What's
Inside:
Greetings Online Communizens,
Could the economic clouds be parting? The market has made modest gains over the last few weeks, in spite of continued bad news from many sectors. With the ever-increasing interest in and use of social media, what happens when we swing in to recovery? Admittedly, this is all wishful thinking on my part, but signs are starting to point to a very interesting (and busy) fall.
And, speaking of busy, if you are in the San Francisco bay area on June 10th, be sure to check out the 4th annual Online Community Unconference. It is shaping up to be yet another awesome networking and learning event.
On to the report!
Bill Johnston, Editor
bjohnston@forumone.com
(follow @billjohnston & @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 Platform & Services Satisfaction
The Online Community Research Network initiated the Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction research project in January of 2009 and we published the final report in March. The intention of the study was to provide insight about customer attitudes towards online community platform and service vendors, particularly around satisfaction. Further, we wanted to explore the unmet needs in the online community platform and services market.
We received a wide range of feedback from over 200 respondents, and have detailed results for all of the top tier platforms. To see overall quality and reliability scores for Telligent, Jive, Drupal and Lithium, check out the following post on the OC Report:
Online Community Platform & Services Satisfaction- OC Report
Social Media ROI
Social media activities are finding their way in to many companies marketing and engagement plans. It's a low out-of-pocket cost, high-touch way to build brand presence, engagement, loyalty and trust. But how do we quantify and measure what social media tools are working best? There's no "one size fits all" social media metrics solution, but with clear objectives, each company should have enough indicators to show where the value is.
Social Media, ROI, Metrics and Petsmart - Keithburtis.com
Do You Know the Value of Your Customers? - MarketingProfs
Measuring Social Media ROI: Does size matter? - Social Computing Journal
What is ROI for Social Media - Sudarshan Banerjee
Measuring Engagement and Return on Relationships - Beth Kanter
Online Community ROI: Models and Reporting - OC Report
Celebrity-Twitter Madness
Twitter's been a hot topic for us over the past year. Heck, you'd have to live in the boonies with no access to the internet, TV, radio or newspaper to actually not know anything about it. Many companies have been experimenting with Twitter as part of their social media marketing arsenal. But now that Oprah had a show dedicated to Twitter, Ashton Kutcher built his 1,000,000 followers and an astronaut tweeted from space, Twitter's been officially celelbritized. While it's really exciting to see social media at the forefront of everyone's minds, we can't help but wonder, how things will evolve? Does mainstreaming Twitter create more noise, including millions of additional tweets about what people ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, what they are planning to eat later, or does it create more of an audience that understands the medium and uses the micro-blogging service as a true information source to learn about products, services and information about companies and people?
5 Interesting Things Regarding Twitter - WebProNews
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/05/12/5-interesting-things-regarding-twitter
Oprah Tries Twitter, Crowns Ashton King of It - WSJ
Hubble astronaut sends first ever Twitter message from space to say he is 'enjoying the view' - Daily Mail
Twitter Still Headed To The Moon With 17 Million U.S. Visitors In April - TechCrunch
More Highlights:
Top 10 Social Media Sites That Should Be Next In Line To Get Oprah-fied
A list of sites that celebrities (and spammers?) could find useful but haven’t overrun just yet.
The Influencer Algorithm - MediaPost
Email marketers are working hard on algorithms to quantify the worth of those influencers operating via social media outlets.
Interactive Housewives Finale Nets Social Media Success for Bravo - Mashable
Bravo uses Twitter & FB to engage viewers.
Bob Evans Restaurants Embraces Social Media - chain leader
Bob Evans, digital marketing manager explains why the company has jumped into the digital world headfirst and what programs they are running.
10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media - mnn
Guest blogger Max Gladwell shares 10 ways we're making the world a better place through the use of social media.
A Social Media Reality Check: Time To Get Serious - Search Engine Land
Actionable strategies for managing a complete social media plan
Social Media Ad Metrics - iab.
The IAB has released standard definitions for Social Media Metrics.
Online Community Events
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 Health: Give Your Online Community a Check-up
June 17, 2009 at 11:00 am PST
Online
/ Free
Is your online community healthy? How do you know? Join Joe Cothrel of Lithium Technologies and Bill Johnston of Forum One Networks to learn how to assess – and improve -- the health of your online community.
Specifically, you will learn:
• How to define “health” in an online community
• How to measure online community health
• How to concepts of community health can be applied to distributed communities (on Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• Three steps you can take today to improve the health of your community.
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.
OC Expert Interview: Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke
This month's Online Community Expert Interview is with Ryan Holmes, CEO/Founder, Invoke - Creators of Memelabs, HootSuite, Claytorials and ow.ly.
As founder of Invoke, Ryan’s experience combines diverse management skills with solid industry and technical knowledge. Since 2000, Invoke has grown to a talented 26-person powerhouse focused on new media disciplines such as online advertising, viral campaigns and social application development. As CEO, Ryan has been active in all aspects of Invoke operations, focusing on strategy, business and product development and technical and social networking trends.
Q: What are some of the most effective techniques you've seen Hootsuite users employ for engaging on Twitter?
A: I think that the more interesting usage has been around scheduling of tweets and RSS feed integration. We recently had someone tell us that they scheduled interesting content every 10 minutes for one week and went from 100 to 5000 followers in that week. I think that's pretty amazing. The RSS feed integration is also powerful because it allows someone to easily add a bunch of content feeds around a specific interest niche. For example if your core area is technology, you can integrate a Digg, Engadget and TechCrunch feed into your Twitter account using Hootsuite.
Click here to read the full 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.
AAA Mid-Atlantic
Social Media Community Specialist (Level II)
Care2 Inc.
Product Manager for Community
Clear Capital
Commumnity Manager
CODEPINK
Online
Community Organizer
Corporate Accountability International
Online Director
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)
The Global Fund
Senior Web Editor / Lead Facilitator
Trade2Win
Community Manager
Virgin Media
Virgin Media Community Senior Producer
Walmart
Community Analyst
Warner Bros. Records
Community Director
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