This week's second Online Community Expert Interview is with Ron Casalotti. Ron is a Social Media guy who got his first PC in 1994. It came with free trial memberships to the online services of the day: AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Genie and ImagiNation Network. He joined them all, dropping each as their trial period ended -- except for AOL. Why? It had the best online “community”. Ron started participating in online activities with other members there and three years later AOL hired him. He's been hooked ever since. After 10 years at AOL, all in Community, where he was involved in everything from creating online content to setting up an offshore moderation team, he joined BusinessWeek as Director of User Participation where he is responsible for curating community centered around the Business Exchange social media information site including user outreach; content approval and community moderation.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the strategy behind BusinessWeek's Business Exchange? What are you trying to accomplish?

Start with the tenet that in business, as elsewhere, knowledge equals power, and emphasize that relevance is vital. Acknowledge the fact that important information is not limited to any one site (or even one’s own site of reputable and knowledgeable writers and editors). Recognize that there is no more precious resource to a business person than time. And then inject the formidable power of social media to amplify and organize all of these factors. That’s my recipe for BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange.

People ask me, “Is Business Exchange a content aggregator or a social network?” My answer is, “Yes.” Certainly, Business Exchange (“BX”) is a site that aggregates business information in the form of articles, blog posts, reference items and jobs organized by topic. But, we do not impose our idea of what those topics should be – our users suggest business oriented topics (currently 1,600+) that are of interest to them thereby creating a topic folksonomy. We also do not limit content found in BX from just BusinessWeek related sites. Any relevant content (even our competitors’) is welcomed and included.

But BX is at its heart a social media platform where people “vote with their clicks” on content that they find most important, displaying those items in a ranked Most Active list. This crowd sourced vetting of the most valuable content within a topic helps our users save time when trying to identify the most valuable information on each topic. And a professional profile on Business Exchange is highly ranked by Google further enhancing our users’ online personae. And so Business Exchange is a useful tool to the business professional, reinforcing providing information and engagement well beyond that of other business oriented sites that

BusinessWeek magazine has been around for 80 years and launched its online presence in 1994 with a traditional Web 1.0 print replicated online model. Since then the site has evolved into a modern, Web 2.0 companion presentation. With Business Exchange, we now complement that with a social media platform where our users contribute and share information found anywhere on the Web for the benefit of each other.

Q: What are the 3 key lessons you have learned from the process of "activating" the BusinessWeek community via Business Exchange

1. You cannot “manage” community, you need to participate in the conversation and engage your community members on a personal level
2. You need to engage your users wherever they may be socializing on the Web – not just on your site – and so we are active on Twitter (@bwbx) as well as LinkedIn (more on that below)
3. That business oriented users of our site act just like others social media participants do, with clear Key Influencers, Active and Passive users


Q: I notice that you are using the LinkedIn API to allow users to connect their profiles between the Business Exchange site and LinkedIn. What benefits does this connection offer to users and to the community at large?

Our LinkedIn involvement is a rare win-win-win situation. The user wins by automatically importing LinkedIn profile data to build their Business Exchange profile with minimum effort, a key point referenced by users via feedback. LinkedIn wins by exposing its business professional oriented social network to their target demographic on Business Exchange. BusinessWeek wins by linking with a large (45 million users) social network comprised of our target user.

We also utilize the Twitter API to allow for simultaneous posting of reactions to content linked into Business Exchange on users’ Twitter stream.


Q: How has the BusinessWeek print publication changed as a result of being connected with an online community of readers?

The BusinessWeek magazine and BusinessWeek.com Web site provide our readers with a multimedia business news presentation. Content on the BW.com site however changes daily and so reference from within the print magazine is limited. Business Exchange, by having a growing number of permanent topics to point to, now enables the magazine to add an info box at the end of articles pointing the reader to the relevant BX topic online for more information on the subject at hand.

Q: What advice about online communities would you have for other print publications trying to evolve their business strategy?

Should we or shouldn’t we: The only bad action is inaction. The future of print based media is uncertain, but what can be concluded today is that it will never be the same as it was and Web use will continue to rise. So – get online now.

Fallacy Believed by Many: Social media is easy – anyone can head up our effort. Just because your CEO has a LinkedIn profile, or your Marketing Manager is on Facebook doesn’t mean they understand social media or can successfully lead your foray onto the Web. And the folks who built your Web site? Let them stick to their area of expertise (there’s a reason lab-techs stay on the ground while astronauts man the capsule). Oh, and hiring an intern to do it because “they’re young and they get” it, doesn’t work either. Social Media is a skill set whose best purveyors are experienced professionals in the space and for whom participation in those sites is second nature. Find one to head your effort.