Mitch Arnowitz

Online Community Building: Rules of the Road

May 1, 2012 by Mitch Arnowitz

Building a community — Photo credit: niallkennedy

Online community building skills come in handy whether you’re using social networks, email lists or web forums to build relationships. Traction, or getting people engaged, is becoming the holy grail of social media marketing. We’ve compiled the following Rules of the Road, culled from our experience with clients. We hope that some of these rules help your online community building efforts.

Facilitate rather than moderate: Managing an online community is art more than science. Facilitation allows you to work through members rather than broadcast to them, or even try and to control the conversation. Facilitation means that you, as the leader, take a back seat and encourage members to lead the conversation. This strategy helps foster a self-sustaining group with members helping members, instead of waiting for the group leader to respond.

Establish the ground rules and netiquette early on: How will the group be moderated? Is there a certain format you’d like members to use? Will you discourage cross-posting from similar groups? It makes sense to post community rules early on so that members can familiarize themselves, and you can point to them if necessary.

Be responsive: A good online community leader helps members and responds to issues in a timely manner. If a participant posts a question that goes unanswered, the leader might solicit input from other individuals both inside and outside of the group. If off-topic conversation becomes an issue, the leader might send through a friendly reminder. A leader might also have to act as a parent, occasionally mediating discussions that get out of hand and pulling members out of the “sandbox” for a “timeout.”

Choose your battles: Silence is sometimes golden. Taking a deep breath before hitting the Send or Post button can work well. It also makes sense to take a long view when dealing with situations that come up. At the sake of repeating myself, managing an online community is an art more than science. Over time, intuition should offer clues on conversations that merit a response. At the same time, don’t be afraid to exert authority when it’s warranted.

Set the tone and find your voice early on: Initially, members will follow the leader. It’s important to define the culture of the online community so members understand ground rules and expectations, but are not deterred from participating. Creating a community “voice” is also a big part of that culture. Will your group be casual or more buttoned up? Create discussions and ask questions in a non-controlling way that encourages participation and sets the tone.

Invite the right people to your party: Doing a bit of research and outreach to cultivate a core group of participants is smart. Who are the leaders in your space and what other groups do they participate in? Who are your competitor and “coopitor” groups? Reach out to leaders or participants and make friends! Invite those with similar interests into your online community and build your membership base early on.

Consider content curation: Community discussions will undoubtedly create solid content. Consider curating and posting this content somewhere in your group or, on your website or blog. Member-generated content offers value and can also be used to market your group. Here’s an example of community-generated content that was mined from the Netpreneur AdMarketing Community.

Use an organic growth strategy: A bottom-up, grassroots approach to community-building ensures your chance for success. In our experience, the alternative “build it and they will come” strategy isn’t as effective. It makes sense to start with a core group of participants, gain traction and then build from there. Better to have a smaller engaged group than a large community of lurkers!

Learn from the pros: There is much to be learned from the early pioneers of online community building! Here, I’m talking about the likes of Howard Reingold, Nancy White and Amy Jo Kim. For additional brainpower, check out this short post by Craig Newmark , Richard Millington‘s blog, or how Cisco’s online community for Networking Professionals got started.

Have fun and remember, its never about the technology but always about the people: They say people can tell when you’re smiling even when they can’t see your face, and I believe that’s true. If you’re going to make the commitment to manage a group, choose a topic or area that you love and one that will help your personal branding. These days, we hear much talk of social media platforms, SaaS solutions and automated communities. At the end of the day, it’s never about the technology but it is always about the people.

Is there anything I missed? Please let me know in the comments if you have anything to add!

Thinking About Social Media? 10 Things to Keep Top of Mind

July 14, 2011 by Mitch Arnowitz

As the US summer sets in, we thought it high time to take a time out and do a social media reality check. We execute social media campaigns for a variety of organizations, from events to government and nonprofits to associations. With every campaign, there’s always a mental checklist we keep as we create and implement strategies to ensure our efforts are goal-focused, measurable and successful.

If you’re thinking about implementing social media into your organization’s marketing plan, here are 10 things to keep in mind as you’re developing your strategy.

Social is not just another piece of the marketing pie– Well-intentioned broadcast marketers will have you believe that social networking platforms simply offer an additional channel to distribute your message. Not true! Companies and organizations that use networks to broadcast press releases and (only) talk about themselves will continue to be roadkill.
Everyone’s an expert, no one’s an expert– Social media experts, of the just add water and stir variety, continue to come out of the woodwork. Many can talk the talk but not walk the walk! Knowing how to tweet doesn’t make you an authority. Years of productivity, a solid reputation and quantifiable results does. Peter Shankman summed it up well in a recent post: I Will Never Hire a “Social Media Expert,” and Neither Should You.
Some things never change– Yes, there’s been a paradigm shift away from broadcast communications and towards engagement but the basic rules of communication, PR and marketing practice still apply. Good old fashioned business ethics continue to rule the day! Knowing who you want to impact, the value your organization brings and understanding the other person’s needs before you get in touch continues to be mission critical in all marketing efforts.
Social media is more than Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter– While uber-important, social networks make up only part of the social media ecosystem. Email lists, web forums, user groups, photo and video sharing services, podcasts, social bookmarking sites and niche online communities are all part of the social media mix. It’s important to seek out where your customers are socializing and get involved in conversations on their turf. Here’s a more complete definition.
It’s all about building relationships– All marketing is about building relationships. Social offers tools and platforms to get the job done, but they don’t replace the one-on-one interaction necessary for being successful. And, relationships take time. We live by the adage that it’s never about the technology, but always about the people.
Don’t drink the social media Kool-Aid– There are many things that social media can do, but it will not cure cancer, right the economy or solve the Middle East crisis. We tell clients that there is rarely a silver bullet. However, with hard work and marketing smarts, social media can certainly help you reach your campaign goals.
It’s not one thing you do, it’s everything you do– Our most successful campaigns are those where all program elements work together. Social media, search, email and traditional should all work in tandem. Social should not be standalone, rather it should be baked into all campaign elements.
Build it and they may not come– Some organizations are moving away from a destination website mentality and more towards an outpost-focused, community building strategy. While it’s great to set up your brand’s social media outposts on Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s also important to remember that customers and supporters might be involved in other social media and affinity groups as well.
Social is not only about return on relationship– At Tuvel, we gauge our success by qualitative and quantitative metrics. While awareness, brand recognition and reputation are important, so are metrics that include money raised, increase in attendees or subscribers and widgets sold. Plan to measure your social media efforts in such a way that you can easily track results.
At the end of the day, social media is all about being social!– If you’re a practitioner, it’s also a good thing to be sociable – sharing, listening, learning and laughing! No one wants to socialize with someone who is either a) broadcasting, or b) not socializing at all. Find your social media voice and make it a part of your brand.

10 Tips for Successful Social Media Contests & Promotions

April 20, 2011 by Mitch Arnowitz

Contests and promotions through social media outposts like Twitter and Facebook are a great way to generate excitement and engage and involve your fans, friends and followers. It’s a key way to get people interacting with your brand, product, event or organization in a meaningful way while helping you to identify your most enthusiastic advocates.

Through our work with a variety of clients at Tuvel Communications, we’ve created and executed several successful social media contests & promotions. You can see some examples of our work, here, here and here.

Along the way, we’ve been able to refine our efforts to maximize results while creating excitement and having fun! By sharing some of our tips, we hope that we can save you time while driving the results that you want. With this in mind, we’ve created our Top 10 list of ways to ensure that your social media contests & promotions are successful:

Get peeps engaged! Don’t just broadcast promotions through social networking outlets. Rather, get folks involved with your brand or organization. We recently ran a Twitter promotion that asked folks to tell us, in 140 characters or less, why they should get a free conference pass. We also ran a promotion that required those interested to provide the contest answer as a comment on the client blog. Create something that allows people to interact directly with your brand – it’s key to getting traction and conversation going in your social media communities.

Have a there-there. Don’t just do a contest for the sake of doing a contest! All of our promotions have a specific purpose. While you want to create buzz and excitement, you also also want to think about the other goals you want to accomplish. Do you want to increase attendance, fund-raise, generate discussion, build an email list or deliver another metric?

Make it simple to participate. Complex games are fun (anyone remember the early days of scavenger hunts that included several websites?) but may attract less participants. It’s great to utilize the “flavor of the month” technologies out there, but keep your audience in mind and don’t make them do anything that will generate more perplexed questions than actual participation.

Create fun and excitement! People love contests and the chance to win prizes. Make ’em interesting and people will play. Convey excitement through messaging. Make your promotion different and, of course, inject personality into it.

Follow best practices. We are careful not to get our clients or bloggers and others into trouble by promoting or creating a contest. Know the rules beforehand. In this game, you can’t beg forgiveness! You can find out more about the rules and regulations here and here.

Offer value and relevance. Find out what turns people on. We have executed many government related promotions. We’ve been told that government types aren’t interested in promotions. Not true! Most people are interested in a contest or giveaway, it’s just a matter of finding out what they like.

Leverage marketing partners. We typically approach client partners that have large followings (fans, friends, followers, subscribers). We then approach these folks so that they might create a special (client) promotion for their readers. Everyone wins in this scenario with partners being able to offer value and our client reaping the rewards!

It’s the total campaign that matters. Promotions are most successful when they are part of a larger, integrated campaign. Involve creative and promote on the website and through email. Our most successful campaigns are seamless and can be played through several social networking platforms.

Make it easy to pick a winner and fulfill. We typically create giveaways so that our clients can randomly choose winners. We also find prizes that can be fulfilled through an email address – gift cards are a good example – make awarding easy. Have you ever had to hunt down snail mail addresses for fulfillment? Logistically, it can be a painful process!

Don’t stop! Promotions help to create traction and momentum. Continue the conversation, get others involved and grow your supporters. In other words: be a smart marketer!