We've had a lot of math on my blog recently, so I thought I'd take a break and talk about some of the more touchy-feely aspects of community today.

Do you love your customers? What makes you think they don't love you?

Ever since the Cluetrain, a lot has been said about the new power people have to be heard with social media. However, it seems that most companies believe customers will use this power to do them evil rather than good. After all, the #1 concern I hear from customers considering building a community is some version of "how do we keep people from saying bad things about us on our site"?

I find it equally odd that the common retort I hear is a riff on "Well, they're going to say bad things about you anyway, so why not let them say it where you can see them?" 

Why are we so convinced that our customers hate us? Is this what all those customer surveys, Net Promoter scores and market research have told us over the years? Are there hundreds or thousands of people who have been just chomping at the bit for us to open our doors so they can yell at us? Then why in the world is anybody actually buying our products, much less buying them again and again?

I think this crisis of organizational self-confidence needs a quick dose of Jack Handy: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it - people like me!"

I'm treating the issue kind of lightly here, but there does seem to be a lot of irrationality with how companies perceive online conversations with customers. Perhaps it stems from the venerable old adages that 'no news is good news', and 'you only hear from people when things go wrong'. We deal with so many fires and issues in our daily lives isolated from customers inside our corporate brand, that we think that is all there is. But unless you are a monopoly or fascist state, the reason you are still in business is that customers generally think they get good value for your products and services. When companies actually do invite their customers to tell them what they think, they are often pleasantly surprised by the quality of the responses they receive.

I'm not saying people won't complain about your products and services in your blogs or forums, or that online attacks on your brand don't happen. But I am saying that they happen a lot less than companies expect, and careful preparation in advance will both prevent the worst, and enable you to respond quickly to address issues before they become crises (for a quick primer in preparing for negativity in public see this exerpt from Andy Sernovitz’ book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking).

Think for a moment of the brands you use in your own life. What would you like to say to them if they asked? What would you tell your peers about them?

Now think of the brands you despise. Is a part of your anger their unwillingness to listen respectfully to your needs? If they actually did pay attention, would that soften your opinion?

Photo by aussiegall

If you've looked into online communities in any way, chances are you've heard of 90-9-1, also called the 1% Rule of Participation Inequality. What it describes is that about 90% of visitors will rarely contribute content to online communities at all, 9% will post infrequently and a small proportion of members, the 1%, will tend to post the majority of all content in the community. At Lithium, we call that 1% the Super Users of your community.

But so what? Why does this matter so much that nearly everyone in the social media world feels compelled to talk about it?

Some folks seem to regard this as a challenge or opportunity - if we can just figure out the right magical formula, they say, we can unlock all that potential activity from those 90%ers to make our communities successful. Like turning lead into gold, but perhaps just as hard to do.

Others try to use 90-9-1 as a benchmark or average by which to measure their success, and spend a lot of time and effort raising their 'scores' one or two percentage points closer to the mark or above it. Even though studies have indicated that this ratio tends to vary by both scale and modality.

And finally there are those who seem to take it as an excuse to avoid online communities altogether, and perhaps marginalize them as the fringe that only represents the minority view. This view forgets or purposely ignores the other 90-99% who are paying attention to what's going on.

There is still a lot of work to be done to determine why 90-9-1 seems to occur over an over again and whether it can be influenced or altered in any way. But until that day, there are some ways this knowledge can actually help us to build more healthy and effective communities. Here's three things 90-9-1 means to you:

1. If you want to increase quantity of activity in your community, it’s more effective to increase the total population who visit your site than to try to get current members to participate more (not that you shouldn't do both, but the former will typically be more effective than the latter).
2. If you want to increase the overall quality of activity in your community, it is generally more effective to focus your efforts on those 1% who contribute the most.
3. If you want to find out what the total reach is of your community, be sure to count the 90% or so who are spectators as well as the 10% who are posting.

Are you worrying about 90-9-1? Or are you using it to your advantage?

As any good trial lawyer will tell you, you should never ask a question in front of a jury unless you already know what the answer will be. There's a similar rule to follow for ideation sites and other requests for community feedback: if you ask for members to submit ideas, make sure you have a plan for how to address them when they do.

Idea exchanges and other feedback mechanisms let you establish a direct connection with customers and get insights into their opinions, while also demonstrating  that their voice matters. But that only works if you actually show them you are listening.

To make sure you start off on the right foot, you should plan to address four key elements when launching an idea exchange:

Expectations: You need to communicate the purpose and scope of your idea exchange to make sure everyone knows what its for. If you are only able to act on suggestions for specific products or issues, make sure members know this in advance. If you are using criteria other than just the votes to decide which ideas to implement, tell your members this up front.

Moderation: Ensure that content in suggestions are appropriate and thank members for well-crafted submissions, while avoiding forward-looking statements. If you have an existing community already (and you are following moderation best practices) chances are you are already covered here, but it never hurts to review those policies when you are adding anything new.

Response: Acknowledge the suggestions, evaluate and comment on them, and assign statuses on a regular basis. This also includes communicating back to the community when an idea is adopted. You can think of Ideas like the inverse of a blog in this respect; in a blog you write the content that others comment on, but in an idea exchange your members expect you to respond to them.

Action: Have a plan for what to do with the results. This should be according to the expectations you set before, fulfilling your purpose and redeeming the implicit promise you make by asking for member feedback to begin with.

You don't need to implement every idea to make people feel like they have a voice. And you don't need extensive business process management tools to make it all happen. Just be clear about your intentions and follow through on your members' ideas visibly and appropriately.

Know your answer before you ask.

photo by hashmil

Interestingly, after I posted my article last week on why limiting participation in your community is detrimental to achieving ROI, an article comes out over at Internet Evolution titled "Online Communities: Private vs. Public". There's some good quotes in the article from our CEO, Lyle Fong and from the CEO of Passenger, a company that's chosen a completely different direction than us when it comes to online communities. And it does an effective job of outlining the key differences between the private and public approaches. But in choosing to highlight the differences, I think it leaves the reader with a false choice. After all, just because a community is public, doesn't mean that everything in that community is exclusively public.

In a public community you can create private areas that are either invitation-only or that members can earn access to through certain behaviors. The difference is that when you grant folks access to these areas, you already know them and the way they participate due to their previous activity. Within that private area, you can engage much more closely with the vetted audience in whatever way is most appropriate for you objectives. And because the entire community is public, you are able to cast a much wider net for the audience that you want to try to attract.

Contrast this with an exclusively private community, where you invite a much smaller number of members that you want to join, and then hope they will come and participate in ways that you want. Not only do you have to get any potential members over that initial barrier to join in the first place, which is harder to do when the content and activity which is their motivation to join is not visible. But limiting participation also shifts the problem from finding productive members to trying to change the behavior of existing participants, which experience shows is a much harder thing to do.

The public vs.. private debate is a good one to be aware of, but be sure it doesn't take you to an either/or proposition that can limit your success.

Photo by by star5112

There is a school of thought in social media which believes that communities cannot be made, they are only discovered. On the other side, some folks believe that you can build it and they will come. The answer probably exists somewhere in the middle.

Of course, we at Lithium are in the business of helping companies build a community around their products or services. Leaving aside the argument about whether these are communities that were 'made' or 'discovered', there has been a recurring outcry from some folks in the social media scene against the soundness of this strategy. "Fish where the fish are" is a common refrain to companies considering the build vs.. join decision, and I'd be the first to agree this is very sound advice. But I'd argue that this isn't really an factor against building a community site of your own for two reasons:

First, there's nothing to prevent you from building a community site of your own and reaching out to groups in other places; in fact, it should be a key part of your outreach strategy.

Second, and more importantly, chances are good that your customers visit your company site today with some frequency for a number of reasons: support, product news and updates, etc. If these folks aren't the core of your new community, who is?

Sometimes you don't need to go very far to find the fish: it's quite possible they may be swimming in a lake in your own backyard.

photo by libookperson

To continue where I left off earlier this week, I was talking about the large number of uses the word 'community' is being put to, and wondered if that was making it harder for organizations to come up with effective community strategies. If the term community is going to avoid becoming a grab bag of any social concept we want to attach to it, we will need to put some definition around it. 

Let me begin by saying I don't expect to definitively answer the question of what is community in all its forms and expressions. This is a concept that many better equipped than I are engaged in researching and refining. But I would like to try to come up with a working definition for organizations to use as they start thinking about how to approach online community as an objective to advance their goals.

So perhaps the best way to talk about community is to start at the result: what do we want a community for?

I would argue that earning the trust of members is the ultimate benefit organizations can obtain from communities. Trust is fundamental because it enables everything else, from increased sales and satisfaction to improved product development and adoption. These objectives cannot occur without sufficient trust. And if that is true, how do communities help to build trust? Or better yet, how do online communities in particular facilitate the building of trust better than other methods? 

I feel the key is in the coalescence of a shared identity among community members. Membership and affinity become possible because we are naturally disposed to associate with others who are like us. We say that we belong to communities or groups, that we are a part of something that is larger than ourselves and we identify with and trust other members as a result. A prime examples of this is in politics: how often do we see that people vote along 'party lines' no matter who the candidate is? Americans, for example, will frequently assert that they vote a particular way because they are either a Democrat or Republican; because their party affiliation is ultimately a part of who they are. An example at the extreme end of the spectrum perhaps, but we do define ourselves through our associations and that definition creates a degree of trust.

So it is this shared identity that I think ultimately differentiates a community from other groups of individuals. And once that common emotional connection exists, you benefit from the network effects possible online to build relationships and trust further and faster than prior methods could accomplish.

Next up: if shared identity is the foundation for trust among groups, how do you get there? What are the common elements of communities that enable these associations to form and interact?

Photo by by Joe Shlabotnik

When beginning a new relationship, are you more likely to connect with the outgoing person who really puts themselves out there and makes an effort? Or the guy who is reserved, tests the waters carefully, and starts with all kinds of ground rules about how you can interact with each other and when?

It is deceptively like common sense to start small when you are trying something new. After all, it is generally accepted as a best practice to launch a new campaign, product or program with a beta or pilot phase because it allows you to validate your ideas and approach with a lower degree of risk than a full deployment. But the problem with applying this concept to deploying your community is that you increase your risk instead of lowering it.

Communities are about building relationships. To start a community, you need to create an environment that is conducive to forming relationships among your members. Members show up for a variety of reasons, but what keeps them there is demonstrable activity by other members and an overall commitment to the community as an entity of its own. Pilots and beta programs actually increase your risk rather than limit it.

Here's some things to consider if you are thinking about launching a beta version of your community:

Betas and pilots are limited in size.

But a community needs to reach a critical mass to succeed.

Do you want to limit your chances of success?

 

Betas and pilots are of limited duration.

Community requires commitment.

Will temporary and superficial relationships get you the results you want?

Your relationships with your community and the people who comprise it are not a technology, they're not a campaign and they're not a project. Don't make the mistake of treating them that way.

Photo by Mel B.

I'm going to start with a quick culinary diversion: Let's say you want to start a new restaurant in the city offering an entertaining experience in addition to a wonderful meal. But it's your first time as a restaurateur so you're understandably nervous about how to proceed. So you decide to start out of your house in the suburbs and have your extended family try out your food first, hoping that this will prepare you to open that swanky hot-spot in the city. You can keep to a simple menu, and you can feel safe and confident that your family won't give you too much trouble while you're learning the ropes. And after a couple months of hearing how wonderful everything is, you're brimming with confidence for the real thing.

Good plan, right? The only problem is that your new restaurant in the city closes its doors after only 90 days. Why? In focusing on the safe and easy target you failed to learn the lessons you needed to be successful.

Yet organizations starting out with social media tend to fall into just this kind of thinking. They try to start with a known, safe audience (like employees) thinking it will somehow prepare them for a different kind of community. The problem is that they learn the wrong lessons in the 'safe' environment, which can make it harder to be successful when they start to engage their real audience.

5 lessons you won't learn from internal communities:

How to successfully promote a community

Failing to attract enough new members in your public community is the number one reason why communities fail. It is important to promote internally, but let's face it, that's mostly a captive and receptive audience.

 

How to handle confidential or sensitive information

There are many things we know about our organizations that are not common knowledge. But where best to draw the line, especially on those topics where the public may have some but not all of the information? How much to disclose, and who is authorized to disclose it? What do you say when your members ask you directly about a topic you'd rather not discuss? These issues are less likely to occur behind the corporate firewall, since your insiders are already in the know.

 

How to handle public criticism

You may receive criticism internally, but it is unlikely to challenge your corporate values or self-image; your public audience won't have such reservations. You can handle (and even convert) critics in your public community, but to do so requires policies to evaluate and respond to criticism and feedback in a speedy, professional and transparent manner.

 

How to moderate effectively for a public community

The rules are there to help your members be successful, but what is appropriate can very different between internal and external communities. This means your moderators will need different policies and procedures to address each group.

 

How to protect your community

Its a tough world out there, and not everyone is your friend. But this simply isn't a factor in an internal community, so security ends up as an afterthought to the planning and architecture of internal sites. Security is never easy to retrofit, whether it is technology or process. You need to start secure.

Internal communities can provide many benefits, but serving as a test bed for your public community is not one of them. While it may appear easier to start with an internal community, the lessons you learn don't always apply to the public environment. If you want to learn the secrets of cooking over an open flame practicing with sushi isn't going to help.

Any other differences between internal and external communities to watch out for that you can see?

Photo graciously made available by qnr

Caroline McCarthy of CNET posted an article about a recent interview with Adam Sarner at Gartner titled Analyst: Half of 'social media campaigns' will flop. The key point that was made was that "75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes". Adam Sarner projects that 50% of those will ultimately be classified as failures.

Two things I thought after reading the article:

1. If companies view social media only as a vehicle for a marketing campaign, failure is almost garanteed. Effective, successful community strategies are built upon developing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with your customers rather than marketing any one product or fad. Those companies need to re-evaluate what they want to achieve in the bi-directional mediums that exist today. To do so requires developing a strategy built on real data, accompanied by the implementation of best practices, policies and processes that will enable them to succeed. This was true in the past for CRM, ERP and other game-changing initatives, and it is true now as well.


2. The interviewer asked at the end "whether the faltering economy will mean that businesses are cutting back on this largely unproven field of social media for marketing or customer relations." Maybe, but if they do it would be at exactly the wrong time. I believe one of the reactions to the failures of Wall Street will be an increased skepticism and desire for transparency in corporations. Companies should use sound social media strategies to deliver transparency and build closer relationships with your customers as a way to turn that perception around.

Another way to look at this report is if 75% of the Fortune 1000 will undertake the risk, 250 will fail by never trying, 375 will fail through bad planning and poor implementation and 375 will successfully build a deeper relationship with their customers founded on mutual benefit. Which company do you want to be?

If you knew one of these companies starting a new social media initiative, how would you advise them? What do you think it takes to be one of the successful 50%?

I posed a question the other day on the Lithosphere asking how many ranks communities are starting with and how many they have now. Take a look at the post if you want to see what people are saying, but the responses started me thinking about what kinds of impacts the different ranks you create have. As a member you can often choose your moniker, but there's something different about a name that is bestowed upon you by others. What turns a rank you hold into more than just a name, to becoming a measure of status and recognition of the value you contribute? And as a community manager, how do you tap into that process?

It's an vital question, because it lies at the heart of those things we try to foster in our communities: increased activity, appropriate behavior, a positive tone. As a community manager, how do you craft a system of ranks that fosters the behavior you want and that members will embrace?

I'll post my own thoughts in the comments, but what do you think? What ranks, titles and names are you known by in different settings? Which ones are you proud of?