Author Archives: Cecilia

What McDonald’s Can Teach You About Taking Your Online Community Global

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McDonald’s sell french fries but it doesn’t sell onion rings.  Why?

There is an urban legend that says Ray Kroc’s first beloved sweetheart was killed when a huge burlap sack full of onions fell on her and smothered her. From that day forward he vowed never to support the onion industry and only reluctantly allowed chopped onions to be added to McDonald’s burgers.

For some reason I don’t think that is true, but do think there is a lesson that online communities (and other businesses) can learn from McDonald’s about globalization and localization.

First, let’s talk about globalization since that’s what matters most when talking about onion rings.  The business school legend on why McDonald’s doesn’t sell onion rings as part of their standard menu is that the world’s onion supply is insufficient to support the sale of onion rings in their stores globally.  Apparently the potato supply is sufficient to ensure that anyone who comes to one of the 33,000+ stores in one of 120+ countries can order a standard french fry.  (I know there are some operations issues such as the cost of production, the batter tainting the taste of the oil, and the amount of time the onion rings will stay fresh, but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s just focus on the issues related to globalization.)

So what is the lesson related to globalization? Continue reading →

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What’s Good for the Company is Good for You

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As I was flying to Chicago the other day, I experienced two things that really made me stop and question whether people really understand the economics of the companies that they rely on to provide them a paycheck and a living. I was on an American Airlines flight that had 140 or so seats and only 90 passengers. While this was good for me – I got to move out of the middle seat I was assigned to an aisle – I didn’t think it good for the bankrupt airline.

I then overheard the flight attendant comment that she liked the plane we were on better then the one she would be on during the next leg of her trip. A co-worker commented that he understood her liking the other plan better. Then the disturbing part – she commented that it was a good thing the next flight only had 40 passengers scheduled to fly.  The two employees then agreed that was a good thing.

Now, although I am no expert in the airline industry Continue reading →

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10 Ways to +1 Your Community this Year

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Cover of "Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Ap...

Long before there was Google+, the concept of +1 was used to address the topic of extraordinary customer service.  In 1993, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles wrote Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service.  In Raving Fans, Blanchard and Bowles cover three areas:  Deciding what you as a business want; Discovering what the customer wants; and delivering plus one.

So what did they mean by delivering plus one.  Here are some of the key points they articulate:

  • Being consistent in your performance to create credibility with your customers
  • Limiting the number of areas in which you want to make a difference so that you have a chance of doing them well
  • Promote more service and deliver more (as opposed to under-promise and over-deliver)
  • Meet expectations first, exceed them second
  • Be flexible

Since one of the primary reasons to have an externally facing online community is to deepen relationships with your customers, it seems that the +1 concept from Blanchard and Bowles fits well for online communities.  Here are 10 suggestions for ways you could +1 your community this year. Continue reading →

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Beware: Members Can HiJack Your Community If You Don’t Do These 5 Things

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A Best Practice of World Class Communities is to Encourage Ownership of the Community by Members

One of the strategies Telligent encourages for building World Class Communities is to encourage a level of ownership of the community by its members.  There are several benefits associated with this:

  • People tend to support the things they feel they have ownership of
  • The cost of managing the community can be lowered with community volunteers
  • Community members can often be more ardent supporters of the community rules and also more effective evangelists of your products than employees

This usually works well because the interest of the community members is in alignment with those of the company sponsoring the community.  The following chart is an example of the typical types of things both a set of customers and a company would be focused on:

The key is ensuring that the community’s interest stays aligned with the interest of the company that is funding the community, otherwise there is a problem.

Sometimes, Community Ownership can Turn into a Community Hijacking

Steve Pavlina had this happen to him with his forums that had been successful for five years.

Click here to read the entire post on Telligent.com and find out the five things you can do to avoid having your community hijacked.

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An Obvious Fit for Online Communities: Associations

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AssociationsIn the recent newsletter that Association Trends™ published, there was an article titled “Social media and how it’s changing associations.” This article focused on the theme of the recent ASAE 2012 Technology Conference, which was how to integrate a social media strategy into an association’s corporate culture. Social continues to be a growing trend, and it is starting to pick up in popularity among associations.

This trend should not come as a surprise since associations are perfect candidates for online communities built via social media.  A group of people with a common interest, that come together regularly to achieve a purpose and to establish relationships.  That is the definition of a community – and probably a pretty good definition of an association as well.

Click here to read the full article how associations should plan to use the Ant’s Eye View levels of engagement to move through Telligent’s social ecosystem layers.

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Pride, Prejudice, and Social Media

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pride_and_prejudice_largeOver the past year I have been adding some of the classics to my reading list.  The book I finished most recently is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  One of the things most striking about the book is the extreme focus on the level of civility when engaging with others.  The book is full of conflict, between families, neighbors, and would be lovers.  It is set during a time period that has a major concern over how things were communicated.  There was a real concern for how the message would be taken – what impact it would have on the feelings and reputation of the person to whom it was directed, and what impact it would have on the perception of the character of the person doing the speaking.

While there were a few too weak in character to express their opinions, most, instead, took the time to think through the most appropriate manner of communication.  Given this, I wonder what social media would have looked like in 18th century.  Continue reading →

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Why the classic strategy frameworks from McKinsey and BCG are still relevant

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7sSomeone on LinkedIn recently posted a question on whether  “our strategic models (such as McKinsey, BCG, standardized indicators, . . .)” are outdated.  The person wanted to know if there were some keys to give new meaning to strategic thinking that are better adapted to the current environment?

Before even attempting to answer that question, some serious clarification needs to happen.  First, McKinsey and BCG are not strategic models.  They are consulting firms that have, for the past 50 years, helped shaped the way the business world thinks about the entire subject of strategy.  In fact, they, and most notably the early pioneers of BCG, introduced the concept of strategy into the business lexicon.

Continue reading →

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CMSWire: Building Great Enterprise 2.0 Communities

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Telligent held it’s large user conference, The Big Social, at the end of September.  It was a great event – good turn out, good content, and lots of being social.  I conducted a half-day workshop that focused on putting into action the theory discussed in the first two white papers in the World Class Communities series I am working on with Rob Howard.

I covered all nine of the characteristics of World Class communities from the first paper Rob and I wrote and all seven of the strategies from the second paper I authored.  Participants walked away with a workbook that allowed them to assess where their community stands on each element and a list of actionable items they could address.  (As a side note, I am working on a similar type of assessment for companies that do not yet have an online community.)

CMSWire.com sent staff reporter Josette Rigsby to participate in the three day event in Dallas and she recently published an article about the session’s content.  Read the full article here.

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The democratization of influence

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AssymetryWhile the advent of the internet led to the democratization of information, social platforms are leading to the democratization of influence.

Information asymmetry is when one party in a transaction has more and/or better information than the other. Think of purchasing a home or a used car.  The seller usually has more and better information about the condition of the home or car – how the previous owners cared for it, and whether or not there are any hidden issues.  In days past, the seller also had more information on what the market thought the actual value of the home or car being sold was than a buyer did.

Information asymmetry creates an imbalance of power during the transaction and  the party with the more information generally does better. Taking advantage of the asymmetry of information has long been a business model for large businesses to compete – that is, until the internet came along.

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Beware of the SWOT Analysis

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SWOT

Every good business or marketing strategy book will tell you that one of the most essential pieces of analysis to perform for your company is a SWOT analysis.  This method, attributed to Albert Humphrey, a management  consultant from the Stanford Research Institute, has been around for more than half a century, is often one of the first things strategic planners will have you perform.

  • Strengths:  Look at the characteristics, skills sets, experience, or assets that give you an advantage in the market place
  • Weaknesses:  Determine the elements about your business that put you at a disadvantage to others in your industry
  • Opportunities:  Identify things that you may see in the business environment that you may be able to take advantage of for increased sales or profitability
  • Threats: Point out those things in your environment that could lead to decreased sales and profitability

This seems to be a very reasonable and beneficial analysis to perform for any business – review both your internal and external situation and make decisions from there.  Right? What could be the harm?

Continue reading →

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