Community Guy – Jake McKee

5 Tips from Nate

5 Tips from Ubisoft’s Nate Mordo

Here’s 5 good tips for working with online communities from Nate Mordo, Mananger of Online Marketing for Ubisoft. 

Internet communities are notoriously good at smelling a rat. If you’re not honest, even by omission, you can get in big trouble.

Tip #2. Provide tools

More and more media is not simply being passively consumed but being remixed. Give a community tools they can use to upload artwork, create their own blog, or join a message board. For example, if a person is able to upload a picture of himself dressed as a character from a game, he feels like he’s actually doing something rather than just passively viewing a trailer of the game.

Tip #3. Don’t try to control the message

A brand used to be able to carry a company through hard times. Today, brands can’t trust that anymore, because the minute a company does something "wrong," it’s dissected online. If you decide not to put up a message board because you’re afraid people might write something negative about you, you’re simply hiding your head in the sand. Instead, learn from what is being said.

Tip #4. Hierarchy is important

In a community, "elders" begin to emerge, and their opinion counts more than the opinion of someone new. Communities like bragging rights, so find ways to make status clear. You might assign points based on how many times a person has posted or how much they read on the site. A certain number of points signifies a certain rank.

Tip #5. Differentiate between blogs and message board

A blog is a soapbox, mainly for a single person, with a small number of people who give feedback. It’s "one-to-many." A message board is more of a roundtable, "many-to-many." The difference is subtle but important, and if you want to foster community you might want to consider both.

101 Dumbest Moments in Business

This is a very long list of dumb business moments. It’s a fun (albeit long) read. One of my favorites:

Having barred alcohol marketing that associates drinking with sex, British regulators block an ad that shows women imbibing Lambrini sparkling wine while using a fishing pole to hook a hunky guy. The Advertising Standards Authority says the ad violates its guidelines because the guy "looks quite attractive and desirable to the girls." It would pass muster if only he were "overweight, middle-aged, balding, etc." The company then runs a version of the ad using a paunchy, chrome-domed model.

A little misty…

In late 2002, 10 LEGO colleagues, me included, came together to develop the Community Strategy moving into the future. This group, the “Launch Crew” (we had a whole Mars theme) met for 10 weeks, putting our jobs on hold in the busiest time of the year to develop plans, ideas, strategies and teams. Out of the Launch Crew came the LEGO Community Development team, my full-time community role, and some goals.

At the end of the 10 weeks, we all sat around at the end of the last day and chatted about our personal goals. These were the things that when they happened, we would say “Yep, we’ve done it… we’ve done good work”. My goal?

To have the adult fan community grace the cover of a major publication.

It’s happened. As of a few days ago, The Mindstorms Users Panel (MUP) and the Mindstorms NXT project made the cover story for Wired magazine.

Here’s the opening from the article:

The email from Denmark was only a few lines long. “It basically said, ‘We have an opportunity for you here, but we can’t tell you anything until you sign a nondisclosure agreement,” says Steve Hassenplug, a soft-spoken software engineer from Lafayette, Indiana. The cryptic tone of the email from Lego headquarters hinted at something more than a simple customer survey, but Hassenplug didn’t know what.

Actually it wasn’t quite Denmark, but from the US… my computer actually! It’s been an amazing process to see the MUPs work side by side with the Billund design team. It’s amazing to see them get the credit they so rightly deserve … and in one of the coolest magazines on the planet.

Last night I went to the bookstore and bought three copies of this issue. I have to tell you, I’ve never been more proud of the adult fan community. Steve, John, David, and Ralph, you did something amazing with this project – your humility and professionalism has opened the doors for more projects like this in the future.

On top of that, you’ve shown the world that working together with consumers is a great idea.

Wow.

Google Book Search

At 30 mins, it’s a bit long, but this video presentation by Lawrence Lessig about Google Book Search.



(As a side note, Lessig is also using a similar format as Dick Hardt – which is a good thing)

All for the cost of dinner

Steve Rubel pointed this story out:

I’d bet Allchin got more pointed feedback out of that few hours and few hundred dollars over dinner than he could have gotten with a $50,000 focus group. And PR…. here I am writing about how Microsoft is doing something right. Can you imagine such a thing just a few years back? There’s a very key message here:

Marketing (and even PR) people tend to see things in terms of how much the budget is. The first step in any new project is asking "What’s my budget". When it comes to interacting with consumers, money is a second step. The first step is to figure out what you’re trying to do, who you’re doing it it with, and who to talk to.



Probably about 60% of my (fairly tiny) budget each year is focused on travel costs (hotel, rental cars, planes). Yes, only about 40% of the budget is divided up on "activities". This isn’t because I don’t have enough money, it’s because working with community is about the conversation, the relationship not the glossy programs.



This isn’t to say that glossy programs don’t have their place. It’s all part of a integrated approach to accomplishing a mission (usually to sell more products). Glossy campaigns are part of what fuel interest in the product line overall within the community. (Think Apple commercials and the Apple iPod community)



Colleagues always ask me "How can we actually talk to consumers". I make a funny hand/arm motion representing me picking a person on my left and moving them to my right. It’s literally that simple -  if you want to talk to someone, ask. If you’re asking the right people, they’ll be happy to join you. After all, everyone likes to feel like they’re the expert on a subject and their opinion is valuable.

Putting the Search in Job Search

I was chatting with Jackie Huba on the phone today and she asked an extremely interesting question:

“How do you search for people to fill community roles”

We chatted a bit about the types of people that make up good community people. Is there a profile? A certain skillset? A college degree that would say “I’m going to be a great community person”?

I think there are two big requirements for any good community person:

·     Communication skills – written, oral, internet based, face-to-face. It’s amazing how much time I spend in the course of day simply communicating. I’m working with colleagues to get them excited about working with community, community working with the company, and general transferring ideas.

·     Social skills – I know this seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget. A community person’s job is all making and maintaining relationships. It’s incredible important to know how to interact very well with others.

Sure, some formal education in certain fields can help, but they can also be a hindrance too. I’m not crazy about old school marketers or PR people doing community work, as they tend to try to shove community into their pre-conceived notions of what the process should be.  But I think younger marketing and PR folks have some advantages.

But overall, you really have to actually search for good people. Typically a “job search” hasn’t been much of a search. You post an ad, and wait for people to send in resumes. But with community people, it’s important to actually seek out good people. People who get it.

Those folks can come from any department within your company (the guy who works for me in Europe came from the legal department before joining the community team). They can come from the the community you’re hiring for. They can come from another community you frequent. They can come from your local church group.

The key is personality.

High volume blogs and comments

I don’t tend to comment on things from Jason Kottke, simply because by the time I get to reading his entries they’re well covered. But this was a very interesting discussion of why the top tier (i.e. high traffic) bloggers don’t tend to have comments turned on with their blogs.

Completely understandable.

Become an Evanglist

Ben posted this great entry on how to become an evangelist:

1. Become an evangelism expert.

Gather evidence such as case studies, how-tos and books on the subject. (There’s a growing body of work on the subject.) Put a stake in the ground that will define the edges of your platform of evangelism knowledge. For instance, if you’re focused on building customer loyalty via evangelism, don’t waste time on viral ads. Religiously follow the work of a few organizations whose evangelism you covet.

2. Track what people say online.

Become the go-to person whenever someone asks "What are they saying online?" about your company, product or service. Do this via free services Technorati, BlogPulse, IceRocket and Google Alerts. Politely mollify the skeptics who claim online word of mouth is not a scientific sampling of true customer opinion.

3. Find a few co-conspirators.

Share your growing body of knowledge with a few trustworthy co-workers with similar beliefs in word of mouth and customer loyalty. Envision how your company can increase its level of customer evangelism. Do not present your idea to a committee, whose "let me play devil’s advocate" members will effectively kill it.

4. Start small.

The smaller, the better. In a big company, it’s often the skunk-works projects that end up having the biggest impact. Your first program could be adding a "How did you hear about us" question to website sales or inquiries or in-bound call centers. Or launching a customer advisory board for a store or locale. Ensure your first effort includes solid measurements. Later efforts might not be so easy to measure. Watch how the success of your effects spread organically from co-worker to co-worker.

5. Bring in the experts.

If your pilot program is a success and the boss’s boss is asking for more, consider hiring an expert. It could be a known practitioner who joins your company as an employee, or it could be a firm that helps you conduct larger-scale research, customer-community planning or large-scale evangelism strategy development. The best firms will position you as the genius behind your company’s growing base of evangelists, not themselves.

In the comments, I added a few other things to the list too. I thought they might be interesting enough to repost here.

7. Have a vision

If you don’t know what path you’re on, and what your goals are, you’ll never be able to convince colleagues, fans/consumers to take the journey with you. Repitition is a crucial element in the ongoing struggle (and yes, it is a struggle to re-wire minds), and if you get "off vision", you will end up spinning your weels.

8. Don’t get discourage

Stick to the plan, even when people tell you no. And they WILL tell you no. A lot. Daily. (I actually wrote a blog entry recently about this one concept alone)

9. Learn, learn, learn

If you’re not paying constant attention to how colleague and consumers alike are responding to your ideas, your personality, your actions, you WILL fail. This does not mean that you need to conduct surveys and polls. It means you need to open your eyes, ask people what they’re concerned with, read body language, learn the "between the lines language". It’s all there if you’re willing to spend the time paying attention to it.

Rule: Say who you are

Penny Arcade, the well-known webcomic, has posted a great strip today about fake forum content posting by companies trying to pump their products. Here’s the post in question:

Compare that to another comment that’s clearly written by a real user:

Now let me be perfectly clear – I have no idea if either of those comments are plants or are actual users. Here’s a few of my reasons why I think the first one is a plant by the likes of EA:

• As the Penny Arcade dudes said the comment is "so relentlessly on message"
• While the comment tries to sound like it’s written by a 12 year old, it properly capitalizes everything, including the Xbox name itself.
  
• The language is clearly "planned", at least to this reader.
• It just oozes "Marketing Key Message"

So let’s assume that the first comment is, in fact, a plant. The saddest part is that instead of improving buzz, they’re creating negative buzz. Again, assuming this is EA at work, they’ve violated two key rules:



Properly identify yourself: This may seem excessive, but do it -  if you work at a company and you’re posting in a forum (or anywhere publicly), always always tag yourself. Most of the time, you’ll be in one of two modes:

• I’m an employee of XYZ company"
• "I’m just another user"
  

If you’re an employee, posting as an employee, use something like:

Sometimes, you can work for a gaming company and like talking about games away from work. Even though I work at LEGO, I was a fan first and then got the job. If I want to post like "just another user", I can do that with a footer like this:

If I’m posting as an enthusiast, then I always make absolutely sure to clarify the context of my message. For instance, maybe I open a post with:



"Speaking as a fan of the product…." or "This is just my personal opinion, but…"



Of course, this only becomes believable I actually…



Maintain an open and honest and honest relationship: As they say, "if you’re lying, you’re dying". Lies are always found eventually. Always. With the speed at which information buzzs around the net, don’t chance the fact that you might not be discovered. If projects like this are part of your strategy, your strategy is dead wrong. Fundamentally, from the ground up, day one wrong.



If your tagging (see first point) is a lie, it doesn’t count. This process only works if both rules are observed at all times.



These rules apply 100% of the time. When you get hired, you take on certain responsibilities and give up certain freedoms. Before coming to EA they could post whatever and however they wanted. They could identify themselves or choose to remain anonymous. But once they work their first day, that ends and they take on new constraints. I still post frequently as a LEGO fan, but I have to alter my behavior as an LEGO employee.





Imagine if EA had instead posted as EA employees – there’d be a ton of people saying "Great! EA cares enough to show up!" Sad to see they missed the ball… again, assuming that this is the real deal.

Beastie Movie

This is a really cool concept:

The Beasties, an iconoclastic, 40-something hip-hop band, handed out 55 Hi-8 and six digital video cameras at a Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004. They also gave their untrained videographers some simple instructions: do whatever you want — rock out, act like a filmmaker, try and sneak backstage — but keep rolling tape.

When the show was done, band member Adam Yauch (aka MCA, aka Nathanial Hörnblowér) spent a year editing the very raw footage into Awesome, a new kind of concert film premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival. Yauch is credited as the film’s director.

And think about the budgets involved in this project:

• 55 Hi-8 cameras – (estimated safely) $500/camera = $27,000
• 6 DV cameras – (estimated) $5000/camera = $30,000

An entire movie, albeit a new style (very much in the Beastie Boys realm, by the way) for a total production price of $57,000. Now, certainly a year worth of editing time could be expensive, but since I’m assuming this was a labor of love, I’m not going to count that in here.



But seriously, consider a film production budget of $57,000. They only have to sell 3000 copies to recoup their entire investment. And considering that the Beasties have a pretty big fan base, I doubt that’ll be a problem.



OK, so maybe the final costs are a bit more… but I’m not sure that they really needed to be. Again, labor of love probably drove the time spent a bit higher than truly necessary.

But the final product, a $1.2 million film, is anything but low rent. Three teams of editors, working on Macs with Final Cut Pro, built three initial cuts, which Yauch and editor Neal Usatin then melded into one.

But here’s the best quote…

What a great way to not only involve your fans, but produce a cool new product as an outcome.