind. realize that your plans may not be what the communities want. be creative.
Deal with trolls?Kellie – try to engage, at least once. often this just calms them down. if keeps on, will discuss in private and then ban.
Dawn – step back and do not get defensive. Typically there are people who will stick up for the community. It is much less defensive if you let passionate members help fight rather than the organization. Bob – train all bloggers on engagement. moderate lightly. often the community comes to the defense. use terms and conditions if they are egregious. let community have discussion.
Clay Shirky – deploy a community? what is funniest social dynamic on site? Kellie – general topics section. people find out they grew up in same town. what they had for breakfast. So have a place where community can just be people not part of PCWorld. Dawn – spammer got on and got Nigerian sam to members. Bob – discussed terms. not deploy but embrace. funniest is what does not make it out of moderation side. off the wall comments. experimentation.
How do you get people to stay at community? Kellie – ask general questions? favorite browser, etc. act as matchmaker and connect people. Dawn – give them something special like their own space. Bob – make it simple for people to engage. add captions to photos, etc. one sentence.
Within the enterprise (sales people or contractors) where do you see momentum inside companies. Dawn – mostly in external communities. seeing more around partners. semi-private. just starting inside company. does it at Jive. it is really helpful since all info on 1` platform and everyone knows where tp go to get answers. 2013 – 40% will be internal.
experience of community managers to senior management. Bob – distributed structure. need to make sure community is close to product. but need to evangelize up.
What are metrics? What is ROI? Bob – needs to know objective and be firm. outreach will have different than marketing. talking model – make intel more relevant. looks at organic traffic like to see referral links to site rather than number of visitors.
Dawn – look at participation. messages posted. do not need to look all the way down to leads. not really a funnel to purchases. Kellie – page views may be only way to tell who reads but not participating. looks at page views then number of messages. Jeremiah – depends on exact objective of community.
What about interactivity? Digg help hostage by community. cold community hurt product. Dawn – hard to value Digg because whole value is the community. can you buy a community. not an easy answer. different for dedicated sites like PCWorld.
Size of community. number of managers to community. resource management. Kellie – depends on culture. if community is self managing – then only need 1. if more like a cocktail party, then need more host activity and maybe more hosts. dedicated manager vs shared resources. Dawn – development manager but have help from developers. Bob – foster conversations. lots of managers living in community with 50-100 FTE with lots of bloggers. each post 4-5 times a week. no ghost towns.