Engaging your Communities
Fast track to Online and Social Publishing
15 July 2009

A natural progression?

Is your brand making the most of social media?
• Interactive marketing will reach nearly $55 billion, representing almost a quarter of all
marketing expenditures by 2014, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
And the biggest growth area for interactive is expected to be social media.
• The spend on interactive campaigns through social networks, combined with agency
fees for creating social media assets (community sites, internal blogs), will exceed $3
billion by 2014, a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent.
• And as that investment increases, marketers will “improve how they use social media
to engage — not just reach — target audiences,” according to the report.
SOURCE: http://www.m-travel.com/news/2009/07/is-your-brand-genuinely-making-the-most-of-social-media.html

Lessons for Success
• Communities Are A Powerful Tool, As Long As You Put Members’ Needs First
• “An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common
interest.
• To host a successful community, think of it as you would product development: Start by
focusing on objectives, chart a road map, assemble the right team, and plan to be
flexible. Then build your success by launching the community with the backing of your
most enthusiastic members and staying engaged as the community grows. Above all,
remember that control is in the hands of the members, so put their needs first, build
trust, and become an active part of the community.”
Online Community Best Practices, Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research
SOURCE: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44795,00.html

Online Communities - What can scholarly
publishing learn from other industries?
ALPSP seminar 7 July 2009
Building Online Communities To Support Successful Media Brands
Presentations by
Dan Thornton, ex-Community Marketing Manager at Bauer Media, now
Digital Marketing Manager at Absolute Radio
and Gail Robinson, Community Producer TES, TSL Education Ltd
SOURCE: http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=&did=47&aid=73515&st=&oaid=-1

Why is community vital to a brand?
•Humans are inherently social creatures, who wish to interact. And
capable of driving exponential growth.
•Media owners no longer control the methods of production and
distribution.
•Brands (Advertisers) can interact directly with consumers, who can all
interact with each other.
•All interaction can be visible to hundreds, thousands, or millions of
other people.
•The cost of search engine optimisation is rising, but the effect doesn’t
increase in isolation. Meanwhile display advertising is less and less
effective at driving response.

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?

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

Consumers aren’t waiting for proven business models
•Around 13 hours of content is uploaded to Youtube every minute – the
equivalent of Hollywood releasing more than 57,000 films each week.
•Technorati has tracked 133 million blogs since 2002.
•Audioboo has had over 35,000 pieces of content uploaded since launch in
March ’09.
•Stephen Fry has 630,000 followers on Twitter.
The small percentage of individuals making significant revenues online are
doing it by secondary income streams, not display advertising.

Well known examples of Return on Investment
•Dell has made $1 million plus directly via Twitter.
•Zappos made $1 billion in gross sales in 2008, 10 years after launching by
concentrating on customer service, using Twitter, Blogs, Youtube etc.
•The viral effect of the Will It Blend videos increased sales of Blendtec blenders by
20% from an initial cost of production of $50.
•Stormhoek wine doubled sales in the UK using blogger outreach.

A 9 step community engagement process
• Listening
• Objectives
• Technology
• Seeding
• Recognition
• Moderation + Maintenance
• Transparency
• Integrate it into everything you do
• Measurement and Analysis.

TES Connect
•‘The big idea behind the relaunch was to create a professional network
for teachers.
•‘We wanted to harness the power of the education community, giving
the teaching profession networking and content sharing tools that would
help them and in turn help improve the quality of the lessons taught in
our schools.’

TES Connect
•‘The challenge was to build networking tools that our audience would
embrace. Social network tools have a professional purpose when
applied to this space – profile pages include a user’s resources, users are
notified of resources other friends have used and private messaging
provides a way for users to connect with other teachers in their field and
find support and advice.
•‘We have put community right at the centre of TES Connect. While
many other publishers major on their editorial content – articles, news
etc. We found that the key drivers of traffic to our site were instead
those areas that promote community. And this was what drove the focus
of our redesign. ‘

TES Connect
•‘Won two top awards at this year’s AOP Awards: Best Website, Business
for TES Connect and Best Digital Publisher Business
•‘Six months after launch TES Connect is the world’s most successful
network in any professional vertical.’

Knowledge is Power
• The business information provider’s view:
“If we can watch what you look at I can get some information about you, but if
you contribute content I get a lot more information about you.
• “Social interactivity gives us much richer people information. The more niche the
community the higher the proportion of people actively taking part.
• “Advertisers want to target interactions not just anyone who happens to come
to the site. To achieve this we need to be able to define and segment the groups
that they might be particularly interested in.”
Karl Schneider, Editorial Development Director, Reed Business Information

Why is this business critical?
• ‘In information rich, intense environments that connect users with community
content generation, the application and platform trump traditional core
competencies (editorial creation, manufacturing and distribution processes) of
many information providers.
• Owning a platform or community allows for unique ways to recombine and
leverage content within and across communities, and further embeds and
strengthens the community – creating an upward spiralling, positive momentum
cycle.’
Executive Leadership Council: CEO Topics – Social Communities & Expert Networks in B2B ©Outsell, Inc.

The Corporate Engagement Opportunity
• Who do you want to reach?
Customers, consumers, members, subscribers, employees, enthusiasts,
other stakeholders?
• What are your objectives?
Spread your message? Enable word of mouth marketing? Monitor brand
perception? Support customers? Gather and develop ideas?
• How will you engage in relationships?
Query your audience? Energize advocates? Run surveys and online polls?
Facilitate discussions? Seek opinion? Just listen and learn?

Tangible business benefits
• Enhance your brand’s social presence and customer loyalty
• Improve customer insight
• Generate content for your audience from your audience
• Reduce your marketing costs, particularly market research
• Create new revenue opportunities
• Transform customer service

A natural progression?

Comment demo
http://community.commenttechnologies.com/

Questions?
Michael Collins, Marketing & Business Development
E. michaelc@commenttechnologies.com
T. 020 7946 3915
M. 07779 602 865
Tom Bailey, Sales
E. tom@commenttechnologies.com
T. 020 74963931
M. 07970 965351