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The first true collaborative learning
solution expressly designed to bridge
the gap between formal learning and
social knowledge sharing
Social Marketing & Online Communities:Getting Started
August 2008
Mzinga White Paper
www.mzinga.com l 888.MZINGA.8 l [email protected]
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About This White Paper
© 2008-2009 Mzinga, Inc.
All other brands and names may be trademarks of their respective owners and are used for
explanation without intent to infringe.
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Introduction
In just 15 years, the Web has connected nearly a billion people and changed the world so profoundly
that some historians liken the Internet Age to the Renaissance. That’s heady stuff for people around the
world. But for businesses, the potential of so much individual brainpower linked and amplified by
technology is almost unfathomable. This is the “we” factor, or the surprising superiority of mass
brainpower, and it goes far beyond the “social networking” exemplified by Facebook. Over and over,
we’ve seen collective intelligence outsmart individual intelligence, and it’s become a major turning point
in traditional ways of doing business.
Mass collaboration itself has long intrigued thoughtful people. In his monumental novel War and Peace,
for example, Tolstoy pits a brilliant military genius (Napoleon) against the clumsy, plodding resistance of
Russia’s ox-like peasant masses. Napoleon loses: A million simple minds outsmart the world’s smartest
general. Think of our fascination with beehives, ant colonies, barn raisings, or space shuttle lift-offs. In
such team phenomena, many collaborators join their individual talents in collective pursuit of a mutual
goal.
Consider Web 2.0, the current stage of the ever-evolving Internet. Web 2.0 grew out of the work of
free-minded software innovators who believed that knowledge expands as more people use and refine
it. Gone is the urge to keep secret the blueprints for one’s creation—the code behind a new software
program, for example. Rather, these architects of innovation welcome tinkerers and testers, confident
that additional eyeballs and brain cells will improve on the original design, thus benefitting all users—
including the product’s initial creators.
These changes, however, can be frightening to the leaders of businesses built on the past. In his 2005
article, “The Power of Us,” Robert D. Hof noted that, “Corporations, those citadels of command-and-
control, may be in for the biggest jolt. Increasingly, they will have to contend with ad hoc groups of
customers who have the power to join forces online to get what they want. Indeed, customers are
creating what they want themselves—designing their own software with colleagues, for instance, and
declaring their opinions via blogs instead of waiting for newspapers to print their letters.”
In the same article, Hof quotes C.K. Prahalad, a University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of
Business professor and co-author of the 2004 book, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique
Value with Customers: "It's the democratization of industry…We are seeing the emergence of an
economy of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Therein lies Web 2.0’s paradoxical appeal to business imaginations. By allowing open-access to your
operation, you wind up with a better product—one that costs relative pennies to develop while
attracting ever more customers. Looking to provide better support to your customers? Utilizing social
software to create radical transparency throughout your support initiatives allows your customers to
begin to help one another. Using blogs to open channels of communication between your executives
and the outside world can help you develop better brand awareness.
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A paradox, indeed, for traditional business minds, but as eBay CEO Meg Whitman once observed, “It is
far better to have an army of a million than a command-and-control system” (Hof).
The world’s largest brands believe it: They’re actively using social software and online communities to
build stronger businesses. Ford Motor Company launched a discussion forum to support owners of their
new Sync in-car system, dramatically reducing their support costs while simultaneously creating a
powerful market research channel. American Express utilized social software to support The Members
Project, increasing new American Express card memberships while tying their brand to a project to
develop and fund ideas to make a positive impact on the world. ESPN’s Conversations gives website
visitors a voice in the stories, resulting in significantly longer visits and higher ad revenue.
Indeed, even traditional business tasks typically performed by a few company specialists are being
thrown open to the global masses. Using the Internet as their hiring hall, Web-savvy companies are
beginning to farm out important jobs ranging from product development to customer service, sales,
marketing, and even basic research and design. These companies use collective-intelligence technology
such as podcasts, wikis, blogs, and social networking sites to support important initiatives. They’re
tapping the amazing range of expertise gladly offered by their customers and prospects. In summary,
they’re using the opportunities provided by marketplace communities to embrace conversations with
their customers.
Marketplace Communities
A marketplace community is, quite simply, a collection of social software applications, programs and
content designed to bring together customers, enthusiasts, and/or prospects for a certain purpose or
goal. Examples include communities for:
• Brand building
• Product innovation
• Event management
• Market research
Before exploring each of these in more detail, it’s important to define the building blocks of a successful
community. These are consistent regardless of the business process you’re planning to support.
Getting Started
Building a community should not be considered a technology implementation. While technology plays
an important role in the ultimate solution, it’s important to leave it on the sidelines at the outset.
Successful community implementations follow these steps:
1. Focus on your overall community strategy early on.
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2. Map that strategy to a specific set of social software applications.
3. Develop a moderation and member engagement plan.
4. Measure it.
Building a Community Strategy
The information superhighway is littered with failed community initiatives. They’re the “mom & pop”
restaurants of the online world—here today and gone tomorrow. Why is this and how can you learn
from their mistakes?
Begin by focusing on who you want to build community for and why you want to build it. This may seem
trivial, but many companies start with technology and a “build it and they will come” approach. Instead,
recognize that you already have community, whether they’re your customers, prospects, or enthusiasts,
but you simply haven’t enabled online social tools for them yet. Then, choose a specific businessprocess you want to support and begin to map the members’ needs to your community objectives.
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research recently authored a compelling book on this topic
called Groundswell . In it, they put forth a community planning concept called “POST.” In their words:
“Take a step back and ask yourself, ‘What are my customers ready for?’ and then ‘What are my
objectives.’ Once you know that, then you can start planning. We created an acronym for the
four-step planning process, starting with these questions, that you should use to build your
groundswell strategy. We call it the POST method, for people, objective, strategy, and
technology. POST is the foundation of groundswell thinking – a systematic framework forassembling your plan.”
Focusing on people and objectives is not a new concept. Traditional marketing functions such as market
research, product innovation, and demand generation took this approach and were tremendously
successful. What’s new are the social software applications and their resulting organizational
transparency. Therein lies the rub: Traditional “command-and-control” organizations aren’t
comfortable with transparency and often fight against it. A major challenge you need to address during
the strategy phase is helping to prepare your culture for the coming transparency.
Finally, develop a consensus on a focused, measurable goal for your community early on. Too manycommunity initiatives start out in the right direction, but eventually spiral out of control as the scope of
the project expands. Keep it simple early on and grow organically over time.
Social Software Applications
The right mix of social software applications, programs, and content can have a dramatic impact on your
key business processes by facilitating more conversations, information sharing, communication, and
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transparency. Understanding the various social applications available to you is an important foundation
for discussing how community can support these business processes.
Common applications to consider for your Marketplace Community include:
Blogs – Blogs provide a mechanism for members to share their thoughts and ideaswhile also following the blogs of experts and thought leaders. The conversational
nature and flexibility of blogs make them ideal for communicating with your customers
and prospects, while also allowing them a channel to provide feedback to you via
commenting.
Discussion forums – Forums enable sharing of multiple perspectives on specific topics,
better connecting members both in terms of ideas and personal relationships. Helping
foster tighter personal relationships means greater participation and engagement.
Forums are also the “grandfather” of social software, having been in use for decades,
and provide a familiar jumping off point for many new members.
Video and audio sharing – If forums are the grandfather of social software, then
podcasts and video are the “new kids on the block.” They provide a compelling
alternative to text-based content and can add a new dimension to your community
initiative. They do, however, require an additional level of oversight and moderation.
Adding audio and video content can be a critical component to some marketplace
community initiatives.
Idea management – This application gives your customers and prospects a voice in
your innovation process. With simple idea creation, total transparency, and
straightforward voting mechanisms, idea management streamlines innovation andgives you immediate feedback on your initiatives. Companies such as Dell and
Starbucks have embraced the concept of idea management and have witnessed great
results: Starbucks saw more than 100,000 votes cast in their MyStarbucksIdea site’s
first week alone (Gillespie).
Social profiles – Social profiles provide a way for members to connect socially as well
as professionally, enabling new members to locate expertise within the community.
Social profiles also provide visibility into member challenges, giving your company
insights into potential pitfalls and opportunities before they arise. As with Facebook,
advanced social profiles allow members to post on each other’s “walls,” update their
status, and chat with one another, creating a more cohesive and personal communityexperience.
Ratings and rankings – Ratings and rankings are designed to enable members to
provide feedback to other members within the community. It’s also useful to have
member rankings (and status) corresponding to each member’s level of activity in the
community, creating a hierarchy of membership based on the criteria that’s important
to the sponsoring company.
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Shared file repository – It’s often necessary to share product documentation and other
files in Marketplace Communities. The shared file repository is built to support this
requirement. The file library is critical for communities built to support discrete events
where presentations, transcripts, and documentation are an important component of
success.
Event chat – This application is designed to provide a way for community members to
ask questions and receive answers from an industry expert or luminary. The event chat
provides multiple layers of filters and reviews to manage the high volume of questions
that typically flow in during live events. Event chat is also a fantastic way to gauge
member interest/sentiment around a certain topic.
Moderation and Engagement
Once you’ve assembled your strategy and applications into a cohesive community, it’s critical that you
formulate a plan for content moderation and member engagement. Moderation is both the
infrastructure and the actual human review of flagged content, while engagement is the active
scheduling and facilitation of activities designed to keep members involved in the community.
In moderation solutions, the infrastructure you select should allow for both pre- and post-moderation,
have a flexible member permission structure, and include reporting to keep you apprised of your
community’s health. You should also be able to establish automatic filters for certain keywords, bad
language, and rogue HTML. Additionally, the infrastructure should allow members of your community
to “self-police” the content, reporting violations through simple alerts built into the community content
management system.
On the human side of moderation, it’s important to understand the differences between pre- and post-
moderation and how each affects your community’s vitality.
Pre-moderation stipulates that all content submitted by members is reviewed by a moderator before it
goes live in the community. In some marketplace communities, this might be important for sponsoring
companies to maintain a sense of control over what’s being said. The downside of pre-moderation is
that users are becoming increasingly accustomed to their ideas and comments immediately going live;
pre-moderated communities may see slower growth and adoption than their post-moderated
counterparts. Also, depending on the volume of content of flowing into your community, pre-
moderation may require a significant investment to review all content before it goes live.
Post-moderation depends on moderators to quickly scan content posted to the community for
violations. While this carries the risk of some questionable content being live on your community, it
assumes members are trustworthy at the outset and establishes a more open, transparent environment
for your community. This approach tends to support fast growing, viral communities. It also relies on
members to report violations and encourages them to self-police the community, a hallmark of strong
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communities. In the end, you and your company have to balance your need for security and control
versus free and open conversations when choosing between a pre- and post-moderation strategy.
Member engagement is another important and challenging consideration for any community initiative.
If you assume you can just “build it and they will come,” you’re in for quite a surprise! Marketplace
communities depend on frequent activities and interactions to keep the momentum. You must build
programs such as webinars, conference calls, surveys, newsletters, face-to-face breakfasts, etc. into your
overall community strategy. In designing a programming strategy, it’s critical that you consider member
needs and develop program visibility several months out. Solicit feedback from members and begin to
design programs based on their suggestions, and you’ll build enthusiasm and thought leaders for those
sessions.
Transforming Business Processes with Social Software Solutions
Now that we’ve looked at what it takes to build and sustain a marketplace community, we’ll explore
four specific business processes and how they can be supported and/or radically evolved by social
software and community.
Brand Building
In their groundbreaking 2001 article, “Brand Community,” Albert Muniz, Jr. and Thomas C. O'Guinn
described a brand community as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a
structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand.” For enterprises, the concept of a brand
community presents a compelling opportunity to build stronger relationships with their variousconstituents.
• Enthusiasts: Most enterprises are blessed with a core group of customers often referred to as
“enthusiasts.” Enthusiasts not only prefer this particular brand, but also will actively refer
others to the brand. Creating opportunities for these members to share stories (whether
through text, audio, or video) and build a better relationship with the enterprise is essential.
• Customers: These members actively utilize your products and services, but they are not yet
considered enthusiasts. Creating opportunities for them to converse with, and consume
information from, your enthusiasts will help you convert and create more viral/virtual brand
champions.
• Prospects: These members are interested in learning more about your brand and are heavilyinfluenced by existing customer testimonials. Providing exposure to enthusiasts and customers
is a great way to introduce prospects to your brand and begin moving them toward a stronger
(and potentially revenue-generating) relationship.
By utilizing social software and community to deepen relationships with these constituents, marketers
can realize several brand benefits:
• Support new initiatives and products with a viral brand communication channel
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• Increase the time consumers spend interacting with and enjoying your brand(s)
• Reduce advertising and marketing communication costs
Brand communities can take on many shapes and sizes depending on your goals. They can be campaign-
based or grow with your brand over time. Common applications used in brand communities include
blogs, forums, video sharing, and social profiles.
Product Innovation
Every business needs to innovate to stay competitive, but many rely on costly research and expensive
expertise to get there. By utilizing social software and community, enterprises can create an alternative
approach by leveraging the collective insight, wisdom, and creativity of their customers, prospects,
partners, and employees.
At the core of successful product innovation communities is the idea management application, whichenables community members to submit new ideas and then rate, rank, and comment on the
submissions. All ideas are captured and the highest rated suggestions rise to the top, making it easy for
enterprises to identify the most relevant and game-changing ideas.
As mentioned previously, Starbucks’ “My Starbucks Idea” and Dell’s “IdeaStorm” are examples of
product innovation communities in action. By asking their customers for ideas (and listening to them),
both companies are:
• Generating tremendous insights into how they can serve their constituents better
• Building a captive audience of highly motivated consumers
• Creating new ideas to fuel enterprise growth
According to Dawn Lacallade, Dell’s lead on IdeaStorm, building a product innovation solution is best
when you’ve already developed other social software and community solutions for your constituents. In
a podcast at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas, Lacallade noted the importance of
establishing a social footprint and actively listening to and answering clients’ questions and comments
via other social channels such as Twitter and Get Satisfaction before developing your own product
innovation community.
Event Management
Supporting specific events with social software applications is such a natural fit that it’s surprising the
concept has taken so long to gain broad support. Whether the event is a user group, sales meeting, or a
television program, a community helps to create bonds and share information that makes the live event
more successful.
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By utilizing social software applications, organizations can create an online meeting place designed to
complement events as they are happening and to provide a forum for people to discuss related topics
before and after the event. Some examples of event communities in action include:
• A live event chat preceding a user group conference to create a venue for customers to ask a
keynote presenter questions• A collection of blogs, discussion forums, and social profiles designed to share important
information and introduce constituents to each other before a sales meeting and then
disseminate key findings and approaches following the meeting
• A destination for television viewers to discuss/debate the latest twists and turns of their favorite
program (e.g., ABC’s “Lost” Theories discussion board).
Enterprises that build an event community may see them evolve into a brand community over time. This
is typically the case when the specific event is a product/service launch campaign or television show
launch, where the community naturally evolves to support needs of the product, service, or show.
Market Research
Many companies conduct formal market research programs, often at tremendous expense, to discover
what their customers want from them. Ultimately, these companies have one goal: They want to fine-
tune their products so prospects will buy from them. Social software applications support this goal at a
fraction of the cost.
Communities built for market research activities typically include applications such as blogs, forums,
social profiles, and surveys. Through a robust series of programs, members get to know one another
and the sponsoring company. Members see the community as a place to:
• Learn more about new products and services
• Share their experiences, likes, and dislikes about products and services
• Give feedback on logos and campaigns
• Deepen relationship with other community members and the sponsoring company
More than other marketplace communities, market research communities rely on consistent programs
and proactive engagement activities to ensure the ongoing conversations that are the hallmark of the
market research community.
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Summary
Marketers should examine social software and community solutions carefully to complement and
expand their existing activities. Marketing communities in particular represent a unique opportunity to
transform the staid, traditional approach to business processes, including market research, product
innovation, and brand building, by enabling companies to connect directly with target audiences
through interactive Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, discussion forums, and user profiles.
Prior to implementing social software and communities, marketers develop a strategy and identify
whom they want to spark a conversation with and why, focusing on supporting specific business
processes. Marketers must also allow the applications and tools in question to follow their strategy
(rather than dictating it) and then support their initiative with content moderation and member
engagement strategies.
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References
Gillespie, Elizabeth M. “Thousands of Posts Flood Starbucks Site.” Associated Press. April 8, 2008.
Retrieved August 19, 2008 fromhttp://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/08/thousands_of_posts_flood_st
arbucks_site/
Hof, Robert D. “The Power of Us.” BusinessWeek. June 20, 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm
Li, Charlene and Josh Bernoff . Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social
Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008.
Muniz, Jr., Albert M. and Thomas C. O’Guinn. “Brand Community.” Journal of Consumer Research
Retrieved from:
27.4 (2001): 412-432.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/319618
http://nowisgone.com/2007/10/18/dells-incredible-turnaround/
“Dell’s Incredible Turnaround.” Nowisgone.com: (October 23, 2007). Retrieved August 19, 2008.
http://www.mzinga.com/en/Community/Blogs/Jim-Storer/C20-Conversations-Dawn-Lacallade/
Dawn Lacallade - C20 Conversations with Mzinga: (May 2008). Retrieved August 19, 2008.