Community Guy – Jake McKee

Friday Non-Blog Design Series IV

I’m rushing out the door to catch a plane to the beach and a few day of relaxation and recharging. (And yes, it’s very very early) But I couldn’t leave without dropping a few links for the Non-Blog Design series!

And don’t forget to check out all the links at my delicious account under the tag "nonBlogDesign".

See you fine readers on Thursday!

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.

Hit bottom? Keep digging!

As you recall from yesterday’s blog post, a simply request to find out where in my area I could buy Pitu, a tasty liquor, I received a highly insulting email from them. (Read the full account here) After I had posted the blog entry on the subject, I politely informed them that I had posted the exchange on this blog.

This morning I received three email responses from Ms. Krauss, shown below.

Email 1

Email 3

And here is my response:

UPDATE: Here’s the latest response…I think it pretty much speaks for itself. 

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.

Pitu, welcome to the Web

During a business dinner at a Brazilian resturant a few years back I was introduced to a terrific drink – the Caipirinha. It was very tasty, especially considering I don’t drink liquor as much as beer.

In preperation for my upcoming beach vacation this weekend, I visited the Pitu site (this liquor is the key ingredient for this tasty drink) to try to locate a store near me that sold it. To my excitement, the site has a "Where to Buy" section where I could fill out a form with my details in order to receive info from a local distributor. Great!

The downside was that in order to get this information, I was asked to give my name, company name, street address, city, state, zip, phone number and email address. I happily left my name, email address, city, and zip. But the form required all the fields so I used fake data for my street address, phone number, and company name.

This morning I received this mail from the Pitu folks:

Really makes you excited to go out of your way to find an uncommon product, doesn’t it? Here was my reply:

Clearly enough people have done something similar to what I did, which I guess is what set off Ms. Krauss. If there’s enough people doing this to make her this mad, perhaps the better answer would be to ask me (politely) why I choose to do what I did, rather than insulting me for it. Not only would I have rushed out to buy some of her product, I would also be taking this new drink to my friends on our beach vacation trying to convert them too.

There’s a clear lesson here for all of us to learn: Just because you’re frustrated at something doesn’t mean your community members are stupid. Take the time to ask them for clarification and you’ll probably learn something new.

UPDATE: I just re-read the email from Ms. Krauss and discovered something cool – apparently (I think) they send out physical goods, which is why they want my full address. Of course if they don’t tell me that, how they can expect me to know it or willingly give my personal data to a liquor company is beyond me.

Superman Returns indeed!

When I was 7 years old, I had what was arguably the best birthday party I’ve had yet. After going to see Superman  (Superman III, I think) in the theater with a few friends, we all went to a local park to partake in ice cream and cake. Not just any cake, mind you. This was a cake like none other. My mom typically made all of our baked goods at home, so when she unveiled a Superman cake, you can imagine my excitement.

I largely forgot my love of Superman as I got older. After catching several Superman Returns trailers in front of other movies in the last few months, I was largely unmoved.

But when I saw the latest trailer with the music (you know… THE Superman theme), I got goosebumps and childhood memories washed over me like I was 7 years old in the park, post-viewing of the first Superman movie wondering how I could grow up to be Christopher Reeve/Clark Kent.

Needless to say, I’ll be catching Superman Returns in the theater. (And by the looks of the reviews, I won’t be sorry come June 28!)

How does this relate to community stuff? Largely, it doesn’t directly. But it did bring home the points that Martin Lindstorm was making in his presentation I recently caught about "Smashing Brands". (Basically using all of the senses to get your brand message across)

It’s also interesting to note that when you google "Superman Returns", these are the three sites that come up first:

1. Offical Warner Site
2. IMDB listing
3. BlueTights.net – the fan site (They even have a cool MySpace group)

BlueTights is an interesting project. It’s a fan site, but has given over parts of the site to Bryan Singer, the movie’s director.

Peter Jackson started this trend when working together with fans on King Kong, and it’s great to see Singer pick up the ball and run. Hopefully others follow suit.

Friday Non-Blog Design Series III

Once again, a fine collection of non-traditional blog designs!

Trabian
An interesting portfolio blog

UX Magazaine
The way the core content of the "blog" is displayed, you don’t even realize it’s a "blog" until you see the comments section on the articles themselves.

OrderedList.com
Excellent personal blog, simplistically rich. (If that’s a term…)

And don’t forget to check out the del.icio.us feed of all the Friday Non-Blog Design links.

Brand = User Experience

In this great article, I found a terrific synopsis of today’s "brand" environment:

And from the same article there was no way I could pass this quote up:

Or better yet, this one:

Let’s repeat that for effect…. the question for brands is no longer "what should we say", but "what should we let customers do".

Pardon the interruption

I’m pretty sure it won’t be long now before I start saying things like "I can quit any time" and "I have it completely under control, back off!"

That’s right, I’ve gotten completely sucked into World of Warcraft. It’s an absolutely brilliant game and I’ve not even really discovered the social aspects yet. And all this from someone who absolutely hates fantasy themes like Lord of the Rings.

So if blogging is light in the upcoming days/months/years you’ll know why. If you want to find me, I’m on the Uldum universe and my character name is Maever.

"My name is Jake…"
"Hi, Jake"
"…and I play World of Warcraft"