Public Relations | Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration

Building B2B Online Communities – Why, How & Where to Start

Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by Jolina Pettice in B2B, b2b marketing, B2B Social Media, Blog, community building, Online Communities, PR Conferences, public relations, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

B2B Online Community Member Matrix This week at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks talked to attendees about the benefits of online communities as part of a B2B social media strategy.

According to DiMauro, nearly 2/3 of organizations surveyed are engaged in private, online communities hosted by companies that sell them computer hardware, software or services.

The average visit in an online B2B community is 10 minutes, with 1 visit every 5-7 days.

What B2B organization wouldn’t want roughly 40 minutes of time per month with members to help solve problems, learn how they are using tools and what topics they are most interested in?

Building an online community gives organizations an opportunity to strategically connect with its audience in meaningful and sometimes deeper ways through private interactions.

Many companies continue to respond chaotically to social chatter. With this, they can end up with what Vanessa calls social media muddle.

Part of that muddle is due to baseline measurement such as number of fans/followers. Vanessa recommends going beyond such measurements and make sure someone in the organization is responsible for reviewing social interactions so that they can be strategically brought back to the organization and impact future marketing decisions.

Online communities can help companies shift from chaos to focus. Specifically moving from a set of discrete interactions to a dynamic, meaningful relationship which can impact business outcomes.

Benefits of online communities can include deepening customer relationships, building greater brand equity, providing better customer care, shortening product innovation cycles, extending and accelerating product and service delivery and delivering improved financial returns.

Which companies need online customer communities the most?

Those where customers are:

open to sharing information with other customers
purchasing a platform product and need to communicate with each other about how to capitalize
willing to participate in off-line user groups or in-person customer summits

And where customer problems are:

critical, ongoing and ever-changing
such that knowledge for solving problems becomes obsolete quickly
those where other customers can gain major value by learning from the experiences of other customers
urgent

Here are 3 models for communities:
1. Gated

select, narrow target audience
acceptance criteria established
protected dialog
managed topical agenda
supported by the organization

2. Public

open call, all interested
member directed
public forum
ad generated support

3. Hybrid

tiered membership
consensus/trend driven
public forum with private areas
thought leadership
hybrid revenue

An example online community is the Palladium Group’s Execution Premium Community. The audience includes senior strategy professionals from organizations worldwide.

The case for the community included; helping increase customer intimacy, raising awareness of products and services, tapping into leading trends in strategy execution and creating a new revenue-generating service line.

Results to-date include more than 50% of the membership from non-US countries and its ongoing revenue, which it started generating at month 6.

Then she reviewed the online community LexisNexis Investigators Network (LNIN). The audience includes federal, state and local law enforcement and currently has more than 7,000 registered members.

This site aimed to bridge the gap between different law enforcement agencies.

Results to-date include over 4,000 members in the first year, members from all 50 states and 3 new product enhancements implemented.

The following are 3 Operations Processes communities need to succeed:

1. Expert community facilitation
2. A healthy balance of Institutional Content and User Generated Content
3. Persistent and programmatic outreach

For B2B communities to work, they need to solve a problem, accelerate a process and/or make something easier.

To get members interacting, know the types of members and what motivates them.

Fame Seekers – seek opportunities to grow reputation and showcase thought leadership
Motivators – seeks opportunity to be valued. Connect people with each other and with content
Problem Solvers – reticent participant but overcomes this in order to get answers to their questions

A member who uploads a photo of his/herself is 7x more likely to post a comment. Be sure to pay attention to the members who join and upload a photo first. These people are likely fame-seekers and can be encouraged by member spotlights, shout-outs or in discussions.

Understanding the members of the community, their individual goals and what drives them to share and engage are all critical to building a successful community.

Online communities may be the right next step for organization’s who want and need to connect with customers who have persistent needs and can learn from the collective wisdom of others.

Supporting users as they transition to customers, and across the customer life cycle, is a key message in TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden’s new book Optimize available in for Kindle and Nook now, with hard cover copies shipping starting on April 17th.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Building B2B Online Communities – Why, How & Where to Start | http://www.toprankblog.com

Digital Convergence: Marketing & Public Relations #PRSADIConf

Posted on 02. Apr, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Marketing PR Conferences, PR Conferences, public relations, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

optimize prsa digital impact

Since 2004 or so when I started this blog, I’ve been promoting the convergence of SEO and public relations, especially through press release optimization. Shortly after, that focus has shifted to emphasize the intersection of search, social and content. In fact, here’s a post from 2006 on social media, SEO & PR.

Winds of Change. If you work in the Public Relations world, you’ve undoubtedly observed significant changes both in the news media business and the relationship between PR, intermediary news organizations and consumers. Information preferences have changed, technology and media have changed and the business of news and corporate communications have changed.

44% of Americans own a smart phone and 51% use them for news. 18% of Americans own a tablet device and 56% use tablets for news consumption. 23% use multiple devices to consume news content. The shift from print to digital goes beyond the desktop to other devices and it’s essential for PR and Communications professionals to understand how target audiences discover and consume news content.

Yin & Yang of Marketing & PR. Marketing goals are influenced by PR and media relations activities. PR objetives are increasingly achieved through online marketing activities. The trend with business leaders expecting marketing and PR outcomes as a result of their investments in content is growing. Across the US, heck all over the world, light bulbs are popping with the realization that siloed marketing and PR no longer works.

Crash or Catapult. Whether it’s an evolution or worlds colliding depends on how organizations understand and prepare themselves strategically and tactically for the fundamental shifts that drive communications, influence, behaviors and marketing/PR outcomes.

Digital Convergence at Digital Impact. At the PRSA Digital Impact conference in New York this week, brands (Facebook, IBM, Google, Dell) and top practitioners are converging to create a perfect storm of insights into the essential answers PR and communications professionals need to know to evolve themselves and their organizations in this always connected digital age.

Optimize State of Mind. For my part, I’ll be covering the role of content, search and social (as I do) and how PR/Communications can leverage a marketing-centric understanding of audiences to create optimized and socialized content that facilitates both PR and Marketing objectives.

Here’s an outline of what I’ll be presenting on Monday April 2nd at 2:30pm EST:

Convergence: PR, Marketing
Customer Optimization Trilogy: Discover, Consume, Act
Content Marketing Framework & Best Practices
Know your audience segments
Search keywords, social topics
Optimized editorial, socialized promotion
Social networks for engagement
Optimize your story: share, buy, recommend
Essential measurement for optimized and socialized content

First Sighting of Optimize! It turns out that PRSA Digital Impact 2012 will be the first event where I will have hard cover copies of my new book, Optimize. This is exciting to me because of my PR and SEO roots and having worked with the PRSA as a consultant for quite a few years. I’ll be presenting on Monday 4/2 at 2:30pm and if you’d like an opportunity to win one of the very first, signed copies of Optimize, then make sure you’re there. And bring a few friends too!

It’s Kind of a Big Deal. Optimize has been the culmination of my 15 years in the online marketing business and being a “walk the talk” practitioner, working on our own online marketing and with many of our clients. Optimize provides a 30,000 foot view of why and then does a fast, deep dive into a framework and specific tactics that PR and Marketing professionals can use to improve the reach and engagement of their content the same day. Smart folks like Joe Pulizzi, Chris Brogan, Ann Handley, Jay Baer, John Jantsch, Michael Stelzner and digital leaders at Ford, Microsoft, Vocus, Radian6 and Walmart have endorsed Optimize.

Begin your journey to optimized digital convergence. If things work out, I’ll have some books available for a book signing on Tuesday. In case it doesn’t, be at the 2:30pm Content Marketing & PR session where I’ll give a preview, a few free copies to the best questions and a free SEO Audit Guide for everyone as a thank you for attending.

The digital version of Optimize (i.e. Kindle) is available right now. The hard cover version will be out April 17th through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many other online book sellers.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Digital Convergence: Marketing & Public Relations #PRSADIConf | http://www.toprankblog.com