Smart Connections

How To Ensure a Vibrant Online Community

October 16, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

I just finished rereading this important deck by Rachel Happe of The Community Roundtable, originally posted in 2011 and am reminded how much every single concept in the deck is as true today as it was then. Frankly, I am disappointed that, with so much quality information out there, people are still making major mistakes and setting unrealistic expectations of what an online Community will do for them and their organizations. There are hundreds of examples of people doing it right and when you look at Rachel’s well presented points, you may wonder, why are people still flailing, and failing?

Community is a group of people with unique shared values, behaviors and artifacts

My experience is in talking to people interesting in adding a Community, they fail to understand how to optimize for shared values and behaviors, in fact many times, they think that the Community is all about pushing content and getting people to talk, rather than helping them discover, uncover and celebrate the unique shared values and the diversity of behaviors and experiences that make up the collection of people involved. Whether it is 50 or 50,000 – considering these basic fundamentals gets lost.

Things that define Community: a common interest or context, a sense of shared purpose or fate and common set of needs.

I would argue that in the beginning of an online community design, these concepts are discussed, yet soon fall to the wayside as the tactical deployment, design and launch of the community takes center stage. When a community is floundering, I look to see if the common interest or context is still clear, is it clear to new members, how is the sense of shared purpose communicated and is it still relevant six months or a year later – and has it been reviewed, probably not. The solution is simple. Look at the slides from The Community Roundtable, see how easy it seems to do it right – yet, why are so many communities having an identity crisis when, at one point, they actually discussed these critical design decisions, yet somehow have failed to realize any benefit from those decisions. You may not think about community all the time like we do, however, when you do, please make sure you consider that there really are only a few secrets to building a vibrant community according to The Community Roundtable, then ask yourself are you doing all of them to the best of your ability?

Observe Your Audience
Keep a Regular Schedule
Be Welcoming
Provide a Guide
Be Valuable
Be a Connector
Bring Catnip
Have Rules
Lead from the Back
Encourage Your Cheeseheads
Ride The Waves
Don’t Ignore
Be Multi-model
Protect the Fish

I could easily write a paragraph about each of the above. Look at the slides and see the images she chose to illustrate each concept and use your imagination. How do you relate to each concept? Could you be doing better? If you don’t have a community now, how would you address each of these ideas in your own organization. Even if you think you are doing a great job now, review the slides to see if you could be doing even better. The Community Roundtable is an amazing resource for those of us who provide platforms and for those that take care of the thousands of people that populate them. We thank them for their generosity in publishing these materials, then frequently reminding us that something published two years ago is relevant, timely and a perfect thing to share with our readers. Thank you.

Are private communities worth the effort?

October 2, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

David Nour, of the Nour Group asked us to comment on a post in the ASAE – The Center for Association Leadership internal discussion area. The post, titled: We Terminated Our Private Community – Was It the Right Decision? was from an Association that had abandoned their private community (not one of ours) and moved over to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They complained about the effort to maintain the community and asked for comments from others. There were several that spoke to the need to have a clear purpose and resources dedicated to ongoing engagement. David, who runs one of our communities at http://renetworks.intronetworks.com is a noted speaker, author and growth consultant in the field of Relationship Economics, crafted a great response to the post, which with his permission, I have reposted here.

“The overall social strategy needs to be revisited annually, including the desired strategic outcomes from a private community. It works to elevate perceived member exclusivity, benefits (based on different membership levels), thriving discussion groups & forums, sharing of best practices from best practitioners, making relevant member connections before, during, and after events, and most importantly, touching them with value-add throughout the year and not just at your annual meeting.

The challenge for many associations who have deployed private communities in the past has been the flawed assumptions of a) build it & they will come – without consistently creating unique value propositions of why should members care or participate, b) funding it with the necessary resources (human, capital, time & effort) to nurture it, and c) monetize it with sponsorships, content curation, or infusion of thought leadership! You build anything on a sand trap and neglect it and it will “fail.” Conversely, if you learn from what didn’t work, segment your members based on their needs, modularize your capabilities (including a private community) toward those needs, anticipating their future needs (fantastic use of a private community), rewarding staff for win/win interactions, and transforming their touch points to smart ones so you can continue to learn from their behavior, is the receipt for making an online community succeed! We’ve had ours for the past 3 years, it has 1,500 active participants and we’re continuing to invest in nurturing it with a refresh of the strategy in 2014.” David, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. If you would like to talk to us about how a private social network could improve your organization, click the Contact Us button and we will have a conversation.

Smart Tags make for Smart Connections

May 1, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

How tags help make smarter connections

We are all familiar by now with tags and how they are used to help us sort and search out information. We use them to help us find hotels, places to eat, movies to watch or have Netflix recommend films to us. We use tags to help us find better connections, yet there are two fundamental flaws to tags and how they are used. The first flaw is that people actually have to add them to their data. This has been a challenge since the first Content Management Systems were designed. People don’t want to take the extra step, or they are not sure how to tag, or what to name the tag. Problem, problem, problem. The second flaw is that tags are usually on or off. You are either an Action/Adventure movie fan or you are not. There is no value attached to a tag. It’s utility is to aid you in search only. We thought about these two problems when we designed our Visual Matching Engine.

How do we get people to tag themselves, quickly, efficiently and in an engaging manner?

Without smart tags, our matching strategy just wouldn’t work the way we had envisioned it. Getting people to tag themselves turns out to be easy if you give them an interesting, interactive, hands-on way. Make it fun. We have tried various versions of this over time and have found a very easy way to do this. In fact, we turned this into a component that can be easily added to the profile process. Now it’s the best part of creating a profile. People love it.

How do we give tags weight or importance so that they can be ranked to provide better insight?

Giving tags weights was relatively easy technically and the visualization we implemented for users helped them see the rankings at a glance. By interactively moving the most important tags to the top and without having to give an explicit ranking we gave them control which really helped. The flexibility of placement really made a huge difference in engagement. Tags used in this manner are at the core of the introNetworks system. The Visual Matching Engine uses this weighted tag information for search, for pin positioning, for ranking results and even uses it when displaying information that you are likely to be interested in. We constantly find interesting new applications of the technology.

The tag information really is the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of our smart connections concept. The ‘why’ is so that we can deliver better insight through visualization. That’s the thing we find most interesting.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this concept and how you have used tags and how you think this approach could be used in other applications. Please leave a comment below. If you are interested in the subject of Tags, there’s a great section on Knowledge Tags on Wikipedia (see here). ps. the tags shown in the image above are an example taken from a TEDx event. Every community we built has a custom set, custom titles and words designed specifically for them.

Data Driven Decisions

April 10, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

Data Graphic from the introNetwork System

We are used to looking at charts and graphs and deriving meaning from them. I would suggest that we should be thinking about how these charts and graphs can be used to help us in making smarter decisions and not just eye-candy. When we build a Community, we are helping users make smarter connections with each other because the connections are data-driven. The tags selected in their profile are matched to others that result in a ‘smart’ connection for them to make. So this is obviously of great value to the individual user and happens without them having to really do anything except build a robust profile. However, when we are helping a client with the initial site design, we always ask the question;

What do you want to know about your audience that you do not know today? Once you know the answer, what are you going to do about it to improve your organization?

We call this Actionable Business Intelligence. Which means they don’t ask a question in the Profile that they don’t already have a plan for what they will do with the answer. This is data driven decision making. Makes sense, right? This is one of the most challenging aspects of the design phase. People don’t know what they don’t know and they don’t know how to ask the right question. It’s a conundrum to be sure. That’s why we are glad we have kept hundreds of these types of questions from sites previously built to help clients during the brainstorming of a new community design. We love this quote and repeat it often

If you want better answers, ask better questions – Tony Robbins

We apply this by suggesting to clients, If you want to make better decisions, ask better questions and let the answers drive your decisions. Here are three examples of how you might make data driven decisions:

You are designing an educational program and want to make sure you apply your limited time and resources to creating the most needed courses. If you had asked a question such as: Areas I need help. Then you could easily look at the answers to the question and quickly find the top five items you should focus on, rather than guessing.
You are putting together a task force to investigate an industry challenge. If you have asked the question: Biggest challenge facing our industry today, you may find that 79 people had said: Government Regulations. You could then invite the 79 people to seed your group instantly.
You are wanting to best understand the motivation for people joining your community. By asking the question: What do you expect from this Community (see image above from the NEON site), you would have the range of answers and be able to enlist others based on this knowledge.

It’s not hard. But it does take some future thinking on your part. It also removes the anecdotal aspect from the decision, by being data driven, you have more certainty that you are working with the right people, which will help you be more successful. Would love to hear your point of view on this, please feel free to leave a comment below.

It’s taking you too long to find the right people

April 2, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

There is a radically different way to find people within your organization or network. What if you could find people by skills, interests, and experience or by what’s most important to them? We don’t have enough time to waste it searching for expertise that should be instantly available. In our highly networked workplace we assume it’s easy to find the right person yet as it turns out it’s tragically difficult in most organizations and nearly impossible at an event. What the right person or right connection for you and your organization is usually very different from another person or organization. There is no concept of one-size-fits-all at introNetworks. We look at your organization and create a way to capture information that is directly relevant and in language that is recognizable for it’s uniqueness and diversity. This data is already familiar to you, however it’s not in one place that is dynamic and instantly accessible. We also think about how people will use tags and questions in search, then make the profile information instantly searchable.

So, what’s so radically different? Two things. We attach a weight to each word that the user then will adjust graphically. This allows them to create a more accurate Profile than just checking a box or writing in text. Secondly, we use that weighted information to create a visual map with the user at the center, then we show their best matches arranged around them. They instantly see whom they should reach out to.

This is what we call smart connections.

We don’t stop there. Seeing your best connections visually is powerful, being able to search on multiple dimensions using those weighted tags as search terms is another way that introNetworks is radically different. The results of searches can show on a Pin View, a Map View, an ordinary list or in an animated Tag Cloud that invites exploration. The secret to making this all work is to make sure it never takes more than a very few clicks to find the right person. This is the ‘smart’ part. Making the true human connection we leave up to the humans, they can take it from there.

5 Simple Ways to Grow Your Business In This Tough Economy

March 31, 2013 by Mark Sylvester

Economic challenges, alarming statistics and continuous bad news are all around us. How do you turn the negative environment around and find opportunities that can make a positive impact on your company? Many businesses are utilizing tools that can bridge the gap in communication, can utilize data to reveal methods to either save or make money and can instantly connect and develop stronger business relationships with their customers and employees across the globe. These companies are experiencing success by implementing solid and detailed social media strategies. According to the 2008 Cone Business and Social Media Study conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

After talking with hundreds of executives and analyzing research reports and white papers, it is clear that social media is no longer an emerging technology that is nice to have and instead is a solution that businesses must have now. Social media is rapidly being adopted by the Fortune 5000 as well as small and medium sized businesses that are strategically utilizing these proven technologies in their organizations. On the surface, these solutions seem to meet their needs yet how do these companies know if they have selected the right strategies?

Companies who want to remain competitive by having a closer connection to their clients and aligning their employees to the mission and vision of the organization are experiencing tremendous value out of their investments in social media. Success in social media is not a technology problem, instead it is a business problem. Here are five critical success factors to consider before you launch the right social media strategy for your organization. If you clearly understand the outcome you want (results) and why you want that outcome (purpose), then creating a list of actions that will make your strategy come to life is easily done.

1. Compelling business objectives

The first aspect that is often overlooked in designing a social media implementation is the actual strategy, purpose and planned outcome. Businesses often forge straight away into a tactical implementation without anything more than, “We will put up a community or forum and our customers or employees will simply show up.”

Thinking about your strategy as a business goal rather than a social one will change the conversation that you have about what the most important part of the social media strategy will be. It is important to visualize where you want your company to be within twelve months and ask yourself the question, “How has my social media strategy transformed my organization?” This is a hard question because in most cases, you may not have developed your strategy – yet. Having a clear and detailed understanding of your business objectives is critical. What does success look like to you? Once you have established that, developing the road map, selecting the tools and the team to get there is much easier.

Question: Do you have a clear view of a social media strategy? Suggestion: Consider having an expert guide you through this process in order to develop the ideal social media strategy that fits your ultimate outcome perfectly.

2. Ideal implementation considerations

One of the challenges to utilizing any new tool is implementation. There are often a lot of areas to consider, many audiences to appease and numerous constraints. When you begin working on your social media tactics, choosing solutions that can offer simple and fast implementation options is very important. If it will require IT resources and a team of people from your company, you may want to consider alternative solutions.

Another option is to begin with a pilot, rolling out your social media initiative to a small group of customers or employees first. This will enable you to test, measure your results and make changes before you unleash your strategy to the entire target audience. Ideally, if you can set up your social media solution without having to connect to existing databases, without linking to existing websites, or without having to be concerned about user authentication – at least for your pilot – then don’t. In many cases, it can easily take you six months to understand all of the potential issues that HR, IT and Legal may put forth and this may distract you from executing on the core business objectives you have worked so hard to create. Instead, consider building internal momentum with a pilot program first and then you can replicate your success with a more in-depth integration of the tool or tools throughout your organization.

Question: Have you taken into account the steps you will follow to implement your ideal solution? Suggestion: Ask your vendor what the process is to be up and running with a solution or a pilot within a week.

3. Measurable insight and business intelligence

In developing your social media strategy, you will need to understand the audience that you plan to offer this solution to. This knowledge will allow you to mold your solution to best fit their specific needs.

You may be familiar with the idea of website analytics or statistics. These are metrics that track usage of a website, time spent on pages, and where the visitors come from, for example. Similar to website metrics, it is critical to choose a social media solution where you have the ability to measure the key aspects of your strategic objectives. With the ability to track campaigns and analyze the intelligence you gather, it will be clear how you can best use that information to serve your audience. Having the ability to utilize the business intelligence to deliver insight is not only a key driver of success; it can transform your business.

In order to have insight that is valuable enough that you can make better business decisions, you can start by creating tactics that will yield answers to deliver the insight you are looking for. Great rule to follow: If you want great answers from your audience, you have to ask great questions.

Question: Do you have the ability to access business intelligence about your audience at your fingertips now? Suggestion: That which gets measured, gets done. Make sure you have instant access to key metrics at all times.

4. Engaging user experience

One of the biggest challenges to any social media experience is to create something that captures the attention of the audience in three seconds or less and keeps them coming back for more. If compelling enough, three seconds of interest extends to three minutes of interaction and then into three hours of repeat activity. This is the ideal situation. Think of how many websites you have been to that were slow or poorly designed. Chances are that once you had a negative first impression, you did not return.

Choosing social media tools that are easy to use, visually engaging to interact with and that offer value to the audience will play a significant role in the success (or failure) of your strategy.

Understanding how good design helps people use social media will transform how they interact with other users and information. This should be a key objective for you. If you spend significant effort on crafting the other key aspects of a successful social media strategy, yet you neglect design, your efforts will not deliver the best results possible.

Question: Are you offering your audiences a compelling and engaging experience? Suggestion: Impeccable design makes complicated concepts easy to understand and will result in delivering greater value to your audience. Insist on it.

5. Easily communicated ROI

If you follow the steps covered above carefully, you will definitely see results in as quickly as one to three months after implementation. Understand that these efforts take time to grow organically; your initial steps must be nurtured so that they become great strides moving you forward.

To recap: 1. Make sure your objectives are clear that you have a road map to follow throughout the process. 2. Insist on a solution that is easy to understand, easy to set up and maintain. 3. Choose a solution that delivers measurable insight. 4. Select tools that have a high level of attention to design and user interaction.

The return on investment you receive will be directly tied to the strategic objectives you stated at the beginning. Are you trying to communicate better with your customers so that they know more about your products, and as a result buy more? Or are you making sure that your employees can find the right resources at the right time and save hours hunting for experts to help them? With a successful social media solution in place, imagine the thousands of hours saved if you were able to provide this type of information to your audience with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

“Economic hardship is demanding that we produce more from less. As a result, we’ll need to embrace new ideas and deploy new approaches so we can arrive at new goals.” – May 2009, Deliver Magazine.

Being able to move a successful pilot project to the next step will mean that you can show the business results of your pilot to other stakeholders and clearly demonstrate how it has affected your business. You will have command over these results because you will have taken a baseline measurement at the beginning of your effort and measured it continually throughout the initial phases. This practice of defining your outcome, understanding your purpose, then taking the actions to implementing your chosen social media solution will result in success.

Question: Do you know how to effectively identify ROI from existing efforts to solve your challenges? Suggestion: Focusing on the ROI you want to deliver can change business trajectory of your campaign. Consider your ROI goals early in your planning process.

In Conclusion

Do you have the five aspects of a successful social media strategy in place now? Can you afford to not seriously think about what it will take to get started with your own social media strategy?

At introNetworks we understand how daunting this information may seem to you. There are hundreds of choices, different paths you can go down and many people to convince along the way. It is a significant amount of work to take this all into account and develop an ideal social media strategy.

If you feel like you aren’t sure where to even begin, we can help.

Every week we help companies discover and develop their own effective social media strategies. After working in this industry for over seven years, we understand the nuances and politics of putting together and implementing a strategy that will align you with your customers and employees like never before.

We will be in touch shortly to answer any questions you might have as a result of reading this report. Alternatively, you are welcome to reach out to us to explore the possibilities.