Twenty Years Ago was a Long Time Ago

In 1990, Michael Porter, who is evidently a guru for marketing folks (though I'd never heard of him until I started my MBA) - wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, "The Competitiveness Advantage of Nations." You guessed it, I have to read it for class.

It's amazing how much things have changed in the two decades since it was published, but it gives an interesting window into "the way it was" and the way it is "transitioning to be." In the article, he talks about what makes certain nations global players in an industry, while other nations, try as they might, just can't get in the game. In true Porter style, he has some interesting things to say (if not a very engaging way to say them). His points center around this: competition encourages excellence, and communication between companies, competitors, and the marketplace is paramount to innovation.

Makes sense. Yet, in his day, this relied on geographical proximity.

Here's an example of his thoughts:

"Suppliers and end-users located near each other can take advantage of short lines of communication, quick and constant flow of information, and an ongoing exchange of ideas and innovations."

Clearly, you don't have to be located near each other to experience that benefit anymore. The world is our marketplace. Global feedback can be immediate. Online communities offer a marketers pre-established focus groups - ready and willing to give feedback on ideas.

It's really very exciting.

News Flash: Online Community Doesn't Matter to Retailers

Jupiter Research released a new Report in which they take the interesting and somewhat befuddling stance that "social and community network sites have little impact on influencing online retail sales."

I know, I'm staring at my screen in amazement too. To me, thats somewhat akin to saying, "friends and family have no impact on determining what people buy." Because, of course, in our digital world much of our traditional social interaction happens online. Ok, so perhaps if you are selling glucose monitors for seniors, social networking isn't going to make a huge difference to your bottom line - but if you are selling the latest greatest tech gadget or any item aimed at teenagers - you better get online into your marketing plan.

The other thing that is really confusing about this, is that marketers KNOW that these community sites matter - and they are increasingly seeking more devious ways to get their messages embedded around, beside, and within them.

Here is a quote from the Jupiter report:

"Retailers would be better served to take a step back and evaluate how effective tactics really are – and with whom – to make a stronger impact with the right audiences rather than succumbing to trends,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.

And here's another:

“From a branding and advertising perspective, social and community sites are garnering a great deal of influence online,” explained Patti Freeman Evans, Senior Analyst with JupiterResearch. “But when researching a product online, shoppers are looking for fundamental information, not entertainment or social interaction. In the end, the consumer is still interested in convenience and efficiency and social and community sites are just not that efficient.”

I think Jupiter totally missed the point. People are going to these sites and interacting with other people. When they considering a purchase, they ask their online friends about their thoughts. When it gets time to research specifics, yes, they may be looking for information. But lots and lots of statistics say that even at that point, online reviews of a product have an enormous impact on online sales.

I haven't read the whole report, because it costs money and information wants to be free. But unless it totally contradicts what the press release says... all I can say is... Hi Jupiter - this is the modern world. Sit down, stay a while, and we'll show you around.

Keeping it together... when you're not

The WSJ had a great article about working together in virtual teams - since you have to be a subscriber to read the whole article - I'll give you the highlights along with my compelling commentary!:

1. invest in an online resource where members can learn about each other - can anyone say... Social Media!
2. choose a few team members who already know each other - this makes a lot of sense, but they do say that if you have too many people that know each other - then there is a tendency for the group to become stale and predictable. You need fresh people and ideas to keep interest and energy up.
3. identify boundary spanners (people who have and make a lot of connections) and make sure they make up at least 15% of the team - these people serve as social glue,and are seen as SO valuable that they make it into #4 as well
4. cultivate boundary spanners as a matter of practice within your organization - having these people throughout the company helps ensure that more people will meet and collaborate
5. break the team's work up into modules so that progress in one location isn't overly dependent on progress in another - some members will be out sick, some will be more productive than others, and some tasks just plain take longer. If you can plan activities so many things can be done in parallel, it helps ensure no one is sitting around waiting for other groups to catch up. In short, everyone can be productive all the time.
6. create an online site where a team can collaborate, exchange ideas, and inspire one another - this is an offshoot of item #1. We live our lives online. Give us a way to collaborate!
7. encourage frequent communication, but don't try to force social gatherings - social gatherings early on - bad - get to work first. Social gatherings later on are good - when you already have a working relationship.
8. assign only tasks that are challenging and interesting - well sure - that would make everyone's job a lot better - but I don't think this one is actually do-able in practice. Some things just have to get done - and they might have to get done by a virtual team - and they might not be very interesting.
9. ensure the task is meaningful to the team and the company I'd argue that if the company doesn't care - why do it? But meaningful to the team? Again, you might be asking too much. Some things you don't care that much about just have to get done. I really don't care much about my lawn being mowed, but it's got to be done. So I make sure it gets done. Same with going to the dentist 2x a year. Some things are just necessary, yet not very interesting.
10. solicit volunteers as much as possible. This is a great way to make sure people want to be involved. This is the root of the open source movement - as well as Wikipedia and other online collaborative projects. If people are inspired, they will get involved, stay involved, and give it their all.

Most of the best practices here aren't that different from basic working best practices: meaningful work, frequent interaction, and a place to collaborate.

A lot of what I've read says that teams that share the same values do better together - and teams that get together often are more productive - but I think it's more about being on the same page. If you want to be there, you're working on something you want to work on, you touch base on a regular basis - and you have the tools to do so effectively - I think any team can be pretty successful. I am noticing - and taking note - of some sorts of conversations that should be had in person. I'm going to keep a running list of those and publish them in a few weeks.

jakob says, "I'll take mine in vanilla"

I've been seeing a few
posts lately that claim that Nielson is against Web 2.0. I don't really think that's the case... I think he's against most everything when used frivolously (and in his definition, the threshold between frivolous and necessary is reached very quickly).

From his site:

This is not to say that there's no role for new technology. We're currently working with a company that's placing an extremely complicated application online. They can't do this with good usability unless they use several "rich UI" tricks. But that's an application, and a big one to boot. For 90% of websites, it's more important to focus on communicating clearly, whether they're e-commerce sites, corporate sites, government sites, or non-profit sites.

And that's the rub. So many sites are just done so poorly, that slapping some community features in them isn't going to save them or make them places people want to visit.

User first. Bells and whistles later.

Giving to the community....

In the tag cloud of my thoughts, online community and giving to the community have recently had very bold, very large fonts. (Ok that reference just goes to show you... I am SOOO geeky).

As a result, I found this article very engaging: Consider the Small Things. The author, writing for the online marketing trade site ClickZ, has some really great ideas.

Basically, he goes one step further than the ideas I put forth in this work of my MBA academic prowess, completed in December of 06: The Case for Social Media. In my paper, I suggest that marketers get involved in the online experience, make wiki entries, play Second Life (don't just slap advertisements there), post to blogs, things like that. They should do all this with their brand in mind - not overtly selling, but just keeping in mind that they are representing the brand. They can do this in tandem with overtly sponsoring some online activities/sites/etc.

Chad thinks that we can one up that - by really giving to the communities - not just our two cents - but GIFTS.

Some of the most active blogs and forums relevant to your brand and products may be run as a hobby by a single or group of passionate consumers....

While these sites may accommodate advertising, consider something different, such as sponsoring a user prize-giveaway contest. How about asking site operators what features they would like added, then provide those services to keep the site humming along. A rounding issue for your marketing budget could go a long way for an online community.

Go read the article, it's short, you can do it. This is good stuff - and you can really take his ideas and run with them. Run! Go! and let me know how it goes!

PS: Lots of corporations make a big deal out of sponsoring community (real space community) causes and events. If you can sponsor a community event around your brand... well... isn't that just all the more effective?

Why Web 2.0 is Like Burning Man

School is almost out. I can post again!

Last weekend, which was my last official "class" weekend of MBA Year 1 - I presented a controversial paper on Burning Man's gift economy. My Fellow Future Leaders of America (aka the FFLA) were entranced with the concept of *giving* gifts of service and things to others and the community all while expecting absolutely nothing in return.

In a well-timed sequel, we had the founder of glimmerofhope.org speak to my elective class today. He spoke a lot about how he made his zillions, and how he was now able to spend time and money helping the world. I have a problem with that. I don't think you need to have made your zillions to make a difference.

And here's my point. Like Web 2.0 so clearly demonstrates, we are all connected and not only that... we *want* to be connected. Sure, you can hole up in your room with your tv on and live your little pretend life, but your little pretend life tends to disintegrate into community (Second Life anyone?). Man, this is a really big topic to cover in one post. So I'm not going to try. Let me just stop here, for today and say: Web 2.0 shows that the world is more like Burning Man than an office building full of cubicles.

Tune in later this week... and I promise this will make more sense.

Does community have real value?

The Harvard Business Review recently (Nov 2006) ran an article that attempted to quantify the value of eBay's online communities.

This is what they did: they performed a yearlong experiment on the German site that involved present eBay customers who had all bought and/or sold in the last three months but had not participated in the communities. The experimenters incentivized the eBay users to try out the communities with promises of iPod drawings and other prizes.

Within three months, 3,299 of the invitees become active community participants (out of 79,242) and not to our surprise, these participants REALLY got into eBay in a way they never had before.


According to the experimenters, the German site "earned several million dollars in profit from the increased trading behavior from the experiment" and they summed up the project by saying, "Our results show that customer communities pay off handsomely for eBay and suggest any online company will benefit from nurturing its communities."

Mmmm, so juicy.... yet so... obvious!

You can read the complete report (it's short) by visiting the site and agreeing to watch a short web-vertisement ala salon.com.

[A word before we get to today's topic. We contributors have agreed to post once a week, and that will be about all I'll be able to manage for awhile. I come home from work with all sorts of ideas stirring around in my head, but I'm also brain-dead and dead tired, so writing is going to happen after I've had a day to recover. I start with this caveat in case there are any expectations of immediacy. With that said, we're becoming very web 2.0 at work, and there's a lot to say because we are currently undergoing a complete overhaul.]

I have a few soapboxes at work; I stand on them a lot as we go through the process of redesigning our web site. One of them is that we need to support our technical community in two ways:

1. providing them with information about our systems so they know:
• how to implement them in their specialized environments (creating capability)
  
• what processes we follow for making decisions or changes (creating trust)
  
2. enabling them to share their extensive information with each other and with us (creating community)

Historically, we have very little information available for them. We are a black box. There's some information out there, but someone typically has to direct you to it. There's no findability, and there's no link to what is available from our product pages.

What's interesting is that I get a lot of support for the idea of providing better findability for the information that will create capability. Some aren't sure of the idea of creating community. I think this has two causes. We do have a few in our customer base who like nothing better to take potshots. They lie in wait for the opportunity to arise. The other cause is a fear, I believe, that people will not participate. I'm not too worried--we have good participation on our mailing lists, and I think we can translate that to forums and community generated content.

Where I run into resistance (fear) is creating trust by opening up the black box. We run centralized IT services (network, phone, security, etc.) that others can and often must use. They can also run some of their own services. We have a lot of power, and we can make things difficult for people, oftentimes inadvertently (these usually end up being labeled "communication problems," but that's another post). That makes people upset and more likely to take potshots.

So, we open it up. Listening to our folks complain about the complaints they get and talking to customers tells me that this is what we need to do. As we enter the content phase of the web site redesign project, we will integrate that at several levels of the site--mission level, SLAs, policies, product/service descriptions, and more. Exposing information creates trust.

online collaboration--the cure for everything?

You may or may not know this, but I'm spending my weekends going to business school. We just started our new semester, and my study group did a presentation yesterday entitled: "Improving Environmental Sensing and Interpretation in Your Organization." Basically, it all boils down to: everything in the biz world is moving fast. Lots of information is being exchanged. So, how do you, in a dynamic, dispersed, and often frantic organization - ensure that the right people in your organization have access to the information they need in order to interpret and react to information/changes/etc. in the business environment?

So we talked about who's responsible for gathering the info (everyone really). And they we talked about how to build a culture (through example and reward) so that everyone did feel responsible. Then, we talked about how to disseminate the info. This is where the issue gets problematic. Say you work for a large organization, and you're at a tradeshow cocktail hour and hear some juicy competitive info regarding another team's product. Would you know what to do with it? Would you just disregard it because, well, that's another team? If you did try to pass it on, would that team welcome your input? Would you even know who to tell?

What a perfect place for social media. I can easily imagine my own company's internal "phone book" becoming more like MySpace. Instead of just the generic page with my phone number and address, each employee would have a "profile." I'd list in there all my vitals: contact info, job responsibilities, etc. But the page would also show current projects, teams and interests. What a fantastic way to encourage knowledgeshare and collaboration across large companies. If you wanted to know who's working on that Dept of Defense project up in DC, a quick search would lead you right to them.

Of course, I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this. I'm certain companies and vendors are already all over the idea... or are they?

Building Community, Building Brand

It's a strange thing to start a new blog. Hi everyone (everyone everyone everyone). Ah, the echo of no readers on a new blog. But hopefully we can fix that soon. I've been blogging over on Live Journal for several zillion years, but this blog promises to be more professional and more well... topical: thus the name. So here we go.

Today's tidbit: Toyota has created a "MySpace" like site for hybrid owners.

From the article....

"Toyota's more than 600,000 hybrid owners are very passionate about their vehicles and the reasons they drive them," Gregg Benkendorfer, National Manager of Media Strategy and Digital Marketing for Toyota, said in a prepared statement. "The new community site taps into that excitement by letting users visually represent themselves through graphic art and video."

Brilliant? Not really. It just makes a lot of sense. I can't see people going back there again and again to talk about their cars, but the site will surely generate a lot of buzz and a ton of content and ideas for new campaigns....