FreshNetworks Blog

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting some great examples of co-creation that we’ve come across at FreshNetworks and some thoughts on what makes for good co-creation: Co-creation case studies.

The real prompt for this is that we’ve been talking a lot about ‘we’ at FreshNetworks over the last few weeks. Across the team we seem to be helping quite a few client with co-creation and innovation at the moment - getting their customers to input into or lead innovations in everything from the position and marketing of a B2B telecommunications product to improving and tailoring experiences for a leisure client.

The concept of ‘we’ is one that intrigues me. There is an undoubted power to ‘I’. People like hearing personal stories and experiences, and we see in our online communities that such stories can get better reactions and greater responses. However, the power of ‘we’ is greater - people collaborating on an idea or innovation, working with each other to further improve and advance the previous thought.

Iterating and refining an idea is one of the best ways of bring in different view-points and peer reviewing the concept as it develops. We find that getting brands involved in this process can be illuminating - for the consumer, the brand and the idea. Good innovation and co-creation comes from getting people with different skills, experiences and understanding of the product or brand together. They each add something to the process and can bring their expertise and experience to the subject.

One of the best introductions to the ‘we’ experience that I’ve seen comes from Marieke Schoenmaker. The slides below are a great introduction to the subject, and the case studies at the end of the deck (including Nike+ and Zopa) are world-leading examples of the power of we.

Some more reading

• Ignore the Consumer?
• So How Do You Measure ROI of Online Communities?
• Nike’s Branded Storytelling Showcases Innovation
• Social Media + Company = Are you ready to innovate?

At FreshNetworks we spend a long time working with clients on the organisation of information in online communities. You can have the best content in the world, but if you can’t find it, then it’s of no use. You need to work hard to organise information thematically and make it easier for people to find what they want.

A few months ago the BBC launched its Topics in the UK - a first step towards this kind of thematic organisation across their site. Taking content from across its site, this section organises things by themes - first it was places, then people and now some subjects too. So whether you want to find out about Hong Kong, Nicolas Sarkozy or the Edinburgh Festival you can see all of the BBC’s content in one place. From TV programmes to editorial content, news or background information on subjects.

This is a really good use of the vast and constantly changing content that the BBC has at its disposal and makes a fantastic resource for the user. Rather than having to use the search function we can now find information grouped by themes we are interested in.

A report in the New York Times over the weekend suggest that a similar thematic structure is to be launched by Business Week. But their Business Exchange pages are going a step further than the BBC:

Each Business Exchange topic page links to articles and blog posts from myriad other sources, including BusinessWeek’s competitors, with the contents updated automatically by a Web crawler. Nearly all traditional news organizations offer only their own material, spurning the role of aggregator as an invitation to readers to leave their sites.

This is an exciting step. As a reader I don’t necessarily mind where the content has come from, as long as it is clear to me when I read it. Online communities work well when they combine expert or editorial content with user generated content or input from other areas. Users want to see everything abotu a subject rather than having to hunt information down from a number of areas.

We often find that this kind of aggregation can be a good thing for the editorial content. It is this that binds together the other content and adds comment on it. The extra content acts as colour, exploring tangential areas or exploring some areas in more more depth. Thematic based information structure helps the reader, and it can certainly help the content providers too.

Some more reading

• Topic Pages to Be Hub of New BusinessWeek Site
• BusinessWeek Launching Topic Pages; Rejoices
• Business Week Creates Business Exchange
• Social Media: Strategies in Content and Commerce
• Your Website Shouldn’t Be Just An Electronic Version Of Your Print Publication

The latest edition of the McKinsey Quarterly includes the results from their global survey of Web 2.0 in firms. The survey documents the developments that we see at FreshNetworks - more firms are using more Web 2.0 tools for more complex business purposes. McKinsey go even further, noting that a significant finding from this year’s survey is that:

Companies that are deriving business value from these tools are now shifting from using them experimentally to adopting them as part of a broader business practice.

Web 2.0 tools are starting to enter the mainstream in business, those who trial them find them beneficial and want to look at ways they can use these tools across their business, helping them meet multiple aims.

If you’re interested in some of the detail of the McKinsey study, I’d suggest you go to the article on their site here (you will need to sign-up, although it is free). However, for me the most interesting findings are:

• More community-based tools are growing in their use. In 2008, 34% of businesses studies used blogs (compared with 21% in 2007); 32% used wikis (compared with 24% in 2007)
• Web 2.0 tools are popular both for internal purposes (94% of firms studied) and for interfacing with customers (87% of firms studied). When they are being used for the latter purpose, this is primarily to improve service to existing customers and then as an acquisition tool
• Blogs were more popular in Asia-Pacific and India; social networking particularly popular in North America and China; and, mash-ups and rating more popular in Europe
• The biggest barriers to using Web 2.0 tools are a lack of understanding of the financial benefits (28% of respondents), internal cultural barriers (22%) and lack of skills (17%)

This last point, the barriers to adoption, show the areas where we as an industry need to focus our efforts to help clients. We have written before on this blog about measurement and ROI in online communities and in social media (see posts here, here and here) and it seems that this is the biggest barrier that firms need support with. Perhaps as these firms move from trialling the use of new tools, to using them for specific business purposes, the measurement of how they contribute to these will be easier.

Some more reading

• Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?
• Web 2.0 Design and Internet Marketing
• Analysis: McKinsey’s enterprise web 2.0 survey
• Gartner throws weight behind enterprise Web 2.0

What’s the best way to promote films with online communities?

I was pondering this last night when my friend Jim sent me the trailer for his directorial debut, Eden Lake. As the UK Marketing Director of a major film company recently told me, film promotion has some particular challenges. Speed, for one: the marketing has to be so effective that penetration in the target demographic goes from 0 to 80% in about a fortnight. Flexibility is another: with the right word of mouth, a film that starts playing in only a few cinemas can build up sufficient momentum to get country-wide distribution in a matter of days.

But while film production companies might specialise in particular genres, the film distribution arms (on which they depend hugely for successful sales and marketing) usually don’t – one week it’s art-house, the next grisly horror. Since the target audience is changing all the time, it’s no wonder that their marketing is usually highly tactical, very campaign-based, and quite traditional – mainly above-the-line promotion on TV, billboards and in cinemas. Sometimes viral campaigns are thrown in, but these tend to be short-lived, fairly hit-and-miss affairs.

So how should online communities be used to promote films? By their very nature, communities take some time to grow the social bonds that make them sustainable. So aside from the multi-film franchises, few individual films have enough time in their marketing slot to generate community on their own micro-sites.

But there is an alternative: to treat the microsite as a hub, which connects the official site to the multiple other spaces where community and conversations can form. The site of upcoming Bond release Quantum of Solace has done this successfully by mixing exclusive content with links to fan sites on social networks (like MySpace and Facebook). It also has a download section to promote cross-linking with widgets that allow consumers to add features to their own social networking or blog sites. In fact, it’s exactly the same approach that we recommend to our clients when they’re building a customer community – they should see it as a space they manage that can also integrate with the other external sites they participate in.

The other advantage of this approach is that it can help distinguish the official from the user-generated content, some of which might be well-produced enough to lead to genuine confusion. Admittedly the amusing re-edit of The Shining trailer as a romantic comedy is unlikely to mislead anyone. But well-made spoof or malicious content can have adverse effects on a brand if people think it’s genuine – ask the banks, who suffer from the many phishing emails that no doubt turn up in your spam box every day. Equally if, like my friend Jim, your film is about a gang of louts targeting a young couple, you don’t want really user-generated re-enactments as part of your marketing campaign…

So when it comes to short-lived, campaign-based marketing, a central hub that links to other sites might be more appropriate than a dedicated community site. Real community takes time to form and should be sustainable – it’s a long-term relationship, not just a one night stand.

Some more reading

• Social Network Retention– How to Achieve Engagement Nirvana

Something I discuss a lot with clients is whether online communities are more suited to some people than others; are some people more likely to join them and take part actively. One issue I’ve discussed a number of times is whether a C-suite audience is more or less likely than more junior employees to want to take part in a B2B community. There are theoretical arguments on both sides but it’s more useful to look for and examine examples of senior-level communities.

When I talk to people they often cite LinkedIn as a good example, but I would think of this as much more of a social network than a community. It’s more about ‘me’ than it is about ‘us’. I know of a couple of other examples of closed online research communities for business travel and credit card firms. But I’m still looking for great examples of online communities that show how they work and allow us to compare what makes them work with  what makes communities for other audiences a success.

One example that I do know of is the Chairman’s Network, a Europe-wide network and community of C-level members in the high technology sectors. The community is both a networking, advice and information resource and a place for these people to share ideas with each other. The networks appears to have grown out of work identifying the (lack of?) networking and advice resources for Board-level people in this industry and as such an online community filled a real gap. They currently have just over 1,000 members and from what I can establish the community is quite active.

Of course, you could argue that building a community in the TMT sector is probably easier than in other sectors. However, this isn’t our experience at FreshNetworks for more junior community members, so I’m not convinced that sector is the main reason this community works. It is probably more that the community is meeting a specific need for the members (the lack of a place to meet, share and collaborate on ideas in their industry). For the target audience letting them do this at a time that fits into their busy schedule and without having to travel to meetings should be perfect. And it seems to work.

Do you know any other examples of c-level online communities?

Some more reading

• Will Your Business Opt In?
• The new employee connection: Social networking behind the firewall
• Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives
• KPIs and Metrics - More on Online Community Measurement
• Is defamation in online communities slander or libel?

I watched about an hour of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics live yesterday. It was perfectly timed to coincide with lunch in London and so I sat at my desk and watched live streaming thanks to the BBC. At the same time I was following what other people around the world thought about it on Twitter. And later in the afternoon I looked at photos on Flickr and saw what my friends thought on Facebook.

I suspect my experience was not alone - whereas in previous years my main source of Olympic news and events was the television and the thoughts and opinions of reporters and commentators. This year I suspect I will follow it more through other people and through social media.

This isn’t just because of the time difference - most of the action will be in the morning and early-afternoon UK time so I’ll be at work, in front of a computer but not a TV. This is because if there were ever a perfect candidate for coverage in social networks, online communities and social media, then the Olympics surely must be it.

From my experience with clients, the aspects that are common in successful online communities typically include:

1. A shared or common interest or goal
2. The subject may be broad but allows interest groups to form
3. A subject people are or can be passionate about
4. Enthusiasts and leaders who will help to shape the community
5. An experience that is or can be inherently social, that people want to share with others
6. A subject that can create strong opinions and passionate views
7. Regularly changing and updated content
8. Media and varying content types so different people can interact in different ways
9. You can be more interested in the issues as you are in the people you are discussing them with
10. An ability for the online experience to be supplemented with offline experience

The Olympics is one of those subjects that meets all of these criteria. People unite behind it and are enthusiastic on a number of levels - the Games as a whole, individual sports and individual countries. I like the event as a whole and what it stands for, but I also have my favourite sports (the cycling, rowing and track events probably my favourite in that order), I also obviously want to see a good performance from Team GB.

Many people will have strong and impassioned views on any or all of these levels. Some people are extremely passionate and would want to be leaders or enthusiasts online. But the experience is inherently social - you want to talk about it with others (as I saw yesterday on Twitter) and anything that allows you to do this would be seized upon.

The events themselves lend themselves to regularly updated content. With constant updates on results and real-time feeds on events as they happen. It’s also a very media rich event, with photo, video, audio and text coming together to describe and enhance your experience. Creating ways that you can share and experience these will increase reach and attract people.

The nature of the Games themselves suits online communities. In these people tend to unite round issues and themes rather than, necessarily, round individuals and their friends. You might want to discuss the performance in the Team Pursuit heats and share opinions with a variety of people who you don’t know but who are also passionate about that sport.

So, if I was evaluating the Olympics as a candidate for online communities or successful use of social media, I’d say the chances of success were high. Of course, I’ve written elsewhere about how even the most ideal candidate for an online community can fail if it is executed or managed badly. But the positive signs are there.

That’s why over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be watching and following the discussions on Twitter, the photos on Flickr, the videos on YouTube and the discussions in forums and communities across the Internet. It strikes me that Beijing 2008 is the first time that we will see mass use of social media to cover the games, and I’d expect that this brings out a higher quality and broader range of debate, information and coverage than ever before.

Some places you can follow the 2008 Beijing Olympic

• BBC Olympics coverage
• Qik 2008 Olympics
• Beijing Olympics 2008 YouTube Channel
• Real-time update of Olympics discussions on Twitter
• Athlete blogs (from Lenovo)
  

Some more reading

• Social media and the 2008 Olympic Games
• Olympics: BBC promises ‘cornucopia of content’
• Beijing Olympics: Opening ceremony fuels internet traffic surge
• How Some Covered the Opening Ceremony

There’s a distinction in English law between slander and libel. Slander is when a defamatory statement has been made orally. If the statement was made in a permanent form, for example, recording words onto tape or in writing, it would not be slander but libel. The implications of this difference are important. For libel, the victim can claim damages even if they have not suffered financially from the statement. For slander, on the other hand, the victim must prove that actual damage has been caused. Basically, it is much harder to win damages for slander than it is for libel.

To date it has been thought that defamatory comments in online communities, bulletin boards and other chat on the internet are libel. They are published and a permanent record is kept. That’s why I was intrigued to read a report in OutLaw today of a recent judgement that took the opposing view.

Here’s the comments from Mr Justice Eady who tried the case:

“[Bulletin board posts] are rather like contributions to a casual conversation (the analogy sometimes being drawn with people chatting in a bar) which people simply note before moving on; they are often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out,” he said in his ruling. “Those who participate know this and expect a certain amount of repartee or ‘give and take’.”

“When considered in the context of defamation law, therefore, communications of this kind are much more akin to slanders (this cause of action being nowadays relatively rare) than to the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions,” said the ruling. “People do not often take a ‘thread’ and go through it as a whole like a newspaper article. They tend to read the remarks, make their own contributions if they feel inclined, and think no more about it.”

The facts of the case are complex and involve multiple parties, so I’d recommend reading the full background on OutLaw here.

For me the most interesting comment is that contributions in online communities and forums are “give and take” and like a “casual conversation” rather than published and printed material. This is certainly more akin to the kind of conversations and contributions we see on our communities at FreshNetworks, as I’m sure it is for anybody else with experience in this area.

Some more reading

• So How Do You Measure ROI of Online Communities?
• Record £100,000 online libel damages awarded to social housing firm
• Businessman wins Facebook libel case
• Biggest internet libel payout ever made over ‘malicious’ website

I’m returning to the subject of measuring the ROI of online communities after an all day session with a client today. We spoke a lot about how they are to measure the benefit of the online community they are launching and about the metrics they are going to measure and the KPIs they will report on.

I’ve worked with a lot of clients and read a lot of things on metrics and KPIs and have noticed that many people confuse these two terms. Really they’re very different. The best description I have seen of how and why they are different is a presentation from Dennis Mortensen, that I’ve copied below. It’s worth a look as it quickly and clearly shows how and why metrics are different from KPIs.

This ties in to the debate on measurement in online communities. There are many things that you can measure (metrics) but only some things that show the impact your community is having vis-à-vis the business or other objectives of the site. These are KPIs and are what you probably will be using to show the success of your online community.

So work out all the metrics that you can track with your online community, and work out what KPIs you are going to report on to show the success of your community. Both are measurements but only the latter is really a measurement of success of ROI.

Some more reading

• So How Do You Measure ROI of Online Communities?
• Great Article on Measuring Social Media ROI

The answer to this question is simple and complex. The simple answer is that you make sure you establish a set of criteria when you launch the community and then judge success against these. The complex answer come with some of the ways in which you may judge success.

The workshops that I’ve run with clients at FreshNetworks only prove that every online community has a different set of aims and so needs to be measured in different ways. However, a few basic principals exist that show the possible ways in which you can measure ROI.

First of all it’s useful to distinguish between actual measures of ROI and measures of the health of the community. As people who build and manage online communities, at FreshNetworks we are interested in metrics such as number of people who log-on each day, proportion who make contributions, average amount of time spent on the community and other such measures. These help us to benchmark the community against others that we have run and understand how each community is developing. It’s also useful for us to be able to build a set of metrics across community types so that we can better understand consumer behaviour in them. In most cases however, such measures are not (just) what we use to measure ROI.

A client may want to own the debate in a certain area. It may want to work with its customers to improve or develop its product in an online research community. It may be looking to engage a new audience demographic. It may want to amplify the word of mouth for its services. There are many reasons why people may set up online communities and understanding these on a very granular level is the first stage to effective measurement of ROI.

Then it’s just a matter of work out which factors will help you to understand how you are performing against these aims. There are really two types of data you can measure in a community

1. Qualitative data - this could mean measuring the quality of conversations about the brand, the response to the brand and competitors, the increase in actual conversations and dialogue about the brand, the extent to which these conversations are positive, the quality of ideas generated. Whatever you’re trying to achieve there will be qualitative measures that help you to measure this. Of course the problem with qualitative data is exactly that - it’s qualitative. Although this is the nature of online communities - they’re a space for conversations and discussions. So we often find that establishing detailed qualitative measures of success can be the most revealing and the most informative.
2. Quantitative data - to some extent this is much easier to measure, the trick is measuring the right thing and not measuring too much. From Google Analytics to more bespoke packages there are ways of quantifying a member’s interactions with the site and building a set of measures from this. It may be about reaching more people (possibly of a certain type), or about engaging the same people for longer. Quantitative measures can be good for understanding how people interact with the site.

This is really the fundamental difference between these two types of data and these two ways of measuring. Qualitative data helps us to understand the quality and usefulness of the contributions to the online community. Quantitative data, on the other hand, shows us how people have interacted with the site.

Most are important to measure and different clients have different aims from their online community - this means that different baskets of measures are needed. Sometimes you’re more interested in the quality of debate and so want to include a greater number of qualitative measures; sometimes you’re more interested in the reach and penetration of the community and so want to include more quantitative measures.

Whatever you measure it is that first question that’s important: what are you trying to acheive with this online community; how will it help your business? Answering that is where it all begins and one of the most critical stages in planning a successful online community strategy.

Some more reading

• Social Media Measurement Camp August 08
• Where Does Social Media Sit in a Firm? Probably Many Places
• Great Article on Measuring Social Media ROI
• Social Media + Measurement + ROI = it’s all about CRM
• Measuring the Value of Your Blog: Reflections Over the Last Year
• Communities = more than the sum of their social media parts
• ROI for Social Media Engagement: B-B Lead Generation
• How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business
• Building your Community Strategy
• Online Media Measurement Framework

A couple of days ago I blogged about some of the emerging analysis of online communities and their benefits from the Deloitte and Beeline Labs 2008 Tribalization of Business Study. I’ve  now seen the full slide deck and have posted this below.

For me, perhaps the most shocking statistic in this study continues to be that 34% of the communities studied did not have somebody charged with managing them. One of the things that people can easily overlook with online communities is that, although technology is important, these are social environments and so the social structure needs to be set up and then managed correctly. A good community manager is critical and when paired with an effective strategy and good technology it can make a community really fly.

I should also add that whilst the social aspects are important, so is technology. In fact another revealing statistic from the study is that almost one in ten of the communities studied had more than ten community managers. With good technology and an effective strategy you can really make this process more efficient. Meaning that a community can grow significantly, without a concomitant increase in bodies managing the community.

Anyway, here are the slides

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