building communities around content

BUILDING COMMUNITY AROUND CONTENT

WORKSHOP PREPARED FOR O’REILLY’S TOC CONFERENCE

02/09/09

MEET THE TEAMS (EXPERIENTIAL)WHAT IS COMMUNITY? (EXPERIENTIAL)LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRIBALIZATION STUDY (LECTURE)LET’S BRAINSTORM ABOUT OUR FUTURE (EXPERIENTIAL)OVERCOMING COMMON OBSTACLES (LECTURE)WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU GET BACK? (EXPERIENTIAL)

ON THE MENU TODAY (MAYBE)

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THINK OF A COMMUNITY GROUP YOU LOVED…WHAT MADE IT GREAT? SHARE WITH YOUR GROUP…

WHAT IS COMMUNITY?

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TRIBALIZATION OF BUSINESS STUDY CONDUCTED BY BEELINE LABS, DELOITTE AND THE SOCIETY FOR NEW COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH LOOKED AT 140 COMPANIES LEVERAGING COMMUNITY AS PART OF THEIR BUSINESS

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRIBALIZATION STUDY

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UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS AT WORK WITHIN COMMUNITIESA QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE FINDINGS OF THE STUDYTHE MAJOR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE STUDYSOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITIES IN PUBLISHING

OVERVIEW:

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TRIBALISM IS THE VERY FIRST SOCIAL SYSTEM THAT HUMAN BEINGS EVER LIVED IN, AND IT HAS LASTED MUCH LONGER

THAN ANY OTHER KIND OF SOCIETY TO DATE. (WIKIPEDIA)

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What’s this tribal thing all about?

SOCIAL MEDIA HAPPENED…

A PLATFORM AND CULTURE OF PARTICIPATION HAS EMERGED – GIVING POWER TO ALL YOUR

EMPLOYEES, CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS TO BEHAVE THE WAY THEY WERE HARDWIRED TO

BEHAVE – HUMANLY, TRIBALY

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Why now?

The motivations allowing this to work…

• People want to connect with other people

• People want to help and be helped – it’s a reflex!

• People operate either in one of two frameworks:– social framework – market framework

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THOSE PILLARS CREATE THE DYNAMICS OF INCREASING RETURNS WHICH HELP COMMUNITIES DELIVER GAME

CHANGING RESULTS

Understanding the driving forces of communities

• The more CONTENT you have the more MEMBERS you will get.

• The more MEMBERS you have the more CONTENT you will get.

• The better you match CONTENT and MEMBERS to MEMBER PROFILES the more MEMBERS and CONTENT you will get.

• The easier it is to do TRANSACTIONS the more MEMBERS you will attract.

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BUT THEY ARE NOT AFFECTING THE ECONOMICS OF INCREASING RETURNS THAT DELIVER GAME CHANGING RESULTS

And of course…

• The Technology Infrastructure of the community is important

• The Social Infrastructure of the community is MORE important

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A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

SECOND ACT:

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New Product Development

Customer serviceIdea generation

Market research Developer relations

Amplifying Word of Mouth

Employee communications

General Marketing

Reputation management Product testing

Public relationsLONG TAIL SALES

CANARY IN THE COALMINE

Co-innovation

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Top usage scenarios:

Generate word of mouth

Bring outside ideas into the organization faster

Increase customer loyalty

Increase brand awareness

Improve PR effectiveness

Reduce market research costs

Decrease customer acquisition costReduce customer support cost

Increase new product success ratios

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Top business objectives:

Why are companies setting up communities?

• Speed of innovation – extending the edges of the organization

• Learning organization

• Reducing cost

• Building trusted relations

• Transformational power and game-changing nature of communities

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MARKETING

Sales

Customer serviceFinance

Public Relations

Employee communications

IT

Product development

R&D

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Who’s in charge?

DISCONNECT:Not in support of any goal…

Measuring progress and success – web analytics

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Measuring progress and success - business measures

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Activity levels

Tonality

Impact on salesImpact on cost

Participation rate

Sustainability

Software downloads

engagement

Amount of learningAnecdotal stories

Growth

Sentiment

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Measuring progress and success – qualitative

Community features contributing the most to effectiveness

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Could lead to prematureshutdown of community

The biggest obstacles to making communities work

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How long has your community been running?

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How many active members do you have?

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How many full time people manage this community?

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What is the approximate annual operating budget?

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Over the next 12 months will your investment in the community:

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THE MAJOR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE STUDY

THIRD ACT:

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Takeaway #1: Communities are about delivering game-changing results

• Communities can increase revenue per customer dramatically – i.e., 50%

• Communities will increase product introduction success ratios

• Communities amplify everything you do – increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs

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Takeaway #2: The rise of the CMO 2.0?

• Communities should be an important part of the CMO’s toolset(but for many large companies – there is an under-investment and scale problem)

• Communities should evolve the role of the CMO into Chief Community Officer(but that will require drastic changes in attitude and approach to marketing)

• If done properly, communities will transform the way marketing works(reduced costs, improved effectiveness, new opportunities)

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Takeaway #3: The need for new management thinking

• Mismatch between community goals and associated investments

• Major gaps between community goals and what is being measured

• Communities have to combine with major talent initiatives

• Communities will transform most business processes

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Takeaway #3.5:The worst practices enjoy wide adoption

• The build it and they will come (again) fallacy

• The let’s keep it small so it doesn’t move the needle phenomenon

• The not invented here syndrome

(especially applicable for newspaper and magazine publishers – people ALREADY HAVE A VIBRANT SOCIAL NETWORK ON FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, BEBO…they do not want to rebuild a new on your site – integrate where they are)

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SOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITIES

FINAL ACT:

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Early predictions:

• Many community initiatives will continue to fail

• Communities will eventually transform the role of the CMO

• Early adopters will force industry-wide changes

• Companies will find out how to build predictable communities

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Prediction #1 for Publishing Industry:Have your community cell-phone ready (*)

• A third of US consumers are using their cell phone to entertain themselves, over half of Millennials

• Almost 50% of consumers, 40% of Boomers, and a surprising 35% of Matures are interested in ease of access to product information via product bar code scanning on their cell phone/hand-held

• Although a very small percentage, almost 5% of every generation considers cell phone advertising as being the MOST influential form of online advertising (*) Based on data from

Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition

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Prediction #2 for Publishing Industry:Media will never travel alone

• In order to optimize subscription and ad revenue potential, media companies must develop new product development and advertising strategies

Traditional Content Composition Future Content Composition

Line

ar B

road

cast

Ads

Promos

Chat

Games

Behind the Scenes

Information

CoreContent

NewspaperMagazine

MusicGames

Books

(*) Based on data from Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition

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Prediction #3 for Publishing Industry:You will need to provide the full capabilities of the “digital media menu”

Customizable interface

Personalized content

Personalized recommendations

Extensive content selection from all sources

Sophisticated content search

Active/Passive viewing

Free/Ad supported option

Supports multiple platforms

Same menu on each platform

Transfer content license across platforms

Integrated cross-platform billing

Purchase, rental, free w/ads

Off-line viewing

Single integrated sign-onHigh speed, real-time streamingHigh reliability

Pers

onal

-iz

ation

Cont

ent

Platf

orm

/

Dev

ice

Supp

ortin

g Te

chno

logy

(*) Based on data from Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey, Third Edition

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Some case studies + lessons learned

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Best practices

> 1,000 members logged in over a 24 hour period

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Scientific Journals under attack?

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The encyclopedia market case study

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What happened?

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Integrating the new with the old

• Social bookmarking• Social networking• Integration LinkedIn• Integration with print publication

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Thought leadership communities – the new custom pubs

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An innovative approach to finding sources

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Open source book development

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LET’S BRAINSTORM ABOUT OUR FUTURE…

Why are so many people on twitter excited about publishing?

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There is clearly something afoot in this industry…

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YOU ARE A BOOK PUBLISHERYOU ARE A MAGAZINE PUBLISHERYOU ARE A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERYOU ARE AN INHOUSE PUBLISHER

2ND EXERCISE: LEVERAGING COMMUNITY IN YOUR BUSINESS

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OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS THAT YOU ARE LIKELY TO ENCOUNTER

KNOCKING DOWN THE TOP 8 OBSTACLES

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED?WHAT ARE THE MAIN OBSTACLES?HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THEM?

ON THE MENU

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How do you get started?

S A MStrategize Activate Manage

-to-scale

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Strategize• What are the business goals of your community

efforts?– PR and Thought Leadership– Co-creation– Traffic generation– Sales

• Determine your audience and what makes them tick– What are some of the common passions or pains

that connect them?– Can you align the community goals with your

business goals?• Perform an external scan to map out your

ecosystem:– Where do your audiences hang out?– How do they communicate with one another?– what are they talking about?– What are your competitors doing?

• Make an internal readiness assessment

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Obstacle #1:Aligning the Community Value Prop with the Business Goals

• More McKinsey, less McCann– Hard data, analysis and questions– No fluffiness and pretty web sites

• Forget about how you are organized– Put your members in the center– Find a member value prop first – align it

with the business goals second

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Obstacle #2:Finding what will motivate your members to participate

Source: Rob Kozinets, “E-Tribalized Marketing?” The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption”

“The most potent tribes are built in the interstices, in the margins, on the fringes.”

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Questions that may help overcome the obstacle

• How much do people care about this topic/issue? Why?

• On a scale of 1-10 how passionate are people about getting and giving help?

• Why would people prefer to connecting with people like them vs. “official channels”?

• Are there ”fringe” topics, groups that are underserved?

• What business value is there be for us to be associated with this issue?

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Obstacle #3The Company Culture

• Are you driven by selling more papers, more magazines or more books?

• Do you think of yourself as selling tangible bits?

• Do you have a culture of talking at your community instead of with them?

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Obstacle #4Managing to a 100 year old cost structure instead of to the future

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Activate

• Who will you engage with first? How will you scale beyond that?

• Who will develop the initial content for your community?

• How will the community affect all of your business processes? Get ready to deal with the impact on processes that are not part of the original business goals

• How will you measure success?

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Obstacle #5:Creating a pilot that will scale and from which you can learn

• The dynamics to make small pilots work are often very different from the large scale community efforts

• Pilots are often underfunded and understaffed – people will want to hear from you and if they invest social capital and you’re not listening they will get mad

• The lessons learned from small pilots will not always teach you anything about large scale communities

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Manage-to-scale

• Build the processes to scale the effort

• Ensure the right measurements and reporting processes

• Launch plan– Events– Time based activities– Communications plan

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Obstacle #6Legal fears and “pilotitis”

• Fear of litigation around– Liability– Labor laws

• Project in permanent state of pilot

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Obstacle #7Who’s job is it anyway?

• It will cross functions, you have no choice– Cannot be siloed– Cross-functional team or Center for

Excellence?

• Community manager skills vary depending on need– Functional expertise– Industry experience– Communications– Networking– Content– Analytical– Strategy– Empathy

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Obstacle #8Build it and they don’t come

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“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.”

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky

It’s all about CONTENT, dummy

AdvocatesPro ContentUGCFacilitation

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Conclusion

What were the big aha moments for you and what will YOU DO when you go

back to work?

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Any questions?

Francois GossieauxPartner, Beeline Labse. francois@beelinelabs.comw. http://www.beelinelabs.com b. http://www.emergergencemarketing.comc. http://www.marketingtwo.netp. http://www.cmotwo.com

Ed MoranDirector of New Product Innovation, Deloittee. emoran@deloitte.com w. http://www.deloitte.com

Upcoming Tribalization Sitehttp://www.tribalizationofbusiness.com

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