Our marketing group at Telligent is ramping up on some client case studies, so I thought I’d share some from time to time. The latest one is from a company called Goozex, who’s built an online community for trading video games. What’s most interesting is some of the data they’ve shared as the community has matured. Goozex says its online community is now responsible for more than a one-third (33%) if its recurring transactions, something that lowers the incremental cost of additonal sales. The other piece that stuck out was how Goozex reduced its customer service workload. The company tells us nearly half of its service issues are resolved through its forums.
Clearly all this didn’t happen by just implementing software. As with any digital strategy, it takes a well thought out plan that addresses how social media and collaboration map to your business goals. Even though Telligent’s platform can work wonders, it’s still just the enabler.
I’m always fascinated at collaboration behind the firewall because it’s been such a tough road to hoe for so many years. Getting people to share what they know and to be generally open about their ideas is no doubt daunting for most.
I’d read about Best Buy’s social media efforts, mostly in the form of its Blue Shirt Nation project, but I hadn’t seen the depth of detail behind the company’s motivation until seeing the video below.
With all the talk about the inability to show demonstrable ROI in social computing, it’s refreshing to see a company lay out the benefits so clearly. Though all the gains from social media can’t be distilled down into hard numbers, there’s plenty of returns across the business. One instance was a substantial jump in 401K enrollments after users were encouraged to develop a social media-based campaign targeted at its younger, gen-Y workforce. Through the use of video, blogs and other user-generated content, 401K dissenters were converted after the benefits were delivered in a collaborative, engaging way.
Best Buy simply found a way to engage passionate employees and gave them a voice. That’s a return on participation (ROP) in my book.
1. Prioritize Your Business Objectives & Pick Your Target
Most likely, you’re not hurting for ideas from your user community to do something online. It’s the “something” that can present a problem. In short, make sure your business objectives map to specific company goals. If the CEO’s goal is to reduce support costs, you might want to start with customer service and work through the organization from that vantage point. You should also think about how to gain cross-departmental leverage with your approach. Just because customer service has blogging capabilities doesn’t mean the same process and platform can’t be used by sales and marketing.
2. Start Small And Build Incrementally
As the saying goes, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Invariably, creating content, developing the right user experience and managing content will take longer than you think. Often, it’s better to look at online community efforts as unique programs with unique requirements. Marketers know there’s no one size fits all anymore. In fact, more communities and brand messages are dictated and delivered by the customers themselves. With that approach, you can build, test and deploy smaller projects that allow you to re-direct and re-prioritize in midstream.
3. Set Realistic Goals And Expectations
Decide what you’ll measure. Ask yourself if you could walk into the CEO’s office and deliver tangible evidence that your online community is helping the business. While everything can’t be proven by hard numbers, you can show how your content is consumed, how the market perceives your products, or how sales now has a 360-degree view of your customers. And keep it simple. One organization’s goal was to increase the number of customer testimonials it could garner over a 6-month period. As a result of engaging with its customers online, the company was able to convert those participants into brand advocates.
4.Identify Your Partners
While you may consider yourself the SuperStrategist, you can’t do it alone. Fortunately though, access to world-class technology is no longer your biggest challenge — it’s human capital. While many times marketing will own the brand or community initiative, there’s a few more moving parts you need to be aware of. Technology-wise, do your homework and talk to a few analysts and end-users in your vertical. You’ll quickly find the platforms and tool sets have matured rapidly and will give you most (if not all) of what you need out-of-the-box. Strategic alliances can range from content partners and advertisers, to PR firms and other SEO or social media marketing firms. Odds are you can do most of the heavy lifting and planning yourself, but having a strategic resource to bounce things off and help you build a longer-term roadmap is key.
5. Develop a Community Roadmap
Again, think of your community with longer-term lenses. Don’t get too crazy, but take your wish list and siphon it down into manageable parts. For example, if your goal is to get every executive blogging, make sure you’ve developed an onramp for different skill sets and adoption paths. The approach you used to get the early-adopter execs creating content might not work for others. Less sophisticated users might prefer you show them how to upload a Video blog (Vlog) after you’ve taped them. The community roadmap will be your primer for how things will be delivered, sustained and measured. Marketers should also engage with toolset vendors’ professional services teams. There’s a good chance they’ve built their own roadmap.
6. Develop a Marketing Plan To Rally The Needed Support
Some of the toughest marketing you’ll ever do involves converting the naysayers or those satisfied with the status quo. Internally, market to those executives with phrases like:
-“Do you know what our customers are saying about our products?” -“I want to reduce our support costs.”
“Are we capturing the right intellectual capital to speed innovation?”
Externally, always be ready to answer the question – “What’s in it for me?” Some findings show that as little as 1% are super-users, so be thinking about the value proposition for passive users and lurkers. Think about your users’ technographics (Forrester term) here. If you’ve identified your super-users, there’s a good chance they’ll be on the lookout for your Facebook page or RSS feed. Conversely, late techno bloomers probably won’t mind an opt-in email campaign.
We can thank Gartner for amplifying this one. Too many times marketers and brand managers get the GMOOT syndrome ( Get Me One Of Those) when it comes to online communities. Look across your business and identify areas where better communication and engagement with customers and employees could be improved. Many times an external community can serve multiple business units. For example, product marketers gain valuable customer feedback on how to position and develop new offerings while sales can harvest feedback and loop that data into the sales process. And don’t leave out inward-facing communities. There’s real movement from corporations that want to use the intrinsic value of collaboration and community to improve specific internal processes. Many times an organization realizes it’s a heck of a lot easier to pilot things behind the firewall. Another bonus is the bottom-up adoption and visibility you’ll have as you plan your external community.
2.Find The Influencers Or Brand Advocates
Content is again king, but not just content, quality content. We (Telligent) see micro-communities emerging almost daily that address very targeted issues and topics. Marketers needs to be smart about identifying influencers and customer evangelists. Just because someone is a prolific blogger or media creator doesn’t mean they’re best suited to serve your constituencies. Also many marketers overlook off-line participants, in other words, those that may not be digitally savvy or “joiners” as Forrester describes them. Remember, the offline world is where word-of-mouth resides.
3.Consider A Platform To Generate Media & Manage Your Online Programs
It may seem a bit ironic that the “choosing” step is a bit understated since I work for one of the toolset vendors (Telligent),but it’s by design. The platform is the enabling technology so It shouldn’t become the focal point of your community initiative. Don’t let features drive your community strategy.
4.Inventory Your Content Assets
When developing a community strategy, many times marketers and communication professionals realize there’s plenty of content right under their nose. Think about how to rejuvenate customer testimonials in more interactive format. Heck, invite the customer to blog with you. Better yet, film them and video blog it. You might even want to survey your business units and ask them what content is important to the business. After that, think about how to get that content to the web where it can educate prospects and customers, spur conversation and drive brand visibility. Lastly, after the content audit, put a plan in place to sustain the development of future content. Make sure you use the tools during the process. In other words, don’t let users create content in Microsoft Word and email the document. Better yet, have them blog it.
5.Develop a Measurement Approach
If you can’t measure it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. But first decide what you need to measure. It’s much more than page views today. Your community strategy should establish metrics that map directly to your success factors. If your goal is to use social media to nurture the complex enterprise sales cycle, make sure you can track customer touch points between prospects and your sales staff. That may be something as simple as showing the downloads of the latest white paper or views of a recently taped interview with a product evangelist. If your prospects are interacting with your content, there’s a good chance they’re interested in your products or services.
The good news is that there’s plenty of business intelligence and analytics toolsets available to assist you in developing your measurement processes. Picking the right tool will provide you with the data you need. It’s then your job to use that data to drive additional engagement. If your last product release caused your forums to light up with fiery and negative comments, you might want to rally engineering and take a look at your roadmap. Because you measured the earlier feedback in your forums, you’re now armed with the data you need to show angry customers how version 2 will make their lives easier. Lastly, don’t forget about tracking offline interactions and campaigns to your community initiatives. Research shows customers will often start offline and move to digital environments. Have a process in place to greet (and track) your prospects as they enter your community. Some will get there through traditional media (TV,Print,Radio) and other by word-of-mouth. Either way, you need to know the entry points (medium) so specific media investments can be budgeted and prioritized.
I’m always fascinated at collaboration behind the firewall because it’s been such a tough road to hoe for so many years. Getting people to share what they know and to be generally open about their ideas is no doubt daunting for most. 
