It’s getting harder and harder to find real value and new insights from the plethora of webinars on social media these days. Fortunately, time was well spent yesterday, with Sirius Decisions (”a benchmark and advisory firm” for B2B marketers) and their research director Jonathan Block offering up a good overview of social media’s relevance to B2B companies, encouraging at least baby steps if you want to stay in the game. He made some great points — I’ve picked my top three and paraphrased below — and I would add three more big ones to a successful strategy.

Three of Jonathan’s observations:

1. Realize that blogs, social networks, wikis, and communities are not going to directly impact demand creation — so don’t expect them to. However, social media tactics and social networks can make big contributions to awareness, reputation and brand, and word of mouth.

2. It’s not about the technology. Widgets and new platforms are sexy and fun — but being relevant to your audience and driving business are even better. Understand what your customers or other key audience are doing online — gauge their interest in various social media activities so you know how to engage them in a realistic and valuable way — with the right tools. (But he did not say how to do this…)

3. We need to move from web analytics to KPIs (key performance indicators) to make social media strategies and investments measurable and accountable in meaningful ways. (He gave a few examples, e.g., rather than counting pageviews or clicks, see if sales prospects move through the funnel any faster if they are touched via a blog or community or podcast download. More work needed here.) [BTW, Beeline Labs is co-developing an ROI model now with two clients. Ask me about it if you’re interested.]

Janet’s adds:

1. What you talk/write about is as important as where and with whom you do the talking. Corporate speak and bland informational content doesn’t cut it in the real time, conversational world of social media. As we say around here, “to get more interest, be more interesting.” What works is actually what’s most authentic and central to the business: what do you believe about what’s important and where things are going? What have you learned that will help others succeed? Time to morph your messaging machine into one that shares opinions, advice and stories that turn people on not off.

2. Developing social media capabilities needs to be owned at a senior level, and that someone will need to make some changes. (Yes, everyone can “do” it, but it’s too important to exist as a thousand uncoordinated tactical efforts across the company.) One of the aha’s that surfaced in the Beeline Labs/Deloitte/SNCR “Tribalization of Business” research on how businesses are using and learning from online communities is that CMOs themselves should take on the role. After all, if marketing is in the customer creation business, what’s more important than capturing attention, nurturing relationships, and creating customer preference by being more involved where, when and how is most meaningful to them? (And CMOs — get ready to make talent, organizational and process changes to transform your operation from command and control marketing to participation marketing.)

3. Social media is not a new line item or added expense — it’s an amplifier. Because it’s a new mindset and habits as much as anything, “social media” makes everything you’re already doing much more efficient and effective, and renders obsolete a whole host of traditional sales and marketing efforts. In fact, I would venture to say you could scrap at least 30% of last year’s programs, spend less and accomplish much greater results by shifting to more involving and conversational approaches.

Some timely thinking for entering the 2009 planning season — we should all be asking ourselves: What are we willing to start doing and stop doing? What are the best new bets and changes we can make?

We continue to be thrilled with the interest in and coverage of the findings from our recently released 2008 Tribalization of Business study.

The study, which was conducted in concert with Deloitte and the Society for New Communications Research, surfaced lots of great fodder for discussion, leading to more than 100 articles and blogposts and three meaty webinars to date (be sure to tune in to this one on September 9 in which we’ll be devoting much of the time to the many great questions and comments that have come in that we’ve been unable to answer).

We also wanted to let you know we’ve just launched a “Resources” section for the study that includes:

• A page with thumbnails and large versions of all the charts and graphs from the study. Please feel free to grab these and use them in your reports, blogposts, articles, etc.
  
• Graphics and buttons from the Tribalization report.
• Links to all the articles about the study we’ve been able to track down.
• An audio recording of our July 31 webinar that included Francois (Gossieaux of Beeline), Ed Moran of Deloitte, and Jen McClure from the Society for New Communications Research.
• The full slide deck presentation of our quantitative results
• And coming this fall: an executive summary and some great case studies in the works.

We hope you find the resources section useful and again, please join us on September 9 from 1-2 p.m. EDT for this webinar.

In the webinar today on the 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that we did with Deloitte and The Society of New Communications Research it was interesting to see how more attendees who attended the webinar had their communities managed by IT rather than by Marketing. Of course, the poll is not scientific and does not reflect the percentage of companies who have their communities managed by IT, as multiple attendees could belong to the same company - but it is an interesting trend that somewhat confirmed a recent Forrester report that got some commentary in the blogosphere.

So is it a good idea to have your community efforts led by IT, or not?

Personally I think it is not a good idea for two reasons. First off, the default first step that you would expect an IT department to focus on is technology. And as we have found and documented, that is the wrong place to start. If your community will not survive in a discussion thread it will not survive anywhere. The key forces generating dynamics of increasing returns are content, members, member profiles and transaction - not the technology infrastructure nor the social infrastructure as described in this post.

The second reason why IT may be the wrong place to start is because if they get the budget and the mandate to build a community, they will do exactly that - build one. And yet your community may already exist somewhere else - on Facebook, Yahoo Groups, or in some other user-started community like the Tivo community. If that is the case then the best results from leveraging communities will be gained from engaging with the community on their existing turf instead of going through the expense of trying to get them to relocate on your turf.

What is your opinion?

The 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that was released last week led a lot of people to conclude that online communities do not work and that companies are spending too much money on making them happen.

Well - there is some of that and then there is a whole other side to the story that we uncovered as part of the study.

Let me use this post to clarify some of the misunderstandings in the interpretations of the business community study results.

Do most online communities indeed fail?

In fact we found many very successful community examples in the companies that participated in the study - many of them well known and well documented case studies, some less so. We should also point out that most communities that were part of the study are less than 1 year old - so we do not really know whether they are successes or failures.

It is true that many communities fail, and will continue to do so. When they do, however, they do so for very similar reasons - so you’d think it should be fairly easy to avoid the pitfalls.

The first reason is that many companies who embark on community initiatives are putting their company or product at the center of the effort. As many pointed out, that is obviously WRONG - you need to put the community member at the center and make sure that there is some passion around the initiative.

Do companies spend too much on Technology?

The second main reason for community failures, and one that got misinterpreted by many, is that companies are starting community initiatives by focusing on the technology first. It’s not that they are spending too much on technology, it’s that the technology platform is not what is going to result in the dynamics of increasing return that characterize successful communities.

Should all companies have community initiatives?

If you can create a place for your customers and prospects to come and share their passion, and that place does not yet exist, then you should absolutely try to have a community initiative. But don’t be blinded by “the not invented here” syndrome - maybe the best way for your company to leverage communities is to go on Facebook, MySpace or some other community that is user controlled, like the Tivo community used to be.

As some pointed out, there is another big reason why companies should always think about affiliating with other communities - and that is that people will only participate in a limited number of communities. I won’t participate in a Bank of America small business community and a Microsoft small business community and maybe a few others - I only have so much bandwidth.

When is $1M too much to spend on a community?

Many jumped on the bandwagon that it is unbelievable for companies to spend $1M on customer communities…

Maybe yes, maybe no…

If you are small startup, then $1M is definitely way too much. If you are a bigger company and spend $1M on designing a slick community with worthless technology bells and whistles, then that is too much to. But as I wrote by using the example of Bank Of America, in some cases companies are not spending enough to make a difference with their online community. If you are a Fortune 50 company with billions of dollars in revenues, and routinely spend multiple millions of dollars on advertising media, then only spending a few hundred thousand dollars or even a million dollars on your community will just not move the needle. And if the goal of everything you do is to create new customers in a way that will make a difference for your company, then you need to invest appropriately.

Now if you are going to spend $1M - you have to make sure that the investments need to be made in content creation, moderation and awareness development (no, I did not say advertising or direct mail ) to support large numbers of users.

Do CMOs get it?

Talk about a loaded question…but since many were quick to dismiss the capabilities of marketers it is one that I thought should be addressed.

And the answer again is - some do, some don’t, and many are trying to figure things out.

Some are indeed looking at communities as another channel through which to interrupt their customers and prospects with product messages - and most of them fail fast and miserably.

Some don’t quite get what they inherited and keep it small and contained so that it does not make it on their radar screen.

And some know that it is transforming their role and giving them a renewed chance to be the key market strategist at the executive table and the representative of the voice of the customer within their company - and those are the ones who are reaping all the gains.

So, again - do most communities fail?

Our study did not show that. But yes, many community initiatives do fail - either because nobody comes (or they come once and then never come again), or because they fail to move the needle for companies and do therefore not receive the executive attention that they deserve. As I said before, the reasons why they fail are very similar from one case to the next and should therefore be avoidable. But there are many case studies where companies delivered game changing results to their company’s bottom line - and the reason why they succeeded are very similar as well.

For the second time in six months I got to listen to the Fiskateer case study at last week’s ANA Conference on Marketing Accountability. This time it was co-presented between Jay Gillespie, the VP of Marketing at Fiskars and Spike Jones, the President of Brains on Fire.

The folks at Fiskars did a lot of things right in order to build this community - they found an area of passion, scrapbooking, and they put the users at the center of their community, not their company nor their products.

In a nutshell, the Fiskateer community is a community of passionate scrapbookers who are helping one another in every aspect of the hobby - from providing social interaction guidelines for the community to finding the right tools for the job. A handful of community leaders are paid by Fiskars, all others are volunteers.

What started as a modest PR project, with a goal of recruiting 250 community members within 6 months, ended up with a movement of 5,000 passionate fiskateers in 18 months. In fact they achieved their original goal of 250 members in less than 48 hours. Another goal was for them to increase chatter by 10%, which they instead grew by 600%. They also blew past their original goal of increasing store sales by 10% and instead increased store sales by 300%.

What’s even better is that the program, which was originally funded by Fiskars at the tune of $1M, is now fully paid for by the box stores.

And just like we found with our own study on how companies leverage communities, they had some unexpected benefits from their community, including:

• The participation of the community in the R&D process
• Having the community members create better advertising than they used to
• Having community members take over much of the customer support function
• Having the community rally around the company when they had a PR crisis on their hands.

The key to success, said Fiskars’ Jay Gillespie, is to keep yourself accountable to the fans - not the company.

When companies deploy successful communities, the benefits are not level-setting; they are truly game-changing.

The study on tribalization of business which we (Beeline Labs, my new company), Deloitte and the Society of New Communications Research (where I am a senior fellow), produced this spring/early summer is out.

There were some real interesting takeaways from the study, many of which I have been writing about in more detail over the past few months. They include:

• The worst practices (i.e., build it and they will come, focus on technology first, etc.) for managing communities are well entrenched and will continue to cause many community efforts to fail.
• Business communities have the potential to transform the role of the CMO, but for that to truly happen it will take some new management thinking
• There is a significant mismatch between the goals that companies set for themselves and their size and the associated investments and measurements that they use to measure the success of those communities.

If you would like a briefing on the findings, please contact me (francois [at] beelinelabs.com or 617.899.1698) and I will arrange for you to get one.

On July 30th, you can also join us for a webinar debrief which will be hosted by Deloitte and for which you can register here.

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.

Patti Anklam, a contributor to The AppGap and longtime observer, researcher and practitioner of collaboration, KM, and network analysis, weighs in on the Community 2.0 Conference workshop led by Beeline partner Francois with panelists Mark Yolton of SAP, Ed Moran of Deloitte, and Rachel Makool of eBay. The session’s starting point: some of the early learnings from the forthcoming 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that we’re producing in concert with Deloitte and the Society of New Communications Research.

Says Patti, in sharing her take on the initial findings: “…The good news is that what the study has found (and what many attendees at C2.0 are demonstrating) is that communities can be built with predictable success. We have been working in online communities long enough to understand the pitfalls and the success factors. Being in communities will be a way of life at work…”

And in closing: “The better (or perhaps best) news — and the parting message from this workshop is that once communities have been introduced into an organization, they are transformational (”game-changing”). They have a huge impact on the organization and offer new job roles and responsibilities, closer relationships, greater transparency, and a better work environment.”

Also be sure to catch her first post about the Community 2.0 Conference on The AppGap in which she discusses another workshop she attended on the design and architecture, both technical and social, of communities.

One interesting observation from the ongoing “2008 Tribalization of Business Study” is that while the state of communities has progressed by leaps and bounds since the last community 2.0 conference, the market is still very young with many people confused about what to do and what to expect.

One way of gauging this is by looking at what people found to be unexpected as part of their community efforts:

• Reach of Word of Mouth for free
• Knowledge about customers
• That our market really will tell us what they want — if we just ask
• Greater visibility
• Lots of active users
• Ideas generated by communities
• How happy customers are with the outreach

It is sort of funny that most people will setup communities to get to know more about their users, get ideas from the outside inside the company faster and increase word of mouth, just to name a few, and then get surprised when this actually happens.

Another unexpected consequence, this one potentially dangerous is “Advertising Revenue.” If the purpose of your community was not advertising, and so far no companies in the study have indicated that as a goal, then discovering advertising revenue as a by-product may potentially lead to spamming your community and eventual failure.

In my update on the 2008 Tribalization of Business study on business communities that we are doing with Deloitte and The Society for New Communications Research last week - I pointed out how some companies are totally misaligning their measurements of community effectiveness with their goals.

As you will see from the slides, many companies measure effectiveness by looking at page views and time spent on the site. Yet not one company listed ad revenue as a goal for the community - which is what page views and time spent on the site would be good for. Let’s assume that your goal is to have a support community - one in which people can help one another or get help from some your employees. If you could deliver the support in a way that never required people to come to your site, you would still achieve your goals. In fact, if you build your community so that people do not have to come to it, chances are that you will have more people participating in it. There are only so many destinations that a person will visit on a regular basis, and chances that your business community becomes one of them are fairly slim.

Another interesting wrong-headed metric-related finding from the study is that a majority of respondents found that “getting people to engage” was one of the biggest obstacles to making a community work. Now if you have a small community, chances are that you could get a fairly high engagement rate. The larger your community becomes, however, the more its profile will resemble that of large public communities - 1% of hardcore contributors, 10% of active users and 80-90% of lurkers. Now does that mean that the lurkers do not get value from your community? In the case of the customer support community, lurkers who do not contribute could still find the help they need and feel better about you than if they had not found it and also save you the cost of a call into the call center. So measuring community effectiveness by measuring engagement is just not a representative metric of community success.

Now the real issue with all this is that if you have a community development team who is being measured by those wrong-headed metrics, they will invariably develop bad behaviors in order to maximize these metrics. They could in fact develop community features that will stand in the way of success for your communities, or close down communities that are in fact doing really well.

If you missed it, there is a dynamic conversation on managing communities going on right now…Chris Brogan kicked it off and Nancy White wrote some interesting musings and also kept track of many of the other interesting links.