b2b community building - a discussion and roadmap - mesh conference 2010
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B2B Community Building - a discussion and roadmap - mesh conference 2010 Note: Much of this workshop revolved around an interactive discussion between community managers and strategists. I'm @EdenSpodek on Twitter if you'd like to chat more.TRANSCRIPT
mesh workshop:
BUILDING A
B2B COMMUNITYMay 19, 2010
Eden Spodek, High Road Communications
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
David Alston, VP Marketing and Community, Radian6
“Social media and B2B were made for each other even though most examples are B2C.
Listening & engaging in social media canhelp you focus quickly on the right people at the right time.”
Why is community important for B2B companies?
“According to a recent Forrester Research
study* of business buyers, 91% use
social technologies and 69% use them
for professional purposes.
Today, more B2B companies than ever
are discovering the potential of branded
online communities – but be careful –
branding should always take a backseat.”
*Deepen B2B Tech Customer Engagement With
Community Marketing
Forrester - December 9, 2009
Agenda
• What is a B2B community?
• Developing a B2B community strategy
• Measuring success
• Insights and practices from Canadian B2B communities
• Questions
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
What is a B2B community?
• “…Community marketing is about using
marketing to engage prospects, current
customers, industry insiders, and partners in
dialog that transparently and collectively improves
the probability of creating effective solutions to the
most pressing business problems...
• ... supports better business outcomes...
•.. new ways, to innovate collaborate, and partner
that create more productive business
operations.“
Bill Lee, President
Customer Strategy Group,
Jan. 12, 2010
Photo credit: andycaster on flickr from PAB 2008
Michael O‟Connor Clarke, VP Marketing Communications, FreshBooks
“No brainer: offer value. ...listen actively and intently to what your nascent community actually wants and needs.
Sometimes, that's not obvious: people won't (often can't) necessarily tell you flat out what they want. It requires a lot of insight, interpretation and questioning.”
Delivering value
What are the rewards?
• Cultivate brand ambassadors
• Generate sales
• Gain customer insights
• Early awareness of issues
• Collaborate with customers, partners
and suppliers.
• Director customer contact
• New customer service channel
Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist, Rogers Ventures
“Different communities will have different goals. If the goal is sales of a product or customer acquisition then there is the metric to measure. If your goal is PR or conversations then measure that. Basically, know your goals at the beginning and work towards accomplishing them.”
Objectives
How does community building fit into your
organization's objectives?
Develop a strategy with a clear vision of your goals and target audience
How does community building fit into your organization's objectives?
Understanding the objective(s) of community members
Choosing an appropriate platform
Cultivating and creating content
Role of the community manager and brand ambassadors
Governance
Measuring success
Marketing, visibility, brand awareness, customer loyalty, relationship-building
Understanding the objective of the community
• Who is your community for?
• Remember, its for them, not for you
• Content and relationships build your brand, not creative
• How will you provide value?
• Where are the current gaps and how can the community fill them?
• What tools can you provide to make their jobs easier?
• The “gift system”*
• How will you define it‟s members?
* Seth Godin, Lynchpin, 2010
Understanding the objective of the community (con‟t)
• Relationships first, business second
• Find your audience – online audits, participating in other communities, events
• Give 25 times more than you expect to receive*
• Model for community management (individual or a team)
• Who will you allow to join - open or closed community?
• Clients/prospects, partners, suppliers and/or industry thought leaders/players
• Open - increases web traffic via SEO, word of mouth
• Closed - gain intimacy and control (preferable for co-creation and market research)
*Chris Brogan
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/
User Profiles
Connie
Motivation:
E.g. Sharing knowledge and
information
Quote:
E.g. “I hope my experiences
can help my readers.”
Mark Jen
Motivation:
E.g. Working smarter by saving
time and cutting costs.
Quote:
E.g. “My workforce has been cut
by 20% while my workload
increased..”
Motivation:
E.g. Collaborate with other
entrepreneurs.
Quote:
E.g. “I’ve gone out on my own
and I’d like to network with
other small biz owners.”
Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com
“Don’t just go to (insert favourite large social site). Let your target audience, content and conversational nurture flow guide your tech choices.”
Choosing an appropriate platform
Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter
“Remember that everyone is busy and only has so much time to spend... Make it as easy as possible for people to interact with you from other places they hang out (Twitter, Ping.fm, etc) - that's something we're working on.”
Choosing an appropriate platform
Choosing an appropriate platform
• Do you go to them, let them come
to you or both?
• Importance of user experience – if
you're building a community site,
make it easy for members
to participate
• Needs to be simple, scalable,
flexible, functional and usable
Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter
“I think the best way to keep people engaged is to continually provide value.
We try to do that through our SprouterWeekly startup newsletter, our offline events, and our blog.”
Cultivating and creating content
Mark Graham, President, RIGHTSLEEVE
“For us, it's all about making our community look great (example - we have photo contests on Twitter where we give prizes to ppl who take shots of themselves using our gear. This is a great community bldg exercise and it also highlights what we do in a fun and non sales-y way.”
Cultivating and creating content
Cultivating and creating content
• How will you engage members with
your community?
• How will you keep them coming back?
• Develop unique content members can't
receive elsewhere
• Be approachable and appeal to a
wide audience
• Keep an eye on engagement –
it ebbs and flows (it‟s not constant)
Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist, Rogers Ventures
“Engaging in the community is important but more then that you need to empower the people in your community to speak for you and find new participants for your group to grown and survive.”
Role of the community manager
Role of the community manager
• Defining roles
• Single or multiple community managers?
• Personality and passion
• What‟s in it for them?
• Internal support and autonomy
• Succession planning
Governance
Define strategic direction and review periodically
Develop content and publishing guidelines
Commenting policies
User guidelines and code of conduct
Monitoring and measurement
Support community manager(s) – internal integration
Succession planning
Rayanne Langdon, Queen of Hearts, Everywhere
“There are a lot of methods and tools to measure community success, but first you need to decide what success means for you and set benchmarks.
However, too much focus on a number can make you lose sight of the effect you’re having on your community.”
Measuring success
Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com
“...Communities are like wine, after uncorking they need time to breathe before being assessed.”
Measuring success
Measuring success
What are the Challenges?
• Loss of information control
• Challenge in balancing transparency with knowledge sharing
• Lack of integration with other business units
• Low engagement, sustaining content
• Staffing changes
• Inability to scale
• Trolls, negative comments
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
• How to do you balance the business' evolving needs with the community
manager‟s role when the business is a start-up?
• How do you add new functions to a community manger‟s role, when there‟s
only one and you have limited resources?
• How does a community manger stay creative and engaged when you
feel like you‟re a one-person team, having to support your own work, ideas
and creativity independently?
Challenge: Managing with limited resources
PostRank‟s Solution
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
„It's ongoing as the company grows. Communication with management
and development's important – helps answer “what are we going to do next,
and what does the team need from me to make it happen?””
Melanie Baker
Community Manager, PostRank Inc.
FreshBooks Solution
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
Find ways to incorporate what you do with other departments in the
organization and play off the strengths you lack that others have. Also, realize
why and that you‟re wanted.
My Advice: Be real. Pretending to connect with people won‟t be bought. You will
only be successful gathering people about your business by loving what you do
and the people you do this for. Recognize and thank the people who really
believe in your business, product, etc. Make them feel special.
Rayanne Langdon
Account Executive, High Road Communications
former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks
Challenge 2: Succession planning
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
• What happens when a community manager or evangelist leaves
the company?
• How to you recover when the departing community manager has a
strong personal brand interwoven with the company‟s brand?
Wisdom from the Head of Magic
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
Just as you should treat your community with respect and class you
should do the same for your employer. This is all common sense but
once you have decided that you want to leave you should be training
someone to do what you do...and this can be done without them even
realizing you are training/teaching them. I was fortunate at FreshBooks
because I had an amazing person who I was able to do this so the
company was not left in a lurch but this is only half of the solution.
.../2
Saul Colt
Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures
Wisdom from the Head of Magic (con‟t)
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
The best way to move between a community is to not actually move at all but rather join
another community and never leave the old one. If you are in a community because you
enjoy being there and participating then why would you leave? I am still very active in the
creative communities that I participated in while at FreshBooks because I was there out of
actual interest and not just to sell people FreshBooks. Just because I am not at
FreshBooks is no reason to abandon the friends and people I met along my journey into
their communities and in a lot of ways my commitment to these people smoothed the
transition for FreshBooks as I acted as an unpaid ambassador for them and still do. This
speaks more to the personality of the individual person but this way of transitioning worked
for me and didn't harm anyone in the process.
Saul Colt
Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures
Advice from the Queen of Hearts
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
There‟s a fine line between being your company‟s brand and being your own
brand when nurturing communities. The part of yourself you bring in is a huge
reason people will connect with your organization. But don’t forget what your
role is and who you’re building a community for. At the same time, there
wouldn‟t be a community if the brand, product, etc. wasn‟t loved – a community
manager simply enhances this. If a community builder moves on and is replaced,
just replace him or her with someone equally excited about the company.
The community will see this, get excited about it and continue to be really
into your company.
Rayanne Langdon
Account Executive, High Road Communications
former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks
Challenge 3: Balancing the needs of the
community with business requirements
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
• As a community manager, how do you balance the “wants” of the
community members with the business requirements?
RIM‟s Resolution
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
The BlackBerry Support Community Forums (supportforums.blackberry.com) are a peer-to-
peer community for BlackBerry users. Our members include customers (example IT
administrators of a BlackBerry Enterprise Server), Support customers, and partners (carriers
for example, or developers) and end users (use BlackBerry for business or pleasure).
We have open conversations both on and offline with our members. We have found that
acknowledging their needs, and at the same time explaining to them any challenges or
difficulty we have in accomplishing it – goes a long way to build strong relationships in
the community.
Michelle Kostya
Community Manager
Blackberry
Challenge 4: Dealing with negative comments
• RIGHTSLEEVE, a long-term sponsor of mesh, included magnets
as part of the swag bags. Attendees (comprised of existing and
prospective customers for RIGHTSLEEVE) were concerned the
magnets would wipe out the data on their Blackberries and
other devices.
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
RIGHTSLEEVE‟s resolution
Turning a PR disaster around in a big way
(you'll remember from mesh last year with
the magnet debacle. People were out for
blood and were not so kind online about it. I
ventured online immediately and
apologized, took responsibility, offered to
collect magnets from concerned attendees
and then shot a YouTube video proving the
magnets were harmless. People loved it
and I was able to turn around a terrible
situation (this also led to a story in
the Post.)
Mark Graham, President
RIGHTSLEEVECopyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
David Alston, VP Marketing and Community, Radian6
“We are connecting to hearts and minds, not just eyeballs and ears.”
QUESTIONS &
FURTHER
DISCUSSION
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
MESH WORKSHOP:
BUILDING A B2B COMMUNITY
Eden Spodek
Account Director
High Road Communications
http://www.highroad.com
Email: [email protected]
Main: 416.598.8061
Direct: 416.644.2265
Mobile: 416.318.0456
Blog: http://bargainista.ca
Twitter: @EdenSpodek
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/en/EdenSpodek
Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com
Props to the community pros
Thanks to this lovely group of community pros who generously shared their knowledge and insights:
• Amanda Laird, Communications Specialist, CNW Group
• Amber Naslund, Director of Community, Radian6
• David Alston | VP Marketing & Community, Radian6
• Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter
• Mark Graham, President, RIGHTSLEEVE
• Melanie Baker, Community Manager, PostRank Inc.
• Michelle Kostya, Community Manager, RIM BB
• Michael O’Connor Clarke, VP Marketing Communications, FreshBooks
• Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com
• Rayanne Langdon, Account Supervisor, High Road Communications, former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks
• Ryan Holmes, CEO, HootSuite - Social Media Dashboard
• Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures and former Head of Magic, FreshBooks, He also wanted you to know his preferred title is
``Hugable and Kissable``
• Simon Chen, Senior Consultant, Ramius Corporation
References
Planning an Online B2B Community by Nancy Strauss, Marketing Profs
http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2009/3279/planning-an-online-b2b-community
Chris Brogan , http://www.chrisbrogan.com/
Seth Godin, Lynchpin
4 C's of B2B Marketing , Buzz Marketing for Technology by Paul Dunay
http://pauldunay.com/4-cs-of-b2-marketing/
Customer Engagement: Deepen Relationships with Community Marketing , Laura Ramos' Blog , Jan. 12, 2010 - Forrester,
http://blogs.forrester.com/laura_ramos/10-01-12-customer_engagement_deepen_relationships_community_marketing
Forrester - December 9, 2009
Deepen B2B Tech Customer Engagement With Community Marketing, by Laura Ramos
with Peter Burris, Zachary Reiss-Davis
Promoting your community from the outside
• E-mail signatures
• E-newsletters (helps build customer database)
• Attend tradeshows and conferences
• Look for public speaking opportunities
• Present community events such as webinars and twebinars,
• Don‟t ignore print touchpoints including ads and invoice inserts