But not from the usual Vegas reasons: staying up late, losing money and drinking too much. I did none of those during the three day WOMMA 2009 Summit in sin city. My excuse is too much information and so many great conversations with little down time to process. So now, I’m in the air heading home with a little time to reflect.

Summit 2009 content was heavily focused on case studies, social marketing techniques and measurement. In fact, WOMMA debuted it’s newly published “Measurement and Metrics Guidebook”, a collaboration of some of the best thinkers in social metrics. Check out ComBlu’s chapter by Jennifer Voisard on cost deflection. I moderated a session on “Community: An Important Driver of WOM” with panelists Dawn Lacallade , chief community strategist at Solar Winds and Bill Johnston chief community officer at Forum One.

And, Steve Hershberger helped lead the live “Socializing Media” podcast which featured a conversation with some of the best thinkers in word-of-mouth. In between hallway chat and keeping up with crucial projects, I attended a half dozen sessions. Here’s some of my favorite take aways.

Measurment Keynote. WOMMA’s chair of the Measurement Council, Walter Carl, PhD, presented highlights of the above cited tome of best practices in measurement. One interesting factoid was the impact of word of mouth marketing (WOM) on revenue vs. traditional marketing communications channels. Turns out the latter does a much better job of generating short term customer acquisition and revenue generation, while WOM yields higher customer lifetime value through longer, deeper customer relationships and a significantly higher referral rate for new customers. (1.7 per traditional channels vs. 3.8 for WOM).

Anatomy of Buzz Revisted. Author Emanual Rosen gave an address on what not-for-profits can teach commercial enterprises about generating buzz. Core to his examples is the concept that human beings want to share what they create. If you give them an opportunity to co-create with you and other stakeholders, they will spread their interpretation of the activity. I think this basic tenet of self-expression as an engagement model has been forgotten in the gold rush of social media and the bright shiny object syndrome.

The View, only with academics. Keller Fay principal, Brad Fay deftly led a panel of academics who all study various aspects of engagement, influencer identification, measurement, etc. You’re thinking this was deadly, right? They were great. Here’s the line-up.

Socializing Customer Service. Sue Sunday, Microsoft, Ed Billmaier, The Scotts Company and Marie Shubin The Gallo Winery, talked customer support. These were from wildly different industries: software, wine and fertilizer yet offered a common thread: the use of customer service professionals to become the voice of the company in social platforms. The rationale: many companies that start listening programs or solicit comments through online forums and communities often get quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of conversations. The solutions: repurpose customer service representatives from call centers or email support. Not only will they be able to handle a larger volume of customer support episodes through the online platform, but they typically can offer marketing three magic things: human resources who already have deep product knowledge and are steeped in the legal, privacy and compliance imperatives of their organizations.

Cognitive Science. Another potentially deadly topic that turned out to be the absolutely best presentation I heard. This one was lead by Steve Knox of P&G’s Tremor Group. He laid out how human’s think and a process for disrupting normal perceptions that serves to get people’s attention. Using this disruption model or combining two unrelated schemas can lead to the magic that we all seek: cutting through the clutter and getting consumers to notice, buy and tell others. This is highly over simplified, and definitely worth digging deeper. Who knew 45 minutes about schemas could mesmerize!

I’ll provide more learning about some of these sessions in upcoming posts. ComBlu also previewed our research report, “The State of Online Branded Communities” which we’ll also dive into in the weeks ahead. Now that I’ve gotten these ideas out of my head, the seat is going back and I’m snoozing the rest of the way home.

In the past 6–8 months, I’ve been asked the same question about a dozen times from clients and colleagues.  What platform should I build my community on?  This seemingly harmless question can spark hours of discussion and debate.  If you’re planning on starting an online community, here are a few pieces of information that you should know prior to asking this loaded question.

Know your budget.  These days, community platforms can range anywhere from free open source solutions or spending up to as high as $250K. On the low end, free or low cost options will give you bare bones functionality that will leave you having to customize the look and feel, as well as configure a hosting environment. High-end platforms will provide a set of tools that will allow you to customize your community. Some even include easy content management systems so non-technical personnel can maintain the community. Knowing how much you can afford up front will help cross some names off of your list and save you time during the evaluation process.

Brush up on your company’s data policies.  In today’s online world, data integrity, data security and customer privacy are at the top of most companies concerns when launching an online community.  Bone up on what your company’s data and security policies are before beginning to compare platforms.  If your company does not allow data to be hosted by a third party vendor, that will eliminate the software as a service (SaaS) providers.

Start small.  With all of the sexy, cool Web 2.0 functionality that’s out there today, it’s easy to go overboard during your requirements gathering sessions.  Remember to take a step back and vet the functionality against your core community objectives.  For example, a support community might not need a tool that allows you to view members in your location.  However, it definitely needs a simple to understand Q&A tool.  By narrowing your list of desired functionality to only the most relevant, you may find that the more expensive platforms may have lost some of their original appeal.

Look and feel.  A brand’s online community presence should match the look and feel of its other Web assets.  Make sure that you sample a few different examples of communities built on the same platform so that you can get a feel for how flexible the platform is.  Some platforms allow you to create custom themes or skins for your community, while others allow you to only adjust base colors and copy.  Be sure that you can live with the “template” look and feel before you commit.

Know your environment.  Let’s face it.  More often than not, the budget for an online community is going to come from somewhere other than IT.  Marketing often foots the bill.  If you are a marketer looking to build an online presence, remember to check with IT on the specifications of your current environment to be sure that they meet the basic requirements.  It never hurts to have someone from IT with you while reviewing platforms to provide you with a sanity check.

To host or not to host?  That is the question.  There are several viable SaaS models out there that will provide both hosting and development of your community.  If you decide against a SaaS model, remember to ask yourself two important questions before purchasing your platform:

1. What are the additional overhead and maintenance costs associated with hosting it myself?

2. What are the additional costs for using a third party vendor to host the community for me?  In addition, what is an acceptable service level agreement between my company and the vendor?

Deciding on which platform to use isn’t an easy one to make.  However, with a little due diligence before you get started, the process will go a lot smoother and hopefully, save me a phone call ;).

I recently did something that was risky; okay maybe even stupid. I got into a debate with a new biz prospect while making a major presentation to win their community marketing business. I can see the eyes rolling back in people’s heads. Why would I do that? Because I HAD to!

The debate started when I made a simple statement: community is a business strategy and should not be simply viewed as a marketing domain. That made the marketing people in the room uncomfortable. They view anything to do with the brand as their territory and do not want to cede control to other functions or biz units. I argued that while oftentimes marketing gives birth to a branded community, they should not be the sole arbiter of what happens in that community. Many around the table disagreed, but I thought my points were strong so I continued the intellectual sparring:

· Communities are not campaigns; they are a destination for people to connect and interact in a purpose-driven way. When organizational objectives and member needs align, a company or brand can make community magic. The key is starting with business drivers and following the tangents that end in member motivations.

· Once alignment is mapped, the business drivers need to influence engagement approach. Many communities are nothing more than blogs and forums that do little to either engage or impact business objectives. Major missed opportunity. Community designers can integrate a variety of fun, engaging, or elegant tools that both serve member purposes and deliver significant, pertinent business intelligence.

· Few community managers understand the multiple member personas that interact on their site. Instead of adopting a faceted matrix that considers all types of members, they offer a one size fits all engagement approach. This not only causes member attrition, but also limits the ability to maximize business ROI.

· Collaboration across business units increases organizational efficiencies and effectiveness. When properly aligned, communities become that elusive horizontal view across the enterprise. While a community will not eliminate organizational silos, it presents an economical way to stimulate collaboration, knowledge sharing, operational efficiencies and deep customer insights. The trick is to embed intelligence into engagement tools, roll-up the raw data into a dashboard that presents actionable insights to each business unit and make people accountable for action.

· Feedback to the community drives deeper engagement. A wonderful thing happens when the brand reports back to the community. When members hear how they helped with innovation, quality initiatives, customer service improvements, community relations, etc., they are more motivated to do more, tell your story, recruit others to join the community and create links to community content. That’s how it is suppose to work.

On the plane ride home, I tucked into the latest HBR. Imagine my delight, when I discovered a great article, “Getting Brand Communities Right”. that echoed many of my points. Of course, you know what happened when I landed... I attached a pdf of the tome with my “thanks for the opportunity” email. While I am still waiting to hear if we made the final cut, my grapevine reported that the participants found the conversation stimulating and pertinent to internal challenges they face. I’ll keep you posted when I learn our fate.

In the meantime, where do you weigh in on the debate?

There is a story about the Tower of Babel in which a great tower was built in the city of Babylon thousands of years ago. 

Babylon was a cosmopolitan city, many of the citizens were very impressed with themselves.  They were very important.  They did important things.  What they did, what they said eclipsed the value of everything and everybody else. 

Across this city/state there were a myriad of languages spoken, roll all of this together and it was a very confusing and problematic place to be at the time. 

All of this self impression along with the conflicting languages caused things to go badly.

Hmmm.  Does any of this strike a cord?  Did you notice in my blog posting I deliberately mis-spelled Babel?  It’s typed as ‘Babble’.  Dictionary.com defines Babble as “to talk idly, irrationally, excessively, or foolishly; chatter or prattle.” 

Sound vaguely familiar yet?  No?  Ok, I’ll keep going.

How about this.  Earned Media.  Getting warmer?  Tagging? Uh-huh.  Uniques?  Yep.  Web 2.0?  Sure.  Tweets.  Of course.  What about this one:  Link Juice.  Ummmm.

Marketers have their own language that to others sounds like well, babble.  Try an experiment.  Set a meeting request to your company’s CFO and put in the subject line ‘Briefing on Earned Media, Tagging and Link Juice. 

See if he or she accepts or instead, declines and emails you back asking what the @#!&# it is you want to waste their time with. 

Respond saying you made a mistake.  You want to share a few cost-deflection and lost revenue earn-back strategies you’d come across.  You’ll probably get a different result.  You see, marketers speak ‘promotion’, while CFO’s speak P&L (profit and loss).  Accountants speak GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals), VP’s of Manufacturing speak Lean or Cellular (as in Lean or Cellular Manufacturing).  A few mutants still speak Six Sigma.  Together at some level in the organization, the management committee made up of the C-level and EVP level peeps who make decisions like merge, divest, close the Scranton Office, etc. speak Revenue Center and Cost Center. 

Revenue and Cost center is an interesting language, it has two intertwined dialects.  The first, ‘Cost’ is brutal and gutteral, sort of like Gaelic.  ‘Revenue’, on the other hand is more melodious and sweet; a joy to listen to. 

Those who speak Revenue and Cost see things as, well…generating either revenue or incurring cost.  Revenue and Cost speaks only of black and whites. You as a marketer are part of that world.  Yes!  It’s true.  Unfortunately, you reside more often than not in the Cost side; not always a comfortable place.  Sales sits in the Revenue side, which can be much more fun.  The reason is metrics.  Sales can show direct contribution to revenue.  TV ads and guerilla marketing tactics usually don’t.  Sales are easy to defend.  Without hard metrics, marketing is well, squishy and couple squishy metrics with terms and definitions that others don’t get and you are on thin ice in terms of value and influence.

While the term Earned Media sounds cool and is important to help describe all of which help define the granular inner-workings of some marketing tactic, its impact or outcome, most people outside of the marketing department don’t care or even understand.  Your marketing power points cause some in the organization to spontaneously bleed from the ears (note:  this will usually cause them to exclude you from critical meetings like budget planning).

Not being understood is bad.  If they don’t understand, you’re value to the organization is diminished (imagine getting a new boss who doesn’t understand what you do.  How long will you last?). 

If those who speak Revenue and Cost can’t understand your department or your program’s value, you don’t get the opportunity to actively shape how the marketing promise is delivered. 

Those who control the business enterprise (the making of the widget, the pricing of the widget and the distribution of said widget make their decisions regarding the widget without you.  Your input falls on deaf ears.  Yikes!  Hell on earth!

So what to do?  Don’t live in the chaos of Babylon waiting for the impending doom.  Be proactive!  Learn a second language and communicate.  When we as marketers are as versatile in the other operational languages our peers speak as we are in our own language, amazing things will happen.  One:  You will start measuring your activity and results in ways that are important to others (those who speak Revenue and Cost).  Two:  Your influence and work will amplify in terms of results.  Marketing initiatives will begin to be baked into operational activities and visa versa.

What were previously siloed activities will begin to work more harmoniously (i.e. CRM and Social Marketing) and you as a marketer will cease to be viewed by the other non-marketers in the company (whom by the way out number you) as not just the creator of hokey messaging and some un-measurable brand promise but instead the gate keeper of customer loyalty, net profit generation, low-cost win-backs and heck, maybe even a cost deflection source!

Well, we are at the end of this blog posting and the four non-marketers who were reading this have already gotten their fill and left, so I will reveal the big important ah-ha.  One that trumps even decoding Revenue and Cost.

You as marketers will hold the power of the customer in your hands and strong customer demand trumps everything.  You will understand them better than anyone, you will know how to reach and keep them happy.  You will know how to convert more customers using targeted, efficient techniques and tools.  You will balance the promise of your marketing efforts with the delivery of those promises by the operation.  You will be the master of customer engagement efficiency!  You will drive profit, which you can measure and defend…and that is a very good place to be.

That is, if you like that kind of stuff.

There is a debate bubbling up on this topic.  Why?  I really have no idea. 

In March Dell was able to generate $1,000,000 in revenue and cultivate 100,000 followers for their @delloutlet handle.  Today they have 677,825 followers.

Here is a sample tweet:

“@Sc00ter Did you order it from the Outlet? DM me your order# and I can see if I can help.about 24 hours ago from HootSuite”

Some individuals out there are actually obtuse enough to be arguing that this is not a successful social media example but instead a successful ecommerce example.  Isn’t this a useless argument? 

I see a few things in the tweet that I have posted above.  Based on the groaning in the marketplace about this We are going to diagram it just like elementary school grammar.

“@Sc00ter [This is a Name, which makes it a personalized one to one, from the brand to the user message] Did you order it from the Outlet [This is a Distribution and Logistics question designed to identify the order’s point of origin from the business enterprise]? DM me your order# [this is a Unique ID Code designed to find the order in the businesses CRM or Sales Management Software system] and I can see if I can help [This is a CRM Response with a call to action].about 24 hours ago [This is a Time Stamp] from HootSuite [This is a Method of ID and Contact from the responsible party who has taken ownership of resolving the problem]”

Well, bummer.  Since there is no viral video or game involved, of course it can’t really be social media, as the agencies and pendants define it.  I say let them argue and split hairs over the latest shiny penny tactics.  Let’s focus on the bigger prize.  Maybe the Dell/Twitter example isn’t social media but maybe it’s something better, social marketing integrated with social operations.  Maybe it is something that is meaningful and useful to all parties.  Maybe we have tapped into mechanisims to finally deliver on Pepper & Roger’s Shangri-La; One to one marketing.

As compared to this.

Just because it isn’t sexy doesn’t mean it isn’t right.  It is.  The Dell example worked in creating awareness AND engagement AND affinity.  The Skittles example is just lame-brained.

The Dell and Twitter partnership is exactly what everyone should be point to as a best practice (not the only one but a darn good one) or at worst yet another viable and meaningful use of Twitter that doesn’t involve saving expats from a kidnapping or reporting and organizing election revolt in countries with dictatorial regimes.  

So yes, it is good use of social marketing and social operations…which is what keeps brands and their operating entities (the business enterprise) in business.    Being in harmony with your customer base is a very profitable and effective method of doing business.

For many, that is still the plaything of agencies and sporadic marketing managers.  I think it is time to start understanding the difference.  If you want to continue debating the meaning of the word ‘is’ (which is in this case the debate about what is or is not social media), good luck.  The rest of us are moving on.

I sit on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA) Research and Measurement Council. Over the last year we had the very important task of defining key measurement models fundamental to determining Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) impact and ROI. I am happy to report that the first version of the guidebook was officially released at the WOMMA Summit held in Las Vegas on November 18!

Metrics run the gamut from:

· Conversation volume and share

· Reach

· Sentiment analysis

· Advocacy

· Influence factor

· Cost per conversion

· Marketing mix modeling

· Ratings and reviews

· Conversation value

· Social marketing metrics

· A special section devoted to program ROI

· Cost deflection

The Metrics Best Practices Guidebook contains definitions, key considerations, real case studies, application models and a slew of resources from industry experts, thought leaders and respected academicians. We clearly defined the role of social media and where it fits under the WOM umbrella, recognizing that WOM has many forms – both on- and off-line. My contribution focused on ROI attained through Cost Deflection.

We hope that this becomes a useful tool for both brands and agencies alike. Devoid of bias, the book was written with the intent that all marketers and businesses, big or small, can learn and benefit.

Download your FREE copy here and let me know what you think!

I love watching kites skip across the sky. The dips and turns delivered by the wind are both unpredictable and inevitable. One of the most interesting phenomenon about kites is that they can catch both tailwinds and headwinds in a single flight. Compare that to an airplane. When headwinds slow its progress, either the plane is late or the pilot tries to reroute. Once a direction is set, it’s near impossible to turn headwinds into a tail wind.

Great online communities should be more like a kite and less like an airplane. Why? Communities are both organic and organized. They need to provide the right mix of expert content and tools that are easy to find and use along side community generated topics, conversations, ideas and content. There should be multiple ways to engage with the brand and fellow community members. And, the member’s experience should reflect both the information shared via the member’s profile and the activities in which they participated. The more the member accesses content, offers comments, or starts a conversation thread, the more customized and germane the community experience should become. .At the same time, it should be easy for the member to explore and discover new things outside their “prescribed” areas of interest or former actions. Like the kite dancing at the end of a string, the community offers a defined destination for exploration and exchange. The free flow magic of the kite’s moves represents the organic currents that make the community experience also one of discovery and delight. Members enhance, refine and share the knowledge gained both in and outside the community.

Communities need the control of a community manger just as a kite needs the guidance of its on-ground pilot. Without it, the kite careens out of control and quickly crashes. The community manager performs a similar role for the community. S/he is the stabilizing force that lofts the community, lets it dance in the winds of the community’s will and guides the string in and out, depending on the strength and direction of the winds. Most importantly, the community manager is the human face of the brand and makes the experience personal. A great community manager gets to know members and uses their input to guide engagement and content. S/he also regularly recognizes members who go above and beyond.

Late last year, ComBlu published a study called, “The State of Online Branded Communities.” We’ve referenced the report before, but here’s a quick review of what we did. A team of reviewers joined over 135 online communities and noted their experience from that of a consumer first joining the community and attempting to interact with the brand. They recorded both qualitative observations and quantitative data into a scorecard that captured a community’s performance against 23 best practices. One was “evidence of active community management” and a “human face of the community” To our surprise, community management was one of the lowest scoring practices in the study. This is a real missed opportunity to learn from customers as well as extend brand experience. Many people join branded communities because they want to have a more personalized experience.

We believe that many organizations equate “moderation” with “community management”. They subscribe to automated services that search for profanity and other violations of Terms of Service and think they have community management covered. Or, they hire a “celebrity blogger” to be the face of the community. The person’s blog is prominently featured on the community home page, but either the comments feature is not activated or no one ever responds or acknowledges member’s comments. Again, a missed opportunity and lots of potential for frustration. Another flawed model is the automated FAQ approach to community management. Whenever a member asks a question, canned responses are generated that may or may not actually answer a question.

Some communities let the members serve as the sole source of support and reference. While this type of community involvement adds richness and authenticity to helping people get the most benefit from products and services, it’s missing the voice of the brand. Sometimes, a subject matter expert form the company is the only one with the best way to do something or possess the latest information. Again, communities should be the right mix of organized brand experiences and organic member interactions.

One recent example of the latter is my experience with Facebook. I recently had an issue and went to their Help function to search for the answer to my dilemma. Sure enough, there were plenty of people who had the same or a very similar problem. Lots of people jumped in and gave various ways to correct it; none of which worked. This was a long discussion thread and no where, not once did a Facebook SME jump in and offer expert advice. This is a prime example where the community manager could have performed a valuable service. Instead, I went through several frustrating days before the problem was resolved by “tricking” the system. It took two of the tech wizards on my staff to help me figure out the work around. How many people have that luxury? While I still love Facebook as a wonderful way to keep in touch and follow the antics of an interesting group of people, I think less of the brand. They exhibit little respect for their users and are so large that they must not care that people leave in droves or never activate because they don’t have tech wizards to help.

Many organizations are starting to “get it’ and are adding community management as a core skill set in their marketing departments. WOMMA is working on a certification course for community managers in partnership with a major university. This is sorely needed and a welcome resource. Hopefully the course logo will include a kite!

Community management, community strategy, WOMMA, ComlBu, “The State of Online Branded Communities”,

Like any good party, there is a period of anticipation, which then leads to excitement and if it’s really a good fling, exuberance (sometimes irrational) which can last till the wee hours, which inevitably is followed by one of two morning after thoughts:

1.  “What the hell was I thinking. ”  Which usually translates into ‘that is going to cost me.’

2.  '”Wow, that was fun, I’m glad I did that.” Which usually translates into ‘that will pay off for me.’

Choice number one or number two depends on how irrational the exuberance was. 

The tech bubble party led to one giant hangover.  It was one wild party.  Trust me, I was there and saw it first hand….eCompany Now’s launch party renting out Candlestick Park and hiring the hottest Top 40 band around for 750 people is a great example (but it sure was fun!).

Sure, we recovered but it took a while.  Some lessons were learned.  Sometimes you have to go on a real bender and suffer the morning after consequences to learn these lessons.

Social is experiencing some of that morning after right now.  However, unlike tech’s ‘What the hell was I thinking’ thought, social has woken up with a smile.  You see, social’s party, fun as it’s been was a bit more responsible.

A year ago, ComBlu began compiling it’s first State of Online Branded Communities report.  There were a lot of brands trying social on and in all sorts of ways, which was sort of the problem.  It was a little chaotic.  Lots of experiments lacking any real cohesive strategy and lots of ghost towns.  Newly minted relics of the ‘build it and they will come mindset. 

Unfortunately, at the time, nobody either thought of or was convinced that a community dedicated to one niche activity and brand (to take a look at who some of these were, click here) would cause consumers to abandon their current trusted, broader social resources and start all over within their walled garden and such a stand alone tactic wasn’t the best idea.  You see community isn’t a place but a concept and a promise.  It must not exist in one place but many.  Early on, this concept was lost or ignored, as the party was on a tear.  Today, we are a little wiser.

As summer winds down and we are compiling our research findings of the second annual report, we see a different picture.  Responsibility is prevailing and results have dramatically improved.  Social is a bonafide business strategy; if done correctly and more and more people are adopting proven best practices and developing disciplined processes. Today, social is proving to be as important as CRM and Product Development in sustaining profitability and market share. 

Here’s a simple example of what I mean.  Overall, we see this being manifested with fewer and fewer meaningless buzzwords taking root.  Of course there are still a number of consultants that sell based on buzzwords and convincing clients that this is all net-new and they are the only resource capable of navigating such unknown waters.

However, in large part, social is speaking the language of business. 

It took tech a lot longer to figure this out.  Remember ‘The Old Economy is Dead, long live the New Economy’? 

Today we see people talking about ‘sCRM’ or social crm and BI or Business Intelligence.  Interestingly, it’s simply a social and collaborative version of the CRM best practices in place since the mid-1990’s.  BI has been important for quite a while. Or take ‘Listening’.  Prevalent but not really a buzz word, just a descriptor that any 70 year old board member should be able to wrap their head around.  Lastly, I hear less ‘next killer app’ language in social and with less frequency, which tends to lead me to believe we are focused on making what we’ve got work.

This is all good news.  Social adopting business terms means social is adopting business philosophies (which exclude give everything away for free and simply drive eyeballs in volume for endless VC dollars or an IPO).  Social is also in love with measurement and usually, measurement shines a light on performance and we see social’s metrics and KPI’s starting to creep toward those seen on the balance sheet. 

Within a number of market segments, we see customer engagement assets growing more robust.  We also see the evolution, albeit glacial speed, of campaigns as a tactic within long term engagement instead of the defacto-standard.  We still have a long way to go here but social is helping to speed this process…which in the end is good for everybody.

So all in all, good progress for only the morning after, don’t you think? 

As we work to compile our second annual ‘State of Online Branded Communities’ report, I am sure there will be more on this topic before we release it.