My book pile has grown faster than I can deplete it.  I’ve done what I rarely do…started reading multiple books at the same time.  Some people can do that, it’s not for me.

While traveling this week, I finish Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba of Church of the Customer.

It’s one of the better books on the changing face of marketing and influence in the post read/write web world and I certainly recommend adding it to your pile.  If you are already in a web 2.0 role, Citizen Marketers is a warm blank of reassurance and if you are just considering the implications, it’s an excellent primer for pulling together your business case.

Here’s what I liked:

• Good story telling - it’s just a good, entertaining, well written book - notable in that so many business audience books simply are not.
• Examples galore - I wouldn’t necessarily call them best practices, but a range of examples that span industries and company sizes.  Selling the benefits of community in a company is in part good story telling with examples.
• Approachability - If you are "web 2.0 literate" already, this is one of the books to drop on the desk of your boss. 
• Structures:
  • Personas: The Four F’s:  Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators, and Firecrackers
  • Programs: Contests, Co-creation, and Communities

Enjoy the book…next up, finishing The Influentials.

Sean

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’m too slow getting back to this…

In May, Bill Johnston blogged a response to an article in Information week and suggested they should have talked to me as well - thanks for the compliment Bill.  I put this on my "to-blog" list and just didn’t get back to it.  Here’s the original article in IW, titled "Online Influencers: How The New Opinion Leaders Drive Buzz On The Web." 

I had forgotten about the article.  The irony is when I did go back to it, I re-discovered that the story quoted (among others), Dave Balter, Ed Keller, and Ben McConnell - all of whom I’ve had the chance to talk to and learn from the past month.  It also brings in some research by Duncan Watts, published in HBR, that concludes:

Understanding that trends in public opinion are driven not by a few influentials influencing everyone else but by many easily influenced people influencing one another should change how companies incorporate social influence into their marketing campaigns. Because the ultimate impact of any individual–highly influential or not–depends on decisions made by people one, two, or more steps away from her or him, word-of-mouth marketing strategies shouldn’t focus on finding supposed influentials. Rather, marketing dollars might better be directed toward helping large numbers of ordinary people–possibly with Web-based social networking tools–to reach and influence others just like them.

The article introduces debate on the true influence of influencers or opinion leaders in the blogosphere.  I think this is actually quite a good article that gets at some of the real issues underlying successful influencer program development.  Way to much thought leadership on the topic of online influencers is focused on the value proposition of marketing and/or buzz generation.  As I introduced in my post about community ROI, companies should invest in community and influentials not just for marketing benefit, but because it can change how you support and how you build products and services.  In fact, I believe it can be detrimental to a brand to overly focus on just the marketing/viral side of the story.  These initiatives need to work in concert as part of a business transformation, not stand on their own. 

There are two generic methods of generating positive buzz / Word of Mouth.  First off is a combination of serendipity and trial & error.  The second is as a by-product of systematically supporting, listening to and engaging with your users through communities.  Both are valid strategies I would endorse, but #1 takes some patience and an acceptance that batting averages are never 1.000.  The second method takes a more persistent, long term view of transforming how you connect and engage with your users.  It requires changes in business processes.  It may require changes in policies.  That said, done in a consistent, systematic and long term fashion it is a near guarantee.  Where you may be disappointed is that all your competitors are either doing this already or will do it as well.  You may have some advantage to be a first / fast mover, but in the end, I’d argue not doing this is a going-out-of-business model in the new media era. 

oh…and obviously, if you can hit on both #1 and #2, they are catalysts for each other.

Had I responded to this article a few months ago, I think my view would be different than it is today as I was rigid (and too simplistic) in my support of the two-step flow of communication.  The reality today is that those who are raving fans of the influencer effect and those that are dissenters of the model, are both wrong (and both right).  Taken in one dimension (marketing), the evidence of the revenue effect of influencer driven models is easier to disprove than prove (I’m with Duncan).  It’s only in taking a more holistic view of the influencer effect on a company (across support, product feedback/research, and marketing/buzz) can you truly evaluate the impacts of the influencer model.  I haven’t seen that study done yet, but my own experience running an influencer program that impacts all 3 pillars suggests that this is a very different way to evaluate the model.  None of this runs counter to the wisdom of Word of Mouth, it just means that in practice, things get a little more complex if you want to think about the opportunity end to end.

Interesting how research is often confined in the same ways that organizational structures are - hey marketing, go talk to support! (vice verse - and while your at it, invite product planning!)

Sean

Popularity: 14% [?]

As I came home from vacation and found this in my inbox I was once again surprised by the passion within the community for the products, brands and/or companies they follow.  Information Week reported that MVP Bil Simser (and spouse) named their newborn daughter "Vista Avalon."  Here you can read Bil’s account of the thought process including the first naming idea where the initials spelled "DOS."

Showing his good nature, Bil leads off the inevitable jokes with a few of his own thoughts:

• Her blog will contain the largest number of search hits with people looking for information about Vista
• She has her very own carrying case (a laptop bag) and other personalized "logoware", most of which I can buy from the Microsoft store or any geek conference for the next 10 years
• She’ll be the only one at her school with a service pack (or two, or three, …) named after her
• If she’s hot (and she will be) boys will make many crazy jokes about "starting her up" and "rebooting her" to which I will pummel them upside the head with an XPS laptop that I’ll carry around to "interview" any potential suitors.

Well Bil, here’s the bottom line.  Beautiful baby!  Congratulations and glad everyone is home and doing well.

Sean

Popularity: 41% [?]

Part 2 of 4 part series on Channel 9 about the MVP program…this time with Insiders Ben Miller and April Spence.  Hear the podcast here.

sean

Popularity: 39% [?]

Couple a cool guys from my team (Ed Hickey and Brian Boston) Podcasting on the MVP Program.  While I get to run the program, these guys work hand in hand with our community every day!

Give it a listen:  http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=317571

Sean

Popularity: 33% [?]

A former Dell employee posted an article June 14th that got a lot of play:  22 confessions of a former Dell Sales Manager.  Lots of traffic and 1500+ votes on Digg.  In the article, the author goes on to expose a lot of "tricks" on how to work the online system at dell.com.  Nothing in this post was particularly anti-Dell, but there are a number of items that it’s obvious if you were Dell you might prefer weren’t posted.

June 15th, the same author/site posted again:  Dell Demands Takedown of our "22 confessions of a former Dell Sales Manager".  This posting racked up 3500 Diggs!!  In it, the Consumerist posts the text of a communication (a few back and forth conversations) from a Dell Attorney requesting that the post be removed.

Ugh…Not a good scene.  Big companies have challenges in working through response management in the web 2.0 world - where you pretty much have to assume transparency.

June 16th, the Dell Community team (responsible for Direct2Dell) steps up with a direct response:  Dell’s 23 Confessions.

Let me say, good recovery Dell.  Yes, it would have been better for this not to happen at all, but in reality, it does. The judge of your commitment to community is in the quality of your response.  Here’s what I liked:

• The opener:  "Now’s not the time to mince words, so let me just say it… we blew it."
• Acknowledging other bloggers posts on the topic (Jeff Jarvis) - this says they did some homework.
• It’s personal, I don’t know who Lionel is, but the post is an "I" post vs "we" - good tone.
• Tied in a relevant discussion happening in Ideastorm.  More homework here and including real customers in the discussion.
• Point to point discussion - not negating the feedback or challenging it, just presenting their point of view and links to help.

Sean

Popularity: 22% [?]

Seattle’s famous Fremont Troll

One of the challenges every community will eventually face…if not continuously face… is the disruption of "trolls."  Trolls are a particularly disruptive force in online communities.  You could probably create some categories for types of trolls in online communities (those with a grudge against you, those with a grudge against a group of other community members, those with a grudge against everything, those who are just plain obnoxious, etc).  Thinking through the categories could be fun and I might think on that more for another day.

Communities that don’t force authentication offer uniquely harder challenges with trolls as pure anonymity and difficulty of consequences (banning) embolden some of the worst behaviors.  Given the option, a community without some sort of registration and authentication (at least in order to post/comment) is not the best practice.

In general, trolls will hi-jack conversations with off topic and often outrageous claims on controversial topics.  In the end, the single best tactic for managing trolls (and hardest to do it seems) is ignoring them.  Keep in mind the following principles:

• The Troll’s goal is to draw you into debate and argument - a single response from you is victory for the troll.
• A troll is a troll is a troll is a troll is a troll - you do not have the power to bring them from the dark to the light.
• If you must, type out your response to the troll, save it for 24 hours, and then delete it - that process of writing was your opportunity for therapy!  Posting it will not help.

So…some do’s:

• Ignore, ignore, ignore (to a point)
• Moderation is important, especially to new forming communities (we have not always done this - and still don’t in many cases)
• Moderators who have credibility/status in the community are critical (no "drive by moderation"
• Post guidelines for your community and be consistent about them
• Consider providing tools to your top contributors to handle some poster problems
• Use authentication and no anonymous posting
• Consider providing a "wild west" forum - a place where off-topic and random is ok. 
• Do NOT get confused or drawn into a "freedom of speech" debate - make no mistake, if your community is hosted on your servers, that is your property, you can be held liable for what happens there - freedom of speech is a brilliant principal, but does not apply here.

What had me thinking about this is that we recently had some issues in some private communities with some of these kinds of problems.  It was in a private/"walled garden" community and while I’m not a moderator, I am a pretty well known participant in the space - I guess it helps to mention that I run the program that ultimately entitles the members to be in that community.  Now, I’m pretty pro "letting things go" in this scenario, but there comes a point where lines are crossed and a stand has to be made.

I consider part of the purpose of this blog to share practices (they may not always be the best practices…but they are examples from my experience).  In this case, I had hit the wall and writing and deleting my post was not the right response (given it was a private community).  So, for sake of sharing, here was my very personal post to the community.  I have only made minor <edits> to preserve some people and program privacy.

Thinking out loud - NOT making a policy decision.  I chose this part of the
thread as I like what <name removed> says here.

I’m not inclined to create more private NGs - don’t think it will help
really.
I don’t want to moderate - seems a horrible waste of resources to me
I can’t ban users from the private NGs the way they are configured - you are
either a <member> and have access or you are not a <member> and don’t have access.

I like the notion of values/principles.  As a leader and as a person, I have
to ask myself every day if I am living my values - what do I value?
#1  My family (this is both my home and my work family)
#2  Integrity/honesty/respect
#3  Accomplishment - I like getting things done

These aren’t all my values, but they are core to me and they have to apply
in both my work and my personal life.  If I don’t feel like I’m living them,
then I am failing - not someone else, but failing myself.  So, I work hard
to live these values in everything I do and I feel pretty good that I do it.
However, that said, when I look at the kinds of conversations that seem to
occur at times in the <name of specific community>, that is where I do feel like my values are out of sync with what is happening around something that is part of my work and "family".  I don’t think I can continue to allow these values to be out of sync.  I don’t know what to do about it and I’m quite certain not everyone will like any decision I make, but having everyone "like" my decisions is not on my list of values.

What would I like?  Everyone treated by default with dignity and respect.
If you can’t do that…don’t be here.   If you can’t resist, then I guess
ultimately you’d be making the decision mine - and that decision is not
likely to be one that treats a person differently, but one that says that
person is perhaps not aligned with the values of this <program> as embodied by the current leader of the program.

sean

This is probably one of the strongest and certainly most personal posts I’ve made in my history with community - reminder here - when I post in that community it is as an official representative of my company (and myself).  On the whole, I think this response was very necessary and overall very well and respectfully received.  It was a turning point as well for some recent troubles.  Whether the turn lasts or not is to be seen, but either way I have stated where I stand and communicated that action would be taken.

This aside, it’s an exceptionally important reminder that I am a very present, visible and credible (at least I think so:)) individual in this community.  If I was just another corporate representative who suddenly took a stand I would have been chased off and thoroughly dismissed.  I have authority in this community not because of my role, title, employer or responsibilities - but because of my consistent, open and honest presence there.  Turns out online respect is earned just like offline respect.

So, I hope this example is of some use.  Good luck with your communities and don’t forget to share your stories.  I suppose if there is one take away here, it’s that no matter the situation you need to address in your community, you must be a credible and respected presence there…so go engage!

Sean

Popularity: 9% [?]

Eventually maybe I’ll do some of my own podcasts here, but for now, I’m enjoying the opportunities to do so for others.  Sue Waters with Mobile TAFE recently asked me to do a podcast (link here) and took a bit different approach than others I’ve done.  I hope you’ll give it a listen and give me your feedback the bits that worked and areas I should expand on.

Sean

Popularity: 14% [?]

3 people helped each day, "paid forward" by each person helps 4.7M people in two weeks.

Sean

Popularity: 16% [?]

On Tuesday, May 8th, I’m presenting a breakout with the above title at SSPA in San Diego.  I’ve put together an abstract of my talk below.  Knowing me, it will be interesting to compare what comes out of my mouth, with my in advance prepared content.  I have a hard time not free wheeling a bit on my content as I go:)

Here’s the abstract:

Where’s the first place you go for help, support and advice on all the products and services you use in your daily life?  “www.company.com?”  That’s probably not your first stop.  Most of us go to “our community.”  That is, the personal network we are connected with:  friends, family, neighbors, etc.  Why?  Our personal networks offer a lot of benefits.  They have diverse areas of expertise, they are trusted, they are accessible, and they generally “speak our language” – not linguistically, but like a user verses a sales person or support professional. 

The challenge with our “personal networks” is that they are finite.  They may not be deep enough on a topic or broad enough across new areas of interest.  Enter online or virtual communities.  The proliferation of online communities in recent years has democratized access to information, experiences and expertise on virtually every subject and in nearly every language in the world.  As a user, you now have a choice between your personal network, vast online communities (peer users), and your suppliers for help and support.  Each of these sources provides certain advantages (credibility, authority, camaraderie, indemnification/quality assurance, accessibility, timeliness, guaranteed answer, etc) and disadvantages (scope, trust, cost, etc.) 

Given this new dynamic, how are you defining your approach to online help and support to balance both traditional online support experiences and integrating communities into the assistance workflow?  Our objective is to deliver the best of both worlds.  This means migrating your customers from “trusting your content” to a model where customers “trust the experience” you deliver.  In other words, the content you will now deliver will be a superset of the content you author, so how will you assure your users that this user generated content is easy to use, easy to trust and easy to find?

At Microsoft, online communities offer the single largest opportunity to dramatically increase the breadth and depth of available content on our products and services.  While we are not in the “content business,” we are in the answer business from a customer support experience standpoint.  Integrating the value of the vast repository of user generated content and independent answerers is no simple task. 

As a starting point, let’s set a context for what we mean by communities.  The industry today is awash in community buzz words:  “virtual, online, web 2.0, social networking, peering, participative web, etc.”  For Microsoft, communities represent anywhere users go online to interact with one another to gain knowledge and/or expertise.  As you set the landscape for your communities a few key principles emerge:

• Communities are User Driven.  The best communities have you as a participant, but not as the driver.
• Communities are not just about forums or Question & Answer pairs.  While forums are a great starting point, user participation can come in many other ways:  Blogs, Wikis, podcasts, videocasts, content rating, tagging, RSS subscriptions, “user Gen-next?”  Content authoring and forum answering may be exceptionally valuable today, but other, lighter weight participation models may be equally important over time.
• Communities are a combination of venues/destinations, relationships, tools and processes.  Without adequate planning across all these pillars, challenging roadblocks will emerge.
• Our communities are not confined to destinations across www.Microsoft.com.

While there is an explosion in social networking technologies that enable many of these community models, there are also a set of industry and social trends driving this evolution.  Take developers for example, our experience is that developers dramatically prefer to self-solve issues versus calling for support.  This is a reflection of evolving preferred work-styles.  At the same time, those entering the workforce today are by-products of the “MySpace” generation – a generation of social and peer networkers.  In the years to come, it seems clear this will emerge as a dominate model for help and support.

The next issue to address is affirming the business purpose for investing in community work. This will define whether you check the community box or ingrain it into your long term online support strategy.  Online communities can benefit the support function, the marketing function and the product development function.  Establishing priority will drive one of the key challenges for communities:  landing the right near and longer term KPIs. 

At Microsoft, I would set the priorities as Support and Product insight with little direct investments in marketing via community.  This drives how we think about KPIs:  Reach, Success/answer rate, Satisfaction and cost. 

Integrating community and online can be described as a 3 step process.

1)      Understand the community demographics:  What communities already exist around your products?  Are they communities you host and/or 3^rd party.  How big are they?  How are you going to approach the legal and policy issues to ensure you have a framework for risk management that doesn’t unrealistically constrain your support of community content?  If you haven’t already, when are you going to join the community?  Do you have a credible presence there already?  If not, that is a natural and necessary starting point.  Who are the influencers?  You need to identify them, thank them AND engage with them.

2)      Integrate community and support workflows:  This speaks to the preferred work style of our users.  Do the phone, the web and community feel like 3 distinct support options and workflows, or is it one integrated end to end experience?  The theme we are targeting here is “search-ability” – of support AND user generated content.  These initiatives include online workflow & search, online submission, rapid publishing, supported communities and expanded influencer recognition programs with a focus on service delivery mix-shift from phone, online reach, answer rate and satisfaction.

3)      Leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowds:  In the future state, the aspiration shifts from “search-ability” to “find-ability.”  At this point you’re not just looking at the sum of user generated content, but you are deploying specific strategies for filtering, rating and rendering that proactively presents that content to your users based on their profile and/or past support interactions.  A key indicator here will be progressively “stickier” community participation.

This road to online and community is not without its “potholes.”  Two film metaphors apply to this business, “Field of Dreams” and “Pay it Forward.”  Remember, “Field of Dreams” was just a movie – if you build a community, that doesn’t mean customers will come.  Furthermore, the legal construct can derail your plans and progress. So engage legal advice early and often in determining how you implement (not whether or not you should). 

I would also highlight that your communities are not YOUR communities; they belong to your customers.  You should be a purposeful and engaged neighbor in that community, but there is great danger in overpowering the community.  A topic that often comes up is controlling the community and I’d note that the effort spent to control a community and your ability to control it are inversely related.  And lastly, landing metrics is not easy.  The reporting and analytics in this space are still immature and require considerable planning and internal negotiations to gain alignment.

In summary, the 3 steps above take us from a support value proposition, to a Support, Enable and User Participative value proposition.  It’s important to acknowledge that your community likely already exists (if this is not the case, you may have a different problem.)  Earning the right to participate in that community as a credible peer is a key and non-trivial opportunity. 

PS:  If you’d like the slides that go with this, drop me an email:  Seanod (at) microsoft (dot) com and I’ll forward.

Sorry for the long post:)

Sean

Popularity: 20% [?]