3. Challenges to community success
Often a lack of clarity around purpose & therefore
business relevance
An online presence doesn’t mean it’s a community
Vital nature of sustained stewardship & facilitation not
well understood
Creating value, assessing value communicating value
5. Community principles & dynamics
Communities have a lifecycle
and a unique set of dynamics
Transparency
Participation
value is achieved
participants see
each other’s
contributions
through
participation
Collective
created &
expanded from
wide contributions
Emergence
Persistence
contributions
captured for
sharing, viewing
value emerges
from collective
interactions
Independent
engagement
anytime,
anyplace, at will
The Social Organization: How to use social media to tap the collective genius of customer and employee,
Bradley, A., , McDonald, M., Harvard Business Press, 2011
6. Community Lifecycle
Inception
Establishment
High value content
sparks engagement
Growing sense of
community
Comm. Mgr. direct
outreach, initiates
discussions,
prompts response,
relationship building,
seeks interaction to
content
Regular
communications
Program of online
events – forums,
expert bloggers,
original content
Growth
Higher levels of
interaction,
engagement
Community sense
Social media channel
of shared history,
engagement
achievements
Recruit volunteers
Volunteer-led
Survey, poll
activities
members
Advancement in
Recognition
UX, platform,
programs
metrics, analytics
Promote community
Maturity
Community
more selfsustaining
Subgroup,
affinity group
formation
Reformation of
purpose
Advanced analytics
A life-cycle perspective on online community success, Iriberri, A ., Leroy, G., ACM Computing Surveys, Volume 41 Issue 2, February 2009
7. Planning elements
Engage and education stakeholders
Identify strategic business alignment
Plan for inception & establishment
Determine critical success factors and KPIs for
early phases
Lay groundwork & infrastructure for growth and
maturity phases
Inception
8. Business Strategy Alignment
Inception
External Facing
Internal Facing
Customer engagement, loyalty
Productivity
• Obtain feedback, information on
• Increase quality of knowledge
customer needs
• Improve customer service
Increase idea creation
• Enhance problem solving
• Accelerate new business and
product innovation
• Save time during information
seeking and sharing
Visibility, reputation
• Improve or enhance reputation
• Increase access to expert
knowledge
• Exchange information with
credible sources
Employee communication, trust
• Better understanding & alignment
across organizations
• Increase level of trust
8
9. Community Business Model
Value Proposition
Market Segment
Value Chain
Revenue Impact
Position in value
network
Competitive Strategy
Inception
Being involved in this community is important to me
because…
Customers or prospects, partners or employees. Market
segment(s), targeted level (CXO, leaders, end users etc)
Expert curation > original content > topical forums >
showcase customer leadership > demonstrates commitment
to customer
Enhance customer loyalty, advance opportunity with
partners, give access to expertise, value to product or
support.
Identify how the community is aligned with business
initiatives or strategic engagements or programs
Differentiation, customer loyalty, satisfaction, underserved
segment, disruptive potential, product insight
10. Community Architecture
Inception
Community Management
Facilitates, stewards regular interactions
Face of community, promotes, advocates
Evangelizes, recruits, engages members
Manages volunteers
Monitor community health
Define, refine strategy, outcomes
Social Media, Marketing
& Communications
Platform, UX,
Analytics, Operations
Original content
Social media
Compelling, evolving UX
Expert curation
engagement & promotion
KPIs, benchmarks
Regular, online events
Regular member
Identify, manage tools
Targeted discussions
communications
Educate stakeholders
Promote trending topics
Marketing strategy
Metrics, reports
Content & Events
Programming
Governance
Terms, conditions
Executive sponsor
Company policies
Legal, IT, HR
11. 11
Critical Success Factors
Inception
• Identify executive sponsor
• Effective education of stakeholders
• Resourced for lifecycle and business strategy success
• Community manager, social media manager, content
specialists, analytics talent
• Content and programs: Plans and budgets for events, content
development, content curation, recognition programs
• Communications and marketing plan in place
• Metrics: tools, services to analyze effective performance
• Governance model alignment with larger organization
• Technology and user experience attuned to targeted community
12. Establishment
Cultivate, facilitate spectrum of engagement
Identify leaders, influencers
Recognition, volunteer programs
Regular cadence of events, programs, communications
Active cycle of engagement
Analytics, metrics aligned with purpose, relevant to management
Refine resource requirements for growth
Internal and external advocacy
Partnerships in place
Benchmarking, active listening
Frank Fiishbach/Shutterstock
12
17. Social roles in community
Editor
counselor
Sharer
Connector
lurker
expert
Creator
mitigator
infovore
Writer
re-broadcaster
monitor
critic
contextualizer
interlopernegotiator
synthesizor
gossip
broadcaster
Create an environment where people can bring
a multiplicity of approaches and roles
Support people moving in and out of leader,
active mentoring to lower profile roles
Thanks to Thomas Vander Wal, Gordon Ross
See Cathexis blog post: The City is Experienced on our Feet: Social Business as the Urban Planning
of Enterprise 2.0
18. Team
Collaboration
Community
Collaboration
Network
Collaboration
Crowdsourcing
Members of group known
to one another – shared
identify as part of a project
focus – even though
embedded in hierarchy,
participants cooperate on
equal footing
Shared identity around a
topic or set of challenges
Set of relationships,
personal interactions,
connections among
individuals who have a
personal reason to
connect.
Activity can be done by
anyone who wants to from
a large group
Problem solving,
resource and idea
sharing, clear task
interdependencies,
explicit timelines and
goals, members
Expertise of practice within
a domain
Quickly solve problems,
share ideas, make future
connections
Reputation
Anonymity is often ok, no
pre-defined credentials
necessary
Source of
Learning
Sustained interactions
across project timelines
Sustained partnership
From access to the
network
From access to the
network
Modality of
learning
Formal – through
experience of sustained
interaction and artifact
creation
Formal-experience of
practice is a learning
resource
Informal – through
interactions
Independent,
hyperspecialization, microtasking
Primary
value
Explicit, applied,
realized,
Explicit, applied, realized,
reframing
Tacit, immediate, potential
value
Explicit, applied, realized,
reframing
Secondary
value
Tacit, immediate,
potential value
Tacit, immediate, potential
value
Explicit, applied, realized,
reframing
Tacit, immediate, potential
value
Model
Collective intent
Collective intent
Nodes and links
Nodes and links
Purpose Motivation
Type of
learning
Pre-articulated or validated
reputation credentials
Money, Love, Glory – can
be all three
Reputation may follow
19. Resources
• Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and
networks: a conceptual framework, Etienne Wenger, Beverly Trayner,
Maarten de Laat, Open Universiteit Report 18, 2011
• Designing effective knowledge networks, Katrina Pugh and Laurence
Prusak, MIT/Sloan Management Review, September 2013
• Community Roundtable – Rachel Happe
• Feverbee – Richard Millington
20. Catherine
Shinners
Social Business Strategic Consulting
and Enterprise 2.0 Services
Palo Alto, CA +1-650-704-3889
catherineshinners@mercedgroup.com
blog: collaboration-incontext.com
www.mercedgroup.com
http://about.me/catherineshinners
President
Merced Group
www.linkedin.com/catherineshinners
@catshinners
Skype: CatherinePaloAlto
21. Case Study
• Business benefit - visibility
and reputation
• Segment – education leaders
and innovators
• Purpose – foster peer-to-peer
leadership dialogue –
education innovation
• Expert curation, original
content, events, featured
luminaries
• Recognition program
• Customer UX oriented at
education leader segment
Public Service of Cisco
24. A Focus on Community Building
Establishment
Awareness and global reach – new members
Engage with and facilitate leader conversations
Drive participation and community engagement
Advance sense of connection for leaders
Better understand community needs – active listening
25. Awareness, Reach Recruitment
LinkedIn Group
• Promoting events, content
• Bring content to relevant discussion groups
• Email through LI - campaigns to bring in your members
Twitter
• Targeted, focused outreach to influencers, leaders,
innovators
• Meet and greet – call to action to join
Facebook
• Targeted ads to leaders with geo expansion
• Global content, commentary
26. Community Connection
Engagement
Participation
Active listening
Authentic voice
LinkedIn
Listen & participate in relevant domain groups
Monitor expert discussions
Calls to action to community events
programming
Twitter
Monitor domain #hashtags for trending topics
Participate in #hashtag live chats
Promotion of community events, content
YouTube
Great, original content featuring peer leaders
27. Community Engagement
Be an authentic,
active participant in
the conversation
• Focus, target outreach at members
level, quality engagement peer-to-peer
• Actively participate in conversations,
You have to
be engaged
to get
engagement
bring great content, cultivate authentic
stance
• Bring new experiences – help them
become more adept
• Innovate, experiment, display leadership
28. Value Metrics for Community KPIs
A New
Framework for
Measuring
Results in Social
Media
• Audience Engagement
Jeremiah Owyang &
John Lovett, The
Altimeter Group, 2010
• Sentiment Ratio
• Share of Voice
• Advocate Influence
• Idea Impact
• Benchmarking
Editor's Notes
Designing a user experience not equivalent to creating community
Participation-Value is achieved through participation-a community must be catalyzed and mobilized for participation through purposeCollective-A mass collaboration effort is actively created and expanded through the continues widely-cast contributions of the participantsTransparency–all participants see each other’s contributions – to view, re-use, augment, validate, critique and rateIndependence-participants can engage anytime, anyplace – Any member of the collective contributes, completely independently of any other (i.e., not directed to do so by a manager, etc).Persistence-contributions are captured for others in the community to view and shareEmergence-behaviors cannot be modeled, designed, optimized or controlled like a traditional system – value emerges from the collective interactions
Community lasts as long as the community provides value
It can be hybrid – SAP people and third party developers
In putting your community strategy together using an architectural approach like this will help you structure your plans, identify your resource and budgeting needs There are a few concepts here that are important – Community management – is a new breed of management professional, excellent business judgement, people and Web 2.0 saavy, ability to communicate and educate stakeholders, and it even as the community may become more self-sustaining, it remains a vital role in all stages of the community lifecycle.The other area that is a relatively emerging but important area is expert curationAnd when it comes to analytics and reporting – this is an additional area of education that stakeholders may need, and reports and metrics need to be crafted so that human beings can understand them.
Executives and senior managers and other important stakeholders – Often may not have deep, direct experience with social media and online collaboration – no visceral sense of the opportunity and valueResourced against your architecture and plansCommunity management, content curation and social media management is attention and time intensive – constantly! Analytics must be in place from the start.Community-level communications reinforces community behaviors