IT companies have SLA (service level agreements) for their clients in terms of responsiveness but do social media strategists also have them?

If you are tweeting on behalf of your client (and while this is not ideal  it may be necessary due to the squeeze on marketing depts) do you say how regularly you will tweet ? From a risk management point of view I think an SLA is vital. If someone tweets your clients organisation in an emergency situation who is going to respond? who is expected to respond to that tweet at 11.55pm? what is the understanding in your business about rapid response from a crisis communications perspective? best get that on the table and ensure all parties have clear expectations.

In the ideal world organisations would engage themselves albiet being mentored along the way. It is simpy better that way, the organisations have the deep knowledge to respond internally to situations that arise and employee involvement is vital to engage honestly with consumers and create powerful change within the organisation itself.  Yet, many times clients ask social media marketers to take on the whole kit and kaboodle – devise the strategy and implement the engagement and many times this is indeed necessary.

Apart from the obvious pitfall of the client not being totally involved! what are the logistical pitfalls you have encountered? and what do you think others should be aware of if they undertake this arrangement?

Many years ago I worked as an Information Manager at the NSW Cancer Council so with that background I was interested to see the use of innovative technology in this space with the introduction of the  Wellness Community.  While the community has been around for some years (Wash DC based) recently a swag of new functionality has been added to the site.

The Website provides free online support groups and education programs to people with cancer and their caregivers and families.

The community features new functionality including: chat support groups, Peer-to-peer social networking, Secure, thematic discussion forums,Personal blogs ,Video journals,Webcasts and podcasts and research tools to monitor symptoms and key quality of life indicators.

On a more local level the Cancer Council of NSW has its own version of the wellness community called Cancer Connections which is a very simple but well functioning site and looks relatively new.

Attending the Online Community Managers Roundtable last week was an eye-opener to the myriad of community types available but one area we didn’t discuss was Support Communities yet they have a very real and purposeful place today.

Yesterday I joined a swag of Australian online community managers at a roundtable organised by Editor and Com Mgr Essential Baby, Ms Alison Michalk. The group of over 15 of us from all around Australia met at Fairfax the home of Essential Baby to discuss online community management.

The group involved a great mix of online community startups such as Nick Gonio’s SportsPassion, through to the effervescent Ms Venessa Paech from the highly established and well regarded Lonely Planet, large media corporates were representated with Bob Dobson ( Entertainment Community Manager, NineMSN) and Ben Mott (Product Manager, Network Ten) as well as the ever-present and unmissable Scott Drummond – Sports Hydrant (not to mention many many others…)

Key discussion points from the day:

• The role of the Community Manager: leaders, the concierge, party hosts, traffic as well as other many descriptions. Community management is a highly complex role!
• The challenges included: head-count in recessionary times how to do the job well with limited resources; moderation is a continual challenge and technology can be your best friend or nightmare – with all agreeing technology platforms need to be nimble enough to adapt to the times.
• Sponsorship -  how to ensure the bottom line survives; the challenge of securing sponsors and ensuring sites remain objective is crucial.
• Benefits of online communities: a great way to gain insight from your key members, help you spread the word (WOM) regarding your product and brand and help you get a great understanding of your consumer.
• Metrics - lots of discussion on this topic with qual and quant discussed deeply. The usual page impressions etc were discussed and ever-present AVE (pr metric) but this time wearing the web 2.0 hat – is there validity in this metric? most agreed their was, metrics such as sharability and engagement were also discussed.
• Metric Relevance - of note was the point that you will need to look at member metrics vs metrics for sales and marketing these are naturally going to be different. We also discussed the old ‘conversion’ chestnut – that many clients asked. We agreed that as case studies come out we can put some figures to it but in reality conversion may in fact be a long bow to draw (ie sales) and if it happens – it wont ‘happen overnight’.
• Transparency: No surprises here authenticity/trust are the domain of a healthy and hence successful online community.
• Friction is healthy in an online community one com mgr said ‘it is in our real offline lives so it should be online as well’ – it keeps the community real, vibrant and engaged (too much though is a bad thing)
• Marketing your online community ideally should be a mix of social media strategies,offline activities, combined with some ppc (although some disagreed with ppc being of value). Obviously as a start-up without a brand name it is a lot harder to get that top-of-mind position than online branded communities (think Dell etc)
• Size - The interesting question of do you need to be a large site to be valuable arose. The answer was in fact both yes (particularly if monitisation is involved) and no if you are creating a niche(not a lot of breadth but depth re engagement) – the scalability of communities was also a good topic of conversation.
• Staffing of the community provided lots of variety with some online community managers existing with only paid staff and others relying heavily on volunteers – and every combination in between.
• Reporting Lines: So who do the community managers report to? a large range of responses from CEO through to general manager, marketing, global support/km to finance. We discussed the future of reports and how they typically report into marketing but wondered if it will always stay that way because online communities were providing tangible benefits to ALL areas of the business.
• Privacy is a continual issue for community managers and we agreed that some technology platforms simply don’t have the flexibility with functionality to allow for subtle privacy changes. One manager mentioned the importance of letting your members ‘grow’ with the site and that may in fact mean their privacy settings would need to change from teen/adult etc
• De la Soul -  the question was raised is there a magic number for getting traction within your community? the answer we all agreed was in the 50-80 range because at that point the community starts to run itself which is the ideal scenario (with the com mgr in the background)
• Technology was a source of frustration for many managers that had bought into systems that were not nimble enough to adapt to the times. Many believed that open-source systems were indeed the future.

My interest in community management was sparked when I was moderating online research communities for companies such as Kelloggs, Weight Watchers and Sara Lee. While the nature of my work has a research bent manyof the above issues regarding technology, resourcing, engagement and moderation still applied.

Today I am keen to stay in touch with the online community management field as Forrester’s Five Eras of the Social Web indicated communities are going to continue to have an impact on the social web and hence brands.

If you are an online community manager or company starting up an online community based in Australia feel free to join our Facebook group

P.S. Came across this memo to New York Times staff regarding the appointment of their social media editor (who has some com mgr responsibilities) it makes interesting reading.

As marketing students we all probably remember the four Ps: Product, Pricing, Placement and Promotion – the traditional model of marketing.

Today marketing has been reinvented and the Ps are being replaced with Cs – Collaboration, Creativity, Connection and Communication.  Brands now need to tap into those online community connections and hence the term Swarm Marketing was born.

Recently Dell revealed Dell Swarm a new marketing scheme in Singapore. As discussed by the Ebiquity Blog it goes like this: If you agree to buy a laptop on Dell Swarm, the discounted price drops as others join your “swarm” and also buy.

Here’s how the Dell system is described:

-Start by picking the laptop you would like to purchase. Be the first buyer to join a Swarm and you’ll enjoy a price lower than Dell.com’s best discounted price (after cash rebates).

-Join a Swarm after, and you’ll enjoy a new, lower price – as will all previous buyers. 

- Once the swarms closes – which is when the limit of 15 buyers or 72 hours is reached, whichever is the earlier, the price is then finalised. This final, lowest price now becomes everyone’s purchase price – including yours!

-To get the maximum discount, grow the Swarm by Sharing with your friends. You can share via Twitter Or post a note on your Facebook® profile and tell all of your friends Point others towards your Swarm using Digg, del.icio.us and other tools. Or simply send your friends an email directly! Not ready to buy yet? You can also choose to Follow the Swarm. You’ll then receive updates via email. As well as through free SMS alerts.

What other examples do you have of swarm marketing? are there examples in Australia?

Could your business benefit from a Swarm marketing approach?

Yelp

I recently read a fascinating  interview from econsultancy with Laura Nestler, Community Manager of Yelp. Yelp is an online review site that started in the US in 2004 and recently launched in the UK with new features. It is interesting to see how the site has been continually developing and adding new elements over the years.

The most interesting aspect of the new version of Yelp is the additional functionality that gives business owners the opportunity to respond to reviewers favourable or unfavourable reviews.  This is a key development and I believe much overdue. The ’two way dialogue’ model that forms the foundation of Social Media needs to occur to ensure continual dialogue and transparency.

So what else is new for Yelp? as with many online applications they have now launched our most recent iPhone application – Yelp for iPhone – and they expect to roll out further apps for other devices in future.

Review Sites in a Tight Economy

As the economy tightens consumers are spending more time on the internet researching product purchases before they buy.  Online product review sites are one of the leading types of user-generated content on the web today and their role will become increasingly important.

The following figures show the significance of review sites for consumers.

Does your website have a review element?  it might be a great way to start engaging with your customers today.

Review Statistics

Article of note: Tips on building your review site

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy .  Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

How many times have you heard marketers or pr professionals say:

- “Social Media is so hard to get over the line’  and -’Its hard to demonstrate the ROI of Social Media’ or

-’The CEO is just not on board with the Social Media idea’

These comments typically come from individuals that do not have the full business picture in mind when they are talking with their client.

As marketers we often think of Social Media as part of our own personal toolkit – albiet a growing and quickly developing one. Via Social Media we have the capacity to reach consumers,  with some prs still aiming to get a few messages across  (yes very old school) and ideally raise the brand profile and ultimately sell the item that we are marketing.

So what is wrong with that notion? After working in traditional media, online pr, market research 2.0 and knowledge management it is clearly evident that we need to recognise that Social Media touches all the above disciplines within a business including R&D and CRM.  As individuals within those disciplines we need to step outside our own areas and look at how we deliver business value across many areas of the business  – a much more wholistic approach.

So how is this relevant to you as a marketer? First understand that the Twitter account that you are trying to sell in for pr purposes can also be used for CRM and that means working with those relevant internally to support customers if complaints arise.  That branded Online Community that you are thinking about will provide ROI for many elements of your business including innovation and R&D. It is not just about your big shiny idea or your pr/marketing silo, or for that matter (and this is positive) the marketing budget.

Finally social media strategies can be devised and initially implemented by agencies but collaborative maintenance must come from the company itself.   What is maintenance? after the initial burst of creative activity is the hard yakka of continuing the conversation with your consumers, listening to them and embracing what you learn. If your social media marketing agency is simply selling you a one-off campaign and not educating you along the way they are doing you a disservice. Sure campaigns such as World’s Best Job have a finite time period but most customer engagement strategies should be for the long-term.

Social Media has the power to transform a company,  break down internal silos, deliver excellent ROI, engage with consumers and deliver more relevant products to the marketplace but we need to first recognise its not all about us.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article?please subscribe to the RSS Feed .

Update May 9 Mashable produced an excellent article using Twitter for customer service well worth a read!

I love a good wiki. Perhaps it’s my background in knowledge management but I think they are extremely valuable so when I found the UK Online Community Research Wiki I was in heaven.

The find combines my two loves: Online Communities (OC) and Wikis.  

The site contains a list of UK Online Communities with the formats as varied as Ning Communities to Yahoo Groups. While the format of the wiki could do with some aesthetic improvements the site itself provides useful content for those interested in OCs.

I would be interested to see if an equivalent Australian wiki exists – if it does be sure to let me know.

**Hat tip to Andy Roberts for bringing it to my attention.