B2B Community Building - a discussion and roadmap - mesh conference 2010

mesh workshop:

BUILDING A

B2B COMMUNITYMay 19, 2010

Eden Spodek, High Road Communications

Copyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com

David Alston, VP Marketing and Community, Radian6

“Social media and B2B were made for each other even though most examples are B2C.

Listening & engaging in social media canhelp you focus quickly on the right people at the right time.”

Why is community important for B2B companies?

“According to a recent Forrester Research

study* of business buyers, 91% use

social technologies and 69% use them

for professional purposes.

Today, more B2B companies than ever

are discovering the potential of branded

online communities – but be careful –

branding should always take a backseat.”

*Deepen B2B Tech Customer Engagement With

Community Marketing

Forrester - December 9, 2009

Agenda

• What is a B2B community?

• Developing a B2B community strategy

• Measuring success

• Insights and practices from Canadian B2B communities

• Questions


What is a B2B community?

• “…Community marketing is about using

marketing to engage prospects, current

customers, industry insiders, and partners in

dialog that transparently and collectively improves

the probability of creating effective solutions to the

most pressing business problems...

• ... supports better business outcomes...

•.. new ways, to innovate collaborate, and partner

that create more productive business

operations.“

Bill Lee, President

Customer Strategy Group,

Jan. 12, 2010

Photo credit: andycaster on flickr from PAB 2008

Michael O‟Connor Clarke, VP Marketing Communications, FreshBooks

“No brainer: offer value. ...listen actively and intently to what your nascent community actually wants and needs.

Sometimes, that's not obvious: people won't (often can't) necessarily tell you flat out what they want. It requires a lot of insight, interpretation and questioning.”

Delivering value

What are the rewards?

• Cultivate brand ambassadors

• Generate sales

• Gain customer insights

• Early awareness of issues

• Collaborate with customers, partners

and suppliers.

• Director customer contact

• New customer service channel

Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist, Rogers Ventures

“Different communities will have different goals. If the goal is sales of a product or customer acquisition then there is the metric to measure. If your goal is PR or conversations then measure that. Basically, know your goals at the beginning and work towards accomplishing them.”

Objectives

How does community building fit into your

organization's objectives?

Develop a strategy with a clear vision of your goals and target audience

How does community building fit into your organization's objectives?

Understanding the objective(s) of community members

Choosing an appropriate platform

Cultivating and creating content

Role of the community manager and brand ambassadors

Governance

Measuring success

Marketing, visibility, brand awareness, customer loyalty, relationship-building

Understanding the objective of the community

• Who is your community for?

• Remember, its for them, not for you

• Content and relationships build your brand, not creative

• How will you provide value?

• Where are the current gaps and how can the community fill them?

• What tools can you provide to make their jobs easier?

• The “gift system”*

• How will you define it‟s members?

* Seth Godin, Lynchpin, 2010

Understanding the objective of the community (con‟t)

• Relationships first, business second

• Find your audience – online audits, participating in other communities, events

• Give 25 times more than you expect to receive*

• Model for community management (individual or a team)

• Who will you allow to join - open or closed community?

• Clients/prospects, partners, suppliers and/or industry thought leaders/players

• Open - increases web traffic via SEO, word of mouth

• Closed - gain intimacy and control (preferable for co-creation and market research)

*Chris Brogan

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

User Profiles

Connie

Motivation:

E.g. Sharing knowledge and

information

Quote:

E.g. “I hope my experiences

can help my readers.”

Mark Jen

Motivation:

E.g. Working smarter by saving

time and cutting costs.

Quote:

E.g. “My workforce has been cut

by 20% while my workload

increased..”

Motivation:

E.g. Collaborate with other

entrepreneurs.

Quote:

E.g. “I’ve gone out on my own

and I’d like to network with

other small biz owners.”

Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com

“Don’t just go to (insert favourite large social site). Let your target audience, content and conversational nurture flow guide your tech choices.”


Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter

“Remember that everyone is busy and only has so much time to spend... Make it as easy as possible for people to interact with you from other places they hang out (Twitter, Ping.fm, etc) - that's something we're working on.”



• Do you go to them, let them come

to you or both?

• Importance of user experience – if

you're building a community site,

make it easy for members

to participate

• Needs to be simple, scalable,

flexible, functional and usable

Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter

“I think the best way to keep people engaged is to continually provide value.

We try to do that through our SprouterWeekly startup newsletter, our offline events, and our blog.”


Mark Graham, President, RIGHTSLEEVE

“For us, it's all about making our community look great (example - we have photo contests on Twitter where we give prizes to ppl who take shots of themselves using our gear. This is a great community bldg exercise and it also highlights what we do in a fun and non sales-y way.”



• How will you engage members with

your community?

• How will you keep them coming back?

• Develop unique content members can't

receive elsewhere

• Be approachable and appeal to a

wide audience

• Keep an eye on engagement –

it ebbs and flows (it‟s not constant)

Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist, Rogers Ventures

“Engaging in the community is important but more then that you need to empower the people in your community to speak for you and find new participants for your group to grown and survive.”

Role of the community manager

Role of the community manager

• Defining roles

• Single or multiple community managers?

• Personality and passion

• What‟s in it for them?

• Internal support and autonomy

• Succession planning

Governance

Define strategic direction and review periodically

Develop content and publishing guidelines

Commenting policies

User guidelines and code of conduct

Monitoring and measurement

Support community manager(s) – internal integration

Succession planning

Rayanne Langdon, Queen of Hearts, Everywhere

“There are a lot of methods and tools to measure community success, but first you need to decide what success means for you and set benchmarks.

However, too much focus on a number can make you lose sight of the effect you’re having on your community.”

Measuring success

Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com

“...Communities are like wine, after uncorking they need time to breathe before being assessed.”

Measuring success

Measuring success

What are the Challenges?

• Loss of information control

• Challenge in balancing transparency with knowledge sharing

• Lack of integration with other business units

• Low engagement, sustaining content

• Staffing changes

• Inability to scale

• Trolls, negative comments


• How to do you balance the business' evolving needs with the community

manager‟s role when the business is a start-up?

• How do you add new functions to a community manger‟s role, when there‟s

only one and you have limited resources?

• How does a community manger stay creative and engaged when you

feel like you‟re a one-person team, having to support your own work, ideas

and creativity independently?

Challenge: Managing with limited resources

PostRank‟s Solution


„It's ongoing as the company grows. Communication with management

and development's important – helps answer “what are we going to do next,

and what does the team need from me to make it happen?””

Melanie Baker

Community Manager, PostRank Inc.

FreshBooks Solution


Find ways to incorporate what you do with other departments in the

organization and play off the strengths you lack that others have. Also, realize

why and that you‟re wanted.

My Advice: Be real. Pretending to connect with people won‟t be bought. You will

only be successful gathering people about your business by loving what you do

and the people you do this for. Recognize and thank the people who really

believe in your business, product, etc. Make them feel special.

Rayanne Langdon

Account Executive, High Road Communications

former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks

Challenge 2: Succession planning


• What happens when a community manager or evangelist leaves

the company?

• How to you recover when the departing community manager has a

strong personal brand interwoven with the company‟s brand?

Wisdom from the Head of Magic


Just as you should treat your community with respect and class you

should do the same for your employer. This is all common sense but

once you have decided that you want to leave you should be training

someone to do what you do...and this can be done without them even

realizing you are training/teaching them. I was fortunate at FreshBooks

because I had an amazing person who I was able to do this so the

company was not left in a lurch but this is only half of the solution.

.../2

Saul Colt

Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures

Wisdom from the Head of Magic (con‟t)


The best way to move between a community is to not actually move at all but rather join

another community and never leave the old one. If you are in a community because you

enjoy being there and participating then why would you leave? I am still very active in the

creative communities that I participated in while at FreshBooks because I was there out of

actual interest and not just to sell people FreshBooks. Just because I am not at

FreshBooks is no reason to abandon the friends and people I met along my journey into

their communities and in a lot of ways my commitment to these people smoothed the

transition for FreshBooks as I acted as an unpaid ambassador for them and still do. This

speaks more to the personality of the individual person but this way of transitioning worked

for me and didn't harm anyone in the process.

Saul Colt

Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures

Advice from the Queen of Hearts


There‟s a fine line between being your company‟s brand and being your own

brand when nurturing communities. The part of yourself you bring in is a huge

reason people will connect with your organization. But don’t forget what your

role is and who you’re building a community for. At the same time, there

wouldn‟t be a community if the brand, product, etc. wasn‟t loved – a community

manager simply enhances this. If a community builder moves on and is replaced,

just replace him or her with someone equally excited about the company.

The community will see this, get excited about it and continue to be really

into your company.

Rayanne Langdon

Account Executive, High Road Communications

former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks

Challenge 3: Balancing the needs of the

community with business requirements


• As a community manager, how do you balance the “wants” of the

community members with the business requirements?

RIM‟s Resolution


The BlackBerry Support Community Forums (supportforums.blackberry.com) are a peer-to-

peer community for BlackBerry users. Our members include customers (example IT

administrators of a BlackBerry Enterprise Server), Support customers, and partners (carriers

for example, or developers) and end users (use BlackBerry for business or pleasure).

We have open conversations both on and offline with our members. We have found that

acknowledging their needs, and at the same time explaining to them any challenges or

difficulty we have in accomplishing it – goes a long way to build strong relationships in

the community.

Michelle Kostya

Community Manager

Blackberry

Challenge 4: Dealing with negative comments

• RIGHTSLEEVE, a long-term sponsor of mesh, included magnets

as part of the swag bags. Attendees (comprised of existing and

prospective customers for RIGHTSLEEVE) were concerned the

magnets would wipe out the data on their Blackberries and

other devices.


RIGHTSLEEVE‟s resolution

Turning a PR disaster around in a big way

(you'll remember from mesh last year with

the magnet debacle. People were out for

blood and were not so kind online about it. I

ventured online immediately and

apologized, took responsibility, offered to

collect magnets from concerned attendees

and then shot a YouTube video proving the

magnets were harmless. People loved it

and I was able to turn around a terrible

situation (this also led to a story in

the Post.)

Mark Graham, President

RIGHTSLEEVECopyright 2010 High Road Communications - www.highroad.com

David Alston, VP Marketing and Community, Radian6

“We are connecting to hearts and minds, not just eyeballs and ears.”

QUESTIONS &

FURTHER

DISCUSSION


MESH WORKSHOP:

BUILDING A B2B COMMUNITY

Eden Spodek

Account Director

High Road Communications

http://www.highroad.com

Email: [email protected]

Main: 416.598.8061

Direct: 416.644.2265

Mobile: 416.318.0456

Blog: http://bargainista.ca

Twitter: @EdenSpodek

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/en/EdenSpodek


http://www.highroad.com/

mailto:[email protected]

http://bargainista.ca/

http://twitter.com/edenspodek

http://linkedin.com/en/EdenSpodek

Props to the community pros

Thanks to this lovely group of community pros who generously shared their knowledge and insights:

• Amanda Laird, Communications Specialist, CNW Group

• Amber Naslund, Director of Community, Radian6

• David Alston | VP Marketing & Community, Radian6

• Erin Bury, Community Manager, Sprouter

• Mark Graham, President, RIGHTSLEEVE

• Melanie Baker, Community Manager, PostRank Inc.

• Michelle Kostya, Community Manager, RIM BB

• Michael O’Connor Clarke, VP Marketing Communications, FreshBooks

• Peter Hartl, Community Manager, www.telustalksbusiness.com

• Rayanne Langdon, Account Supervisor, High Road Communications, former Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks

• Ryan Holmes, CEO, HootSuite - Social Media Dashboard

• Saul Colt, Lead Evangelist at Rogers Ventures and former Head of Magic, FreshBooks, He also wanted you to know his preferred title is

``Hugable and Kissable``

• Simon Chen, Senior Consultant, Ramius Corporation

References

Planning an Online B2B Community by Nancy Strauss, Marketing Profs

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2009/3279/planning-an-online-b2b-community

Chris Brogan , http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

Seth Godin, Lynchpin

4 C's of B2B Marketing , Buzz Marketing for Technology by Paul Dunay

http://pauldunay.com/4-cs-of-b2-marketing/

Customer Engagement: Deepen Relationships with Community Marketing , Laura Ramos' Blog , Jan. 12, 2010 - Forrester,

http://blogs.forrester.com/laura_ramos/10-01-12-customer_engagement_deepen_relationships_community_marketing

Forrester - December 9, 2009

Deepen B2B Tech Customer Engagement With Community Marketing, by Laura Ramos

with Peter Burris, Zachary Reiss-Davis










http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

Promoting your community from the outside

• E-mail signatures

• E-newsletters (helps build customer database)

• Attend tradeshows and conferences

• Look for public speaking opportunities

• Present community events such as webinars and twebinars,

• Don‟t ignore print touchpoints including ads and invoice inserts

Business

B2B Community Building - a discussion and roadmap - mesh conference 2010