ROI on Communities

I love seeing what businesses are capable of doing within brand communities. Social media is perfect for demonstrating to your community that you have your finger on the social pulse.
But are businesses using information volunteered by consumers to full effect? Being quick to act/react to customer complaints in a public forum is great. But, will it solve your problems in the long run?
When you’re cultivating a brand community make sure you have the correct comm’s channels set up. Increased followers or fan interactions look good in reports, but improving products and services is where the real ROI lies for brands.
If those responsible for running the community aren’t communicating with the correct stakeholders within the organisation then opportunities aren’t being leveraged. If you’re community is volunteering information about a faulty product or a new feature they love and no one is being informed beyond the marketing department then are you maximising the full impact of what social media has to offer?

People wanna connect, brands can be enablers.

The concept of tribes has existed for thousands of years. People want to feel connected through common ideas, interests and beliefs, we want to talk to one another about these ideas until we're blue in the face and then take a breath and talk some more. 

Seth Godin makes loving the concepts of tribes easy, "People want to missed" is what Seth says is the driving reason.

I believe tribes/communities can be built around brands. Its important from a business perspective to identify the objectives for building a community. The reasons may vary from from networking, support, digital marketing etc. Lets use the objective of networking for an example, a company selling fishing rods could provide a networking platform where anglers come and exchange news about what fish is being caught in certain areas. For both parties this is mutually beneficial, as anglers exchange valueable information with one another and the company gets to observe not only they're behaviour, but also learn about what they're community is interested in. 

Enjoy

Community Managers are social beings

I've been chatting to Alison Michalk recently, she founded the Australian Community Managers’ Facebook & Google group. She's all about communities and runs a business called Quiip, they offer social media monitoring and online community management. I'm hoping we'll be able to work on projects in the future as I like her vision on what a community manager role looks like.
In an article written by Alison, titled The (please) don'ts, she states some of the pitfalls of hiring the incorrect candidate; social media addicts don't necessarily make community managers, nor should you leave an intern the responsibility of being a community manager.
I hope you enjoy it.

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Every Step Counts

 

I LOVE any article that promotes less spend on traditional media, but also provides an alternative to engage consumers. This article Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places by David C. Edelman “shows a mismatch between most marketing allocations and the touch points at which consumers are best influenced”.

The article is more than just idealistic theory, its accompanied by a case study that produced fascinating results.
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Paid, owned, earned, hijacked and sold

I do love a good McKinsey Quarterly article, this article highlights the different parameters of marketing for the new age. "Beyond paid media: Marketing's new vocabulary" written by David Edelman and Brian Salsberg challenges the traditional "Paid, Owned, Earned" media mantra by also adding "Hijacked" and "Sold".
Hijacked refers to when a brand has media channels turned against them by citizen journalist, vying for blood, an apology or a back flip. Examples of this are the Nestle or United Airlines viral campaigns that had PR departments scrambling.
Then there is Sold media, this is where a company finds themselves in a position where they can create revenue from selling media space on their website. This revenue model isn't new, but lets say a bank takes the initiative to build a website that will help students find part time work while studying at University. This bank didn't enter into the market to make money off a website, but if they build a large community, the ad space is worth something because it is honed (18-24 year old, education conscious, job-seekers). Now if this traffic gets so strong, other organisations will purchase the adspace for their own e-commerce. E.g University ads for masters courses, head hunters looking for bright part timers and companies seeking interns.
Its another great article and as always the comments section is worth reading
Enjoy

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Internet stats, made to excite!

I got sent this press release yesterday by comScore. It highlights the Russians are getting into Social Media, in a massive way. In fact according to the statistics Russians are spending more than 9 hours per month on social networking sites, that is double the worldwide average of 4.5 hours!
What content are they producing to keep them online? What/how are they sharing?
What does it mean to a company, how can they leverage this? What opportuities are there in the Russian market? I was asking myself all of this too.
Surely we must be able to learn something from the sites they're engaging on, right?
But then I remembered what I'd learnt from an athlete I've been working with the past year, Tristan Miller at RunLikeCrazy.com

"The internet is rubbish over here"

I've heard this really often from him, I couldn't remember if it was Russia, but I had heard it really frequently so I checked it out. Lo and behold it was Russia with 10% of the poulation having access to broardband it means less thana quarter of the 40 million users have access to high speed internet. The fastest possible speeds you can get out of dial up is 56.6kb per second, which is slooooooooow, could go some ways to explaining the amount of extra time spent online?
Also, other questions remain;
- Is it dedicated time online?
- What are they using it for?


I don't doubt the accuracy of these statistics but my point is there are a lot of statistics out there, until you look at social, economical/infrastructure factors, its hard to determine how valid the findings are to your business.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence.

Unfriend(ly) advice

A recent study by Christopher Sibona, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, into the 'Unfriending' of friends across social networks has showed some valuable insights for businesses. 

Spamming consumers and inappropriate behavior online will see friendships end. Also, you're actions when you're offline effects this online friendship.

Something else to consider, In the consumers mind social acquaintances might question rejection, but brands cannot.

Brands beware

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