More interaction sounds nice, but what’s it really worth to your business? This case study, presented at LavaCon 2014, shows how TechTarget leverages user-generated content to meet business goals and increase traffic, registrations and leads while also providing an improved user experience across 80 sites. In addition to exploring specific tactics, this presentation also covers strategies for wrangling development resources and getting the buy-in of the employees who make it all work.

1. From Comments to Content:
Building Real Value from
Community Participation
A case study romantic comedy
@ben_rubenstein #LavaCon
Ben Rubenstein

2. The plot
 A B2B tech media company has been unlucky with
commenting integration in the past
 A new way of thinking could create a real
relationship, but…
 Can resource and workflow challenges be overcome
so everyone can find community love, actually?
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3. The cast
Community Team
Editorial
Development C-Suite
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4. Once upon a time…there was lonely content
 Pre-2011: No comment function on editorial content.
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5. Once upon a time…there was lonely content
“Our users don’t
care about that.”
OR
“They can go over
to the community
for that.”
(<10% crossover b/w
editorial and
community sites)
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6. The Dating Circuit
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7. The dating circuit
 Anonymous
comments
 Difficult to interact
 Minimal moderation
 Limited value
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8. The dating circuit
 Disqus
 Improved ease
of use
 No integration
 No registration
value
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9. The dating circuit
 Fly-in polls
 Closed questions
only
 Responses
combined with
general comments
 Quantity>quality
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10. The dating circuit
 Trying to track down a comment or moderate a
thread? Good luck…
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11. The challenge: A real relationship
 Create a positive
experience for users
 Make it easy for all
involved to manage
and interact
 Make comments
useful and valuable
for the entire
business
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12. What is love?
 Better understanding of
target audience
 Audience engagement
with brand/employees
 Traffic increase
 Content production
increase
 Membership increase
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13. The meet-cute: Stumbling into a solution
 Comment
‘repository’ driven
by existing
community site
 Interaction points
support content
through links
 Editors and
contributors
incentivized to
participate
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14. Getting to know you…
 Users create a community profile/username to
interact
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15. Getting to know you…
 All content gets automatically generated discussion
page w/ synced comments
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16. Getting to know you…
 Editorially created discussion questions create
second entrance point, interaction opportunity
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17. Getting to know you…
 Automated comment notifications to authors, editors
+ commenters
 Tag-based activity emails to subscribers
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18. Getting to know you…
 Moderation via community back-end (WordPress)
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19. Getting to know you…
 Content/discussions/users showcased on community
site
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20. Friends with benefits
 Expected increases in:
 Inbound links/search
visibility
 Site registrations
 Return traffic
 Visibility for
contributors/editors
 Interaction among
community and site
members
 Data for editorial content,
marketing campaigns,
sales conversations
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21. Will it work out?
 How will we mesh
separate systems
and teams?
 Who handles tagging
and content updates?
 Where does this fit in
the editorial
workflow?
 Will users get it?
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22. Circle of friends (and frenemies)
Internal user
feedback identifies:
 Early adopters,
supporters,
skeptics
 Potential workflow
issues
 Topic-based
challenges
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23. Meet the parents
Making the case for
development
resources:
 What’s the goal?
 What’s the
business benefit?
 What’s the
alternative?
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24. Relationships = work
 Data cleanup
 Profile setup
 Taxonomy updates
 Design mockups
 Daily scrum
 Daily scrum
 Daily scrum…
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25. Consummation
All my hard work
has paid
off…we’re getting
a new
commenting
system!!
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26. It gets complicated
 Success means everyone participates
 Create discussion questions
 Monitor and respond to comments
 Make user interaction a priority
Wait, this
isn’t just
going to
be easy?
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27. It gets complicated
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28. It gets complicated
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29. The grand overture
3 rules for successful communication:
 Speak the language
 Keep it simple (and positive)
 Know what you’re asking for
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30. The grand overture
“Beautiful Aurelia, I’ve come here with a view of asking
you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person,
because I hardly knows you, but sometimes things are so
transparency, they don’t need evidential proof. And I will
inhabit here, or you can inhabit with me in England. Of
course I don’t expecting you to be as foolish as me, and of
course I prediction you say ‘no’… but it’s Christmas and I
just wanted to check.”
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31. Our strategy
 Meet face-to-face with
everyone impacted
 Broadcast success
stories and highlight
early adopters
 Stay visible with
regular communication
 Do the gruntwork to
prove out value
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32. Communication efforts
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33. Communication efforts
Infographic, emails,
meetings
Examples of success
stories
Communicate to
contributors
Communicate to sales
(vendor relationships)
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34. Communication efforts
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35. Making it official
 Discussion questions
part of the editorial
workflow (300+ created
each month)
 All editors (and many
contributors) have
profiles
 Community
registrations tracked
 Daily notifications sent
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36. Reviews
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37. The numbers are in…
 6000 comments/responses over first 10 months
(12K over previous 3 years)
 4000+ new-to-network registrations
 20% CTR on comment notifications
 Community participants view 3 times as many
pages, stay 5 times as long on sites as average
visitor
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38. ‘Til death do us part…
‘Honey do’ list:
 Testing/feature
optimization
 Full integration of
community into network
– profiles, pages,
experience
 Continued workflow
discussions
 Increased community
content/moderation
 Full integration, tracking
and communication of
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39. Lasting impact
 Changed the
internal perception
about community
and content lifecycle
 Entered new
editorial, sales +
marketing
conversations
 Set the stage for
increased
resources, new
roles
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40. Credits
 benrubenstein.net
 linkedin.com/benrubenstein
 @ben_rubenstein
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