New Venture Marketing

How to spot the best online community builders

An excellent post on "How to spot online community builders" by Vanessa DiMauro, CEO and Strategy Consultant, Leader Networks.  Followed by a post identifying those companies who do it best.

Social media has even more relevance for the B2B companies

Is it any wonder that social media, more often associated with celebrity Twitter, or videos the likes of “Keyboard Cat” or “Leave Britney Alone” are not as often associated with B2B marketing?

However the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.  Social media has even more relevance for the B2B companies, because the potential number of customers are smaller and more niched, the products are more complex, require more education, have longer sales cycle and can have longer pre and post sale support.

According to recent IDC research “… we are entering a time of significant cultural and process change for businesses, driven by the emergence of the social Web.” According to the IDC survey, 57% of U.S. workers now use social media for business at least once per week. And they use them primarily to acquire knowledge and ask questions from a community. 

Today managers connect to their peers within and outside of the corporate firewall and use their  connections via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to access, filter and share information on vendors, products and services.

But there remains some misconceptions among the B2Bs with whom I speak.  Here are a few of the most often heard.

#1 Social media is not something that B2Bs do, much less their customers,

I can not think of a large B2B company that does not use some form of social media, and a great many small ones.  For the later it maybe the most cost effectiove tools they use. By now we know that the majority of the customers use, indeed rely on social tools to get answers to their questions, identify and find key products and services.  If you are not already talking to your customers via the networks your eco-system reaches, your competitors certainly are.

#2  A Facebook Page, Blog, Twitter account is a social media strategy.

These are simply tools and no more effective than the planning and effort put into them and part of a cohesive strategy of which they were selected to address a specific outcome.  I wish I could count the number of times I have been asked to come in and help a company develop an online community, blog or Twitter account without the upfront planning as to what the tool is to accomplish, how it will be measured, developed, sustained.  (A topic I will address in an upcoming blog post.)

#3  The ROI from using social media tools can not be measured

Ironically, new social media tools are among the most quantifiable of the marketing tool kit.  Digitally speaking you can measure just about everything on the web:  how many people come to your website, blog post, Facebook Fan Page, how long they stay, what action they may take.

 #4 The cost is too great to justify the return. 

All of the new tools have a cost, although it is often the time and effort required to implement them, but think about how important it is to keep a relationship going with your B2B customers, to be able to learn what they like or need AND to be able to go back to make another sale.  In fact follow on sales to existing customer are far more likely to result in success than in a new sale to a customer you do not know.  Social media tools -- when effectively applied – can deliver their cost and then some.

Social media has even more relevance to B2B companies.  They enable a B2B to extend their visibility and brand, reach niched, highly focused customers, help educate on products tht may be more complex and more costly, provide ongoing pre and post sales support, and ongoing comunication and collaboration with customers, partners and employees.

 

The Facebook Effect

I just finished David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect:  The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World," and highly recommend it.  It is the best book I have read to present the fascinating inside story of Facebook, its remarkable founder and team and to place Facebook in the context of the ever evolving and transforming world of the Internet.  David also presents one of the best discussions I have read on the difference between Google with its emphasis on computers and the organizing the world's information and Facebook, with its focus on people and the sharing of information through the "social graph", your personal network of friends, family and colleagues. That differences is not just about finding the best place to buy a camera, but in rethinking how we navigate the online world.

David, a fine and experienced industry veteran, is a senior technology writer for Fortune Magazine, and I had the priviledge of working with him many years ago on the same high tech conference.  If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend you do so.

Three key traps when setting up an online community

I am sometimes asked to help a company develop an online community for its users, employees, or developers. It is something I enjoy doing as I am a real believer in the benefits new social media tools. Well implemented these communities can enable a company to engage with its audience, listen and understand its concerns and needs, build a loyal and supportive following, extend its presence and brand and bring in a rich infusion of new ideas.

The problem is that I am always called in at the wrong time or rather without much thought as to the marketing objective behind the desire to have an online community.  Most companies treat a new social media tool as an end in itself.  But the decision to build an online community should be grounded in the marketing objective:  to increase sales leads, customer loyalty etc.  Not all tools, social media or more traditional, are equally suited to meet a specific objective.  A press release can be very effective in announcing a new product to the greatest number of publications and end users, but a blog or online community maybe a more effective way to engage with customers and learn about their concerns.

Another common trap is to develop one community to satisfy all marketing, support and development objectives.  Not only is that community apt to satisfy no one, but with three sets of separate and conflicting objectives, no one, least of all customers, is going to be very happy.

But perhaps the biggest pitfall is a misunderstanding of emphasis.  Most companies invest almost no time in planning and listening to their customers before they decide to build an online community.  I am asked to come in to "simply" put it up. It's a real recipe for failure. When a far more effective allocation of effort would be to spend 80% of the time planning and 20% it implementation.

The stand out companies, those that have the very best online communities, are those that have spent a great deal of time and effort listening and analyzing their market before selecting the specific social media tool.  

Mobile is primed to take off – is your company ready?

According to Infontics Research, it is estimated that there will be some 5.9 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by 2013 from its current 4.3 billion, making it, according to Forrester, the leading point of Internet access in three years.  Observes Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, “mobile is ramping faster than any ‘new newthing’and faster than PC or even PC notebooks.”

Will your company be ready for it?

Think that this is not for your high tech B2B?  Think again.

When did you last see a professional without a cell phone?

Not recently I bet.

Not only are smart phones predicted to grow faster than desktop or notebook PCs, but they promise to become the most important way to access the Internet via a browser or "app". These small software applications, designed to perform a singular or multiple related tasks, are growing explosively.  And every organization needs think how it might use them and other new mobile possibilities.   

Here are a few of the possibilities (with thanks to B2B marketing guru, Christine (CK) Kerley):  web sites sized expressly for mobile, mobile apps, location aware services, video, SMS alerts, augmented reality and bar codes.

And what about the benefits?   Here are a few: to extend your organizations reach across a new range of media, to extend your brand’s presence across the most important new media, to create highly customized messages to individual people, to extend your existing marketing investment, and not least of which, to be able to measure how you are doing.

What are some of the things you can do today?  According to CK, you make your web site “mobile friendly”, develop a web site expressly designed for mobile devices, extend your brand’s value and engagement though apps, repurpose content and video for that smaller space.

Mobile is primed to take off  – is your company ready?

 

Key Trends in Web 2.0: Acceleration of Change

It has been a year since I last taught and almost a decade that I have begun to contemplate the impact of new Internet technologies on marketing and communications.

Despite that, I am taken aback by the speed of change that has occurred in the intervening time.  There is almost nothing I would teach the same way from when I started –- and very little from a year ago.  Half of the key tools I used to showcase the possibilities of new Web 2.0 technology have either been absorbed by larger vendors or have simply gone away.  Bloglines, an RSS aggregator for reading syndicated news feeds was to be shut down in November 2010, and instead was purchased by Merchant Circle and is to be kept alive.  And the fate of Deliocious, a favorite book marking site, hangs by a thread in the midst of Yahoo layoffs said to have hit Delicious hardest

But the real issue is that the Internet has evolved and changed and the real time information RSS provides has been made more irrelevant as people turn to Facebook and Twitter to identify what is important.  “Today RSS is the enabling technology – the infrastructure, the delivery system. RSS is a means to an end, not a consumer experience in and of itself,” observes social media strategist Paul Gillin.  As a result, demand for RSS aggregation has slowed significantly.  Bloglines isn’the only service to feel the impact.

Blogging, podcasting and wikis are no longer something most of my clients run from, but use, but now as part an overall social media strategy and developing that strategy has become more important.

The succinct chart I would have used to compare traditional versus Web 2.0 media would be pathetically outdated without a third column that would indicate the growing importance of social. (see below:

Traditional                     Web 2.0                        Social

push                              pull                                  share

publish                          engage                             exchange feelings, experiences

top down                       bottom up                        my circle of friends

mass markets                small sesgment                specific customer

sell                               engage                             build relationships 

Moreover while new social media bear many of the characteristics of “older” Web 2.0 tools, social media amplifies the eco-system in ways we might have never imagined.  Today Facebook membership is 600+ million users and growing, making it, if it were a country, the 3^rd most populous in the world.

The importance of and growing power of social networking has been amply demonstrated.  Indeed it can be said that the revolution in Tunisia and the upheavals in Egypt would not have occurred without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. 

The growth and impact of mobile smart phones is staggering.  With the top mobile Internet markets accounting for some 670,000,000 3G subscribers. And some of the fastest growing markets are in some of the fastest growing countries, among them Indonesia, China, and Brazil. The US remains in the top position with some 136.6 mm subscribers, but not for long. (Mary Meeker) And it is happening at breath taking speed. 

The growing importance of web “eco-systems” and the evolution of new business models based on platforms that support them is another shift and an indication of market maturation (even if that maturation has barely begun).  There was a time, not long ago, when the plaint against most of the Internet's biggest brands had yet to show a business model.  Today, companies from Facebook to Linkedin to Netflix would have no such trouble. 

And is it a coincidence that Eric Schmidt, the “adult” in charge of Google for its first decade, just stepped down to enable co-founder Larry Page, take charge.  For all of its impressive success, Google has yet to prove it can “do social”.  

While many companies now have a blog and have at least dabbled in social media to communicate and engage with customers, acceptance of new social tools -- behind the firewall -- is growing at a much faster rate.  In everything from Twittering, posting videos or sharing across the organization new Internet tools not only offer communication and collaboration but a means to measure what works

Demand for video, made so popular with YouTube, has gone mainstream for every size of organization  with good reason.  It is an amazingly egalitarian way for small companies and organizations –- and large ones -- to break through the tidal wave of information and be heard.

All of these new tools are making their way into the marketer’s arsenal, and I look forward to exploring them all and other trends and technologies in my new class.

 

Key Trends in Web 2.0 and Social Media Technologies

I am getting ready to teach my Stanford CSP Web 2.0/Social Media class again in the fall. Instead, however, of presenting an introductory class, this will be a follow on examining important new trends, things to consider once you have a feel for Facebook and have, perhaps, tweeted.  What next?  How do you apply what you have learned for your company or organization to communicate, market, and sell?

I must confess I am enthralled by these questions and am taken aback by the breathtaking pace of change.  Truly, it is mind bending.  I am going to pick up where I left off with my earlier classes, and write about what I am finding, the trends and key issues and how they are playing out from a marketing perspective.

Today, if I had to choose some of the most important or big themes of the past year there would be 8:

          1.  Unrelenting pace of change (and the compression of time on the Internet)

          2.  Growing importance of social

          3.  Accelerating predominance of mobile as the new platform

          4.  “Maturation” of market with new eco-systems, business models and platforms

          5.  Increased importance of local (and location-aware)

          6.  Breathtaking ramp demand/supply for video

          7.  Segmentation of markets, fragmentation of channels and integration of traditional and new media strategies

          8.  Increasing impact of global, whether or not your business is global

To this I would add 3 important smaller trends:

          1.  Growing use of social media behind the enterprise firewall

          2.  Increased adoption of network gaming 

          3.  Critical importance of listening/monitoring/analyzing

I will be writing about each of these trends here and would welcome your feedback and comments.