1. Building online communities to support successful media brands Dan Thornton, July 2009 (A Work in Progress...) Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm

3. Why is community vital?

4. Planning a community.

5. What can you can and can’t do.

8. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/danthornton

9. Gmail: thewayoftheweb@googlemail.comhttp://www.twitter.com/badgergravling

11. Media owners no longer control the methods of production and distribution.

12. Brands (Advertisers) can interact directly with consumers, who can all interact with each other.

13. All interaction can be visible to hundreds, thousands, or millions of other people.

15. Individuals and communities define brands Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zackv

16. The internet just made it easier to spot and track

17. And brands are finally letting people contribute directly Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mycreativecorner

18. What is happening to media companies? Traditional broadcast models are struggling. U.S. newspaper print advertising dropped $2.6 billion in Q1 2009 compared to Q1 2008. Perhaps it’s just the recession?

19. Maybe something else is holding their attention? Since February ‘09, Facebook has continued to grow to over 200 million+ active users per month.

20. What about Twitter? This only includes visits to Twitter.com, which is approximately 1/5th of all Twitter usage (4/5ths comes from mobile, or Twitter ’clients’ installed on a computer.

22. Technorati has tracked 133 million blogs since 2002.

23. Audioboo has had over 35,000 pieces of content uploaded since launch in March ’09.

24. Stephen Fry has 630,000 followers on Twitter.The small percentage of individuals making significant revenues online are doing it by secondary income streams, rather than display advertising.

26. Zappos made $1 billion in gross sales in 2008, 10 years after launching by concentrating on customer service, using Twitter, Blogs, Youtube etc.

27. The viral effect of the Will It Blend videos increased sales of Blendtec blenders by 20% from an initial cost of production of $50.

29. ‘A lot of online content is rubbish’ – Yes, but the same applies to any media. And the weight of numbers means a huge amount of quality content, which needs filtering: the potential editorial role of media companies/experts.

30. ‘Hardly anyone posts/writes a blog’ – Yes, but only 5% of people contribute the majority of Wikipedia work. 1 person creates, 9 comment/rate, and 90 lurk. But those 90 are the scale part of the equation, and wouldn’t turn up without the 1.

31. ‘Social networking is just for kids’ – The biggest growth is in mothers who blog/network due to time constraints. Twitter’s biggest user group in the UK is 30+ males. And age creep means older networks are rising.

32. ‘People don’t want to sit in front of computers’ – Mobile internet access and smart phone adoption is rocketing, led by the iPhone.

34. You can’t... You provide for, encourage and reward community to allow it to grow Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh

35. The 9 steps: Listening Objectives Technology Seeding Recognition Moderation + Maintenance Transparency Integrate it into everything you do Measurement and Analysis.

37. Twitter search

38. Facebook

39. Ning

40. TechnoratiImage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smoovey

41. Step 2: What’s the point? 1. What tangible results do you want? 2. How can you help an existing community, or provide value for people by creating a new one? (And ‘because it’s ours/official doesn’t work by itself!) Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elventear

42. Step 3: Don’t be different for the sake of it. Most software has evolved to basic conformity for a reason. Don’t try to reinvent the blog or forum for the sake of it. ‘Bad artists copy, good artists steal’ – Picasso. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/missrogue

44. Be present and involved yourself where appropriateImage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deboni

46. Reward new members and posters with encouragement and involvement.Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/raptortheangel

48. Provide adequate resources.

49. Continuously evaluate and evolve software/technologyImage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pictoscribe

51. Be transparent where possible – explain the reasons behind actions and people will understand them – and then defend the reasoning to others.Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teflon

53. Build community/CRM into your core business strategy

54. Ensure every employee has clear guidelines, guidance and trust to interact.

55. Don’t abuse it by broadcasting ‘because you can’

56. Carry the same values from a receptionist answering the phone to direct marketing to advertising.Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer

58. Scale (on-site/external)

59. Number of conversations (on-site/external)

60. Brand perception/NPS

61. Contributions (UGC )

62. Subscriptions (RSS/Email)

63. Revenue .Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/saz

64. Appendix 1: Recommended Reading: Social Media Marketing: Publishing: Blog: Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ Blog: David Cushman: http://www.fasterfuture.blogspot.com/ Blog: Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ Blog: Mark Earls: http://herd.typepad.com/ Blog: Neil Perkin: http://neilperkin.typepad.com/ Blog: Martin Belam: http://www.currybet.net/ Blog: Jeff Jarvis: http://www.buzzmachine.com Radio: Blog: Adam Bowie: http://www.adambowie.com/weblog/ Blog: James Cridland: http://james.cridland.net/ Blog: Adam Westbrook: http://adamwestbrook.wordpress.com/ Analytics/Measurement Blog: Avinash Kaushik: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ Blog: KD Paine: http://kdpaine.blogs.com/

65. Appendix 2: Free tools: Measurement: Google Analytics (Free website analytics) Yahoo Site Explorer (Inbound link measurement) Google Blog Search (Good coverage, crap numbers) Technorati (Good for finding blogs by subject) Nielsen Blog Pulse (Reasonable buzz monitoring) Trendrr (Reasonable buzz monitoring) Facebook Lexicon (Track keywords on Facebook) Twitter Search (Track keywords on Twitter) Boardtracker (Forum discussion search) Roll your own community website: Ning: Create your own social network. Laconi.ca: Open source alternative to Twitter. Wordpress.org: Free Blogging/Content Management System. InvisionFree: Free, standard forum software.