{"id":2246,"date":"2008-02-05T04:55:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T11:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/05\/findings-from-the-community-best-practices-workshop\/"},"modified":"2008-02-05T05:12:37","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T12:12:37","slug":"findings-from-the-community-best-practices-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/05\/findings-from-the-community-best-practices-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Findings from the Community Best Practices Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"consumer<\/a>
\n

[Above: I peered over the balcony to take a shot of the main hall]<\/center><\/p>\n

I attended the Customer Service is the new Marketing Summit in San Francisco<\/a>, really a tremendous view, weather, and vibe at the Presidio a converted military base with a great view. (Both my Grandfathers were officers and used to attend events there). <\/p>\n

Think about that concept for a second, the new marketing is actually the customer experience. Absolutely, and with social media, friends will tell friends about their experience with a company, thus impacting how traditional marketing used to flow –now it will be direct from customer to prospect.<\/p>\n

They handed this company customer pact document to all attendees, please take a look<\/a>, I think it’s fantastic, and I’ll hold myself to making sure people I talk to in the industry upload this, and that I also follow these rules.<\/p>\n

I was asked to give two sessions on Online Community Best Practices <\/i> (my coverage area as an analyst) and we had a great sessions on contributors at each of the two meetings.<\/p>\n

Although I’ll keep the specifics anonymous, we had startups, small companies, large companies from many different walks of life.<\/p>\n

I structured the workshop where we’d identify key problems, then would get folks to share their different best practices, and I’d be sure to add my own. I promised to share all the content and here it is:<\/p>\n

\n

Findings from the Online Community Best Practices Workshop<\/strong>
\nHere’s what the attendees at my workshop said were important to them<\/p>\n

The Many Objectives of Communities<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • Insight from customers, give them a voice<\/li>\n
  • Better experience<\/li>\n
  • A social experience, where common folks get to hang out<\/li>\n
  • Get users to know that they are a human company, and support<\/li>\n
  • Building communities around products, and to learn from customers<\/li>\n
  • New users don’t know how to start. Or are unclear of what to do<\/li>\n
  • 50 million customers, get them to self support<\/li>\n
  • For a low engagement product, how do you get them to be sticky so they are top of line next time it’s time to buy\n
  • Bringing service innovation to a higher level, getting constituents to collaborate<\/li>\n
  • Issues: Raising awareness to get customers to use community, the value is low<\/li>\n
  • Improve customer support issues<\/li>\n
  • Collaborate and get customers to internal<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The Many Benefits of having a community<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Decreased Cost of Support<\/li>\n
  • Increased Revenue<\/li>\n
  • SEO <\/li>\n
  • Improved Loyalty<\/li>\n
  • Transparency: less time spent on marketing programs as they use<\/li>\n
  • Consumer Trust and improve<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The many costs of communities<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Moderation costs<\/li>\n
  • Negative discussions, or not dealing with them, lack of control<\/li>\n
  • Difficulty monetizing social networks<\/li>\n
  • Cost to take action on what customers ask for, closing the loops costs money<\/li>\n
  • Development costs<\/li>\n
  • Surveys and samples<\/li>\n
  • Measurements<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Different ways with Dealing with Detractors<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Varies in every situation<\/li>\n
  • 1 to Many communications<\/li>\n
  • They have a process is in place<\/li>\n
  • Make them feel heard<\/li>\n
  • Compensate them (depending on severity) <\/li>\n
  • Creating a direct feedback place, rather than having in community forums<\/li>\n
  • Good practice: Develop process for the different types of detractors<\/li>\n
  • One company categorized members to put them into different buckets<\/li>\n
  • Having a good tone, being consistent with all members<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    General Best Practices<\/strong>
    \nIn this final topic, I asked all attendees to participate and share what works for them<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Trust is the foundation of every community<\/li>\n
  • Great relationships with members that want to share<\/li>\n
  • Make sure every question that is asked gets an appropriate answer<\/li>\n
  • Create a year long plan, so it’s effective across the business, thinking strategic<\/li>\n
  • Create valuable content<\/li>\n
  • Recognize valuable contributors<\/li>\n
  • Have knowledgeable moderators<\/li>\n
  • Incorporate it into your products<\/li>\n
  • Being Human: Make sure that people know that the community manager is a real person<\/li>\n
  • Acknowledge people<\/li>\n
  • Loyalty programs<\/li>\n
  • Focus on experience<\/li>\n
  • Quality Content <\/li>\n
  • Ask permission: Ask the members if we can reach out and talk to them first<\/li>\n
  • Start threads with questions to get the conversations going<\/li>\n
  • Help users connect with other users, identify ‘super users’<\/li>\n
  • You can never give too much information<\/li>\n
  • Encouraging feedback from the community<\/li>\n
  • Always have a direct email so it can encourage rapid response<\/li>\n
  • Rewarding and recognizing members that have done good work<\/li>\n
  • Embrace what the community is actually doing<\/li>\n
  • Acknowledge when people are right even if they are hostile<\/li>\n
  • Bubbling up information, turning things into FAQs<\/li>\n
  • Internal encouragement for employees (points) <\/li>\n
  • Every question that someone else can answer, have it answered by the right person<\/li>\n
  • Track Google Alerts, if someone tracks outside the community pull them in. <\/li>\n
  • Be transparent, let the community monitor and police itself (rather than the company taking too much control) <\/li>\n
  • Reward and thank users that participate<\/li>\n
  • Plan and integrate internal knowledge bases<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    At Forrester, I’m publishing a handful of reports on this topic<\/a>, they will be available to clients, or you can purchase them on the site, they are very, very succint and tell you what to do do have a successful community.<\/p>\n

    Didn’t attend the event? Andy took notes Ideas from Customer Service is the New Marketing #3<\/a>, Christine has captured why Zappos Shares Secrets of 75% Repeat Business<\/a> Ross Mayfield shares his insight Geek Squad on Marketing is a Tax You Pay for Being Unremarkable<\/a>, and a few others according to Technorati<\/a>. <\/p>\n


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    <\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [Above: I peered over the balcony to take a shot of the main hall] I attended the Customer Service is the new Marketing Summit in San Francisco, really a tremendous view, weather, and vibe at the Presidio a converted military base with a great view. … Continue readingFindings from the Community Best Practices Workshop<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-manager","category-community-marketing","category-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}