community-building

2014 Olympics: Winning Marketing for Team USA’s Athletes

April 21, 2014 by Mitch Arnowitz

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia have come and gone. Tuvel Communications was pleased to lend its support to the USA Bobsled & Skeleton team’s marketing efforts. Olympic athletes rely on many forms of sponsorships to fund their dreams, from individual and corporate donations to sponsorships to crowd funding. Prior to the Winter Games, Tuvel worked with the USA Bobsled & Skeleton and Washington, DC-based ad agency ds+f to bolster the team’s online community building efforts, resulting in record sponsorship revenue.

Many lessons were learned on our Olympic marketing journey. Please keep in mind that individual athletic performance has a huge impact on any type of marketing effort, including everything social. The following list includes some of the lessons learned – and reminders that we picked up along the way.

Content <still> rules

As you can see from the following examples, content rules! Reach, engagement and followers are only some of the metrics used to track success. Bobsled athlete Jazmine Fenlator and skeleton athlete John Daly’s Twitter reach was high when compared to the other athletes on the team. (Twitter ‘Star’ Lolo Jones was not included in our study due to her massive – nearly 400,000 – number of followers.)

Example: Jazmine Fenlator and John Daly’s Twitter reach:

Jazmine’s updates during the Olympics include mentions of Hurricane Irene relief efforts and her mom’s health issues. She is also known for her crowdsourcing or Internet fundraising efforts to raise money for training, transportation, and Sochi-related equipment expenses.

John’s updates include lots of humor and pics from the teammate Johnny Quinn’s famous Sochi bathroom door incident. Mr. Daly also gained notoriety when Cosmo asked readers if they thought he was the Ryan Lochte of the Sochi Olympics.

Context Is Everything: Online Communities

August 22, 2013 by Mitch Arnowitz

Beth Kanter & I recently participated in a Venture Philanthropy Partners/Leap of Reason

conversation reminiscent of a Netpreneur AdMarketing discussion from a dozen years ago.

We offered to write a guest blog post reflecting on peer learning online and online

communities. The blog post follows. What did we miss in our list of things that are

really important, those ‘mission critical’ elements of community building that you can’t

live without? Please let us know in the comments below!

Flickr Photo BirkgetKing

Online Communities: Are Best Practices Still Best Practices?

The discussion thread reminded me of an AdMarketing conversation we had a long time ago. The Netpreneur AdMarketing list, one of the longest running Internet marketing lists and still active, is an adventure of the Morino Institute. Over the last decade, the fundamentals of community and relationship building haven’t really changed. What was important then is even more important now!

I thought it might be fun (and useful) to take a look back at this AdMarketing conversation. At the time, we invited Internet thought-leaders to participate in an email list discussion, focusing on interactive tools. What transpired was a conversation among pioneers of early day Internet community building that produced way interesting insights. Below are several takeaways and pointers from that conversation. Looking back, its amazing how little has changed, how relevant these lessons are today and how important it is to do things the right way. Read the rest of the post here.

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!