Keeping the Community for Social Media Leaders on the Forefront of Leading Edge Design and Technology
Our team has been hard at work recently, hence the lack of regular blog posts! I am also pleased when we can share our work, and I’m proud to announce the re-launch of the SocialMedia.org member community. This was an exciting and challenging project for us; we certainly felt a great amount of responsibility to develop [...]
How to Increase Internal Corporate Community Engagement
“Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. … They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf. While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore [...]
Posted by Shannon Gburzynski on March 31st, 2011 in Best Practices, Internal Community, Owned Media, Strategy, User ExperienceNo Comments
Key tasks of an Internal Community Manager
As social technologies and community spreads throughout the enterprise new roles are being created to support them. One of the most critical roles in the success of these efforts is an active and effective Community Manager (CM). The CM is often the Sherpa for an organizations internal and external community efforts helping with many aspects [...]
Posted by James Davidson on December 28th, 2010 in Best Practices, Internal Community, Owned Media, StrategyNo Comments
A Social Media Strategy Analysis: Overstock.com
I recently read an article detailing the social media capabilities of the superstar online retailer Amazon. It was an interesting look at the shopping luminary, and their short comings when it came to utilizing social media. As the Christmas shopping season commences, this article left me thinking, Which online retailers are using social media properly [...]
Posted by Shannon Gburzynski on December 26th, 2010 in Best Practices, Case Studies, External Community, Internal Community, Owned Media, Social Media, Strategy, WebsitesNo Comments
Killer KPIs: Percent Engaged Visitors
This post is the first in a series that will highlight key performance indicators (KPIs) to include in your measurement arsenal for keeping your organization focused on the metrics that matter. There’s a lot of buzz these days about driving greater online engagement on your website or in your community from customers, prospects, employees, or [...]
Posted by Community navigation approaches – And why they STILL matter!
When I first saw iGoogle and the new BBC website a few years ago I thought it would be the end of traditional site navigation (menu structures at the top of a website), and that these traditional approaches would become redundant and inefficient compared to the widgets and personalization capabilities of these new widget driven [...]
Measures of Community Success
Many enterprise communities are emerging as business communication shifts to a more socially designed model. Some of these new online initiatives fare better than others. Measurement is a key piece of the puzzle in determining what causes communities to succeed. Whether you are preparing to launch a new community or hoping to revive an existing [...]
Posted by Do’s and Don’ts of Successful Online Communities
An online community can create long lasting deep relationships with your key stakeholders. These stakeholders (your customers, employees, suppliers and partners) are all connected to you through relationships, and a community can add tremendous measurable value to these relationships. Successful communities have several proven benefits including: Increased customer retention and loyalty through ongoing engagement that [...]
Posted by Shannon Gburzynski on August 31st, 2010 in Best Practices, External Community, Internal Community, Owned Media, StrategyNo Comments
Don’t silo your community
When considering launching an on-domain community many organizations struggle with where it will fit within their current organizational structure and who will be responsible for taking ownership of it, e.g: Sales/Marketing, Communications/PR, IT, HR and or Support etc. Once this organizational decision has been made most organizations then struggle with where community fits within their [...]
Posted by James Davidson on July 23rd, 2010 in Best Practices, External Community, Internal Community, Owned Media, Strategy, TechnologyNo Comments
Why User Experience still matters in a Community
Today while trying to order my lunch at a local fast food vendor, I couldn’t help but squint and take issue with their menu layout. A combination of unbalanced background colors, photography and fonts completely threw me as I was trying to quickly scan my options and make a selection. Anyone who’s been to In-and-Out [...]