building business value from community participation

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From Comments to Content: Building Real Value from Community Participation

Ben Rubenstein

A case study romantic comedy

The plot

A B2B tech media company has been unlucky with commenting integration in the past

A new way of thinking could create a real relationship, but…

Can resource and workflow challenges be overcome so everyone can find community love, actually?

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The cast

Community Team

C-SuiteDevelopment

Editorial

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Once upon a time…there was lonely content

Pre-2011: No comment function on editorial content.

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Once upon a time…there was lonely content

“Our users don’t care about that.”

OR

“They can go over to the

community for that.”

(<10% crossover b/w editorial and community sites)

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The Dating Circuit

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The dating circuit

Anonymous comments Difficult to

interact Minimal

moderation Limited value

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The dating circuit

Disqus Improved

ease of use No integration No

registration value

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The dating circuit

Fly-in polls Closed questions

only Responses

combined with general comments

Quantity>quality

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The dating circuit

Trying to track down a comment or moderate a thread? Good luck…

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The challenge: A real relationship

Create a positive experience for users

Make it easy for all involved to manage and interact

Make comments useful and valuable for the entire business

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What is love? Better understanding

of target audience Audience engagement

with brand/employees Traffic increase Content production

increase Membership increase

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The meet-cute: Stumbling into a solution

Comment ‘repository’ driven by existing community site

Interaction points support content through links

Editors and contributors incentivized to participate

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Getting to know you… Users create a community profile/username to

interact

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Getting to know you… All content gets automatically generated

discussion page w/ synced comments

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Getting to know you… Editorially created discussion questions create

second entrance point, interaction opportunity

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Getting to know you… Automated comment notifications to authors,

editors + commenters Tag-based activity emails to subscribers

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Getting to know you… Moderation via community back-end

(WordPress)

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Getting to know you… Content/discussions/users showcased on

community site

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Friends with benefits Expected increases in:

Inbound links/search visibility

Site registrations Return traffic Visibility for

contributors/editors Interaction among

community and site members

Data for editorial content, marketing campaigns, sales conversations @ben_rubenstein #LavaCon

Will it work out? How will we mesh

separate systems and teams?

Who handles tagging and content updates?

Where does this fit in the editorial workflow?

Will users get it?

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Circle of friends (and frenemies)Internal user feedback identifies: Early adopters,

supporters, skeptics

Potential workflow issues

Topic-based challenges

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Meet the parentsMaking the case for development resources: What’s the goal? What’s the

business benefit?

What’s the alternative?

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Relationships = work Data cleanup Profile setup Taxonomy updates Design mockups Daily scrum Daily scrum Daily scrum…

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Consummation

All my hard work has paid

off…we’re getting a new commenting

system!!

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It gets complicated Success means everyone participates

Create discussion questions Monitor and respond to comments Make user interaction a priority

Wait, this isn’t

just going to be easy?

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It gets complicated

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Unexpected uses:

It gets complicated

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Low participation:

The grand overture3 rules for successful communication: Speak the language Keep it simple (and positive) Know what you’re asking for

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The grand overture

“Beautiful Aurelia, I’ve come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person, because I hardly knows you, but sometimes things are so transparency, they don’t need evidential proof. And I will inhabit here, or you can inhabit with me in England. Of course I don’t expecting you to be as foolish as me, and of course I prediction you say ‘no’… but it’s Christmas and I just wanted to check.”

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Our strategy Meet face-to-face

with everyone impacted

Broadcast success stories and highlight early adopters

Stay visible with regular communication

Do the gruntwork to prove out value

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Communication efforts

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Communication efforts

Infographic, emails, meetingsExamples of success storiesCommunicate to contributorsCommunicate to sales (vendor relationships)

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Communication efforts

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Making it official Discussion questions

part of the editorial workflow (300+ created each month)

All editors (and many contributors) have profiles

Community registrations tracked

Daily notifications sent

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Reviews

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The numbers are in…

6000 comments/responses over first 10 months (12K over previous 3 years)

4000+ new-to-network registrations (major source)

20% CTR on comment notifications Community participants view 3 times as many

pages, stay 5 times as long on sites as average visitor

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‘Til death do us part…‘Honey do’ list: Testing/feature

optimization Full integration of

community into network

Continued workflow discussions

Increased community content/moderation

Full integration, tracking and communication of data

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Lasting impact Changed the

internal perception about community and content lifecycle

Entered new editorial, sales + marketing conversations

Set the stage for increased resources, new roles @ben_rubenstein #LavaCon

Credits benrubenstein.net linkedin.com/

benrubenstein @ben_rubenstein

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