Social Customer

Framework for Evaluating Online Community Platforms, Version 3

Online community platforms are becoming more and more prevalent as part of companies’ online toolkits. Built initially with only basic forums (a.k.a. message boards and threaded discussion lists), they continue to develop dramatically in scale and scope, providing arrays of features and capabilities for community members (your customers), moderators, administrators, business sponsors, and other key stakeholders.

Customer communities can empower customers and strengthen the relationships between them and your company. This happens through careful planning, assigning sufficient resources, and selecting the right tools. While you should never discount the human element in achieving your goals, the underlying technology—your platform—also plays an essential role in your community’s success.

We’ve developed this framework to help you evaluate online community platforms and identify the one that’s best for you. This third version reflects the technological advances and increased expectations for what community platforms can and should be able do. The past year has seen many changes in the online community space, including an emphasis on collaboration, viral marketing, search engine optimization, and mobile access. To address these and other changes, this framework contains new and updated customer scenarios and criteria for evaluating community platforms.

What’s What in Social Media: Report from Community 2.0

This week saw the third year of the Community 2.0 Conference, an event focused on my coverage area as an analyst: online communities and social media. Attendance was down as compared to that of previous years, but this wasn’t surprising given the economy’s impact on travel budgets. (But you do have to wonder how much longer “two-point-oh” monikers will continue to be used before they lose all meaning.)

While the conference had no official theme, the focus was definitely on community ROI. More and more organizations are being charged with quantifying the impact their customer communities are having on their businesses. This is due in part to the economic climate in which all expenditures need to be justified and in part to the fact that customer communities have now been around long enough so that their ROI models are—or should be—better understood. (My own presentation was on this topic. The slide deck for “10 Critical Success Factors for Generating ROI from Online Communities” is here on Slideshare.)

Happily there were compelling case studies of companies showing strong ROI from their customer communities. Organizations such as Best Buy, the Mayo Clinic, and SolarWinds (provider of network management software, with a vibrant community at the pleasingly onomatopoetic Thwack.com) have found ways to put dollar values on the impact their communities have on their bottom lines.

Social Media is Like...a Mr. Bubble Pool Party?

Doing a Web search for "Social media is like" gives some fun and interesting results. (Make sure you use the quotation marks to search for this exact phrase. And don't tell Patty Seybold I'm spending my time doing this...)

Below are some of the things you'll find. Except for the first couple of examples, you'll have to click the links to understand the rationale. (As an intellectual challenge, you can try to guess at the reasoning before visiting the site in question.)

• Social media is like a Mr. Bubble Pool party...it has a way of bringing people together and can be a heck of a lot of fun!
• Social media is like water...don’t be afraid to dive into the deep end of the pool; water is best when added to other things.
• Social media is like speechwriting...
• Social media is like playing slot machines...
• Social media is like visiting a good hair stylist...