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The first to market, the first one with the answer, or the first one to accomplish a goal are all things that people aspire to be. Finding people who are eager to be the first one to arrive at a meeting, the first one to try someone’s newest food dish, or the first one to express an opinion in a community they do not own is far more rare.
It takes effort to be first in a community – no real culture has visibly been established, so you have to think hard about the appropriate way to contribute. It takes risk – there is no assurance that what you are contributing is on point, whether others will respond in a manner that is personally damaging to your reputation, or whether there will even be any return (a good conversation, increased reputation, a sign of gratitude, etc.) on your investment of time. So why be first?
How does peer support and social identity relate to building a community? These two elements are what researchers believe are likely motivations for continued community participation among users. While gathering information is often a key driver for initially getting members to a community, this is not what will keep them coming back and becoming active participants. When launching a successful community, companies need to act more like facilitators than as dictatorial owners. Listen to what the users like and want, then play the facilitating role as they build and grow the community.
So now, let’s talk objectives. With any new venture, whether it is starting a new social media network to try to become the next start-up sensation or something as simple as creating a new app for the iPhone – you have to have an objective.
Building a world class community requires that you plan for the user’s second visit. Users will come the first time to have a specific information need met. They will come back a second and subsequent time if they can engage in community activities.
When companies are launching communities, they need to think beyond the initial visit and think about how they can ensure that users come back again. They need to figure out how they can allow visitors to see that there are other people that they can engage with around their common interest and that there are people with whom relationships can be formed with over subsequent visits. All communities, even those with a primary business objective of providing customer support, should have the same goal of repeat visits – even when everything related to the product or service is fine.
In this CMSWire article, Barb Mosher, managing editor and senior writer, spoke with me about research pertaining to world class communities that Rob Howard, Telligent Founder and CTO, and I conducted earlier this year. As an outcome of the research, Telligent identified 9 characteristics of successful communities and in this article an overview of each one is given. The article also touches on other key community topics such as starting with the basics, ROI pertaining to your community and ensuring that an individual comes a second time. Read the full article here.
How do you define success? Depending on who you ask that question to, success may have a different meaning. If you ask a bakery magazine publisher, the response may be that success is measured by the number of subscriptions. If you ask the museum curator, their success may be measured by the number of visitors that enter their doors each day. Truthfully, it’s different for every person, every company and every industry.
However, when it comes to building world class communities, success is more than just a goal for the number of members you would like to see in the community or the number of page views you would like to get.
Business objectives are a key aspect to any company. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that business objectives for a community must be established at a strategic level within the organization. The more aligned your community’s business objectives are to the company’s overall objectives and value proposition, the greater the potential for benefit and return.
Now you may be thinking to yourself, how exactly can your company identify powerful business objectives for the community? A focus on a few essential questions is helpful:
How can online community support your company’s differentiators?
What are the top strategic objectives of the senior leadership in your company?
While many people are using Facebook for social purposes, small business owners are trying to use it for business purposes. Having clear goals and a strategy for engaging in social media for business purposes is important. On Facebook, there is an opportunity to grow connections to people in your targeted niche. The following video covers why you might want to do business on Facebook, what some of your goals should be, and how to connect with your target market.
While social media may be all the craze these days, it is important to link your approach to using it back to your business objectives. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be.
There was an article in USA Today on how Social Media Like Twitter Change Customer Service. It covered how more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use Twitter to provide customer service. Now, while I am a fan of social media and embrace its use in business, I believe companies must be careful in how they do it. In order to meet the expectations of the Twitter-sphere, to provide customer service on Twitter means having lots of people on the watch for a mention of something said that should be addressed immediately.
Comcast has 11 people and Microsoft, just for their Windows 7 product, has 7 people responding to customer service related posts. Companies are spending millions to do this. While it is only a fraction of the multi-billions of dollars spent on customer service, it seems to be moving the trend in a direction that is not so good for business.
Social media can, and often does when applied appropriately, drive down the cost of doing business, and in particular customer support costs. Support communities with both the company and, more importantly, other customers and product experts can provide answers through forums seems more efficient for everyone. Everyone learns and has their needs met faster when common questions are shared, suggested answers are proposed, near real time fee can be shared, and solutions are verified. Better yet, the next person with the same issue can benefit instantly from early exchanges.
The use of Twitter to provide customer support has the potential to do just the opposite of what is good for business and their customers. Instead of the cost going down, using Twitter can drive more one-on-one requests for support and therefore higher costs. It can make it difficult for other user of the company’s products to provide their experience (there is a low probability of someone having a group of people they follow on Twitter just because they use the same cable TV company.) Additionally, as the tweet stream vanishes over time, so does the knowledge with it.
In contrast, support communities allows others, including non-paid employees, to handle questions that arise, retains the knowledge, and makes the knowledge search-able by others with the same issues.
It might be interesting to learn a little more about how Dell is using Twitter. In the article, although they have multiple Twitter accounts, they weren’t the ones to respond to the tweet. Someone told them how to get in touch with a Dell expert. Was that expert a Dell customer service rep or perhaps someone active in Dell’s support community? In this instance, it appears as though Twitter was used as intended, to pose a problem and have someone, not necessary the company, help point them in the direction of a solution.
Sending people to the support community with your 140 characters might train people to go to the most helpful and cost effective place first instead of starting with Twitter.
When designing marketing messages and campaigns, the whole point is to encourage consumers to purchase your products or services. However, most marketing efforts miss the mark because the focus is in the wrong place. Instead of thinking about your product and services and what you want to share about them, thinking about the customer’s perspective will drive radically different behavior and results.
What this video to understand what a difference perspective makes in marketing.
The first to market, the first one with the answer, or the first one to accomplish a goal are all things that people aspire to be. Finding people who are eager to be the first one to arrive at a meeting, the first one to try someone’s newest food dish, or the first one to express an opinion in a community they do not own is far more rare.
How does peer support and social identity relate to 
