What's
Inside:
Greetings Online Communizens,
Spring has sprung and with the sunnier days and blooming flowers comes the hope and enthusiasm to try new things. Many companies are delving into social media marketing as it continues to show that it provides a low-cost method at reaching their target markets. 2009 will provide us with some great learning opportunities while companies experiment with social media campaigns and have great wins and lessons from their not so successful efforts. It will be these lessons that shape the future of social media and continue to propel it into the mainstream.
On to the report!
Bill Johnston, Editor
bjohnston@forumone.com
(follow @billjohnston on Twitter)
(follow @ocreport on Twitter)
A Message From Our Sponsors:
Athena East
Athena East is the leading online community support firm, ready to integrate with your team in and deliver exceptional moderation, content, user support, and research services. If you are looking for a scalable, flexible, process-driven partner to help fulfill your community’s needs, contact us today!
http://www.athenaeast.com
Leverage Software
Leverage Software creates enterprise-ready social networks that help you leverage what you already know to make everyone as good as your best. To date, our 100% On-Demand platform powers over 250 communities, including 15 of the Fortune 100.
http://www.leveragesoftware.com
Online Community Highlights
Online Community Business Forum
The Online Community Business Forum was held a few weeks ago on March 19-20 in beautiful Sonoma, CA. There were 67 senior level online community and social media professionals from leading companies, including; Consumer Reports, Google, Cisco and Yahoo!. Speakers shared their use cases and experiences in managing online community and social media initiatives in the economic downturn, managing community ecosystems and getting key executives engaged. Read the two posts below from the OC Report for high level notes from all of the presentations.
Gleaning Insight From The Community Ecosystem - Tom Humbarger
Photos from the 2009 Online Community Business Forum, Sonoma, CA - Connected Action
Highlights from Day One at the Online Community Business Forum - OC Report
More Highlights from the Online Community Business Forum - OC Report
Tweets from OCBF2009
Pictures on Flickr
How Are You Using Social Media?
Instead of asking "are you using social media?" for most people, it's "how are you using social media." At this point, most companies have done at least a little dabbling in social media marketing through one of the major channels like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Social media marketing is a low cost way to engage with your users and/or customers in more personal way. Instead of just putting marketing messages out into the universe, we are now interacting directly with the people who we want to reach. Heck social media may actually be going mainstream...how exciting! While some companies dive right into social media marketing and take risks with experimental campaigns, other companies start slow by dipping their toes in to test the waters. In either case, we are in an exciting time where new tools and channels offer high-touch ways to connect with people instead of just speaking at them and hoping they get the message.
When NOT to Use Social Media - ReadWriteWeb
Using Twitter for the wrong reasons - FreshNetworks
Get new customers by invading ‘social media’ - Richmond Times-Dispatch
50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing - Chris Brogan
Is Social Media Marketing Recession Proof? - PR 2.0
More Highlights:
Me 2.0 - Build A Powerful Brand To Ensure Career Success - Social Media Explorer
How to use social media tools to build your personal brand to use for your career.
Who's Getting Hired in Tech? Q1 Numbers from ReadWriteHire - ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb's aggregate numbers for the first 3 months of 2009. Who's hiring? Software and IT companies, social media and social networking companies and marketing and advertising firms.
5 Events That Have Used Social Media for a Good Cause - Mashable
Social media bringing together people to lend their time to important causes on a global level.
The ROI for Social Media Is Zero - ClickZ
Good article about the real value of social marketing & "social amplification."
Yahoo's plan: create community from isolated sites - Reuters
Yahoo outlines new online community strategy: link internal properties with common social media features.
FTC's Proposed Social Media Marketing Regulations Target Bloggers - SearchEngineWatch.com
If the Federal Trade Commission has its way, bloggers and social network users will soon be liable for their reviews of businesses and products.
Yelp: Businesses may publicly respond to reviews - cnet news
Yelp will roll out a new feature that lets business owners to respond to user reviews--both good and bad--of their establishments.
MySpace Initiative Measures Offline ROI With Social Media - MediaPost
A few consumer packaged goods brands aim to prove that you can measure ROI with social media.
Humanizing Social Networks: Revealing the People Powering Social Media - Social Computing Journal
Social Networks are among the most powerful examples of socialized media. They create a dynamic ecosystem that incubates and nurtures relationships between people and the content they create and share.
Online Community Events
Online Communities: Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar
A webinar sponsored by the Online Community Research Network
May 7, 2009 @ 11:00 am PDT
The economy is in a state of flux, but interest in and use of online communities and social media has never been higher. Hear from a panel of experienced community executives about how they are guiding their community-based businesses through the economic challenges, and hear about the opportunities they see on the horizon.
Join Bill Johnston of Forum One Networks, Thor Muller of Satisfaction, Chris Kenton of SocialRep and Scott Wilder of Intuit for an in-depth discussion around social media and online community strategies and tactics for surviving and thriving in the economic downturn. Session highlights will include:
- Buffalo culture as a new metaphor for your online business
- How stakeholder attitudes are changing in light of economic pressures
- Why solid community engagement strategies have never been more important (or valuable)
- Rethinking "ROI"
- Advice on how to navigate the downturn
- Budget & staffing implications during the downturn
Please note: Attendance is limited to 200 people. Register early to reserve your spot!
Register now
Online Community Unconference
June 18, 2009
Mountain View, CA
The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community practitioners - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experiences 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.
Click here to register
Online Community Summit
October 8-9, 2009
Sonoma, CA
The Online Community Summit is an industry-leading, invitation-only event bringing together leaders in online collaboration.
Held each October in Sonoma, California, the Summit draws senior participants from industry (Amazon, AOL, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, others); leading online community groups (ezboard, MEETUP, Motley Fool); non-commercial organizations (World Bank, PBS, American Academy of Pediatrics); media (BBC, Univision); philanthropy (Packard Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Omidyar Network) and many others.
The goal of the Summit is to allow practitioners from many disciplines -- who would not ordinarily meet -- the opportunity to share current and best experiences regarding online collaboration.
Click here to request an invitation or email me directly at bjohnston@forumone.com.
Mobile Social Media Unconference
October 21, 2009
Palo Alto, CA
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?
Click here to register
OC Expert Interview: Scott K. Wilder, Intuit
This month's Online Community Expert Interview is with Scott K. Wilder, GM for Intuit's Small Business Online Communities, Support Website and Content / KB article management. Before joining Intuit, Scott was the VP of Marketing and Product Development at KBToys and eToys, the director of Internet services at Borders.com and Apple Computer, and has held senior management positions at American Express and Silicon Graphics. Scott worked on the following online communities: eWorld at Apple, Borders Cafe at Borders.com, KBToys Community at KBToys.com. Scott also is a board member of the Word of Mouth Association (WOMMA) and the Society of New Communications. He received graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Georgetown University. Scott also recently authored Millennial Leaders: Success Stories from Today's Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders.
Click here to read the interview.
Know an online community expert with an
interesting story to tell? Or are you one yourself? Email me, and
you may be the next expert interviewee.
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
me with the title and link to the job description.
Care2 Inc.
Product Manager for Community
Clear Capital
Commumnity Manager
CODEPINK
Online
Community Organizer
Corporate Accountability International
Online Director
EAA
Online Community Manager
Forum One
Interface Engineer
Senior Programmer - Technical Lead
Web Developers
KIPP Foundation
Manager, Teacher Recruitment Community
Linden Lab
Community Communications Manager
Lithium
Online Moderator (Part-Time), Remote
Microsoft
Windows7 Social Media Lead
Rare
VP, RarePlanet.org
Community & Product Manager
Salter>Mitchell / Marketing for Change
Web Developer
Sulake Corporation
Community Manager (Copenhagen/Denmark)
Community Manager (London)
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Community Senior Producer
Walmart
Community Analyst
Warner Bros. Records
Community Director
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