I am in NYC at Bill Johnston's Community Conference (run by his company Forum One Communications). We are nestled in a great venue - the cozy theater in the Tribeca Grand.
The first session features Marcien Jenkes at AOL and David Dunne, EVP at Edelman. Marcien's key points:
- Communities belong to their participants
- They are a lot of hard work
Here's what AOL focuses on in their community efforts. They steward and strengthen communities through the following:
- Helping community to know their identity - e.g. helping individuals earn "equity" in their community, find people who are important to each other
- Creating a deep social graph (yes, there is one of the new phrases that capture the personal network we all have)
- Creating facilitation platforms - communities are 'exchanges' not dissimilar from the NY Stock Exchange.
Advice for marketers:
Know what you want to achieve in terms of business objectives? (this foreshadows what I will cover in my own session)
- Use community to leverage consumers and their good will ("get over yourselves tap into the rest of the world"). Hard to engage on a transactional basis. You need to invest in the community over the long haul.
- Organize people around causes that you and people care about.
Examples: BabyCenter & Ford (in relation to Breast Cancer CSR program) - Leverage the talkers (i.e. influencers) you can use advertising to reach and even activate them.
How do you know when you are being successful in community?
David Dunne/Edelman
Marketers have become avoidable which somehow diminishes the power of traditional awareness-based marketing. David gave a thoughtful preso on changes in relation to distribution choices and content creation.
http://johnbell.typepad.com/weblog/2007/11/marketi...