The fol­low­ing are notes I took dur­ing the Com­mu­ni­tyNext con­fer­ence held at the Annen­berg Audi­to­rium at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity in Palo Alto on Feb­ru­ary 10^th, 2007.

Jake McKee, Com­mu­nity Guy, Lead Samu­rai, Big in Japan.

Com­mu­nity Ecol­ogy: Find­ing Bal­ance When Work­ing With Fan Groups

Pre­vi­ously worked for five years at Lego as com­mu­nity manger and had to tackle the ques­tion: what hap­pens when you start engag­ing with a com­mu­nity that exists already and that you didn’t’ create?

The big ques­tion is always “mon­e­ti­za­tion vs. sup­port”. Which do they do? The answer is a bal­ance between the two. The really right answer is “every­body goes home happy”. Make sure this hap­pens. What does it mean? It depends on what you’re try­ing to achieve.

So how to deliver on this concept?

1. Rede­fine Suc­cess. Tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing is about get­ting the most num­bers to sign up, par­tic­i­pate, etc. But often you can get what you’re try­ing to achieve by select­ing the right peo­ple. What are they really try­ing to achieve?
2. Share. A lot. Be open and trans­par­ent. Don’t hide inten­tions. Come out and say “here’s what’s going on with me”. Don’t for­get that fans are enthu­si­asts and they dig the good stuff. Infor­ma­tion can be an alter­na­tive cur­rency. Open­ness cre­ates a rela­tion­ship and strong bond between the com­pany and its com­mu­nity. So, what is shar­ing? It can be just basic infor­ma­tion. Even minute details. Lego always wanted to make a big announce­ment in 6 months and never the lit­tle updates in between. Every­one wants to know the inside story. Lis­ten and pay atten­tion and you will know what the small pieces are that gain the inter­est of your community.
3. Con­stantly Adjust. It’s a bal­ance between mon­e­ti­za­tion and the sup­port of the com­mu­nity. The com­mu­nity always wants some­thing. Gave his email address to the com­mu­nity so that they had an oppor­tu­nity to tell him what they wanted.
4. Skip the NDA. This is the most impor­tant. Com­pa­nies get really caught up in get­ting peo­ple under the NDA. But NDAs stop the con­ver­sa­tion. And it’s a get out of jail free card. But the com­mu­nity man­ager has to get mar­ket­ing folks to open up. Ie. What’s the worst that can hap­pen? NDAs may be good for busi­ness but ter­ri­ble for com­mu­nity interaction.
5. Set and Main­tain Expec­ta­tions. Lego had funded a com­mu­nity event for $1700. But the next year Lego lost $200m and had no money to give to the event. And this turned out very poorly. So set expec­ta­tions cor­rectly and then main­tain them.
6. Train Your Col­leagues. The peo­ple in this room are 400 light years ahead of any­one in any com­pany on these issues. No one else gets it. No one else under­stands how impor­tance this bal­ance is, how impor­tant it is that “every­body goes home happy”. But make sure every­thing you do is based on this concept.

What’s Big in Japan?

Has noth­ing to do with Asia but is a fun name to make you ask about us. It’s a small devel­op­ment shop. They’re talk­ing about how peo­ple learn, have fun, engage with each other.

Tech­no­rati Tags: com­mu­ni­tynext, big+in+japan, jake+mckee, com­mu­nity, mar­ket­ing

The fol­low­ing are notes I took dur­ing the Com­mu­ni­tyNext con­fer­ence held at the Annen­berg Audi­to­rium at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity in Palo Alto on Feb­ru­ary 10^th, 2007.

Pre­sen­ta­tion by Tara Hunt, founder of Cit­i­zen Agency, on “Com­po­nents of Build­ing a Com­mu­nity: the rules of engagement”

From her
expe­ri­ence, every­body in a small town knows one another and new­com­ers are
watched very care­fully by every­one to keep it a safe and healthy com­mu­nity.
This means com­mu­nity inter­ac­tions are rich, com­plex and steeped in his­tory. So,
the idea that you might cre­ate an online com­mu­nity around, say, orange juice,
doesn’t mesh with what it means to live in real-world communities.

The idea of
com­mu­nity mar­ket­ing is not about tap­ping into a com­mu­nity or even build­ing a
com­mu­nity. It’s really about how a busi­ness can learn from a community.

And
com­mu­nity is not your mar­ket­ing strat­egy! The phrase “we’re using a com­mu­nity
mar­ket­ing strat­egy” is not accu­rate. The Clue­train Man­i­festo famously says that mar­kets are con­ver­sa­tions. This doesn not
mean busi­nesses should join in on these con­ver­sa­tions; rather, they should
lis­ten and learn form what’s being said about them and their products.

Because
com­mu­nity is about work­ing towards a col­lec­tive, com­mon pur­pose. 

So how does
this work for your business?

Think like
a cus­tomer! Here are 10 ways to shift your thinking:

-        
Become
a com­mu­nity evan­ge­list: Guy Kawasaki was an evan­ge­list for Apple and took Apple out into the
wider web com­mu­nity. Being a com­mu­nity evan­ge­list means doing the reverse. It
means tak­ing the feed­back, pas­sions, needs, hopes and angers of the com­mu­nity
back into the com­pany. So instead of going out, you bring it back in

-        
Shift
your mea­sures of suc­cess. For exam­ple, GDP mea­sure­ment was an unbal­anced mea­sure of suc­cess and
so the GPI (Gen­uine Progress Indi­ca­tor) was
devel­oped by econ­o­mists:. Trans­ac­tions that cre­ate value are plused and those
that cre­ate costs for the soci­ety and its well-being are minused. For exam­ple,
over the past 20 years, the US GDP grows but the GPI drops. Sim­i­larly, Yahoo!
Pho­tos has 10X the pho­tos of Flickr, but Flickr has an incred­i­ble com­mu­nity and
good­will going on.

-        
Embrace
the chaos. For
exam­ple, Bar­Camp was orga­nized in just 6 days
and drew 300 par­tic­i­pants. The atti­tude of the orga­niz­ers was: “you know what,
even if it’s just us 6 sit­ting in our liv­ing room, let’s do it!”.

-        
Find
your higher pur­pose.
For exam­ple, look at Jimbo Wales’ objec­tive with Wikipedia of mak­ing knowl­edge
acces­si­ble to everyone.

-        
Under­stand
who you are build­ing that appli­ca­tion for. Who do we serve? Has to be a very spe­cific
group. And answer the ques­tion: why would they give a damn?

-        
INreach,
not out­reach. A lot
of time peo­ple speak about push­ing out to the masses to get the effect of a lot
of signups. The prob­lem with this tech­nique is that lots of peo­ple will come
and then leave. On the other hand, with Flickr, Cate­rina and George greeted all
new­com­ers to the ser­vice. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant in the begin­ning of
the ser­vice. If you help your cus­tomers and your employ­ees kick ass, this will
hap­pen. Another exam­ple of this is Twit­ter. Also, Plazes, with their con­test,
or Flickr with col­or­ing con­test, or Fire­fox with their mem­ber kit.

-        
Design
to delight. As an
end user, you know there are cer­tain sites that delight and oth­ers that fall
flat. What is it that makes cer­tain sites addic­tive? Read “Flow: The Psy­chol­ogy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence”. Also “Defen­sive Design for the Web”

-        
Be
part of the com­mu­nity you serve: Get out into the com­mu­nity, sit down with them, go to Mee­tups,
under­stand them.

-        
Mar­ket­ing
is not an after­thought and includes the envi­ron­ment you’re in. Design, prod­uct, communication.

-        
Have
patience. These
things don’t hap­pen overnight. For exam­ple, it took Pan­dora 5 years to break
even.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Com­mu­ni­tynext tara+hunt citizen+agency com­mu­nity mar­ket­ing socialsoftware

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