Here are some of the report’s findings:

1. Only 31% of respondents have a comprehensive online community strategy in place (53% are developing their strategy as they go!)
2. 59% of respondents say their goals are closely aligned with their organization’s corporate goals.

We find this response interesting as if only 31% of respondents have a strategy in place, how can 59% have closely aligned goals?

Additional findings:

1. Metrics are still confusing people in terms of how to use them for ROI. The top ranking metrics be noted as critical for ROI are listed as traffic patterns and statistics (visitors, visits, page views, etc.).
2. Cost savings for Customer Service/Tech Support, Trial Downloads of products, both scored the lowest as critical metrics for ROI. Yet, these two metrics are the easiest to use to demonstrate a base level of support for an ROI case.

Community Managers who responded to the initial survey ranked Membership Growth as the number one success or performance indicator they report on regularly. The most important data that they report upward include (in ranked order): number of members, basic metrics (whatever that means), online content, number of visitors, number of posts, and other meaningless metrics.

More shocking than this is the response to the level of satisfaction/believability of the data with your executives and how satisfied the executives are with the reports they are receiving. A whopping 23% responded very satisfied with 19% responding satisfied. The executive teams we deal with want clear, concise and relevant reporting. That doesn’t sound like what the respondents are delivering to us.

Think there might be a correlation between the lack of a cohesive online community strategy that closely aligns with corporate goals and the lack of sophisticated measurement and reporting? We do.

Many of the respondents (and members of the OCRN) are still confused when it comes to demonstrating the value of their communities to management. With the lack of refinement comes the claim that online community is a soft application that doesn’t deliver results. During budgeting, how can your online community efforts get the funding you need if your team cannot prove its value to management?

Based upon the responses, we wonder how many of the vendors in the Online Community space don’t understand measurement and reporting issues. With budgets tightening, it is clear to us that this has to be a key issue for the industry. Yet in our opinion, the methodology and understanding regressed to pre-2000 levels. That’s a shame, because our ROI analysis does deliver an easy to understand measurement of how the community is delivering on organizational goals.

We help our clients understand exactly how their communities can help with organizational goals and how to measure their success. We start with targeted audience attraction through PPC efforts and sponsored content efforts, then follow these members through the online community value chain to demonstrate the ROI and value that online communities bring to an organization.

Want to learn more about this topic? Leave us a comment or contact us.

But digging deeper, it may just be that marketers jumped in without a plan for measuring their success and relied on traffic measures to justify their expense. That is always a recipe for disaster in marketing using interactive marketing sites like Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, and even LinkedIn. The idea that traffic will magically turn a poorly planned campaign into a success is a faulty one at best. And that’s where some marketers go wrong in looking to use virtual worlds…

It is never enough to set up a space in a virtual world (existing or creating your own) without specific calls to action that you can measure and bring back to a business objective. Just as we counsel our clients and prospects to develop success metrics prior to a launch, we would also tell anyone looking to use interactive technology to make sure they understand just what it is they want their members to do when they visit. So here is our quick list of what’s working and what is not in virtual worlds today:

What’s working:

1. Clickable offers for members visiting your area – Coupons, downloadable avatar accessories for basic information or taking a survey
2. Clever updates- Think virtual billboard tactics where your images and message change on a regular basis
3. Persona avatars to greet and discuss your product in the context of the site and member conversations (i.e. subtle references and recommendations, not hard sell)
4. One off events built up with lots of publicity – for an idea of what I mean, look only as far as CSI using Second Life in its television shows. While a coup for Second Life, the buzz for CSI was pretty good and I’m sure it drove in some additional younger viewers who didn’t previously watch.

What’s not working:

1. Build it and they will come thinking – Too many marketers fall into the Field of Dreams syndrome regarding using third party virtual worlds. Just as any interactive element used today, virtual worlds require staff or outsourced contractors to maintain the excitement, interact with users, and in general play greeter to visitors.
2. Poorly executed measurement – relying only on traffic metrics such as visits and views of your virtual property. You need to move towards ratios that measure activity of consequence for your brand and business.
3. The Jump Off the Bridge syndrome- Remember what your Dad used to say? “Just because all of your friends want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, do you?” Too much herd mentality out there in interactive marketing. Be original with clear expectations and ideas, don’t just do a virtual land grab because your competition is already there. What if it’s a money loser for them? Do you really want to follow?

There’s a lot of good things happening in Virtual World thinking and practices. Children’s sites like ClubPenguin, Webkins, and others are booming as safe havens for kids online. (Our 3 boys are members of both and interact with their classmates and cousins in these worlds.)

While this same excitement hasn’t taken hold in the business community (except for the gaming world), if done right a well thought out presence in a virtual world can yield great business results.