The topic of online community strategy is one of the things that occupies a large chunk of my mental cycles. I've written about a pretty basic process and framework a few times over the years, and I think the baseline concepts have held up well. You can read a couple of relatively recent posts here (I'd love to hear your thoughts):
How to Develop a Community Strategy
Holistic Community Strategy

Why am I Doing This?
I'm very passionate about the opportunities that online communities and social media bring to the table, and I've had my fair share of real world experience (10+ years), but the primary reason I want to write this series is pretty simple:
Organizations are still challenged with setting strategy. From our efforts with the Online Community Research Network, we still see that only about 25% of our participant organizations have a comprehensive community strategy in place.

Over the next few weeks, I will explore the following topics, offering my own opinions and insight, data from our ongoing community research, as well as other relevant content from experienced community-building professionals. I'll also try to post as many templates that I use (or can borrow), where appropriate. In short: I'll be posting, you will be adding to the discussion, and we will all (hopefully) be making our day to day community practices a little better. I hope that sounds like fun

The Topics
The topics, which generally follow my strategy development process, will be:

1. Goal Definition:
How to assemble an internal stakeholder team and facilitate definition of business goals for the community.

2. Member Needs Research:
Processes and techniques for engaging community members in a process of discovery and conducting member "needs" research.

3. Social Media Ecosystem Research:
Methodology for conducting a discovery exercise of the relevant parts of the social web to find out where your community (or potential community) is already working and playing.

4. Designing an Online Presence Architecture (with a hat tip to Chris Brogan):
Factoring the goals of the business, the needs of the members, and the opportunities in the social media ecosystem to create a presence architecture that maps out where to focus engagements.

5. Engagement Planning:
How to develop content & activity plans for the community, including
–Where: to engage (home, outposts)
–Who: responsible party
–How: specific activity
–When: frequency of activity
–What: expected outcomes (prototypical metrics!)

6. Community Platform Selection:
Guidance on how to select a community platform, along with recent ratings for major platforms.

7. Management & Moderation
An overview of the important and evolving role of the Online Community Manager, building an online community team, and best practices on moderation.

8. Metrics & Reporting
What metrics to collect, what they tell you, who to report them to, and how often.

9. Policy Creation & Roll-out
How to develop community and social media policies that fit your organization, and how to deploy them.

10. Governance
Creating a governance structure in your organization, keeping exective stakeholders informed and engaged, and achieving the right balance of of inter-departmental communication and guidance.

11. Superusers / Elites
A review of the best superusers programs, with a focus on process, identification and incentives.

Again, I would LOVE your feedback on the topics above. My goals is to write an article a week over the next 12-14 weeks. Each article will be labeled "Back to Basics", and will be tagged #ocb2b

We announced our partnership with ReadWriteWeb in August of this year. One of the best resources we've seen from ReadWriteWeb this year is their Guide to Online Community Management, which is a great primer to the ins and outs of managing an online community. Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick and his team have sifted through massive amounts of information to cull out the most salient points and relevant sources for thinking about engaging in online community-building activities and getting started with online community management.

The Report Covers:

The Basics
The definition of an online community manager, assessing the need for community features on your site, and reasons for participating in the social media ecosystem (like Twitter & Facebook).

Do Startups Need Community Managers?
The blog post and comments that triggered the report: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_a_community_manager.php

ROI
Perspectives from the field, including Jeremiah Owyang and Joe Cothrel.

Job Description
A thorough exploration of the role of Community Manager, and key differences between the community role and more "traditional" roles like marketing and customer support.

The Marketing / Engagement Balance
A discussion of the convergence of activities for the Community Manger role.

Dealing with Challenging Community Members
How to deal with "problem" community members and how to redirect the negative energy.

Interviews with Community Managers
Including Dawn Foster and Lucia Willow

The report also lists a number of key online and in-person resources (including Forum One's Online Community Unconferences).

Online companion
One of the most innovative things about the report is the companion content site that curates the content streams from the contributors to the report in a one place.

If you are interested in purchasing the report, you may do so here.

In addition to studying compensation during our second annual Online Community & Social Media Compensation study (summary here), we also want to dig in to issues related the organizational environment that community and social media professionals work in. One key dimension is overall job satisfaction.

As part of the research, we asked the question: Please rate your overall job satisfaction?
Of the 370 respondents, most are "somewhat satisfied" with their jobs with an average satisfaction score of 4.1 and a median score of 4. The average satisfaction score was slightly less than last year’s score of 4.2. It is encouraging that while there is an economic downturn, the overall satisfaction with Online Community positions is well above average. This indicates the combination of salary, benefits, work environment and subject matter is working for most of the respondents. The economy can't be ignored as a major factor of influence on satisfaction scores, as a tough economic environment generally discourages folks from aggressively exploring new opportunities and tending to stay with existing positions.

The graphs below show data from the satisfaction questioned presented in a couple of ways: answers form our 2008 survey compared with 2009, and overall satisfaction compared between genders.

2008 Satisfaction vs. 2009



Satisfaction by Gender


As you can see from the graphs, average overall satisfaction was down slightly from 2008 to 2009. You can also see that women were less satisfied than their male counterparts.

A few write in answers from the report that add color to the graphs:

Unfortunately I feel that most companies are still unable to fully grasp the importance of a dedicated social media team. They do not see a direct correlation between social media and ROI, and therefore are hesitant to put as many resources (both people and money) into social media as is typically necessary. Granted, I was on the periphery of social media for the last three years while I was in graduate school; however since my graduation and re-immersion into social media, I haven't noticed much of a change. Most social media job postings are for intern positions.

I think, even still, a lot of organizations (executives and HR) don't understand what we do, and therefore tend to undervalue it. I was laid off from my previous job last year and although I found another job fairly quickly, compensation was a struggle. I ended up settling for less compensation than I wanted in order to get back in a job quickly.

Engagement with the online community and interacting with others in the field is the most rewarding part of my job.

Because community management is often rooted in customer support organizations, compensation tends to be determined relative to CSRs. In fact, more and more community managers play a critical role in shaping customer experience and ultimately brand, and their compensation needs to reflect that value in a way more commensurate with significant marketing roles.

Perhaps the only one other comment I would suggest is that the corporate world needs to understand that community building is a full time job and as such we need official job descriptions put together by HR that are aligned with the business needs as well as the personal career development opportunities from knowledge workers. Something we haven't even started to think about just yet!

Unless Online Community and Social Media is considered a valuable part of an organization and an intrical part of the overall customer touch processes, it won't get the resources and funds to grow. The value given directly correlates into the # of bodies dedicated to support it and the salaries that are paid.

On the one hand, community and social media professionals still seem very enthused about their jobs, and the emerging "social" industry. On the other hand, issues related to lack of standards on community and social roles, team structure, funding as well as difficulty showing financial ROI (in some cases) are clearly starting to cause fatigue.

What do you think? How satisfied are you in your community or social media role?

Last year, Forum One recognized that one of the key issues community and social media professionals face is that we (as an industry) are suffering from a lack of solid benchmarks, including compensation of online community and social media professionals. In July of 2008, as part of our ongoing research efforts with the Online Community Research Network, we conducted the first comprehensive study and gained valuable insight about online community and social media professional's compensation, team structure, and current job satisfaction.

In July of 2009, we launched the second annual Online Community & Social Media Compensation study, and received approximately 370 qualified responses. Participants represent a comprehensive sampling of organizations involved in building online communities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, media & entertainment, retail and independent consultants. A sample of the 300+ organizations that participated include (with their permission):
Answers Corp., Autodesk, Avid, Best Buy, Cartoon Network (Turner), Consumer Reports, Electronic Arts, hi5, IBM, KaBOOM!, Nokia, Quest Software, Sage Software, Seesmic, Sony Online Entertainment, The Knot, and Yahoo!

This year's report was truly global in scope, and included respondents from the USA, UK and Canada as well as Australia, Argentina, Spain, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine.

Several key issues pertaining to online community and social media salaries surfaced during this report, including:
• The gap between the average male and female salaries widened, with male respondents averaging $86,644 (up from $85,423 in ’08) and Females averaging $75,624 (down from $77,319 in ’08).
• The majority of respondents reported a salary increase in 2009, but the percentage compared to last year was down, as was a significant increase in the number of respondents who took a salary decrease in 2009 compared to 2008.
• Average overall job satisfaction was down by a fraction, from 4.2 (out of 5) in 2008 to 4.1 (out of 5) in 2009.
• Several respondents mentioned feeling like they were being inadequately compensated because of lack of data available regarding community and social media salaries, as well as lack of understanding of community and social media ROI relative to their organization’s activities.

Demographics
Key demographic and background information about the respondents:
• The majority of the respondents are Female (52%) vs. Male (48%).
• The majority (77%) of respondents are from the USA.
• Most of the respondents have more than 5 years of experience, completed a Bachelors Degree, and work 41-50 hours per week.
• The majority of respondents work for a Profit Based Organization (85%) vs. Non-Profit (15%).

Industry



Years of Expereince




Work Environment

Location of Community Team
The majority of responses indicate their Community teams reside in the Marketing and Community departments. “No formal structure” and “Throughout the company” were also popular responses. The placement of the community team seems to be shifting to Marketing and Community departments. Last year 20% reported residing in the Marketing department and only 19% reported that they had their own Community department.



Hours Worked Per Week
Most of the respondents (45%) work 41-50 hours per week.



Percentage of Time Dedicated to Community & Social Media
Approximately three quarters of the respondents (73%) said that their job duties were not only comprised of working within the online community, and that a percentage of their time is dedicated to other areas within their organization.




Compensation
The average salary of the research participants, $81k, is the same as last year. The mean was $77.5k, which is $10k higher last year. As in 2008, there were peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k). There were also peaks and dips throughout the salary spectrum for 2009, including peaks for the following salary ranges; $50-55k, $65-$70k, $90-$95k and $100-$105k.

Salary by Gender
On average, the female participants earned an annual salary of $75.5k, which was slightly lower than last year’s $77k. At $86.5K, the male participant’s average annual salary is one percent higher than last year. The overall average annual salary for all participants was the same as last year’s $81k.



Salary by Region: USA
Respondents in the southwest region of the USA reported the highest average / median salary. The average salary for the southwest region was $99k with a median of $102k, which is significantly higher than last year’s average salary of $85k.

The second highest average / median salaries in the USA are in the northwest region. These respondents have an average salary of $87k, which is slightly less than the average annual salary of 2008. Within the northwest region, California had a higher average annual salary ($92k) than reported last year ($89k).

Even though lowest average / median salary in the USA was the same this year as last, the southeast region did have the largest reported average annual decrease compared with last year. This year the southeast region had an average annual salary of $46k, whereas last year it was 72k.

There were general peaks on the high ends (more than 150k) and low ends ($0-$25k) for all regions, except for the Midwest region, which dipped at the low end and remained even at the high end.




Satisfaction
The average satisfaction score was slightly less than last year’s score of 4.2. It is encouraging that while there is an economic downturn, the overall satisfaction with Online Community positions is well above average. This indicates the combination of salary, benefits, work environment and subject matter is working for most of the respondents. Although female and male participants mostly rated as being satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs, the female participants are slightly more satisfied with their jobs than their male counterparts. The women had a higher percentage of rating in the somewhat satisfied category, whereas the men had a higher percentage rating for the somewhat dissatisfied category.




The Full Online Community & Social Media Compensation Report
The full 45 page report can be purchased here: http://store.onlinecommunityresearch.com/oncosomecosu.html
includes detailed information, analysis and charts on:
Participating organizations industry, size and history of community programs
Community Team Staff & Size
Education and experience of respondents
Compensation structures
Detailed benefits
Salaries
- Ranges
- Average by title
- Average by Gender, Age, Eduction
- Average by global location and USA Region
Salary Changes (Increase and Decrease)
Advice from many of the participants about factors that affect compensation, and the evolving roles and responsibilities of the online community team, the team's staff, and executives.

The tag for the Online Community & Social Media Compensation report is #occomp09.

This post is part of the #OCTribe series, intended to spark discussion amongst community practitioners on a bi-monthly topic. This week's "call to post" was initiated by Scott Moore:
The Aug 11 Topic: Fostering culture in and around online communities

I wanted to touch on negative influences of Online Community culture, and hopefully shed some insight in to how to manage these influences. This post is based on our Online Community Culture study in October of 2008, which is part of the ongoing research agenda of the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the factors that influence online community culture, and the steps community managers and strategists take in cultivating, and in some cases influencing, a community’s culture. We had over 75 participants in the research, representing many sectors, including software, tech, traditional media, social media and online community, and non-profits. Respondents seniority skewed towards Manager (44%), Directors & VP's (12%).

What issue can have the most negative impact on a community's culture?
From the research responses, we found the following to have the most negative effect on an online community's culture:

• Negative Content: The issue that most respondents said would have a negative impact on the community culture was related to content 25% (12) (negative content, irrelevant content or no content), trolls and spammers.


• Host Involvement: Host Involvement was also a commonly reported issue, including lack of host involvement 14% (7) and over controlling host 10% (5). It is an important factor, it seems from the responses we received, for hosts to tread the fine line of properly representing and supporting a community.


• Member Feedback: Another issue that was said to have a negative impact was a failure to respond to member’s comments and concerns 6% (3), and to actively cultivate and make use of member’s feedback 6% (3).

Other important issues that could have a negative impact on a community’s culture are lack of member participation 14% (7), lack of trust 10% (5), excessive moderation (3), lack of consistency (2) and poor user interface (2)

A graph of the most common write in responses:


Select write in responses about the different factors that negatively affect community culture:

Negative Community Content:

“"me too" posts, posts that waste people's time.”

Librarian, Non-Profit Organization

“Unprofessional actions including but not limited to, trolling, personal attacks, and disruptive behavior.”

Community Program Manager, Software Company

“Allowing negative attitudes without chiming in to encourage more positive interactions, also not responding to member’s complaints.”

Community Manager, Tools / Service Provider

Host Involvement:

“There are actually two issues that can negatively impact a community's culture: 1) too much involvement by the host organization (corporate politics or the host organization doing things it feels are important, not what the community views as important or needed) and 2) not enough involvement by the host organization (not listening to and responding to member's concerns, ideas and suggestions). There is a fine line that must be found in order to properly represent and support a community. And this is a challenge for many host organizations.”

Community Manager, Online Community / Social Media Company

“Being disingenuous in your interactions with the community culture (you will get busted), or otherwise pulling the blinds after you've made the effort to provide transparency.”

Director, Online Marketing & Community Development

“Short of the host going belly up and shutting off the servers? Lack of, or inconsistent, communication from the community host. This strips the feeling of control or impact on can have on their community which leads to less investment which leads to weaker communities. Trolls and spam can be disruptive, but they are only destructive when the hosts are absent, ineffective or inconsistent in supporting the values of the community.”

Independent Consultant, Consultancy

Ignoring Member Feedback:

“Failure of the host company to respond to it's members. Failure to listen and respond to their comments. When we work with our members on changes to the site, some ideas can get expensive. We explain that we're bootstrapped and , although we love the idea, can't do it at this time. They understand. But to ignore it or just say 'no' would set the wrong tone. Honesty with our members has a tremendous upside.”

Co-founder, Online Community / Social Media Company

Lack of Trust:

“Lack of trust in the reputation of its members”

Online Community Strategist, Media Company

Excessive Moderation:

“Inexperienced (overzealous) moderator intervention, particularly in response to external pressures (a spammer, a "too-salesy" vendor post, perceived threat from other communities, etc.).”

Analytics Country Manager, Agency

Poor User Experience:
“Bad user experience can kill a community incredibly quickly - doesn't matter if the community is online or physical, bad experience brings it to a stop”
Community & Education Marketing Manager, Software Company

Creating a Positive Culture:
It's clear from the research (and the write in comments) that a few key factors to prevent or manage the negative influences are:

Be a good host - Ensure a clean, well lit place from a user experience perspective. Be present in the community, and participate in the community. BE transparent about your intentions for hosting the community, and about any changes or updates to the community and to any policies or guidelines.

Be clear about policy - Post behavior guidelines prominently, and ensure that are easily understood. Educate members by example by your actions as well as highlighting examples of positive behavior and contribution.

Be even about moderation - Be consistent in enforcing moderation guidelines, and keep visible punitive action to a minimum.

Listen. Then listen some more - create as many channels of feedback as you can manage, including forums, feedback email alias and soliciting feedback via regular satisfaction surveys. As important as listening? Ensure the community feels heard by acknowledging the feedback. Even if you can't respond to every email (really?), you can regularly post answers to questions or feedback you have gotten.


We want to hear from you
What are your thoughts? Did we miss any of the negative influence factors? What suggestions do you have for preventing or managing negative community influences?

Last week we announced the 2nd topic in the #octribe discussion: Valuing Member Participation and Contribution in Online Communities.

From the "Call to Post" last week:

" Admittedly, this topic is a bit of a double edged sword: Assigning financial value to online community member participation and contribution.

On one hand, a community manager could can paint a compelling portrait of value for internal stakeholders by determining a financial value to member participation (assistant moderate, guiding discussions, welcoming new members, etc.) and assigning value to member contributions (support forum posts, tutorials, reviews, feedback and ideas).

On the other hand, if an organization were to make the valuations of member participation and contribution public, it would likely set off a firestorm of debate about member compensation, legal boundaries around "volunteer opportunities", and ultimately, force the host organization to account for true cost and true value of the activities and content created in their online community.

It seems clear that it would be useful for organizations to have at least notional values for member contributions and participation. What is less clear is how (if at all) to talk about this value with the community, and how (if at all) social capital is exchanged for financial capital in online communities.

Several folks participated in the discussion, and had perspectives on how, if and why to measure and quantify the value of member participation.

Here is what the #octribe community had to say:

@martinreed

"The value of participation in a community should be measured by its effect on brand perception, equity and aspirations. #oct"

@SueOnTheWeb

"If cmty is displaying cpm Ads, financial value of member contributions would be each page view = Ad displayed = Revenue generated. #octribe"

Value and Community Behavior Metrics: “Behavior Stoppages?” - Connectible Dots

"His big question: “What is the arbitrage between social and financial capital?” I don’t have an answer, but I do have a further question. Even if all of the rewards are experiential, and nothing looks like compensation, could an organized community that knows about metrics and valuation of a business do a “behavior stoppage” of desired activities as protest against a company action? Valuing behavior like work could extend the work metaphor in directions beyond the company’s valuation. “Interesting” organized group dynamics are possible too.

Create value metrics for both host and community - PHOOM!

"Some discussion of assigning value to members in a community tend toward how valuable a particular community member is to the host of the community (be they a brand, reseller, or even non-profit). This often raises concerns that community members are being taken advantage of. The AOL volunteer lawsuit gets thrown out as one of the third-rail types of stories -- danger! do not touch! What is often lost is that AOL ran volunteer programs for a long time before the lawsuits with few issues. What changed? Part of the answer is that AOL was using free access as a perk for their volunteers. However, when AOL went from a rated service (access charged by the hour) to a flat-rate (unlimited access for a monthly fee), the value of that perk plummeted. It's not the whole reason some volunteers stood up against AOL, but it certainly added to some of the resentment."

..."but I challenge my fellow community managers and facilitator. What other kinds of positive feedback loops can we create that build value for different aspects of our communities such that even if the value were quantified as a number, people would still be willing to contribute?"

The value of volunteers - Confessions of a Community Junkie blog

"Here at Novell, volunteers answer forum questions, create and share technical documents, participate in beta testing, etc. etc. Everyone that reports a bug or makes a suggestion is a volunteer...it's just all a matter of scale. The value of all volunteer contributions could be very, very, very roughly estimated by equating forum answers to technical support calls, technical doc contributions to documentation, etc. but then not every forum post would be a support call and every document submitted wouldn't be written by the documentation department. What can you equate a bug report or beta participation to? Also, you should ask what is the value of a forum post or a blog entry when the interactions are not one-to-one but one-to-many or many-to-many where multiple parties benefit over an extended period of time?

The bottom line is that any attempt to put a dollar figure to volunteer contributions in a complex business environment would be spending a lot of time to come up with that rough estimate.

Like documentation, you know it's critical, you know it has value, you know you would lose customers without it, but you can't know the dollar figure in indirect revenue it brings to the company. You do it because you know it DOES have value as a cost of doing business."

If you posted on the #octribe topic, and I missed your post, please let me know. Also, if this discussion spawns any reactions or further thinking, please let me know that as well. The intention is to keep the conversation going!

Most organizations do not have a comprehensive community strategy in place. In most cases, community strategy is actually a set of tactics that individual departments are engaging in based on product or market segments. While this grass roots approach is where many organizations have to start, it is not a sustainable approach. The primary issue is one of valuing the activities, content and relationships of the community in the context of the host organization. Said another way, most organizations have no idea how to evaluate the cost of online community and social media activities, or how to asses the value of these activities because they haven't been internalized in to the organization's cultural, financial and operational value systems.

I've started to refer to a more comprehensive approach to community development as "Holistic Community Strategy". This concept builds on the techniques I outlined in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy"

In the Holistic Community Strategy framework, I see the following as the three most important contexts:

1. Host Organization (a.k.a. "The Business")
In order to understand value, the host organization has to have a series of internal conversations at a senior level and across most (if not all departments) about:
• its intention in engaging the community;
• the potential value the organization hopes to create for itself and its customers;
• the risk associated with engaging;
• the overhead, including headcount, budgets and staff time;
• the level of readyness to participate, and the required culture change to be successful

2. Customers (a.k.a. "The Members")
Customers (potential / current members) should be engaged in the development of community features, programs and policy. I cover techniques to do this in the post "How to Develop a Community Strategy".

3. Community Ecosystem
As I mentioned before, most community strategies tend to focus on the hosted properties of the organization. The reality is that there is an ever expanding universe of online touchpoints that an organization's community members are participating in. An "Ecosystem audit" should be conducting as part of a strategy development (or strategy course correction) exercise in order to discover where the centers or activity are, and who the most vocal and active participants are.

I gave the following presentation at the Community 2.0 conference this week, that provides an initial sketch of the framework. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.

Many organizations are involved with online community building activities, but few consider implications of their online communities on making their business more "green", or even better, more sustainable.

The case can be made that online community building activities support the three key areas of Sustainable Development:

From the Wikipedia definition of Sustainable Development:

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future.

... The field of sustainable development can be conceptually broken into three constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability.

While I don't propose that online communities can magically transform organizations into sustainability superstars, but I do think there is a case to be made that online communities can help support a more sustainable enterprise for many companies. Let's take a look at each constituent category that makes up sustainable development:

1. Environmental

As my colleague Jim Cashel pointed out in a post last year,

Online communities are green.

I believe that online community professionals should hook onto the "green" juggernaut, especially in three ways:

- Anyone involved with corporate green strategy should include an online community strategy;
- Anyone developing online community metrics should include carbon savings as an indicator;
- Anyone marketing online communities should speak to their "green" qualities.

I asked for examples (via Twitter) of communities focused on green and sustainable development issues, and John Kembel, CEO of HiveLive was kind enough to forward a couple of his favorite examples of Green / Sustainability communities:

See The Designers Accord -- just written up in FastCompany
(http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/100000-and-counting.html).
They just launched a community to start the conversation and to
promote sustainable design within the design community worldwide
(e.g., IDEO and others). Their website: http://designersaccord.org
and their brand new community: http://community.designersaccord.org

Another example:

Ryan Martens (CTO of Rally -- rallydev.com) is a strong proponent of
greening the software industry through Agile + Community. See
http://agilecommons.org/hives/6997a8ec6a/summary
E.g., using community to directly engage customers and involve them in
the software dev process rids companies of the 60% wasted development
in most apps (mostly because the conversation between product manager
and customer isn't tight enough). And they're doing lots of things as
a company in addition to promoting agile and using community.

2. Economic
There are a few obvious (and myriad not so obvious) economic benefits to firms engaging in community building activities, from the proven cost-reduction of support forums to the idea generation of innovation communities like My Starbuck Idea and Dell's Ideastorm. Online communities can be sources of tremendous value, and the value-creation happens in much more sustainable way (low environmental impact, source of value is easily replenished) than other processes like manufacturing of consumer goods.

3. Sociopolitical / Social Capital Development
The sociopolitical implications of online communities have inspired many an academic journal article, and the possible benefits range from a more transparent and representative government to supporting human rights worldwide. Online communities (and more generally, social media) allow for identity, sharing and connection at scales we haven't previously seen. As the world becomes smaller by being more connected, the connected individual (arguably) becomes more empowered. Specific examples of the sociopolitical implications of online communities range from social capital created and exchanged via Facebook, the mix of social and real capital that support the developing world on Kiva.org, or the potential for change that many hope for with the beginings of Change.gov .

It's Time to Consider Sustainability
The concept of thinking about online communities and social media through the lens of sustainable development is a nascent one, but given what is at stake, it's one who's time has come.

Quoting again from Jim's "Online Communities Are Green" post

We've always tried to cast our arguments for online communities in black and white. It's time to use a bit more green.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, feedback and examples.

If you are interested in discussing this topic in person, as well as other issues related to sustainability and environmental concerns in the enterprise, please consider joining us for the Green Enterprise Unconference on December 3rd in Mountain View, CA.

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of very grim economic news of late. The purpose of this post isn't to give an overview of the current economic situation, but rather to highlight possible implications of a slower economy on business, and by extension, on online community budgets. More importantly, I want to start a discussion about Community Managers can help their community's survive and thrive during the downturn.

We have seen this cycle before, and relatively recently. When the web 1.0 bubble burst, many "community"-based startups ceased to exist, and spending on online community development in the enterprise all but dried up. From personal experience, most of the community initiatives at Autodesk were suspended in the closing months of 2001, and we shifted focus to our discussion groups and some customer-generated content activities.

What was different with Community 2.0?
By late 2004 and early 2005, key changes in in the marketplace, in organizations attitudes and in customer (user / people online / etc) behavior led to an explosive growth of social media, use of social networking and increased online community building activities by many organizations.

Key factors were (IMHO, I won't list all):
• Cost of platforms dramatically decreased, and in some cases fell to zero
• Consumer and workplace broadband reached ~100% penetration
• Consumers accepted less formal content, trust in "people like me" exceeded authoritities
• A certain segment of the group formerly known as "the audience" decided they wanted to actively create, participate and connect
• Many companies started to accept and practice the principals outlined in the Cluetrain Manifesto, and in the many key books, blogs and conference that followed, evangelizing the metaphor of conversation

Things Were Going So Well, What Happened?
Earlier this year, we started to hear significant rumblings from wall street that things were not ok, particularly with the credit markets. Over the last two weeks, the markets have been in turmoil. Many organizations are seeing the dark shadow of a recession. Some argue we are already there. One thing is clear: most organizations have shifted to a more conservative outlook for 2009.

As organizations take a more sober look at the last quarter of 2008 and make projections for 2009, there are some likely implications for online community programs:
• Budgets will likely shrink
• Headcount will likely be frozen
• Positions may be consolidated (merging of roles)
• Layoffs may happen
• It will be harder to upgrade / make improvements to infrastructure
• Pressure will increase quickly and dramatically for some articulation of value
• Programs may be cut back
• In extreme cases, some community programs may be abandoned

Thriving in the Downturn
I want to be very clear here: I don't think the global economic circumstances mean gloom and despair for the entire online community sector. The circumstances for Community 2.0 that I outlined above still generally hold true, and I still believe most organizations can create real value by engaging in online community activity. Signs that interest in online community is still high are all around. For instance, demand for qualified community managers and strategists is at an all time high (even though we are starting to see the first hints of staff reduction).

However, I do think that Community Managers have some work to do in order to navigate some of the potential challenges I outlined above. I've outlined the following tactics that can help (and I'd love to here your suggestions via the comments).

• Focus on Defining / and Reporting Value
In order for your community strategy to be sustainable, you need to be able to articulate value back to the organization. This value has to be articulated, at least in part, in the cultural language of your organization. In some organizations, it's all about impact to customer loyalty, it some organizations, this value is growing an audience (member registrations). You will likely wind up with a report that is a mosaic of quantitative and qualitative sources. We've studied this issue in the Online Community Research Network, and you can see a report excerpt here:

Online Community ROI and Revenue Techniques

• Reach Out to Other Departments (CSR / Marketing / Support)
Online Communities offer value to almost every department in the organization, from HR (recruiting), to Support (call avoidance), to Marketing (awareness / reach), to the Product team (feedback, customer led innovation). Now is the time to reach out to other teams and create cross-organizations ties, and involve other teams in community building and engagement activities.

• Show the Cost of Not Participating
One way to show value back to management is to paint a picture of not having a community or community engagement strategy, and the associated costs and losses. These hypothetical costs can range from increased awareness of competitors to decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Be Honest About Your Strategy
Take a look at the community touchpoints and programs you are engaging in. Are there a few that have little or no participation? Are there features that score consistently low on your community research? Now is a good time to look at shedding these features and programs that are not creating value for your community. This is also an opportunity to involve the community in continuing to shape the experience and ongoing direction. Lastly, are there features or programs that you are struggling to maintain, that would be better served out in the community ecosystem? For instance, a particularly strong, independent Facebook group for your brand that you have been struggling with, or a user group that has a competitive feature on their site? Let it go.

• Stick Together
The worst feeling in trying times is feeling alone and isolated. If you and / or your team don't have peers at other companies to talk to and share strategies and tactics with, start making those connections now. There are lots of meetups (like my Online Community Roundtable), conferences and organizations (like the social media club and the online community research network) to help support you.


What do you think?
I would love to hear what you think, either via comments or email. Are you seeing changing attitudes towards your online community initiatives? Have you been affected by the downturn? Do you have advice or suggestions to help other navigate these issues?

The Online Community Compensation study was initiated in July of 2008 as part of our ongoing research efforts with the Online Community Research Network. Our intention of the study was to get a broad look at online community compensation, factors that effect compensation, and the current environment of the community team and community staff roles.

I posted key highlights from the report a few weeks ago.

Since then, we have been looking at other cuts of the data. One of the most interesting has been how salaries differ by region.

Key findings from the data
• The highest average / median annual salary in the USA comes from the research participants located in the northwest region. The average salary for the northwest region was $90k with a median of $90k.
• The lowest average / median annual salary in the USA comes from the research participants located in the southeast region. The average salary for the southeast region was $72k and the median was only $67k.
• There were general peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k) for all regions except the southwest regions.
• The northwest region peaked at the higher salary ranges than that of the other regions, peaking at both $65-75k and $85-105k
• The midwest region peaked at the lower salary ranges, peaking at both $45-55k and $65-85k.


As you can see below, our highest concentration of respondents was from the West, and in particular, CA.

Response Distribution by US Region:



Salary Averages and Medians by US Region



If you would like more information about the Online Communities Compensation report, feel free to contact me. The report can be purchased here.

One of the biggest challenges for those leading the community efforts for large organizations (or really, orgs of most sizes) is ensuring that the hosted community efforts of the organization are appropriate, valuable (both to the org and to the member / customer) and sustainable.

First, a little context. I worked at Autodesk for 6 years as the Online Experience Manager (basically a chief IA). The internal web team was structured as an agency within the company, and each division was a "client". This approach has pros and cons that I won't go in to now, but for the purposes of the conversation today, the effect was that we had oversight over most online activities, including any hosted community activity. One of the tools we used to ensure a quality online experience was to have our clients fill out a simple project brief describing their vision for the community.

Specifically, the brief covered:

• Client Team and Stakeholders


• A Summary of the initial community vision and purpose / rationale


• Executive sponsorship


• Community Manager and extended staff


• Desired features and content


• Goals "what does success look like?"


• Budget


• Launch date

I'm attaching a heavily modified version of the brief I used, updated with the benefit of a bit of hindsight.

I'd really love feedback on this, and would love to hear if you actually find it of use in your day to day practice.

You can download the brief template here:

oncomm_project_brief_v1

The LeFever's (Lee and Sachi) of commoncraft have done it again. Check out "Twitter in Plain English"



Do you tweet? Follow me on twitter, and I'll follow you back:
http://twitter.com/redplasticmonke

The Wall Street Journal published an article today on adverting and social media titled "Social Sites Don't Deliver Big Ad Gains".

The article offer a pretty good overview of the current state of online advertising with the backdrop of Microsoft's hostile takeover bid of Yahoo.

As Microsoft Corp. makes a $44.6 billion bet on Internet advertising with its unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc., there are signs that some of the biggest new places where consumers are flocking on the Web -- social networking and video-sharing sites -- are yielding advertising revenue slower than some Internet companies had hoped.

Here is the thing: ADVERTISERS ARE STILL TRYING TO USE THE SAME WEB 1.0 ADS FOR THESE SITES. I doesn't surprise me at all that social networks are slow to take on advertising, and that those that do are finding "crude" tools like adwords more effective than simply shoving the same dated banner ads down community member's throats.

The secret sauce for success (I believe) lies in adhering to general good community building techniques.

- Know your member (consumer)
- Offer them something of value
- Craft the offer in a human voice
- Be transparent about your intentions
- Be respectful of the member (privacy, needs, wishes, intelligence)
- Accept feedback
- Have thick skin
- Continue to innovate (i.e. try, try again)

We have some early examples of attempts at innovation, including Facebook's beacon, but there are still miles to go in this race.