New online communities SavvyAuntie and FirstWivesWorld are good examples of successful communities. Each:

1. Focuses on a niche group of people who share a passionate bond:  women who love children and relish their roles as “aunties,” and women who have gone through a divorce or are in the throes.
2. Allows people to connect with other people and ask questions, share stories, and just be social.
3. Provides lots of helpful advice, resources, and experts on topics related to the community’s theme.
4. Adds some fun: both have entertainment sections and some celebrity angle. (Did you know Hulk Hogan and his ex have just added a 5th team of lawyers to their divorce proceedings?)
5. Has a fairly simple technology platform with an easy-to-use interface and lots of easy ways for people to get involved, from creating a profile and uploading photos to starting a blog or creating a group. Then again, just reading these rich, content-filled would be fulfilling for many.

In any cateogry there are always niches of opportunity. Many businesses are approaching communities too broadly, trying to serve everyone about everything, and ending up with rather bland communities that have no real community. Auntie and First Wives show the power of going narrow.

Mind mapping is an incredibly helpful way to brainstorm, solve problems and actively “doodle” to see possibilities. Raj Dash has a good post over at The Freelance Switch, suggesting that mind mapping gets us into a new mindset, helping us to heed Einstein’s advice: “You cannot solve problems by thinking within the same framework or mindset that discovered the problems.”

Some people like using mind mapping software. I find that sitting on the floor with giant sheets of paper and drawing with different colored marketers opens me up to many more ideas. I guess sitting at the Mac to brainstorm is till too much of my usual framework.

PS — this is a useful technique when running brainstorm sessions. I often ask teams to “name” their maps at the end, which helps people articulate what they’ve created/learned/solved.

I’ve been collecting examples of companies’ beliefs, values, guiding principles and the like. All are meant to serve as a sherpa-like guide to the organization’s culture, decisions and behavior. The ones I like best go beyond the usual blah blah — quality, integrity, customer-first — and connect with people in their guts and in their heads. Here are The Container Store’s six principles:

1. Fill the other guy’s basket to the brim. Making money then becomes an easy proposition
2. Man in the desert*
3. One great person equals three good people
4. Intuition does not come to an unprepared mind
5. The best selection anywhere plus the best service plus the best or equal to the best price in our market area
6. Air of excitement

*Container Store employees are told the story of a man crawling through the desert gasping for a drink of water. He finds an oasis, where an ordinary retailer gives him water. If it had been a Container Store retailer, employees are told, he would have been told “Here’s some water. Do you also want something to eat? And I see from your wedding ring that you are married. How about we call your family and let them know you’re here.” The principle is that you’re cheating the customer if you are not offering them the opportunity to buy more.

Save the Honey Bees

As a partner in a company named Beeline Labs, we always get ribbed about bee related topics.  Here’s a bee video worth watching.

“Campaign 2.008: Politicians Have Yet to Realize the Full Potential of New Media,” featured in the current issue of The Public Relations Strategist, offers some diverse perspectives on how social marketing is effecting the U.S. Presidential campaign. Written by former political reporter Ed Cafasso, managing director of MS&L, the article includes views from:

• Randy Kluver, communications professor, Texas A&M University
• Bill Rice, president, Web Marketing Association
• J. Barbush, associate creating director at at ad agency RPA
• And yours truly, Lois Kelly

Unfortunately the magazine, published by the Public Relations Society of America, isn’t available online, but if you click here and scroll down to Articles you can get a PDF.

All strategic social media initiatives require change management to some degree. To figure out an organization’s social media “readiness” and how much change management will be needed – and in what areas – SAP’s Steve Mann has developed a “social quotient” test/analysis. Where doew your company socre?

“I don’t want any more friends. But I do want your knowledge. That’s what’s really motivating people to use communities, “ says Tilak Mandadi, VP of Interactive and Travel Technologies for American Express.

Talik – one of the most entertaining IT execs I’ve ever heard in a long time– said seven things matter the most for effective online communities:

1. Social intelligence – learning what other people know — vs. social networking.
2. Specialized context of community
3. Exclusive content
4. Ability to transact
5. Moderate moderation
6. Participant defense of the brand (Let other AMEX customers defend the brand if someone says something negative)
7. Speed to market

The ability to transact is especially important. Tilak said customers using American Express’ “Members Know” travel community have expressed frustration at not being able to act on what they were learning about in the community, which Amex is going about changing.

Many companies are creating communities for awareness, loyalty and word of mouth, but they may be missing a big opportunity for transaction revenue — and frustrating customers in the process.

Today my firm, Beeline Labs, Deloitte, and the Society for New Communications Research released highlights of an online communities study among 140 organizations which create and maintain communities. Some of the highlights, more of which can be found here:

Greatest value of communities:

• increasing word of mouth (35%)
• increasing brand awareness (28%)
• bringing new ideas into the organization faster (24%)
• increasing customer loyalty (24%)

Greatest obstacles

• getting people involved in the community (51%)
• finding enough time to manage the community (45%)
• attracting people to the community (34%)

What contributes most to effectiveness:

• ability for community members to connect with other like-minded people: 54%
• ability for members to help others: 43%
• focusing community  around a hot topic or issue: 41%
• quality of the community manager/community management team: 33%

Advice for others

When asked what their most important piece of advice is for others creating communities, survey participants’ advice focused around these eight areas:

1.    Start with the end in mind: “Start with a business strategy, defining carefully what you want to accomplish through the community.”

2.    Focus on the value to the members:  “Make sure you deliver real, special, unique, obvious value to the core group you’re hoping to attract.”

3.    Don’t start with the technology: “Too often people get drunk with Web 2.0 tool excitement and then try to push their business and customer goals into the wrong tool.”

4.    Keep it simple and intuitive:  “Focus on the least common denominator first. Keep it easy to navigate with simple tools to use.”

5.    Keep it fresh and active:  “Keep activity levels up, constantly add new content.”

6.    Have dynamic community leaders: “Make sure you devote enough time to managing the community; letting it fester is worse than not having it in the first place.”

7.    Think through who to involve – or not. “Get Legal and PR to buy-in and help on design, but keep them out of active management.”

8.    Get a passionate core of participants active before launching:  “Make sure you have a committed core of passionate users before you launch.”
Many thanks to everyone who took the time to take the survey and talk to us as part of the qualitative surveys. The complete results are on their way to you this morning.

Here are 50 pragmatic, do-able, inexpensive ways to use social media to improve marketing from Chris Brogan.  Great job, Chris. Thanks.

If you want to really understand how social media/tools are changing how we work, play, activate change and live, pick up Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And if you are seriously considering communities as part of your marketing strategy, Do Not Pass Go without reading this.

Here are some of my takeaways:

There are three essential pieces of a community, starting with purpose:

1. Why: what’s the the promise of the group/community? Why would anyone want to join or contribute? “Creating a promise that enough people believe in is the basic requirement. The promise creates the basic desire to participate. ” Note: in my experience this is where marketers usually spend too little time. Or, rarely challenge their own. assumptions.

2. How: this is where you figure out which tools will help people do what the community is all about. Note: too many companies are buying tools and then trying to make a community fit the tools. A recipe for disaster — or, at a minimum, enormous frustration.

3. Rules of the road: this the what Shirky calls the bargain: “If you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?”

People have always wanted to share and help one another. Pervasive, easy-to-use communications tools and ” the collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together — so much easier, in fact, that is changing the world.” “Social tools don’t create collective action — they merely remove the obstacles to it. This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple easy-to-use tools like email, mobile phones and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their dauly lives.”

Incentives for participating are not financial: Attention, the desire to see your work spread, the desire to help others and be helped.

Why some communities grow and others don’t: “They grow if enough people care about them, and die if they don’t.” (This goes back to getting the promise right.)

How did you do that?: communities where a group of people help one another get better at some share task or interest — called communities of practice — are especially pervasive and appealing. The basic question that can trigger a community of practice: “How did you do that?”

Not everyone needs to be passionate, participate a lot: in the old model we had to work hard to get people passionate enough to act, because acting was a lot of work. Today you can have a handful of highly-motivated people participating a lot — and “people who care a little participate a little, while being effective in the aggregate.”

A small number needed to get things started: “The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something.” Tap into a small core of passionate people; don’t expect a lot of people to contribute at the get-go. Many are more comfortable adding to what someone else has started.