Social Customer

Online Customer Communities: Critical to Most Organizations

By Patty Seybold

There's a Catch-22 in deciding whether or not to invest in trying to nurture one or more online customer communities. The biggest issue in my mind is not, "will customers say bad things about us?" The answer to that question is, "Of course, some customers will be critical, but other customers will be complimentary. It's better to have at least some control over the conversation by hosting it, than it is to be at the mercy of the discussions customers are having elsewhere on the Internet."

The more important question, to my mind, is "will the community take hold?" Why would your customers or prospects want to converse with one another in and around your products or services? The answer is that they really don't want to talk about you or your products. They want to talk about themselves: What they are trying to do; what they care about; and, also many of them actually enjoy helping others who share similar jobs, interests and passions, it's kind of a quid pro quo. "I'll help/encourage you. You or someone else will help/encourage me."

What Kinds of Online Communities Are There?

There are many different kinds of online customer communities:

• Customer Support communities are typically the best place to start for any company that has technical products or for one that provides services to help people get things done.

Deploying CRM and Social Media Globally

We've been thinking a lot about global social media strategies and planning to contact many of you about your learnings and best practices in social media outside the U.S. To prime the pump, our social media maven, Matthew Lees, interviewed an expert on doing business globally, Bill Decker, who runs Partners International, a company specializing in helping firms with their global sales, marketing and business strategies.

How to Use Social Networking. I found Bill's recommendations about how to use social media outside the U.S. useful. He says:

"Most countries would adopt social media, but not for creating relationships. When you talk about ‘building relationships,' that's a confusing phrase. Is that with or without a foundation? For example, you'll see the Europeans pick up social media, but to work on relationships that they already have…. I'll give you an example: if you look at the University of California at Berkeley, they have a social media strategy that's based on (1) adopting new students and getting them to apply, and (2), going after corporate sponsors and getting them to help fund the school. If you look at Yonsei University in Seoul, their social media strategy is about keeping the alumni and students connected. For Yonsei, it's not about attracting new students. So, again, that they already have a community, they already have a foundation, and want a platform for them to interact with each other."

What Will Customers Talk about in a Community?

"For Chinese companies, there is a shame—the Chinese call it "mienze," which means "face" and roughly translates in English to "pride"—if problems with your products or your business become public. So a Chinese tea company, for example, would do better with a community that doesn't talk about what's wrong with their tea. They'd do better with a community that was about collecting interesting tea recipes instead. Or discussing questions like "What's the most interesting use you've had for our tea?" or, "How has tea benefited you in a non-tea-drinking way?" People may say they feel healthier, they wake up more refreshed, their boss loves it, or it's a great gift. That type of community would make a lot of sense in a country that's very concerned about shame."

Bill also explains why CRM systems aren't easy to implement outside of the U.S., why the notion of "friend" in an online context is fraught with difficulty, and how to tell if someone really IS your friend, and how different cultures define ethics and what that has to do with your mom!

You can read these and other useful observations about how cultural differences will impact your global business strategy in Matthew's interview.

Taming the Social Web

Integrated Services for Social Media Management, Monitoring, and Moderation 

By Matthew Lees

We all — both as individuals and as organizations — are still figuring out how to deal with social media…how to use it effectively both personally and professionally (without letting it become too much of a time sink), how to make it work hand-in-hand with the other things we do, how to know when there's something we should know about going on, how to know when just to listen and when (and how) to jump in, and how understand and (ideally) measure its effects.

To help with all this, a cottage industry has sprung up around social media management, monitoring, and moderation. It's part content management, part market research, and part CRM, but it's all about (1) helping organizations get a handle on what's happening throughout the social Web and (2) make it easier for them to deal with it.

The Social Web = social sites and networks throughout the Internet where your customers, prospective customers, users, subscribers, and others are = blogs + Twitter + Facebook + YouTube + MySpace + Technorati + Delicious + LinkedIn + …

When Communities Converge (or Collide)

By Ronni Marshak

For years, we’ve always advocated—nay, evangelized—that customers and employees/stakeholders should be on the same page, with access to the same information, so that everyone has a 360-degree view of what’s going on. Part of our advocacy was promoting the convergence of customer and employee communities. But, as Matthew Lees, our community and social media mastermind points out in his article, Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?, creating a comprehensive community to address customer issues and employee issues doesn’t really make sense.

Although employees have (or should have) the goal of providing a great experience and easy access to relevant information to customers, the information they need in a community is about stuff that customers, frankly, don’t care about—HR stuff like payroll, expense reimbursement, insurance issues, and the like. And, while specific employees—especially customer-facing employees—should know what’s going on in customer blogs, this is typically a small portion of the entire staff. Not everyone on your payroll needs to be involved in a customer support community, or an innovation community, or…whatever it is that customers want to “commune” about. Their jobs, while always in support of making customers happy, albeit often indirectly (good HR policies make employees happy; happy employees stick around longer and can provide better customer support, for example), are not intended to solve all customer problems. Most employees will not become more productive by knowing about a workaround for an absent feature in the product. Nor will customers become more loyal to your brand because you offer a dental plan.

The key to effective communities is to understand the goals of the community and decide who should participate. So, based on Matthew’s insights, we will get off the “everyone should know and participate in everything” soapbox and concede that instead of converging, disparate communities may just collide.

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Can a Single Social Technology Support Both Internal and External Communities?
By Matthew D. Lees, Senior Contributing Editor, May 13, 2010

Crowdsourcing Condom Advertising—Will This Work?

By Patty Seybold

You may have noticed this article in the New York Times, A Hip-Hop Contest to Promote a Brand. Trojan, the manufacturers of the Magnum brand of condoms, has grown revenues and marketshare for the Magnum brand, not through traditional advertisements, but through word of mouth: mentions in Hip-Hop music lyrics by artists such as Ludacris, Kid Rock, Lil Wayne, and Eminem. The NYT article doesn't make it clear whether the Magnum product manager engaged in product placement activities or simply fanned the flames. I suspect there may be some mutual promotion underway. ("I'll mention your product, you tell the world about my song.")

Now Magnum is building on the Hip-Hop momentum by launching a “Live Large” marketing campaign in the form of a contest soliciting more hip hop or R&B songs and lyrics from anyone, not just professional musicians.

You can go to the contest site, MagnumLiveLarge.com, download music tracks to use and/or use your own, and submit your own songs and lyrics about "living large." Fans can vote on the submissions and, of course, spread them around virally. The winner will receive a $5,000 prize and a trip to a hip-hop festival in mid-June in Atlanta, where they'll be congratulated by Ludacris.

How explicit are the lyrics likely to be? The NY Times article quoted Julian Long, a consultant for Colangelo Synergy Marketing, the agency responsible for the contest:

"We're looking for songs that encompass the Magnum lifestyle and what it means to live large — not just the size of the condom or what it’s put on but what it means to live large across the board," Mr. Long said. “We’re saying, ‘You know how to handle your business and we want to give you an opportunity to celebrate that level of understanding.'"

But we all know (as do the contest promoters) that people are much more likely to contribute and vote up sexually-oriented ditties than they are sex-free songs. Is this a problem? Perhaps, for people who find this type of lyric offensive, or if a child receives a link to an inappropriate song.

But it's a brilliant marketing strategy: Leverage an apparently grass roots phenomenon—the fact that the Magnum brand has become a popular icon among Hip-Hop artists—and build on it using the same genre. By having people contribute their own hip-hop songs, Magnum is building on the existing momentum. Contests are a good way to solicit crowdsourced contributions from creative folks who want to strut their stuff. Risqué submissions are likely to spread like wildfire, generating a lot of buzz. This is good for the brand. It's also a good way to make safe sex sexy.

Tweeting the Super Bowl

By Patty Seybold

On Sunday evening, February 7th, my husband and I got ready for the annual ritual of the American Super Bowl—the one football game each year that most Americans never miss. Tom was bemoaning the fact that we had neglected to invite friends over. I said, “We’ll have our own Super Bowl party,” as I got out the beer and the chips. But that’s not exactly what happened. I settled down to watch the game and the ads, with my laptop in front of me, fired up TweetDeck and began tweeting my take on both. I quickly noticed that most of the people I follow on Twitter were doing exactly the same thing. So I enjoyed myself immensely, sharing the experience with several hundred people.

One of the times that Twitter really excels is when there’s something happening in the world that draws peoples’ attention. Last month, I wrote about the way Twitter was being used to help rescue and relief efforts in Haiti. The earthquake in Haiti, an important Congressional hearing, the confab at Davos, the winter Olympics, an announcement by Apple or Google—these are all times when I head for Twitter to follow what’s going on (setting up a search to filter the topic I’m following) and to lend my voice. Humans are social animals. We want to share our celebrations, our passions, and our front row seats with other friends and fans.

I enjoyed the Super Bowl immensely, in part because I was able to hang out with lots of other people doing the same thing—many were friends and family members. Others were people I’ve “met” via Twitter. The game was thrilling. The Colts’ Peyton Manning is the best quarterback I’ve ever seen in action. Yet the underdogs won—the New Orleans Saints persevered in much the way that the people of New Orleans have persevered after the destruction of their beloved city by Hurricane Katrina. It was heartwarming.

The ads were disappointing. (For those of you who live outside the U.S., you may not be aware that the annual Super Bowl is also the biggest TV advertising competition. Audience reaction can make or break an ad agency.) Many of this year’s ads shared a common, bizarre, and belittling theme of emasculated, frustrated men breaking free. (Clearly uninspired group think on the part of the advertising community.)

The worst ads, in my opinion were from Careerbuilder.com (unattractive people in their underwear), Dockers, Dove, Kia, Denny’s chickens, Intel. A lot of people liked the eTrade ads, with the babies talking in grown-up voices, but I found that too derivative of Citibank’s identity theft ads which do it better. My votes for the best ads go to Doritos, in particular, the “house rules” ad: The kid saying to the new boyfriend, “Keep your hands off my Mama; Keep your hands off my Doritos.” Google’s Parisian romance ad, the Audi green police ad, the Cars.com amazing kid growing up ad, and the HomeAway.com (terrible hotel experience) ad. To pick your own faves, go to NFL Fanhouse to view and vote on this year’s Super Bowl ads.

It's a Small World Labs Platform, After All - Small World Labs Reconfigures Product Line

One of the smaller companies we follow, Small World Labs hasn't let its size deter it from landing some large clients, which include the American Heart Association, the Dallas Morning News, Office Depot, and Scottrade (see screen shot below). Over 150 other organizations across equally diverse industry segments also use its SaaS platform to support internal and/or external communities.

The company had has a good 2009 so far the year, adding 15 new clients during the first half of the year to its growing customer base and generating strong results for clients via its Community Management and Social Strategy Services. On the product development front, it also reconfigured its product line and released a variety of new features and enhancements in the latest version of its Small World Labs 2009 platform.

Small World Labs’ platform is a PHP-based, on-demand suite of communication and collaboration components, including discussion forums, blogs, member profiles, groups, ratings and reviews, and a reputation system (User Activity Points). The company releases product enhancements and upgrades twice a month.

Leverage Software Continues to Gain Traction with CommunityConnect Platform

This year has been a good one for Leverage Software. While the company didn’t land quite as many customers as in its gangbusters second half of 2008, its 52 new clients from 1H 2009 represent another solid couple of quarters. Leverage’s revenue percentage from services (versus that from software licensing) has increased steadily over the past year. The majority of Leverage’s revenue still comes from the licensing of its SaaS platform, as well it should. But the increase from services is a good sign that the company is adding value for clients via its domain expertise and not leaving dollars on the table that might otherwise go elsewhere.

Leverage’s marketing communications remains strong. In particular, we like how Leverage’s Web site lays out its use cases and solutions. (This is on its "What We Do" page.) Categorizing online communities is a challenging task. Leverage creates clear differentiation via the following phrasing: “Leverage Your Employees,” “Leverage Your Channel,” “Leverage Your Citizens,” and “Leverage Your Customers.” It’s a terrific breakdown that should help get prospective customers to the right Web pages and from there, ideally, into its sales pipeline.

This breakdown also illustrates an expansion in Leverage’s target market, as it is now looking to find a home for its CommunityConnect platform with governmental organizations and advocacy groups, as well as with corporations.

CommunityConnect is an on-demand platform that includes social networking, group forums, file-sharing, opinion polls, blogs, wikis, real-time chat, and many other applications. In August 2009, Leverage released Version 7.0, which included some strong new features and enhancements, such as:

Telligent Rebrands and Aims at "Platform" Status

Telligent Systems posted strong results during the first half of this year, landing about 200 new customers. This was particularly notable, as it came during a transitional period for the five-year old company. This past February, Telligent went through a 12 percent reduction in force; in May, it brought on board a new CEO; and in May, it rebranded its product line, including its flagship product, Community Server.

The May change in leadership saw founder Rob Howard handing over the reins to new CEO Patrick Brandt. Mr. Howard, now Chief Technology Officer, continues to focus on his expertise and passion, the vision and direction of Telligent’s products. (We don’t know if Intel Capital’s $20 million investment in 2008 had such transitional strings attached; it wouldn’t be unheard of.) Bringing in a more experienced CEO delineates a new and important phase in Telligent’s development as an organization.

In 1H 2009, Telligent also rebranded its product line. We like this decision as well, even though it’s never easy to give up any degree of brand equity. While Community Sever did make a name for itself over the years, renaming its flagship product as Telligent Community is a good move as the company continues making inroads into the corporate market. (Similarly Community Server Evolution is now known as Telligent Enterprise, and Harvest Reporting Server has been renamed Telligent Analytics.)

Telligent is one of the handful of companies on our watch list with a Vision (with a capital “V”) for itself and its product line. While we tend to use the word “platform” more or less interchangeably with the words “application” and “system,” Telligent is looking for its product to become a platform in the sense that the iPhone, Salesforce.com, and Plone are technology platforms. The company's goal is for Telligent’s products to be at the core of an ecosystem of add-on applications, extensions, and integrations developed, marketed, hosted, and implemented by partners.

The upside can be huge, but it takes focus, resources, technical skill, and business acumen (particularly in constructing mutually beneficial relationships with partners). Telligent is off to as good a start as any toward reaching this vision, as its partners have already built dozens of integrations and extensions, including ones for Facebook Connect, event registration, and more.

Awareness Supports 8 Social Media Use Cases with its Best Practice Communities

Awareness has had a good run so far in 2009, driven by healthy influx of new customers. The company has been adapting its go-to-market strategy, looking to rely more heavily on partnerships—largely with marketing and advertising agencies—to identify business opportunities. That’s a distribution channel used successfully by many of Awareness’s competitors, but it remains to be seen if agencies can drive enough new business when they are the primary sales channel.

We remain intrigued by the approach Awareness has taken in productizing eight common community use cases into eight pre-configured and relatively turnkey Best Practice Communities (BPCs) that run off its SaaS platform. Launched this past January, these BPCs are categorized as Innovation, Corporate Voice, UGC Campaign, Loyalty, Enthusiasts, Associations/Subscribers, Peer Support, and Events. We’ll leave it to the Awareness Web site to go into detail on the differences, but we find the naming scheme to be happily self-explanatory. The advantages of such “pre-packaged” communities are in their competitive pricing and quick time to launch—just make your BPC choice, do some graphical branding, define the community’s structure and navigation, and off you go. Of course, in practice there’s more to be done than that, but being able to deploy a community in two to four weeks has considerable appeal. (We should also mention that Awareness also builds communities separate from their BPC offerings. These custom communities will take a longer time and larger financial commitment, but will result in a community built to specification.)