Get Them Talking: How Growing Participation Chains Will Grow Sales

According to this Bizzarevoice.com white paper, "Interactions – no matter how small – drive conversations, leading to measurable business results." Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker and new media visionary Ze Frank share how to make the most of every online community interaction: "Why do timeshares offer so many freebies? Why do you ask customers to indicate if reviews are helpful?" "It’s all about participation. Interactions – no matter how small – drive conversations, which drive business results." Ze Frank and Sam Decker collaborated to create a white paper that "helps you create a participation chain that feels authentic, is transparent, and helps you uncover new ways to converse with consumers – and turn them into your customers." Download the “Get Them Talking” white paper HERE.

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Online Communities for Fun and Profit

Independent publishers find lucrative opportunities for marketing and recruiting
Eyeing the ongoing, phenomenal success of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, independent publishers are creating their own online communities, where they can glean valuable feedback from customers, and keep an eye out for future staff amidst the online message posts.

“It’s a good time to become a niche online community and do it right,” says Don Philabaum, CEO of Internet Strategies Group. “You have millions of people who have learned the value of being a part of an online community, and they’ll bring experience, enthusiasm, content – and their network – to your online community.”

Agrees Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media: “Blogs, discussion boards and other forms of interactive media are the most cost-effective customer feedback mechanism ever invented. You won’t get a representative sampling of your customers. But you will get your most passionate customers.”

Lulu.com, for example, attracts authors to its site with a mature online community featuring dozens of discussion forums, dozens more special interest groups and a monthly newsletter. The company also integrates its own blog into the mix, ensuring visitors participating in the community are also directly in touch with the company.



Similar online communities are offered by Chelsea Green and Autonomedia.

Generally, industry online communities break out into three categories. Most popular are simple social hang-outs, which attempt to attract as many members as possible by replicating MySpace and Facebook, and offering as many community features as possible.

Other online communities are solely dedicated to market research, and often opt for an invitation-only model. Such communities generally result in smaller memberships that are by design more intimate. Users – generally valued customers who offer dependable insights – usually post more often and more regularly than those in purely social networks. And sometimes, specific discussion threads last for years.

The third genre of site is designed for one purpose only: to gather customer reviews on company products and/or services, and publicize that feedback to future customers.

No matter which of these community genres appeal to you, it appears the continued rise of the industry-specific online community appears inevitable.

Not surprisingly, the "everyone’s invited" sites often have more community building features than the smaller sites, and sometimes even have the overall look and feel of a MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) or FaceBook (http://www.facebook.com) site.

If you’re interested in starting an "everyone’s invited" site, you’ll want to offer slickly designed tools like discussion boards, chatrooms, instant messaging, blogging, photo posting and similar services offered by the MySpace and Facebook.



Experienced company community builders also say you should jump-start the community’s nerve center – the discussion board – by posting commentary on a dozen or so industry topics, and then encouraging visitors to offer their own reactions and opinions to the discussions you’ve started.

With just a little luck and perseverance, these discussion boards will take on a life of their own, with community visitors coming up with their own follow-up topics, and others volunteering to moderate special interest groups they are passionate about. Some members will even volunteer to guard your forums for the occasional visitor who just shows up to make mischief.

Some of the most mature online communities sometimes bring in professional moderators – experts in fields like law, accounting and technology – who assume responsibility for moderating and managing their own forums.

These "expert" forums are a win-win for both parties. The sponsoring company yields the prestige of having industry recognized authorities contributing to its website on a regular basis. And the experts get valuable exposure to an audience of potential customers.

Within these ongoing conversations or "discussion threads," you’ll begin to glean valuable insights on how customers truly view your business, what’s working, and what’s not.

In addition, you’ll be able to offer staff positions to discussion board posters who are obviously passionate about online publishing, and demonstrate the critical personality skills you’re looking for in a staffer. In many cases, you’ll be able to learn a great deal about a potential employee by what he or she is posting on your company discussion board, and how he or she is reacting to what is being posted.

The second flavor of online industry communities – small, private, invitation only affairs – are the genre preferred by Communispace, an online community service provider that specializes in designing and helping companies run these meeting places.

“When a few hundred members are participating on a regular basis, the quantity and quality of the content is deeper and richer than from large public sites,” says Katrina Lerman, co-author of the Communispace white paper The Fifth P of Marketing: Participation Size Matters. “For companies that truly want to connect with their customers, smaller may in fact be better.”



Under the Communispace model, private customer communities are generally branded, password-protected sites where an intimate group of members spends months – and sometimes years – together brainstorming ideas for a company, sharing conversations with other company customers, and essentially playing a pivotal role shaping the company’s future.

“Several facilitators guide the conversation and help bridge the gap between customer and company,” Lerman says.

The intimacy and invitation-only factor also tends to result in greater numbers of members participating in the ongoing discussions. “When members contribute, they participate at a high rate – an average of 3.9 contributions per week,” say Lerman, citing an in-house study of 66 online communities created by Communispace.

Meanwhile, the third flavor of industry community – review sites dedicated to netting customer reviews – are being used by some of the biggest names in business, including Dell, Macy’s, Petco, Sears, Charles Schwab and PepsiCo.

”In countries around the world, shoppers are increasingly embracing user-generated review content as a critical part of the research and purchase process,” says Sam Decker, chief marketing officer for Bazaarvoice, an online service provider that offers turnkey, online review systems.

Fortunately, no matter why type of community seems right for your company, you’ll find there are a number of consultants and service providers ready to help you implement your choice. Besides Internet Strategies Group and Communispace, you can also check out:

  • Zuberance

  • KudosWorks

  • Affinitive

  • Capable Networks

  • Passenger

  • WebCrossing


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    Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.
    Email: joe@joedysart.com
    Web: http://ww.joedysart.com


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