embracing & sustaining your community ecosystem

Embracing & Sustaining Your Community Ecosystem

Bill Johnston - @BillJohnstonDirector of Global Online Community

Global Marketing2 Confidential

ecosystem


Online Community:Intention to foster a network of relationships around common interests, over time.

Social Media:Describes a large spectrum of tools and activities.

Global Marketing

HostedCommunities

SupportMastery & Use

AffinityIdeation

External Communi

ty

External Communi

ty

External Communit

y

External Communi

ty

Extranets

Internal Networks / Workgroup

s

Internal

External

Enterprise

Topical Experts

Community

Mass Social Media

Collaboration

Market

Global MarketingOnline Community Strategy & Planning

5

Dell’s Social Journey

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Five years of experiments and experience

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Social Media & Community Team (SMaC)

Goal: Embed Social Media into the fabric of the company.• Centralized Team (Hub & Spoke)

• Range of social disciplines

• Strategic advisors

• Governance

• Operations for key infrastructure

• Training

SMaC


04/07/2023

Listening: The Heart of our Social Strategy A critical first step, a social “trojan horse”, and the social radio for all.

Global Marketing

Social Media & Community University:Employees = Social Rock Stars

Principles

Policy

Governance

Training, Certification & Tools


SMaC Talk Unconferences:Social Media Live!


Community Planning

1. Business Goals2. Customer Needs3. Social Ecosystem 4. Prioritize Social Presence5. Metrics6. Governance

Global Marketing12 Online Community Strategy & Planning

1. Define your business goals

Discuss Goals

• Intention

• Value

• Risks

• Staffing / Overhead

• Leadership / Culture change

Process

• Stakeholder Interviews

• Working Sessions

• Synthesis


2. Customer Needs: Research & Listen

Member Needs

• Expectations of you (the host)

• Role & Facilitation

• Content & Features

• On domain or ecosystem

• Member types

• Desired culture

• Activities & contributions

Research

• Surveys

• Interviews

• Online discussions


3. Social Ecosystem Audit & Listening

Social Ecosystem Research

• Discovery, either via your listening platform, or

• Online tools like Google Blog Search, Twitter, Delicious ,etc

• Looking for:– Company and product brands

– Issues & topics

– Execs & Employees

– Existing user & affinity groups

• http://bit.ly/ocb2beco

Outputs

• Influencers

• Existing communities

• Key blogs

• Active groups

http://bit.ly/ocb2beco


4. Prioritize based on opportunity

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5. Community Metrics

• Business Value (examples)

– Brand: Net promoter score, sentiment, satisfaction, advocacy

– Support: Questions, answers, time to answer, % answered by you, views of answered content

– Content: Content created, views of content, comments

– Web Traffic: Pageviews, uniques, referrers, domains

– Innovation: ideas • Community Health

– Velocity of Change: Registrations, content creation, content consumption

– Population Segmentation: 90/9/1

– Creators: posts, answers, comments,

– Watchers: views, page depth, time on site, bounce rate

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Considering ROI

Value can be:

• Direct Sales

• Indirect (Relationship) Sales Support

• Cost Reduction

• Influence on Purchase

• Increased Attention by Customers / Prospects

• Increased Loyalty

• Increased Presence

• Content Creation

• Customer / Market Insight

• Impacts to CSR / Sustainability Initiatives

• Cost of NOT Participating

• Value has to be expressed in the context of your organization.

• Value will be multi-dimensional.

• There in no single silver bullet. (no shortcuts)


6. Establish Governance


Programs1. Engagement2. Community Management & Moderation3. Advocacy


Community Engagement:Oxygen

Engagement Planning

• Content, Content, Content (did I mention content?)

• Engagement Calendar

• Active Community Management

• Regular Communication

• Acknowledge Contributions

• Feature Members

• Reputation Management

• Incentives

“Sorry it took so long for me to vote on this one. I haven't been on here much lately. This site had so much potential but Dell doesn't seem to want to support it properly. I feel bad for the mods who put a lot of effort into the site.”

Cy Jervis (jervis961)


Engagement

Engagement Tactics

• Content, Content, Content (did I mention content?)

• Activity Calendar

• Active Community Management

• Regular Communication

• Acknowledge Contributions

• Feature Members

• Incentives

• Reputation

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Community Management & Moderation (hint: not the same thing)


Planning Framework: Management & Moderation

Key Roles

• Community Manager

– Host

– Guide

– Conversation Starter

– Cultural Model

– Cheerleader

– Ombudsman

• Moderator

– Authority

– Security

– TOS Enforcement

Management & moderation

• Staff for 24x7 coverage M-F / ~ ½ time on weekends

• Coverage needs will depend on:

• Platform(s)

• Features

• Volume of content

• Configure anti-spam / smut capabilities

• Add features to allow members to flag content

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Management & Moderation• Terms of Use & Guidelines

– TOS to satisfy Legal

– Guidelines to shape community culture

• Guidelines– Add link in registration

– Persistent location: Consider footer or right sash

– Manage to them

• Moderation– Separate moderation from facilitation and engagement

– Have one “moderator” account just for rules and enforcement

– Have a visible and persistent means to allow members to flag and escalate questionable content

– Remove content that violates guidelines

– Set policy and threshold for timeouts and banning members

– Create escalation paths for content that challenges HSG principals

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Advocates~1% will drive 90% content & engagement

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Advocacy Program & Benefits Framework

Benefits

• Logo / Badge

• Annual Gift

• Dedicated Program Manager

• Enhanced Privelages

• Enhanced Access to Dell / Dell Information

• Quarterly Councils

• Private Forums

• Event Participation

Program

• Identity

• Definition of Benefits

• Program Guidelines

• Annual Scoring & Renewal

• NDA


Building the Internal Community* Councils* Communication* Listening* Events* Internal Social Media* Training


Internal Community & Communications

• Councils– SMaC Council

– Community Leadership Council

• Communications– Weekly SMaC Digest

• Listening to Accelerate Adoption– R6 Content to many employees


Internal Social Media & Collaboration

• Blogs

• Chatter

• EmployeeStorm

• Sharepoint


Training & Events

• SMaC University– Over 10 training modules

– Community, Facebook, Twitter, etc

• SMaC Talk Unconferences– Open Space

– Global (Austin, London, Xiamen)

– 150-400 employees at each

– Social media reach of over 100k


HostedCommunities

SupportMastery & Use

AffinityIdeation

External Communi

ty

External Communi

ty

External Communit

y

External Communi

ty

Advocates

Internal Networks / Workgroup

s

Internal

External

Enterprise

Market

Collaboration

Community

Social Media & Community Toolset: Centralized Platform, Distributed Participation


Online Communities

Centralized platform, distributed engagement.• Telligent Platform Features

– Forums

– Blogs

– Wikis

– Networking

• Key Programs for Community

– Listening

– Management & Moderation

– Advocacy

– Reputation Management


IdeaStorm

Evolving from the “Social Suggestion Box”

• Better alignment w/ PG planning

• Idea Partner program

• Storm Sessions

– Time bound, topic-specific ideation sessions

• Storm Projects & Challenges (Future State)

– Sequential Storm Sessions planned for a design cycle

– Ex: Develop the “Sustainable Laptop”


Internal Collaboration

Myriad tools to support internal collaboration.

• Chatter

• EmployeeStorm

• Internal Communities w/ Telligent Enterprise


ROI = A Mosaic of Value

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• Insight: Social media improves Dell’s reach and share of voice

• Insight: Social Media provides high Business Value and contributes to demand gen lift

• Insight: SM keeps customers engaged, provides solutions and improves loyalty.

• Insight: Social media based support improves sentiment and reduces operating expenses

• Insight: Established causality between social media activity and purchase

Awareness

Research and Consideration

Demand / Lead Gen and SalesSupport

CLV (loyalty)Dell.com

External Communities

Our Communities

Social Media is valuable across the entire customer lifecycle.

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Social Media ROI: Popular assertions/beliefs vs. Dell findings to date:

Popular notions about Social Media

Our Findings

Works only for Consumer Impacts each of the Dell Businesses: Consumer, Public, SMB, LE and Services

Relevant only for “top of the funnel” – good for brand awareness, not effective at acquisition

Impacts every part of the marketing funnel. Being harnessed for lead gen and driving conversion

Cannot impact Brand building Social listening, support and research content establishes brand credibility.Can be measured (Social Net Advocacy)

Social Media ROI cannot be measured as a business metric – is more like PR – can “assist”, but cannot be tied to revenue

Run-the-business metrics can be applied on Social Media and integrated into business operations. Has been tied to Consideration and Revenue


Your Customer Community is part of a powerful & valuable social ecosystem.

Are you enabling or ignoring it?


Thank You!

Contact Info

• [email protected]

• @BillJohnston

• http://www.BillJohnston.net

Recommended Resources

• “The Power of Pull” – Hagel & Brown

• “Connected” – Christakis & Fowler

• “Engage” (2nd Ed.) – Brian Solis

• #TheCR, #octribe, #cmtychat tags

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.twitter.com/billjohnston

http://www.twitter.com/billjohnston

http://www.billjohnston.net/

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embracing & sustaining your community ecosystem

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