What's Inside:
Greetings Online Communiacs,
Wow, 2007 is almost gone. Toast. Finito. And what a fantastic year for innovation and activity in the online community and social media space! We have a 2007 wrap up below, as well as our normal assortment of tasty online community goodies. To add to the festivities, tell us your online community wish for 2008 and you might win an itunes gift certificate.
Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Bill (Bing) Johnston, Editor
bjohnston@forumone.com
A Message From Our Sponsors:
SolutionSet
Strategic consulting with custom creative and technology solutions to achieve your organization's Community goals. SolutionSet works with you.
http://www.solutionset.com
Online Community Research Network
The OCRN is a research-based network of online community pros studying best practices for building, managing, and creating value with communities.
http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com
Online Community Highlights
The Big Ideas of 2007
The following are, to our eyes, the "big ideas" that emerged in 2007. We feel these ideas set the stage for the meaningful activity that will play out in 2008.
The "New New" Online Community
One of the most cogent and comprehensive points of view on the emerging opportunities and challenges with online communities is John Hagel's. The following post expands on the keynote he gave at Community 2.0, and is one of the best thought pieces written about online communities this year.
Community 2.0 - Edge Perspectives with John Hagel
The Explosion of Social Networks
If Time's person of the year in 2006 was "You", perhaps 2007 will be "Us"? Ok, they would have to call it "persons of the year"... 2007 is the year social networking went mainstream. Facebook dominated the headlines, but there were tons of smaller, innovative players attracting attention as well. Controversy spun up around privacy, network portability, and the sheer number of similar experiences available.
Are Social Networks Just a Feature? - GigOm
The Chess game of social networking - Marc Canter
All your widgets are belong to Facebook - Jeremiah Owyang
Video: Social Networking in Plain English - Common Craft
Facebook vs. AOL, redux - kottke.org
Thoughts on the Social Graph - Brad Fitzpatrick & David Recordon
Open standards for social networking - CNET
PeopleAggregator and Open Social Network Systems - Read/WriteWeb
Marketing to Online Communities
The reality is, large portions of marketing budgets are shifting from traditional marketing and into online communities and social media. Marketing activities are driving a lot of the experimentation, innovation and controversy. There have been several very visible "social marketing" disasters, and very few "big wins", at least that marketers will discuss. Look for the experimentation with different techniques to continue at a frantic pace in 2008, as more marketing dollars shift to online activities.
Would You Let These People Friend You?- Advertising Age
Real World Marketing Through Social Networks - Digital Influence Mapping Project
2011: Net Replaces Papers As Top Ad Medium - WebProNews
Will closed networks hurt themselves or lead to Web 3.0? - Marketing Conversations
The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life ? New York Times
How to Identify & Target The Right Niche Social Media Sites- Search Engine Land
Why Wal-Mart?s Facebook Strategy is Like the I-Rack - Get Elastic
Beyond the Hype: The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them - Advertising Age
A Marketer's Guide To The Social Graph - Twist Image
Talent & Organizational Design
Many organizations are struggling with organizational design and online community talent acquisition. The bad news? Talent is going to get harder to find in 2008, and most organizations will need to experiment with where community and social media staff belong.
The evolving role of the Community Manager - Online Community Report
Where does the Community team belong? A follow up - Online Community Report
Who Owns Community? - Matthew Lees
Metrics & ROI
Two of the hottest topics our Online Community Research Network studied this year were Online Community Metrics and ROI. Most organizations' community activities will become less experimental and more disciplined in 2008. Quantifying value (including morphing the concept of ROI) and collecting the best mix of quanatative and qualitative metrics will be key issues. Both the ROI and Metrics report are available free of charge via the links below (requires registration) Highlights from the ROI report include:
- Only 22% of respondents could clearly articulate ROI on community efforts
- The majority of respondents gave a high priority to establishing an ROI model in the near term
- 49% were reporting some dimensions of value back to management on a monthly basis
- "Value" of online community efforts are contextual to an organizations goals and objectives
Online Community Metrics 2007 Report - Online Community Research Network
Online Community ROI Report - Online Community Research Network
What's coming up in 2008?
The OC Report staff has their own ideas, but we would like to hear yours. What's in it for you? A $25 itunes gift certificate. Simply fill out the short survey here and tell us the ONE Online Community wish you have for 2008. You may win the $25 itunes gift certificate... and who knows, your wish may come true! Best response will be judged by the OC Report staff, and the winner will be announced on January 2nd.
Take the survey here (less than 5 minutes, I promise).
More Highlights:
Social media is driving online reviews which will drive community
Johnathan Trenn shows how happy customers build good "review" communities.
Detailed steps to create viral videos. The comments on this blog are very interesting!
Marketing is NOT Social Media-Social Media is NOT Marketing
Excellent article by Chris Brogan about approaching social media tools with a "traditional marketing" mentality
The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook
A great overview of techniques to market via Facebook
Manufacturing Buzz
A fascinting look at techniques that marketers use to take videos viral.
Bad example of engaging with Influencers…
Influencer programs are a hot topic for many organizations, and one of the leading experts, Sean O'Driscoll, takes a closer look at the Target "Rounders" program
Online Community Events
Online Community Unconference: East (just announced)
February 21, 2008, NYC
The Online Community Unconference East is a gathering of online community professionals - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.
PLEASE NOTE: We have reserved the first 20 seats at a "Super Early Bird" price of $95!
Click here to sign up for one of the discounted tickets.
Other Events:
Customer Service is the New Marketing
February 4, in San Francisco
This conference brings together innovative business leaders from several industries to share tips and suggestions about how they got their own organizations to do customer service differently. Confirmed speakers include Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappo's; Marc Hedlund, Chief Product Officer of Wesabe; Brian Oberkirch, Principal at Like it Matters, Tara Hunt, Principal of Citizen Agency; and more to come.
Readers of the Online Community Report will recieve 15% off admission. Click here for details.
Mobile Communities Unconference
March 20, in Palo Alto
The Mobile Communities Unconference is a gathering of strategists, community hosts, device manufacturers, service providers, and content developers to discuss the emerging opportunities and challenges that mobile communities present.
Several factors are driving the importance and relevance of this topic, most notably the fact that the number of mobile handsets in use globally dwarfs the number of personal computers. This fact, combined with the increasing sophistication of mobile devices, increasing speed of data flowing on mobile networks, the increasingly robust web experiences available via mobiles, and the explosion in interest around social networking begs the questions: what impact will mobile have on pc-bound online community experiences? And what are the unique opportunities for mobile-only experiences that transcend voice?
OC Expert Interview: Susan Tenby, TechSoup
This month's Online Community Expert interview is with Susan Tenby of CompuMentor / TechSoup. Susan is an expert at community building, and is pioneering new techniques and interactions in the virtual world Second Life.
Susan Tenby is the Senior Manager of Online Community Development at TechSoup, where she is responsible for the promotion, management and direction of the TS community forums, with an audience of 100,000 unique visitors a month.
Q: What advantage do you see in using an immersive world like second life, over a more traditional social networking site?
A: With Second Life, you can augment reality, by using the fact that you can build your own tools and experiences to share your ideas with little cost to do so. You can show a group of people a vision and invite them to interact within that vision, in a way that text chat or videos will not accommodate. You can use virtual worlds to make animated stories or movies, through an easy process called Machinima. SL can provide you with a creative avenue to express what is not possible in the real world, while also allowing for a live teleconferencing environment which will eventually integrate with outside technologies, positioning it well for online learning environments. SL is live and can accommodate many languages simultaneously through internal translator tools, like the Babbler. I see SL as a hybrid between a website, a social networking platform, a webinar and an animation studio, where fairly un-technical end users can achieve some fairly complex tasks, with ready-made tools that are free-to-nearly free. Second Life also allows for anonymous self-expression and freedom from logistical, sociological and economic confines. For more information on this see: http://nonprofitcommons.org/node/174 and http://www.techsoup.org/community/Secondlife .
Read the full interview with Susan here.
Online Community Jobs
A current list of Online Community job opportunities. If you would like to include an open position in the next issue of the newsletter, please email with the title and link to the job description.
Adobe
Content and Web Strategy Manager
Autodesk
Senior Manager, Community Programs
Best Buy (Canada)
Online Social Community Specialist
Forum One
Information Architect
Senior Programmer - Technical Lead
Senior Project Officer - Seattle
Web Developers
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Electronic Communications Specialist
Marketo
Manager of Community and Content
MarketTools
Community Manager, Insight Networks
Optaros
Online Community Manager
Warner Bros. Records
Community Manager, New Media
WEGO Health
Online Community Producer
VM Ware
Sr. Community Manager
Zazengo
Online Community Manager,
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