Community Guy – Jake McKee

Digital Nomads:

My first (and hopefully not last) post on the new Dell Digital Nomads site is live! (Actually last week, but I’m slow to share)

Baggage: It Affects More Than Just Relationships

I’m not afraid to admit it: I’m a bit of a bag junkie. No matter how many roller boards, sling bags, backpacks, and camera bags I have, there’s always a few things missing from the bags I have to choose from. I’ve spent hours upon hours surfing the Web for bag reviews, combing the stores for a discontinued perfect find, and asking random people in airports if they’re happy with their cool looking bags. All of this effort because I know that the easier my luggage is to deal with, the better my trips are going to be. Whether I’m going to the local coffee shop or a client meeting halfway around the world, the utility and ease-of-use of the luggage I bring has a strong influence on how easy the trip is.

(continue reading the 7 tips)

The community team at Dell has begun building a pretty fantastic resource for the Digital Nomad. If you spend some portion of your work day at a coffee shop or on a plane, this is the site for you.

Zappos pays new employees to quit

Can you imagine showing up to your first day of a new job and being offered $2000 to walk out the door that very same day? Zappos, the amazingly successful and fairly unknown (at least in most circles) e-commerce business does exactly that. And apparently it leaves only the truly interested working at the company. Strange, perhaps, but you can’t fault their results. One in seven UPS overnight packages comes from them. They’re generating $1 billion in revenues per year.

The interview embedded below is from a Harvard Business blog post, and is a fantastic article. Don’t miss this one!

Video: There’s a New Conversation

A couple weeks back, I was honored to join an event in NYC organized by Ted Shelton from The Conversation Group. The event, “There’s a new conversation” focused on what’s happened in the 10 years since the launch of The Cluetrain Manifesto. More on the event, as well as clips of the other speakers on the official site: CluetrainAt10.com.

Ted invited me to speak and I happily jumped on board. Of course, he failed to mention I’d be following up the incredible Doc Searls. Thanks, Ted. It turned out fine though, even though I was having an off day. If you’re interested, the video of the session is embedded below.

I was also interviewed at the event by Blog Talk Radio’s John Havens, if the video isn’t enough Jake for ya.

To be clear, the presentation presents my opinions, and my opinions alone.

Huge thanks to the Creative Commons or otherwise licensed photos. LEGO set images are copyright The LEGO Group.

• Back to the Future Delorean – Flicker404
• Wal-Mart – (link evades me, found on flickr…will update as soon as I can find)
• Stop sign – Drawings of Light
• Castles made of sand – mijasper
• Fans are weird – LostArt.ws
• Air cover – public domain
• Who’s listening – electricinca
• X marks the spot – Keith Goldman

All others were taken myself.

Community Communication: Finding the right tone

I was just talking to a friend who was asking about how to find the right tone for communications to fans/users/consumers via text (blog posts, emails, forum messages). Here’s my formula, for what it’s worth.

Step 1:
Write the first draft in the exuberant tone that you want it to sound like. Make it as upbeat and over the top as you are really feeling. Let your own enthusiasm come through. Be honest here, don’t try to add marketing language. If you were telling your buddy over beers about the cool new project you’re working on, how would that sound?

Step 2:
Take your first draft and cut out half the exuberance. Remove half of the exclamation points, half of the statements like "we’re so excited!", and so on.

When you write it the first draft (if you’re being honest), you’re setting the structure. But when you revise for the second draft, you’re adding presentation. Online the dividing line between enthusiasm and marketing babble is a thin one. Too much excitement and you’re a cheerleader. Not enough and you’re just "doing your job".

The two step process above has worked well for me over the years, but your mileage may vary.

Soliciting Feedback From Consumers

All too often when you say to a marketing person or executive something like "Let’s ask consumers for feedback", their minds jump instantly to focus groups and formal surveys. Certainly there are valid uses for both of those tactics, but I’ve found that a few well placed personal questions can net basically the same results for free.

For instance, RightCart.com just sent me a great invitation for discussion via email.

Pretty impressive effort from Mr. Garver. He’s fighting the fear ("What if all our customers call us??") and he’s offering a personal touch (I honestly believe the CTO wants to talk to me, Jake).

Here’s my rules for inviting fans/users/consumers to give feedback or input.

Write the email yourself
Don’t outsource this task, no matter how high on the food chain you are. Get help, ask colleagues for input, but when you write the invitation it’s obvious that it’s honest.

Make it personal, offer up yourself
If you’re not willing to hear from consumers directly, why bother sending the request for feedback? Give you phone number, email address, IM account, etc. Don’t worry, they’re just the people that put food on your table, they won’t bite!

Send to the right number of people
When you’re taking this personal approach, don’t use the same distribution techniques as formal programs. Send to …say 10 people to get initial reaction. Then tweak your email message to clarify any questions or confusion and send to another 10 or 20 people.

Send from your own email account
If you are sending this mail, then make sure you are sending it (i.e. the email address isn’t info@mycompany.com). This personal touch makes it clear that the invitation is coming from a real person, not a marketing agency or internal, faceless department.

Personalize as much as is realistic
Use the user’s name if you know it. Use details about their usage of your product/service if you know it. Spend the time talking to the person, not the generic consumer. It’ll pay off, trust me.

The Fourth Wall and Character Blogs

In theater there’s a term called the Fourth Wall – basically the boundary between the audience and the fiction. Imagine this: You’re watching the new (and very good) Superman movie. Superman is flying through the air but you can see the guy off stage operating the wires. Ruins the illusion, right?

Or imagine watching Friends and seeing the full set, with only three walls, nervous assistants, and the craft table. Makes it impossible for you to suspend disbelief and let your mind move to the belief that these are real people, not actors playing characters. Doesn’t work very well, does it?

Character blogs (blogs written by fictional characters) are starting to be used more and more by TV shows to attempt to further extend the character development beyond the 22 minutes of sitcom. Two examples are Dwight’s blog (from The Office on NBC) and Barney’s blog (from How I Met Your Mother on CBS). Both are pretty amusing reads that further build out amusing characters. On How I Met. On that show, Barney actually talks about the blog further extending the illusion of his character when he has a blog in real life. (Since I don’t watch The Office all the time, I’m not sure there)

The problem comes when you see the implementation of these "blogs". They don’t look or act like any real blog. They don’t have their own URLs. They don’t extend the illusion of being from a "real person". They’re simply marginally updated pages within the larger brand site, complete with NBC.com/CBS.com branding, banner ads, and navigation. Talk about ruining the illusion…

This screams "I’m not real! This is copy from the marketing department, not from the characters (i.e. the writers for those characters)!"

So then how do you create a great "character blog"? Here’s my rules:

1. Keep it right - Find the right concept, whatever that is for your business. Don’t expect an entertainment based blog to replace a business blog, and vice versa. Sometimes you need to entertain your users, sometimes you need to have honest dialogue with them. You can mix honest dialogue with entertainment, but it’s a tough road to hoe. Make sure you throughly think through the project.

2. Use what you have – Just because your brand has a mascot/icon doesn’t mean that mascot/icon would make a good character blogger. Make sure that users would get a laugh out of your character blog concept and that they’d be interested in coming back regularly to find out what your character is going to do next.

3. Make it real - Use Typepad or Blogger. Add an RSS feed. Allow comments. You know – create a blog… a real, honest to goodness blog. After all, if you have "blog" in the description of what you’re creating, maybe you should actually deliver on that.

4. Connect the dots – When you’re spending big money on traditional advertising, or on a TV show, don’t forget to take advantage of that spend in other areas. Barney (How I Met Your Mother) saying "You really don’t read my blog, do you?" on the TV show itself was brillant. Viewers could extend the 22 minute experience into much more time spent with the brand (in this case the show) by checking out the blog entry Barney refers to. The show becomes more "real" and the fourth wall is never seen.

5. Extend the illusion – Push the limits of the fourth wall. Create a universe that people can get excited about and sucked into. Remove any unnecessary (which is to say "all") branding from the character blog that doesn’t specifically support the character development. If the character is your corporate mascot, then certainly your corporate logo belongs on the site. Otherwise extend the perception of reality by constantly asking "If ______ was a real person and was really creating this blog, would they put ______ on it?" If the answer is no, then skip it.

If you’re interested in further discussion of character blogs check out Shel’s support or Steve’s annoyance. Both good reads.

What do you think? Have you found any character blogs that you love/hate? Why?

Webmaster Program Rant

More and more, movie studios are releasing raw assets for a movie in order to allow community members to build fan sites related to said movie. Rather than having users hack photos out of the official site, or scan a magazine picture, or other low quality methods, the studios are giving away photos, videos, backgrounds, logos, and other materials.

Warner Brothers has a full site dedicated to their "Webmaster Program" for the new Superman movie.

First let me say that I love that studios (and other businesses for that matter – we had a LEGO Bionicle Web Kit at one point, EA Games has a kit for the awesome, buggy Battlefield 2, etc.). No question this is a smart move. After all, if people want to make fan sites to help you support and market your product, help them, don’t take legal action on them. It wasn’t that long ago that many businesses would send out Cease and Desist letters to fans who were creating fan sites.

But nearly all of these programs seem to fall short of the touchdown. Sure they offer the assets, but what about ideas? What about tutorials on how to do something with the assets? Here’s my suggestion for future web kits:

• Include the imagery, logos, AIM icons, etc.
• Give ideas for what can be done with these elements – nothing to pushy, just some high level concepts (Make a Web page for the product review, create a custom wallpaper and share it, post a story with images about your product usage experience, creating a footer for forum postings that shows off the love for the product in discussion forums, etc.)
• Tutorials, tutorials, tutorials! It’s great that you’re giving away AIM icons, but what if the users doesn’t know how to use them? What if the user doesn’t understand how to create Web pages?
• Provide a place for people to link to from their own efforts that is more specific than the product home page. This should be similar to the home page in content, but designed in a way that empowers the user to want to always provide a link to the official site because the product owner recognizes that the user isn’t simply trying to sell their product for them.
• Provide clear usage rules, but make them fun to read. People want to know what’s kosher with their images, but most of these web kits either skip the usage rules or, even worse, make them pure legalese. Take the Flickr approach and make them fun to read.
• Think bigger. Everyone has a couple of logos and a few headshots of the core cast. But what about offbeat cast shots, or action shots, or background images that can be used in a header? Think through the process of what you’re hoping to see from your users, then provide them tools that actually encourage that to happen. The Superman Webmaster Program goes down this path a bit, but doesn’t fully realize it.

Did I mention I’m excited about Superman Returns??

Tips for Blog Commenting

If you are taking the step to start commenting on blogs on behalf of your company, here is a great article on the etiquette of leaving blog comments.

Leaving a comment on someone’s weblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation. As in real life, online there are some people who are a pleasure to converse with, and some who are not.

Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Build your own online social capital and become a great blog commenter by keeping these simple guidelines in mind before you post.

Tips for Community Building

The latest WOMMA newsletter had an interesting article that I wanted to pass along. Scott Wilder, Group Manager of QuickBooks offers up some great pointers on creating successful community. (Complete with my own commentary)

Tip #1. Create infrastructure for questions
When dealing with small businesses, questions are par for the course, and every business’ questions are unique. While no single person can possibly answer them all, an environment that invites questions and answers from businesses of all types always has someone with answers.

On top of that, community leaders help shape the culture of question asking not only from encouraging questions, but getting answers in a timely, regular fashion.

Tip #2. Understand how comfortable users are with technology
While blogs are everywhere in the press, not every individual is comfortable with them. Scott learned early on that QuickBooks Community users were more comfortable with discussion boards than with blogs

It’s even more than that, I think. For a community liaison, giving multiple methods of contact is crucial. If your email address isn’t public, it should be. Also share your IM address (or at least an account that you’re on regularly throughout the day).

Tip #3. Foster relationships
First, make sure that the environment has a variety of individuals from a variety of backgrounds. For example, the QuickBooks Community has people with expertise in different areas — lawyers, accountants, nonprofits, etc.

Then, build relationships with some of them in the same way that those individuals are building relationships with each other. And because most word of mouth happens offline, be sure to encourage offline relationships as well.

Completely agree here – relationships are the cornerstone of communities and community work.

User-created content is an excellent trigger for discussion. By making the content accessible and easy to find, those discussions happen much more easily.

This isn’t so much a tip as a theory – communities are made up of user-created content.

Tip #5. Have a moderator
A moderator is useful in connecting people in similar industries and with similar interests, challenges, and problems. That’s important when a site has a lot of information where it may be difficult for people with like interests to find each other. In the QuickBooks Community, the moderator sometimes even arranges for people to get together offline, as well.

Man, I’d say have several. That way there’s never a lapse in coverage. The number depends on the numbers of your community, but in Scott’s case there are 15,000 members. You need a full blown moderator structure. Some communities actually have multiple levels of moderatorship, with some moderators leading other moderators.

No content? Add context!

If you’re business blogging and get stuck on what to post, don’t fall into the trap of repurposing your whitepapers or press releases. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t post those things, in fact quite the opposite.

Press releases showcase what you’re doing. Whitepapers showcase how you’re doing it. That’s good stuff!

But if you simply dump the press release into a blog entry, what’s the value? Why wouldn’t your users simply head to the press center area of your site. But if you wrap that press release with your own personal interpretation, additional background information, or funny behind-the-scenes stories you have something more valuable to your readers than just the press release itself.

Remember: If your users can get the same content on your blog from another source why would they bother with your blog?