Recent Gallup research shows that brands have very little influence on the decision of a consumer to purchase their product or service. Instead, they seek out the opinions of their spouse, children, friends, and others. At the very bottom of the totem pole are company sponsored Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. So does that mean that Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets are useless to brands when trying to cultivate their audience? Hardly. It simply means that brands cannot rely solely on putting up Facebook posts or sending out Tweets with quips about company information or the newest rebate. Brands must focus on truly engaging users if they want to build an audience that will, in turn, go out and spread the word. Brands have to put in the time and effort to create passionate engaged followers.

Source: Social Media: The Three Big Myths, Gallup

When brands don’t nurture these relationships they are opening the door for a larger audience to speak negatively or ambivalently about them. Look at the chart below that describes the different types of engaged users. What should stand out to you is the fact that an actively disengaged customer is just as likely to talk to others about your product as a fully engaged customer, just in all the ways you don’t want them to. When brands have Facebook pages that exist only to fill some percieved need to be on Facebook and don’t engage the people on those pages, they risk alienating their potential audience. The problem then becomes not only the fact that people aren’t giving you Facebook likes, but that they are also now talking poorly of you offline and that is something you won’t be able to track with metrics. Putting effort into truly engaging those who engage with you on social media sites and focusing on the quality of your interactions over the quanitity of your interactions will, in turn, have a greater reach and potentially be longer lasting over time.

Source: Making the Most of Social Media, Gallup

Engaging your audience isn’t always an easy task and in times like these, when everything has to be monetized, it’s easy to get scared off by the seeming inability to truly measure the value of your online community. To some, online communities really don’t earn their keep or are really only there to preach to the already existing choir of users.  In our experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  Online communities can be both the lifeblood of an organization as well as a platform to attract those ever elusive new users/consumers. We’ve helped several major organizations grow their online communities into vital repositories of information, communication, and conversation.  Not only that, we’ve seen these communities facilitate huge ROIs for their brand.

Richard Millington, founder of the UK based Fever Bee Community Consultancy, recently wrote an article titled “Why Branded Online Communities Are Doomed.”  Some of what he wrote has merit, but, in our view, a lot of it doesn’t because we’ve personally seen the opposite happen.

Communities CAN be an important source of revenue

“At the moment, most branded community efforts fail. Few attract more than a handful of active participants. Even those that succeed, barely deliver the ROI they promised.” -  Richard Millington

While this may be true of some online communities, blanket statements about their ability to both attract active participants and deliver the ROI they promised is patently false. We helped NetApp build their online community which has gone on to produce over half a billion (yes, billion) dollars in partner owned sales revenue. Cisco has seen a ROI of over 100% from their online community.  And there are other companies all over the country and around the globe that are seeing direct monetary benefits come out of their online communities.  Whether it’s through direct sales coming out of those communities or greater brand awareness, over all, B2B and B2C communities can and do work.

Communities aren’t just for loyal customers

“If you’re trying to reach new audiences, a community is the wrong choice. Why would people join a community for a product/service they don’t buy?” - Richard Millington

Again, this is not what we’ve experienced in our many years of helping companies build out their online communities.  If you’re trying to reach a new audience communities can be one of the BEST places to turn to.  When reading that question, we ask the question back “Why would someone buy a product that they haven’t asked other people, people who are already users, about.”  Communities are where they can get their questions answered and it’s someplace where, once they do become a user, they can return to.  They know the community will be there to help them and having a robust, active community there for your prospective customers is a benefit rather than a waste as Mr. Millington would have you believe.  Not only that, often times these communities help stave off customer support calls by answering questions within the community.  This, in turn, saves the company money and also builds quality relationships among new and loyal users.  Those new users will look to the community as a source of information and turn into loyal users resulting in even more revenue as they continue to buy more products and support your brand through word of mouth advertising.

Size matters but it can’t be one size fits all

“Communities don’t need a big launch, they need a small launch…They need very high levels of personal contact. They need to be directly invited. Most importantly, they need to be prompted for the first few weeks to participate in discussions.” -   Richard Millington

Yes and no. Mr. Millington is right that companies need to focus on nurturing their communities and even help guide the conversations sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that the community as a whole can’t be big at launch.  Directly inviting members isn’t going to get you far when it comes to building your community. We have found that only 3-5% of all invited users or users who find the community feature will go deeper than one page into the new community.  Even then, only 15-20% of those will actually stay long enough to come to their own opinion about what you’re offering and only a few of those will actually post anything. We prefer to advise our clients to look across their entire audience for places where users share interests and create a larger group of members and visitors that can interact with the community from that.  The size of the “starter” community should be based upon a percentage of your entire audience not a finite number of 50-100 as Mr. Millington suggests.

Communities are here to stay

“We need to understand that communities take time, but it’s an investment which pays off many times over.” -  Richard Millington

Now this is something we can all agree on. Communities take time but, like Mr. Millington says, it’s an investment which will pay off in the end.  Done right, online communities can be the keystone of your overall communication plan. We’ve seen them be successful time and time again. Online communities are far from doomed.  We’ve seen quite the opposite.  They can and do have measureable monetary and social effects on both new and loyal users and they are a powerful tool in your arsenal of social media tactics.

Are you attending the upcoming Marketing Profs SocialTech 2010 event in San Jose on October 26th? If so, we hope that you’ll come say hello and bring us your social media questions. Our team will be exhibiting at the event and will be available to answer questions that you may have regarding social media for technology companies.

The Impact Interactions team has a long history of helping B2B Technology companies. In 2000, our president Mike Rowland helped Cisco Systems launch and manage its first online community, The Networking Professionals Community (NetPro). Mr. Rowland also helped SAP launch its first online community, the SAP Business Community as well as an additional 18 local language communities around the globe. Both NetPro and the SAP Business Community won multiple awards for their excellence in meeting member needs. Since then, Impact Interactions’ team members have helped multiple B2B technology companies ranging from Cisco to SAP to NetApp to IBM to Intel understand how to use social media and online communities to generate leads, lower support costs, educate staff, and extend offline events.

“Too often companies focus on the tools or third party sites like Twitter or Facebook, then wonder why they aren’t getting the results they anticipated,” states Mike Rowland, president of Impact Interactions. “In the technology industry, the users are very sophisticated and have clearly defined needs that must be met to succeed. Our methodology begins with defining success from a measurement point of view. We then build out key performance indicators (KPIs) to track our success based upon three categories of measurement: Traffic, Behavior, and Value. Too often marketers substitute traffic metrics or behavior activities for value. This is why so many senior executives have difficulty believing that social media is effective, even in technology companies. In order to demonstrate true value to the organization, you have to move beyond traffic and behavior and find the economic value of social media activities.”

Recently, Impact Interactions was selected by Cisco to help with its launch of the Cisco Support Community Hall of Fame and Expert program, as well as the NetPro Poland and CSC Japan communities. Our continuing work for Cisco also includes social media reporting, community moderation, and social media consulting projects for the marketing and support channels.

Work for SAP includes partner channel social media enablement activities, Best Performance program training for partners in EMEA, as well as dashboard creation and management for SME online activities.

NetApp activities are focused primarily upon the NetApp Community, a leading information source for storage professionals. We also are working with NetApp to create a measurement methodology which proves the value of the community and corresponding social media efforts to senior executives. Additionally, we created measurement dashboards for NetApp’s management team.

Visitors to the Impact Interactions exhibition space at SocialTech 2010 will be provided with the opportunity to sign up for a free 45 minute consultation after the event to answer their specific social media questions. The event is being held at the DoubleTree San Jose on October 26, 2010. More details can be found by visiting the MarketingProfs’ event site.

“We look forward to meeting with attendees to share the best practices we developed over the past ten years helping our technology clients succeed,” states Mr. Rowland. “If social media is to move past the hype and become a successful long term strategic asset for companies, we have to demonstrate not only what works but how success is measured.”

by Matthew Lees

I’ve been working with a few clients on upcoming online community deployments. As with the launch of most any technology endeavor, particularly Web-related ones, the energy and excitement become palpable as the launch date approaches.

The weeks and months preceding the launch are full of planning meetings, discussions of issues that inevitably arise, all kinds of decisions by a dozen different people wearing a dozen different hats, technological configuration and development, graphical work, customer outreach, testing, and much more. Most of these things are geared toward getting the community looking and functioning the way everyone envisions it will, so that it’s ready when the flip is switched and it goes live.

But the community’s launch is just the beginning. It comes after a great deal of work by a dedicated team, but it’s really just Day 1 in terms of what the community is fundamentally about. All the effort is put ahead of time in because, starting on Day 2, people will be asking questions, giving answers, solving problems, holding conversations, voting in polls, sharing ideas, getting to know each other, observing, learning, and providing some value to each other and to the sponsoring organization.

One of my roles in working with clients is to prompt them to be ready for what will happen after launch. But not every community team is prepared for Day 2.

The laser-sharp focus on the launch of a community, sometimes to the exclusion of what will happen afterwards, always reminds me of the ending of the 1972 movie “The Candidate.” The film stars Robert Redford as Bill McKay, the son of a former popular governor who has never had any political aspirations of his own. Prompted by veteran campaign strategist Marvin Lucas (played by Peter Boyle — I sure miss him) to run for the California senate seat, he takes on the task with conflicted intentions. The movie follows the race from announcement to primary to election, into the first few moments after the outcome is decided.

It’s a brilliantly perceptive and energetic film with a lot to say not only about politics of the 1970s, but also about politics in any era. And it has a lot to say on paying too much attention to short-term objectives, potentially to the detriment of long-term goals.

The final scene is a classic. There’s an excellent overview of the movie at the Film Night at the Park site. This excerpt is from the last paragraph:

“And then there’s the final scene, considered by many to be one of the most powerful political statements made in a Hollywood film. When the circus is over, and everyone packs up to leave, only one question remains. And it remains to this day, hanging in the air…”

I can’t spoil that line here, of course. Best is to watch the entire movie, to get the full impact. (If more instant gratification is required, you can view the final scene on YouTube or read about it on Wikipedia. Do watch the movie at some point, though.)

But that question remains, too, hanging in the air after an online community launches. If you’ve done your planning for Day 2 and beyond, you’ll know the answer.

[Fade to black]

by Matthew Lees

In this fourth and final post on the potential for convergence between Internal and External communities – see Post #1 to start at the beginning – I want to touch on the individuals who are charged with building and managing communities, whether communities of employees or communities of customers.

The Practitioner Perspective
We’re still in the very early days of social software and online communities. Practitioners are the ones at the forefront of this field, which is at the interaction of sociology, technology, and business. And they’re breaking ground daily.

They’re the knowledge management strategists who think about ways of getting colleagues to collaborate more openly; they’re the HR professionals who want to retain top talent by ensuring all voices are not only heard, but also help shape what’s important within the organization; they’re the community managers and moderators who work to get customers to support and learn from each other; they’re the marketers monitoring brand value and customer sentiment across the social Web; and they’re the marketers, developers and researchers who look to engage with customers (and prospective customers) and glean insights in order to innovate and improve.

What they’re not, though, is omniscient. Because social practitioners are working in such a new space, success is a moving target. They don’t know – they can’t know – what things will be like in six months, in a year, or in five years. The guidelines, benchmarks, and best practices are largely still being created every day. Sure, some organizations and vendors are ahead of others, and there’s a lot that (happily) is known and at least somewhat agreed upon, but compared to more traditional disciplines, there are few, if any, codified bodies of knowledge.

Pulled in Multiple Directions
What this means is that it’s tough enough being a social media practitioner in the first place, let alone trying to work in multiple domains, specifically internal and external. Some of the tools and techniques involved in building, managing, and getting the most out of a community apply to both internal and external communities…but many don’t. And, as Post 2 touched on, the business goals are very different.

Last month I wrote about a practitioner in a marketing communications group whose B2B online customer community initiative was sidetracked into becoming an internal collaboration-based community. She was caught in a tug of war between the internally focused IT team and the outward-looking marketing group, with execs on both sides knowing they needed her social media expertise, but not realizing how vastly different their business goals were.

And she’s not the only one in this predicament.

The Downside of Employee Community and Customer Community Convergence
For practitioners, the downside of such convergence is the potential for being pulled unwillingly and/or unexpectedly into initiatives that you’re unprepared for, unsuited for, or uninterested in. It’s nice to ride the excitement of the social media wave, and to be appreciated and in demand for one’s expertise. But the excitement can easily turn to frustration. Here are some things to keep in mind:

•    Bring it back to business goals and business use cases. You may need to hammer on this over and over. It’s a big red flag if business sponsors are unclear on the business goals, or not in agreement with each other.
•    Make sure the technology platforms under consideration fit these use cases. Only a handful claim to support both internal and external communities, and they don’t necessarily do both things equally well.
•    Stay true to yourself. Boy, does that sound corny, but I’ve seen more than a few people take on something they knew they were ill-suited for, uninterested in, and/or knew things wouldn’t end well. It’s a good thing — really, an essential thing — to challenge yourself by going outside your comfort zone, but do this with your eyes open. And if you know it’s not right, try not to go there.

The Road Ahead
While I fully resonate with the holy-grail concept of having a single ecosystem in which both employees and customers participate, the realities of organizational behavior, social dynamics, and technology limitations will preclude this from happening on any sizable scale. Some organizations will continue to move in this direction, and some vendors will support them, but for the most part, inside will remain inside, and outside will remain outside.

The good news, though, is that while this wall will continue to stand, it will continue to become more permeable, with (1) customers and others outside the organization (e.g., customer advisory groups) being able to come in behind the firewall as warranted, and (2) employees being able to participate in more ways in customer communities.

For social media practitioners and community managers, who by nature and by practice place a great deal of stock in the value that customers can provide, this can be a good place to be.

By Matthew Lees

Social technologies have had a big impact on the ways that companies do business, both inside and out. Organizations are using social tools – discussion forums, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, and more – to help employees be more productive and effective. They are also using the same types of tools to engage with those outside their organization, i.e., their customers (users, readers, members, etc.) and business partners.

Social media is helping to break down the walls that separate internal from external. Those traditionally outside the organization not only know more than ever before about what’s going on inside (thanks to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), they also have more of an opportunity and ability to influence things within the company (for example, through crowdsourcing mechanisms). For the most part, it’s easy enough to set up a collaborative space for members of a customer advisory group, for example, to interact directly with a group of employees. And if you manage a customer community, you can – in fact, you should – have employees intimately involved. The lines between inside and outside are becoming increasingly blurred.

I’ve had a handful of recent conversations — with vendors and with practitioners at B2B, B2C, and employee communities — about this potential coming together of employee and customer communities. If social software and social media are at the heart of the shift towards increased interaction, collaboration, and transparency, perhaps there is an eventual convergence that can be supported by a single social technology system. Why can’t there be one technology platform and one set of resources supports (1) internal communication, collaboration, and learning, as well as (2) external collaboration, customer engagement, and peer-to-peer support?

After all, social is social, right?

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Idealistic Answer: Yes
As someone who resonates with just about any customer-centric approach, I love the concept of an organization that values customer ideas and insight (and builds process around such input), and looks to connect employees working on specific initiatives to relevant and interested. A convergence of employee and customer communities would enable this to happen more painlessly and more frequently.

Employee/Internal and Customer/External communities have a great many similarities. Both types of communities…
•    look to enhance communication and collaboration among individuals and groups
•    leverage similar tools and technologies (e.g., wikis, forums, blogs, microblogs, etc.)
•    have, at their core, user profiles and directories
•    need to support both individual users and groups, all with granular permissioning to provide appropriate access
•    require underlying technology that can integrate with other data sets and applications (e.g., CRM systems, registration and authentication systems, etc.), extend , be secure, and scale as needed
•    depend upon authenticity and transparency
•    benefit from data analysis by someone for whom the success of the community is important, and who can make improvements based on the analysis

Leveraging these similarities would mean streamlined technology and centralized resources, which are certainly directly beneficial to organizations, and indirectly beneficial to customers.

So there’s a lot to like about the concept of a single technology platform that supports both employee and customer communities. It fits in philosophically with the direction in which many social media enthusiasts think organizations should be headed. But there’s this little thing called “business reality” that sometimes gets in the way …

Next: Part 2 – Pragmatism Rears its Ugly Head

by Matthew Lees

Maniac Sudoku Puzzler on the Loose
Sitting in seat 15D of my homebound flight yesterday, I opened up the airline magazine to work on the Sudoku puzzle in the down time between take off and beverage service.

Unfortunately, to my near horror, someone had already started the “Gentle” Sudoku, entering around 20 numbers, or about a third of what still needed to be filled in. Although the magazine gives three versions to choose from (Gentle, Moderate, and Diabolical), air travel doesn’t make me especially receptive to challenging mental workouts, so I figured I’d just start where the other person left off on the Gentle version.

My initial assumption was that the previous solver knew what they were doing, but either got bored or ran out of time before landing. While my personal puzzle preference leans more towards crosswords, I’m not too bad at Sudokus, so less than one minute into things, I realized that this assumption was a bad one. One nine-by-nine square had two 8s! There were two 9s in another! And how on earth could you write a 4 in that box, when there’s only one 4 given as a starting clue in the whole puzzle?

After some deep breathing exercises to calm me down from this outrage, and spending a few minutes thinking up scenarios that might explain such a poor attempt – not really knowing how Sudokus work, but giving it a whirl anyway? insanity (temporary or otherwise)? intoxication? pure mischievousness (in which case, they got me good)? – I decided to work on it anyway. After all, it was the easiest level, their pen had been black while mine was blue (so I could distinguish who did what), and they hadn’t filled in too too many numbers. So how hard could it be?

I’ll leave out the exciting details, but I completed the puzzle after about 30 minutes. It wasn’t pretty, though, as you can see from the image above. Along the way, I found that, while some of my unknown co-solver’s answers had been wrong, others were indeed correct.

Building a community from scratch is like solving a new Sudoku.
Migrating a community is like solving a Sudoku that someone else already started.

I’m currently working with a client on migrating an online community from one platform to another. Their B2B community has lived for over three years on a homegrown platform that, while impressive three years ago, is now seen as lacking essential features and functionality that the company’s users want and expect, and that the company requires to effectively manage, grow, and maximize the community’s value.

So we’re knee-deep in thinking through the ins and outs of the migration, planning how best to (1) move data (community content and conversations, member profiles, etc.) to the new platform, (2) configure the technology (reputation system, moderation workflow, single sign-on, etc.), and (3) communicate with key enthusiasts/influencers and rest of the user base. Some of these elements are informational in nature, some are technological, and others are social.

What Came Before
The social aspects are particularly apt for the Sudoku analogy. By definition, an online community that’s migrating to a new platform isn’t starting from scratch, which means it already has a culture, a shared history, and certain ways of doing things. The migration can’t help but change some of these. Ideally, all changes will be for the better, but the important thing is, successful migrations depend on knowing what came before.

If you’re involved with a community migration, you may feel that some of the things that came before were good – in the way that some of the original Sudoku solver’s numbers were correct – in which case you’ll replicate them as closely as you can. And some of what came before may not be aligned with the direction you’re going – in the way that I had to change the incorrect Sudoku numbers – so you’ll adapt.

For sure, the analogy (like all analogies) is imperfect. Puzzles have correct answers, but there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to approach online communities. There are only degrees of success based on your and your users’ criteria. But there are best practices based on approaches that tend to work.

Still, you shouldn’t be surprised if things get messy, like my smudged, cross-out-filled Sudoku. A few hurdles are okay if you still get to where you want to go.

A Final Note: If you really don’t like what came before, finger pointing doesn’t solve anything. Experience, expertise, effort, patience, and iteration, however, go a long way. That said, if you recognize your handwriting in black ink in the Sudoku above, I’d like to have a word with you…

by Matthew Lees

One of my favorite collections of anecdotes is called “That Brings to Mind.” Full of humorous and poignant quips, most a page or less in length, the book was compiled by R.L. Marquard way back in 1975. Many of the tales are likely apocryphal, but they are timeless. It contains a wealth of fodder, then, for presentations, speeches, toasts…and blog posts.

Here’s one that was brought to my mind based on recent briefings and conversations with companies I cover as an online community and social media analyst.

The Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, was asked by a congressman why he hadn’t freed the slaves earlier in his term of office.

Lincoln replied that the time had not been right; he wouldn’t have been able to enforce the proclamation.  The congressman was puzzles and didn’t understand what the president meant.

Lincoln explained with a question, “How many legs will a sheep have, if you call the tail a leg?”

“Five,” responded the congressman.

“Not so,” said Lincoln wisely.  “Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it so.”

From Project Manager to Client Success Manager
Several vendors on my watch list have employees with the job title “Client Success Manager.” It has a hipper ring to it than “Account Manager,” and probably makes clients feel all warm and fuzzy, knowing that someone on the vendor side is looking out for their interests.

Most of these technology and service providers train their CSMs to be effective at their core responsibility, which is to make sure that their clients’ communities meet with success (which means, therefore, from a purely business perspective, that the clients will continue to engage the services and systems provided by the vendor).

One company I follow, though, recently created the title and bestowed it upon two community project managers, without any supplemental training, access to relevant materials, or substantive change to their schedules and other commitments.

These two individuals are definitely good at what they do, but their experience has really been in getting to launch, not in what happens afterwards. They know their technology platforms inside and out (good tech chops), they know how to work with both clients and colleagues (good people and communication skills), and they know how to identify potential roadblocks and how to keep things on schedule (good organizational skills).

But they don’t have much understanding of the community arc; how things should ideally function after the community goes live. They know what the key metrics are, but only in theory, not in practice. They don’t really know how to advise clients if, say, the registration rate of a new community starts to drop, or if important influencers drop off the radar.

Without some training or resources to help them help their clients, it’s going to be a rough road ahead, particularly in the crucial first six months after new communities launch. Because they’re sharp cookies, they’ll eventually become solid CSMs. (They also work well together, so they’ll help each other learn the ropes.)

What Client Success Managers Need to Be Successful
They’re in for some challenges, though, largely because the company gave them new titles without giving them two other essential ingredients:

1. Understanding of community best practices, particularly around moderating and managing communities, the social dynamics within communities (super users, reputation systems), organizational issues such as internal communication, how to connect community success to business success, and more.
2. Time to be proactive. Built into CSM’s job descriptions and schedules should be the regular assessment of client communities they’re responsible for. They can’t just wait for their client contact to raise issues. They should be reading reports, watching the metrics, and keeping an eye on things, ready to provide guidance when it’s needed.

Their company could suffer as a consequence, because if the community doesn’t gain traction, the chances for a license renewal (or further professional services) are unlikely.

Takeaways
If you’re a technology or service provider, make sure you do more than give someone a new title. If you’re committed to the success of your clients, make sure your CSMs have the training, tools, and time they’ll need to do great work…for your clients and for you.

And if you’re evaluating technology vendors, consulting groups, or agencies to help with your online community, ask about the people who will be working with you to ensure the project’s success. They should have not only good technology, communication, and project management skills, but also experience in helping you successfully navigate the development, launch, and growth of the community.

To paraphrase Lincoln, calling a project manager a client success manager doesn’t make it so.

By Matthew Lees

giffgaff is a UK-based mobile telephone service provider that runs off the O2 (Telefónica Europe) network. Basically, what it offers is a pre-paid SIM card that you pop into your (unlocked) mobile phone. (European wireless phone service operates on the GSM standard. In the US, many mobile carriers provide “locked” phones which only accept one type – their type — of SIM card. There’s much more flexibility and compatibility across Europe and, indeed, through the rest of the mobile-phone-using world.)

At giffgaff’s Web site (http://www.giffgaff.com), you can order a giffgaff SIM card and add money to (a.k.a. “top-up”) your existing card.

What you can’t do at the site, though, is contact a customer service representative. Not by phone and not by online chat.

giffgaff does provide a single email address for inquiries; automated acknowledgments promise a response within 24 hours. So somebody is handing email support, which is an asynchronous communications channel. But giffgaff does not have agents who provide synchronous support. (I suppose, though, that if you were to show up at giffgaff’s HQ in Slough, England, there’s a pretty good chance they’d help you out in real time. Based on the tone of the language used on the site, they seem an amiable, if borderline mischievous, bunch.)

No Operators Are Standing By
By not having customer support reps awaiting your calls, giffgaff can keep its prices low and its operation streamlined.

Instead, the company provides support nearly exclusively via Web-based self-service and its customer community. giffgaff’s FAQs, question and answer area, and discussion forums are its primary customer service mechanisms.

Within the community, which is running on Lithium Technologies’ Social CRM platform, giffgaff customers answer each others’ questions. Hence giffgaff’s taglines: “Mobile network with a difference” and “We’re people powered.”

It’s Payback Time
All online communities rely on the contributions of a small but essential numbers of dedicated members who answer a large and disproportionate number of questions. These “active contributors” or “super users” are the lifeblood of their communities and an essential part of their communities’ cultures. They typically participate for the personal and professional connections they make, the inside information they may get, the opportunity to learn, the ability to enhance their reputation and “strut their stuff,” and the sheer fun of it.

giffgaff adds another motivation to this list: making money. The more questions you answer, the more “Payback Points” you receive. Payback points (100 points = £1) can either go toward topping up your giffgaff account or be deposited into your bank account as cash.

In fact, there’s more to Payback points than just answering more and more questions. The better your answers are, the more points you receive, too (this is done via Lithium’s “accepted solution” feature). And you can also earn Payback points by acting as a giffgaff evangelist, getting friends to join and promoting the service (e.g., through social sites and networks such as YouTube and Twitter).

A Sustainable Support Model?
It’s a relatively new business and a relatively new community, having only launched in Q3 2009. And it’s still in beta (although this doesn’t mean what it used to; Gmail was ostensibly in beta for about five years). The site is certainly focused and playful. Is it effective, though? It’s too soon to tell. But here are the questions percolating in my mind:

•  How are giffgaff’s group andsocial dynamics different from those communities that don’t have financial incentives? I’d expect that that the giffgaff community wouldn’t put up with much nonsense, as that would get in the way of earning points. But would this lead to a more or less tolerant community and enjoyable community experience?
•  Can giffgaff provide satisfactory support on a long-term basis without a contact center?
•  If so, can this model work in other industries, or are there aspects of giffgaff’s business (e.g., the telecommunications industry, its particular demographics, etc.) that may make it work for them, but not elsewhere?

A quick Web search shows that “giffgaff” is a Scottish word referring to mutual accommodation or mutual giving. Seems like an appropriate name for an ostensibly people-powered network. Kind of a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” thing. If things at giffgaff go according to plan, the UK could see an awful lot of scratching…

by Matthew Lees

While driving yesterday to pick up my sister at the airport, I listened to a delightful interview on the radio with Ricky Gervais. He was on the NPR program Fresh Air, talking with David Bianculli — nope, it wasn’t Terry Gross, but veteran TV critic Bianculli is very good, too — about his new animated series on HBO, “The Ricky Gervais Show.”

I’m a fan of Gervais’s, despite the fact that I haven’t watched many episodes of either the US or UK version of “The Office.” (Steve Carell stars in the US version, which is based on the original UK program, created by and starring Gervais.) Through his other shows, his stand-up routines, and his podcasts, you can tell he’s a funny, clever, candid, and amiably self-deprecating guy.

About halfway through the NPR interview, Gervais gives his take on making big-budget shows that aim for mass appeal versus smaller shows that may find only a relatively small, but more interested and passionate audience. He says:

“But, I think I’d rather do stuff that makes a big connection with a few people than a small connection with loads. I’d rather this be a few people’s favorite show, than, you know, millions and millions of people’s 10th favorite show. Because what’s the point otherwise?”

There you have, in a nutshell, the essential difference between a Facebook community and a branded customer community.

Big Connections with a Few vs. Small Connections with “Loads”

You can potentially and relatively easily build up a Facebook fan base that’s much larger than your own branded customer community. With just a single click, people can “Become a Fan” of your organization (or TV show); there couldn’t be a much lower barrier to entry. And marketers tend to love volume.

But the strength of these “Fan” connections isn’t particularly great. Most fans probably never return to the organization’s Facebook page again, and the conversations in the Discussions area tend to be superficial.

In a community that you sponsor and manage, though, you’re building much closer relationships, with stronger connections to your organization and the products and services you offer. (You’re also enabling stronger connections between community members, too.) You members are discussing topics and issues of interest and concern; they’re asking questions and giving answers; and they’re bringing up problems and providing solutions.

Strong and Weak Ties

Network theorists and sociologists call these different types of connections strong ties and weak ties.

(Contrary to how Gervais phrases it, though, there are indeed benefits to weak ties. There is indeed an answer to his rhetorical question “…what’s the point otherwise?”, as good things certainly can come out of being the 10th favorite show of millions and millions of people, especially if you’re an advertiser or an actor, writer, or producer on the show.)

But the main point that Gervais encapsulates is that it’s not always about reaching the most people you can. Big connections (i.e., strong ties) can be more meaningful than small connections, at least to some people and organizations. Marketers (and others in your organization) love deep relationships with people, too.

Your social media strategy should ideally include programs that leverage what both strong- and weak-tie connections have to offer.

Of course, you may not want to base your entire strategy on Gervais’s musings. He’s also the man who said (via David Brent, his Office persona), “If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence that you tried.”

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For Further Reading
A lot of interesting and useful information is available on the types and degrees of online social connections. Some is academic in nature and some discusses real-world ramifications and practical aspects of these connections. Here are a few sites with good stuff on ties…
•  Karrie Karahalios: Strong and Weak Ties in Social Media, by David Weinberger (March 3, 2010)
•  40 Years On: The History & Evolution of Social Media, by Jenny Ambrozek (November 4, 2009)
•  Weak Ties Build Strong Networks, by Adrian Scholes (May 21, 2009)
•  Design Your Own Custom Ties on Zazzle