Posts Tagged Tara Hunt

Goal: Build a Community – Simple, right?

Posted by umangshah in Customer Experience, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on January 28th, 2010

The term Community has changed quite a lot in recent years. Jimmy had a similar point with Social Networks a while back in his post about the Three Degrees of Influence but I want to discuss it more in context of one of our primary marketing goals. For most people, the term Community refers to an online forum. This is very limiting and really doesn’t do it justice. Community managers probably resent this, which, I am sure, is one of the reasons Jeremiah Owyang is trying to institute a Community Manager Appreciation Day.

For most of us, this is one of our top (if not the top) goal of our Social Media efforts – create a community where members feel comfortable interacting with each other and with your organization. Why? Relationships deepen. Synergies are created. Information is exchanged. Customers are engaged. In short, magic happens. How do we do this? This can be a real challenge.

Two things that can make it a lot easier: Technology and Metrics. There are lots of options when selecting a community platform vendor. Conveniently, I have been asked to judge the 2010 Social Networking category for the SIAA Codie Awards and I will be evaluating a few of them. Without going into too much detail, the first organization that I met with, INgage Networks, has a very compelling offering in this space. They won this category for the last two years and they actually offer a whole lot more than just a community platform and I suggest you check them out. (In the spirit of objectivity, as I evaluate others, I will share more information about them as well.)

When it comes to selecting and sharing metrics, you should approach it in the same way that you build your Integrated Marketing Strategy. You should go in prepared with a firm grasp of your goals. An old but really good blog post on developing metrics is Tara Hunt’s Metrics for Healthy Communities. Basically, set goals and objectives and then create metrics that stringently test those objectives. Keep the audience in mind when selecting specific metrics. And be sure to consider both qualitative and quantitative metrics. She lists a lot of great suggestions for specific metrics. Read her post for the details.

Picking the right platform and creating the right metrics not only sets up for success but implements a method to test and correct your approach, as needed. I hope this is a thought starter. I would like to hear your ideas about community building too. To all of us building or growing online communities, good luck!

(Check out the link below for apply this thinking internally within organizations. This is exciting and will be another blog post)