2007
Add L.U.C.K. to Your Online Community 17 Questions YOU need to ask yourself in order to develop a successful online community!
By Don Philabaum $49.95 $
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Add L.U.C.K. to Your Online Community! 17 Questions YOU need to ask yourself in order to develop a successful online community!
You may not have realized it but it takes a little LUCK. to build a successful website and online community! However not the type of LUCK. you are thinking about. Online communities have been around since the 1980‟s. One of the earliest well known (pun intended) online communities was The Well, a bulletin board online community originally housed in a closet in Sausalito, California. In the very early days, online communities like The Well, Geocities, and Tripod grew by friends inviting friends. There was no marketing budget, no promotional campaign, just one person inviting another person, who invited another. For most of us, this was the birth of the term “viral marketing,” the concept where a website grows by the fanatical recommendations of its users. Those who participated in
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the early online communities understood they were part of something new, but few understood the incredible changes they were pioneering. The early mega online communities had the benefit of “first mover” advantage. The idea behind this strategy was based on the concept that the websites that got out in the market first would be adopted by consumers and end up among the top three in their niche. Consultants and Page | 3 entrepreneurs adopted the philosophy of FIRE, Aim, Read (instead of Ready, Aim, Fire). The strategy promulgated by consulting companies suggested that in order to get first mover advantage firms didn‟t have time for research, but needed to get in the market with their product. To secure this advantage, HUGE sums of money were invested in traditional advertising to get the attention of the general public, investors, and media. The biggest mistake every It‟s a bit ironic that during this time, web organization makes in creating an companies provided fat profits to traditional online community is not creating a media. Trade magazines grew fat, newspapers written Internet strategy with benefited from pointless full page ads, broadcast benchmarks, goals, and assigned media sales positions turned into order takers as responsibilities. thousands of startups attempted to buy their way to fame and fortune. Fast forward to today and we see traditional media‟s very existence being threatened by Internet media properties and changing consumer behavior. While launching and growing your online community is time consuming and does require some strategy, it‟s not rocket science. The ease and low cost of setting up an online community is creating a tremendous number of competitive sites. You have to keep in mind that consumers will have hundreds, if not thousands, of online communities available to them. Knowing that, you will have to develop a website that better meets their needs. After working with hundreds of organizations for the past decade who were interested in engaging their constituents with an online community, the biggest mistake every single organization made was not creating a written Internet strategy complete with benchmarks, goals, and assigned responsibilities. The organizations that were the most successful treated their online community like a business unit and created repeatable, predictable, and measurable business processes. This report is not designed to show you how to create a written comprehensive Internet strategy, it‟s really designed to get you focused on four key characteristics that need to be PART of your comprehensive Internet strategy. (If you want to learn how to create a written comprehensive Internet strategy, pick up my book, Internet Dough, Make More Dough Marketing Online!)
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In order to help you develop a successful online community, you should keep in mind the following key ingredients to build a highly trafficked, successful member driven online community.
Local“ness”
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Unique“ness” Connected“ness” Keep“ness”
In the movie, You, Me and Dupree, Owen Wilson plays a slacker with a heart of gold who thinks everyone would be better off if they could find their “ness.” After turning his best friend‟s world upside down, Wilson eventually finds his “ness,” writes a book and helps others find their unique “ness!” In a way, that’s what we are trying to do for you today! In the remainder of this white paper, we‟ll show you how you can build your online community on a stronger foundation. You‟ll learn the important role L.U.C.K will have in your creating a successful online community.
Local "ness"
Keep "ness"
Online Community
Unique"ness"
Connected "ness"
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Local “ness” Mega online communities have played an important role in teaching us how to join and become a part of a virtual community. MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube in particular have given hundreds of millions of people around the world the Page | 5 opportunity to discover the rules, culture, tools and what‟s cool in being a part of an online community. As they learn how online community, social media, and Web 2.0 tools provide practical solutions to their lives, they will begin to migrate out of mega communities to smaller online communities of interests. These communities of interest will be built around their professions, hobbies, beliefs, associations, entertainment, and organizations. While individuals will be part of a dozens of communities, they will more than likely focus most of their attention on three or less. For that reason, it‟s a good time to be creating an online community. With over 200 million registered users at the top three online communities, there are a lot of people who know how to participate and are ready to look around for better “fitting” online communities. This by no means spells the end of mega online communities. I suspect mega online communities will survive to some degree serving as national directories of who‟s who where people will register to be “seen and found” by others. At any rate, you need to be thinking of ways you can be among the top three online communities on your user‟s lists. One way you can do that is to create a way for your community to connect locally! People love to meet other interesting people with similar interests. In order to minimize your competition, the local factor becomes a trump card! Ask yourself, “What can we do to: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Incorporate a local flavor? Encourage users to meet locally? Engage local organizations? Make our community exclusive for “locals”?
If your online community tool does not give users the ability to schedule events and meet each other locally, consider using FREE third party software like Meetup.com Meetup found it‟s 15 minutes of fame in the 2004 Presidential race. Meetup, along with Blogs and online fundraising, found instant success for candidates. Exercise: Do a quick survey of friends and colleagues. Give them your 30 second elevator pitch and ask them what they would like to see you add to give them practical tools and or services built around where they live!
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Unique “ness” We see online communities launching nearly every day. Most are replicating what the big three online communities are doing. Few have put any thought into how they can build a unique community and, as a result, they have a better shot at winning their local lottery than becoming Page | 6 the next MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube. One of the biggest mistakes website developers and online community developers make is to focus on themselves. The websites purpose (see my white paper, 6 P’s of Online Community Building) tends to focus on how the website will benefit their organization. This focus affects important decisions on the type of tools, services, and content they will include in their online community. With limited funds and time, the programs that will gather more data for the organization or sell more products will get the available resources and mindshare of everyone on the development and management team. What traditionally happens in this situation is the online community builder creates fantastic ecommerce and data integration technologies, but when nobody shows up or participation is limited, the time and money is wasted. You need to invest both time and resources in building a foundation for your online community base on what makes you unique! Do you know what your users want, need, or desire from you? Do you know what unique things you can provide to benefit them? If not, you need to find out, quick! When you do, you‟ll be able to use that information to choose the right technology, invite the right people, and deliver the right content to your users. To help you develop your uniqueness, ask yourself the following questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
What is unique about our organization? How do we transfer some of that unique “ness” into our online community? What do our users want, need, and desire? How do we translate that online? How do we communicate our uniqueness to users? What can we do to make our uniqueness transportable?
It‟s really not that hard to find your unique “ness.” It just takes a little time! Exercise Take a moment to write down the answers to the above questions. Make your list and continue to narrow down what really makes you unique for your prospective audience.
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Connected “ness” What are you doing to connect people? Take a piece of paper right now and think about the different ways you intend to, or are already, connecting people in your online community. How do you measure this? Is it working for you? Page | 7 I‟d like you to ask yourself the following questions. What are you doing to: 1. Connect people of similar interests? 2. Connect people who are not connecting with others? 3. Measure and monitor connections? Your users‟ online behavior is going to mirror their offline behavior to some degree. Research by the Stanford‟s Shyness Clinic has revealed that approximately 60 percent of the general public consider themselves shy. These individuals are uncomfortable walking into a group of people and introducing themselves. Most have no problem connecting one on one with others after they are introduced, but until then, they are private, shy, and tend to lurk and not engage. You have to build your online community around this fact. The foundation of your online community must reflect that 60 percent of your users are shy and will be reluctant to post information and connect with others. Your job is to find ways you can engage and connect them with others in your community. You can do this one of two ways, manually or automatically. Manually We suggest you incorporate Network Weaving, a community building concept pioneered by Valdis Krebs, founder of Orgnet, and June Holly, founder of Acenetworks. Valdis and June‟s research has shown that the connections in your online community will expand exponentially if you have someone or a group of people actually working to connect people based on their interests, hobbies, geographical location, and more. This manual method is time consuming, but it works. Automatically Another way to connect people is to gather data and information about them. When they register, ask them why they are there. Provide them options like, Meet People Like Me, Do Business, Find a Mentor, etc. Additionally, grab personal information like hobbies and interests. Then, develop software that will let them find people LIKE them and opposite of them. Building either manual or automatic connections is key to having a healthy online community. Exercise: Consider including in your community data that helps your members connect more easily. Ask for their favorite books, colors, vacation spots, musicians, cars, movies or food. Then give them an opportunity to find people sharing these interests.
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Keep “ness” Another way to remember Keep “ness” is to think of it as “sticky!”
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In the late 1990‟s, prior to the dot bomb, industry pundits regarded as one of the holy grails of a website success was if it was sticky. The average website can only keep a visitor on their website for a couple minutes. Contrast that with YouTube which averages nearly 30 minutes per session. By the way, I considered calling this concept L.U.C.S., the S for Sticky, however it just didn‟t have the ring that L.U.C.K has. Today, your web strategy has to include products, services, and strategies that encourage your members to stay on the site for longer periods of time. The longer a user spends on the site updating personal information, participating in content creation, or consuming content, the more successful your online community will be. And the more loyal they will be! Take a moment and think about what you can do to keep users in your online community longer: 1. What tools and services could you add that are more sticky? 2. What data can you ask for that will increase Keep “ness”? 3. What tools that revolve around the other “nesses” could you use? For instance, how can you encourage people to connect with each other, participate in local events? 4. What user generated content options should you incorporate? You need to build these around the other elements we‟ve discussed. In building your Local “ness,” think how you could keep people in your online community based on Local “ness”. For example, if you encourage subgroups to meet frequently, you should include a photo album or integration with Flickr so members of the group can post photos of their event. Giving users the ability to rate and comment on the photos gives you time to deliver your brand and related information. You need to find additional ways to connect people based on their unique interest that are in their area. By creating a Mashup of your data with Google‟s maps, you can include on your website a map that shows the current address of others who like photography, ride bikes, etc. Exercise: Go to one of your favorite online communities and evaluate what they are doing to keep you on the website. Create a list of items and rate them based on your personal observations and use. Share this with others and decide which you want to include in your online community.
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Summary Ready to get started? Building an online community requires careful thought and planning. Because the barrier to Page | 9 entry is so low, many organizations think they can build an online community and instantly have a million registered users. It just doesn‟t work that way. Launching online communities requires dedicated planning and focus on integrating:
Local“ness” Unique“ness” Connected“ness” Keep“ness”
Baking these concepts into your online community is not difficult, you just have to take the time to think through each of them and create a comprehensive Internet strategy that integrates L.U.C.K!
Your next steps There are five steps we recommend you take in order to facilitate discussions and “release” the ideas and creativity that will be important for you to find your “ness” and include them in the foundation of your online community. 1) Create a vision of what you want to accomplish and how it will benefit your users first and your organization second. 2) Now that you have that vision, determine the resources, tools, software, staff, and financial support you will need to make it happen. 3) Determine the goals, benchmarks and identify the stats you will use to determine if you are on track. 4) Identify how you will communicate your vision both externally and internally. 5) Determine what kind of projects you need to put together to handle the planning and development in each area?
If your busy schedule prevents you from facilitating the discussions and building a written Internet strategy to find your “ness,” give us a call and we‟ll cut to the chase and get you where you want to be faster, at less cost and hassle. When we do, we leave you with a valuable media property.
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Building Online Community is an ART! Jack Nicklaus designs challenging golf courses, I.M. Pei designs stunning buildings—we design online communities that attract, retain, and engage your customers and prospects! Page | 10 Building online communities is an art and science which requires a great deal of planning. To develop a successful online community, we‟ll take you through an analytical process called „LUCK‟ to identify YOUR „ness‟ factor.
Local „ness‟ Unique „ness‟ Connected „ness‟ Keep „ness‟
Building on that, we‟ll introduce you to research and engage you in discussion on the six P‟s of building active, engaging online communities. These include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Purpose People Participation Practical tools Partnerships Promotion
Next, we‟ll help you focus on your objectives, goals, and benchmarks by walking you through three distinct discussion phases covering 33 primary online steps that are crucial to building a successful online community.
Phase One Explores your “ness” and defines your purpose. Web 2.0 and social media technology are finalized. Goals and benchmarks are set.
Phase Two Marketing developed, SEO and SEM developed, partnership plan, viral marketing, and push/pull techniques introduced.
Phase Three Volunteers are identified, trained, and social networking analysis identifies which users are at risk of not participating. Let’s build an Online Community you will be proud to share with others!
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Get your copy of : Internet Dough, Make More Dough Marketing Online suggests all businesses from as small as a pizza shop to a Fortune 500 company need to adopt Web 2.0, social media, and online community tools in order to acquire, retain, and engage customers. You will learn: Page | 11
15 Successful Internet techniques that increase your profits 7 ways to cut your advertising budget AND increase sales 5 ways to retain & engage customers An easy to adopt plan to get your business on the Internet!
This book takes the mystery and confusion out of creating an Internet strategy. It offers a blueprint your business can follow to create a repeatable, measurable and predictable Internet strategy that generates new revenue and higher profits.
97 Strategies to Build Online Community is a significant workbook that provides your organization 97 different strategies to incorporate into your Internet strategy. This 200 plus page workbook provides hundreds of marketing stories that companies have successfully implemented using Web 2.0, social media, online community and email marketing. You will find this “bible” immensely valuable. Not only do we share what works, but you‟ll learn what doesn‟t work too. All of this combined delivers to you:
Practical ideas you can implement Increase in profits, decrease in costs An Internet strategy that works for you!
You save time, money and get a head start over your competition. Order both of these right now! www.internetstrategiesgroup.com/specialoffer
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About Internet Strategies Group The Internet Strategies Group helps groups and organizations understand how to use Web 2.0, Social Media and Online Community to acquire, retain, and engage customers. The company provides training and consulting. Page | 12 Don Philabaum is the founder and President/CEO of Internet Strategies Group, author, and has spoken at trade shows around the world since 1995 about the benefits of social networking. Referred to as the father of “online community,” Don will tell every business owner from a butcher to an undertaker they need to engage customers online! don@internetstrategiesgroup.com Pick up a copy of Don Philabaum‟s book, Internet Dough, Make More Dough Marketing Online. Internet Dough is written so a business of any size, as large as a Fortune 500 or as small as a pizza shop can learn how to create their own Internet marketing channel using Web 2.0, social media tools and online community.
White Papers by Don Philabaum 1. Six P‟s of Successful Online Communities 2. Add LUCK to Your Online Community 3. Five Mistakes Online Community Builders Make 4. Create a NET-Centered Organization 5. Create an Internet Strategy for your Small Business 6. 97 Strategies to Engage Your Customers 7. Facing UP to the Facebook/MySpace Generation 8. Policing in the 21st Century using the Internet 9. The SHORT History of Online Communities 10. Protecting Your Distribution Channel with a NETCentered Strategy
Blogs by Don Philabaum 1. Wiredcommunities.com 2. Onlinecommunity.com 3. Higherednetstrategies.com
Biographical Information on Don Philabaum www.internetstrategiesgroup.com
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Additional information can be found at: www.internetstrategiesgroup.com ? questions, call - 866-385-8084 email phyllis@internetstrategiesgroup.com
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