Some great resources available at http://onlinecommunityresearch.com/

Building or bridging?
Consensus is bridging what you have by finding ways it can work with new technologies/platforms

Challenges:

• How do we draw them back to the corporate site?
• Do we try and interact everywhere (forums, email mailing lists, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc.) or stay focused on 2-3 socnets?
• How do we tie it all together?
• How do you choose which tool to use?
• How much time do you invest in connecting with your community?
• Why do you wish to connect with your community?
• How do we get started?
• How do we get the community to self-organize?
• If they don't connect offline, will they connect online?
• Finding the 'gotcha' that brings them in
• How do you know if someone is part of your community or someone else's?
• If they are participating on Facebook, but not on your corporate site(s), are they part of your community?
• What happens when your community changes the tools they use to connect with? Twitter vs. Plurk. Facebook vs. MySpace. etc.

Suggestions:

• Define your community. Who participates on your sites and learn why they are there. If they participate elsewhere, find out what they gain being there too.
• Identify 'super users' of your product/service and cultivate relationships. Goal is to get them to champion your company in the networks they participate in to eliminate the need for you to be there 24/7.
• Use incentives for people to participate in your community - prizes/rewards
• Remember different audiences require different means of communications. You might email a newsletter, but you can also post it to the website and send a link via Twitter, etc. to get them to come to you. Provide options.

More?

My notes from session:

Scale an issue; Care2: lots of time/effort for not a lot of return (yet)
Anita Borg: dabbling in social media tools but no overarching strategy
Stanford alumni site: own site vs existing
Everyone experimenting but probably more efficient to learn from others experience; research on these topics
Outside or own site? Both, but how?
Get everyone on the same page about what are reasons for having online communities
Get word out/help communities we serve
Working out how to reach—segment or bring together, what that means: community has to exist offline as well as online for it to work (Intuit)
Sophia’s Garden Foundation: using emerging tech. to help families w/ life-threatening illnesses: looking at 3D, art for healing, increasing engagement to help
How do we translate real-world community to online community
How do you determine if someone is member of your community or not?: register w/ site, alumni, anyone who interacts part of community, a nyone who is talking about what I represent
Do you consider osn activity your community? Yes, but want to encourage them to own site, matter of brand control, awareness, support community around them
Ambassador program one way to manage all communities (listservs, key groups, etc.)
Is it a requirement for online communities to be facilitating community on other online sites? How to do so w/ limited resources?
Reinforcing effect of community of effort you already have vs distribution partners
Identifying super-users within our community & some of resources they have—not always to their benefit b/c promoting self, but feels more authentic, external better ambassador for the community, informal more 1:1 but also formal part of : community elects members of the community to represent them; tends to be people of influence, share w/ them strategies for future, reward/incentives for power users
What’s making people tick? Have to pick 2-3 return, can’t do too long
Killed email list & translated in to FriendFeed, took a couple of people doing it & then caught on
But was the new technology better?
Building some of own to house info. In one place, not searchable but at least aggregating in one area
Don’t discount forums; finding forums most effective
Bridging tech savvy and less-savvy segments of community: find ways to do it (preferably automatically)—example: still email newsletter, but also on web, RSS feed available
Consider who your audience is—don’t necessarily want all community engaging in all offering, look at what your goal is for different levels/engagement of users
Important to look at a way to present information so see what have to offer/ways to connect participate deeper but w/o overwhelming w/ offers
Do we provide tools to get super-users to talk about us?
About aligning the right incentives

branding/design important
asked in registration forms “are you a member of this group/social network/etc.?”
www.rapleaf.com
Facebook for events
LinkedIn for jobs
YouTube nonprofits group
Playing stuff partly for image/morale even within the company, tangible value in keeping image of company
Identify what gets people to take the next step

What’s working/not working: Jeremiah Owying good paper on marketing on site vs others
initial impulse to build own but attrition, managing them all, leveraging where they are vs transplanting into a new space

Take-aways:

• finding the “gotcha” that will bring them in
• identifying and understanding who your key people are
• Identifying super-users and cultivating them so they can be ambassadors
• Once you identify who they are; profiling what they do online as community matures as key
• Finding tools that will allow you to have it both ways
• Different audiences require different forms of engagement

"identifying and understanding who your key people are" is a wonderful take-away. Can we have future discussions about our efforts and experiences in this endeavor? richreader@pacbell.net

contributed by richreader@hidden on Jun 19 10:07am