Awesome links

A few great links to share that i’ve found over the last couple of days.

Monster Marketing – Which Wich Embraces Social Media
A fantastic example of how a company can foster and work with their fans.

A Synopsis of Jyri of Jaiku on Social Objects via Strange Attractor.
A interesting set of 5 guiding principles for social objects.

Tara has put out not just one, but two great posts on communities over this past week. Both are worth checking out.

Creating Connection in Communities

Antony Berkman asked me what I thought may be some mechanisms for creating “real connects.” Because I have quite a few thoughts on the subject, I couldn’t just do a quick response to his comment. So here are some of my thoughts.

The first thing to identify, I feel, is that the point of connection is to create a relationship. The point or extent of this relationship, however, is up to the initiator. I see it at this point to take a step back and look at simply the methods of initiating and improving the connection process, thus allowing the developing relationship to grow organically rather than trying to control the point.

Taking a look at the facets of connection, or even more subjective, what factors play a part in one person liking another? (Parts of these are taken from social science studies, others from personal experience working in sales and looking at social networks etc).

 

Authenticity and Avatar Converge
There is something to be said about avatars. While in communication and learning not everyone is a strong visual communicator or learner. There is something to be said about the effect of a lack of a visual asset. This is where avatars converge with authenticity, enhancing our trust in another online. By giving a picture of yourself you are going to have a higher staying power in a persons mind as they now have a connector. That is, their comfort with you and their ability to trust what you’re saying is going to be higher due to having a ‘tangible’ visual link in their mind. Take it as a concept of a blind date. You are more likely to go out to dinner with someone you have seen before. Likewise, you are more likely to believe what someone has written if you’ve seen them.

There is a bit more to this, however. A person’s picture matters, too. It matters because as much as we say it doesn’t, according to social studies, physical attractiveness matters. We subconsciously give attributes like honesty etc to the person. So taking that bit of extra time to take a better picture, or one that depicts your personality better, might be worth it. This is in part the reason why I have a separate picture on this blog in my “About Me” section- a picture that doesn’t cover all of my face like the one on the top right here. I also have another sociological reason to the picture in my about me section. Props to any who can guess it.

 

Similarity is king
We like people with common interests whether it is background, work, recreation, vacation spots, art appreciation, etc. Similarity is perhaps one of the biggest builders of connection. Being a part of leadership in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship here, I see this truth played out day in and day out. Don’t believe me? I put that last sentence for a reason. I bet if you were a part of either IVCF or a Christian organization in college, I gained some connection points. Likewise would have been the case if I had said I was in a frat, or a video game forum. Similarity is king.

 

Encourage
Support is a very important thing. You might not think this as a valid part of the equation, but it is. Receiving either a compliment in general or a supportive remark about something you’re working on has a large impact. This is proven true by Ma.gnolia’s “Give Thanks” button. People appreciate being appreciated.

 

Experience
“Remember that one time…”

Part of what builds a relationship is experiencing things together. Sharing in various moments of hilarity, sadness, or boredom. It exposes a person’s authenticity, character, and on the simplest level, creates a memory. The best example of this is an inside joke. They are powerful connectors. Inside jokes say “I know this person well enough to where we have had an experience to which I can say something only they will understand.” Such a thing can also be negative, too, creating barriers for others. A remark on the power of experience, experience over time builds similarity.

 

Events
This in part ties to experience. By creating both competitive and cooperative events where winners take place (ensuring that cooperative events between whatever competition was created comes after the competitive) you create a time of unity. The environment must be handled well, though. For example, because competition can create a negative hostility, frequent methods to counter-act it is to offset the competition with cooperation. I feel that Threadless is a good example of this. Another good example of association with events is the Conversation Age.

 

All of the above are what I perceive as the largest facets of building connection in communities. I am hoping to have a bit more time this weekend so I can apply the above as a case study to World of Warcraft which will hopefully show some similarities between how the design of games cross apply to communities.

Talk less.

This is a bit of a personal reflection post. As an outgoing extrovert, I wouldn’t be lying if I said more often than not I dominate conversations whether or not I mean to. While this isn’t so bad, it is. The reason is because while I am talking, others aren’t… and should be.

I am reminded of this often as my girlfriend is much less out going, and an introvert. Because of this, I am always reminded (and sometimes trying patience) that I need to talk less and listen more.

It’s something difficult to do but has a fantastic impact. On the business side, I have gotten interviews and established important relationships because of talking less and listening more. On the relationship side, I do a little more to make my girlfriend, and my other friends happy. That makes me happy. So here’s to trying.

Communities Are Co-Developers Part II.

When I last wrote about this, a friend of mine contacted me and made a an interesting comment. He made a comment about the Co-Developing relationship between developer and community, saying that as opposed to being the “overseers” laying the law and enforcing their wishes on essentially the “living entity” that is a community, a stronger relationship to have would be to let the users merely manage themselves, the developers (or company) acting as simple custodians. Taking it a step further to say that as opposed to it being a co-developing relationship, it’s a parasitic relationship where the community is the host.

Now it is here that I am torn. On the one hand, I want to say that he is wrong, that the relationship isn’t parasitic. Certainly it is a strong relationship, but the ideal relationship, as I see it, is the developers joining with the community as opposed to being the custodian. It is here that custodial services become a mere civil duty, allowing the product or service to take on a life of its own, becoming merely the device, a bridge that connects all those within the community. To me, this is certainly the ideal.

The question to which I am torn, however, is can this really be achieved? As long as the developers are just that- caretakers of the bridge or core connecting part of the community that’s not theirs, but the communities, can they really be 100% a part of the community? Does that small fraction of “power” or “involvement” tip the scale enough to taint them? Are developers simply forever damned from being a true part of the community, always forced, as long as they are developers, to some degree be a parasite, thriving off of the host that is the community?

Communities Are Co-Developers

I was taking a look at Raph Koster’s presentation on game design at GDC this year and

came across two slides that read the following:

“Fail fast and fail often.

Users must be treated as Co-Developers.

Google discards 80% of its features.
They often prototype and deploy within 2 weeks.”

 

“Release early, release often.

Flickr issues releases as quickly as every half hour.”

 

I agree with these two things whole heartedly. The game players are becoming more involved in the games, and as they become more involved they needed to be treated more as co-developers. With that, the best kind of feedback to get is real feedback. Issue a few instances of your new design, whether it be a weapon, spell, level, etc. and see what the players say about it. I see little point in wasting tons of time hypothesizing about something that you could give to a community to test and get real feedback on. Then you’d know the result because you have real data. But I also see little point because I agree with the above statements.

Overall it looks like it was a great presentation. I am sad I didn’t get a chance to make it to GDC this year :(

Markets are conversations, not war grounds.

The title of this post (at least the first part) may strike you as familiar if you have read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Having recently read that among some other books (like Blue Ocean Strategy, etc) I have been considering how ensure the re-alignment of my perspective on marketing, and I think part of ensuring my perspective involves re-aligning my vocabulary.

So I thought: If markets are conversations, then they’re not war grounds. I find this an important distinction because the general marketing vocabulary is about war. Your target, segmenting, guerilla marketing (warfare), tactics and strategy, front lines, strategic positioning, barriers to entry, etc.

So why is it so important that we understand and speak as if markets (and marketing) is not warfare?
A simple answer, really. Because warfare implies hostility while conversation implies connection.

A war doesn’t imply a joint effort between two groups. It implies a warring effort where two groups fight it out, tooth-and-nail, until one side wins. The battle is exhausting. There are casualties as customers leave, employee’s leave, sacrifices are made, and lives are negatively effected, feelings hurt, people frustrated, etc.. There is collateral damage as a companies brand suffers, the product suffers, and peoples jobs may suffer (both employees and customers). The groups undergo plotting on one another, constantly trying to thwart the others efforts. One of the most significant aspects is that people at war often aren’t valued by the one they are warring against. Worse yet, there are only two outcomes that occur with war. One side wins, or one side surrenders. Who wants to be in a dominated relationship? Who wants to surrender and accept what is being provided, having no say at all?

I think the use of war as an analogy and as a vocabulary isn’t the best method. Not to say that all people who use it think the way I have mentioned. But the consistent use of such vocabulary will eventually have a lasting effect on ones perspective.

So I ask the question- what vocabulary could be used in place of war and what could the vocabulary be based off of? Conversations are one thing to base the vocabulary off of, but I would prefer to go with something more tangible, like communities, for example.

Community to Business Interaction

I’ve written before on my notion of what the ideal relationship between a business and its community is. I’ve began writing in a more full form what I find are the most important points and steps to creating a community are, as well as how to tell whether or not you’re on the right track. While that is not done, I would like to share a small portion from that.

My idea of the ideal relationship between myself (being a part of the business) and the community (the group of people whom we are privileged to have supporting our products) is when I know many (I don’t say all because I am terrible with names) of the members of our community by name, what is going on in their life, and what they are currently up to.

To sum it up in a more concise form: The interaction between a company and the community that creates it should be a relationship. That is, a two way, interactive, respectful, authentic, and caring relationship. 

The above takes a lot of work. A lot. It also requires a lot of caring and authenticity. I used to do community development and marketing for a team (of which I have now switched to design to help move things along) whose community I was authentically passionate and cared about. The results from this, from focusing on building the relationships between the community and between us and the community, were awesome. I could literally call up/e-mail/instant message, a member of this community who was now a friend and ask how he or she was doing. We would chat about my recent move, because they knew I made one. We would chat about how their new hobby was going, because I knew. These are the kind of relationships that create growing communities.

It is a relationship. I think relationships are what really matter between companies and their communities. The products [that make their lives better] and all that business related stuff is of equal importance, but I think those are simply the bridge to what matters- the relationships.

How to build a community (part 1)

Following a recent post over at Creating Passionate Users that addressed building communities, I thought I would expand and add to a few of the elements that were mentioned as I have been doing community building in one form or another for a while. What I will be adding/expanding on is what I have used in the past to give me results such as a 47% increase in the number of active community members after only 1 month of starting these methods. The posts that will follow this will be dealing specifically with forums as that’s where a lot of my experience lies. I would consolidate this into a single post, however, it would be quite long, and seeing as how this post is already and I don’t have time to write everything now anyways, I will break them into a few posts.

A peak as to what the other parts will be:

• Encourage (that’s this post)
• Engage
• Remember
• Moderate

The very first thing mentioned over at Creating Passionate Users was to encourage new users. This is certainly true, however, I feel it misses a particular point. I feel it aught to be changed to Encourage everyone through simplicity. The easier you make it for members of your community to get involved, the more they will get involved. Over on Creating Passioante Users, though, it aims encouragement specifically at new members. After I elaborate on encouraging through simplicity I will explain why its important to not just encourage new members.

But how do you encourage through simplicity? How do you make it easier for members to get involved? As I see it, there are two means that can be used to accomplish this. The first is ease of mind in terms of what they think the community’s reaction will be to what they say, and how this will change others perception of them. The second is ease-ability in terms of how long it will take to get involved or how difficult it may be.

Ease of Mind Example:
An example of the ease of mind in use would be the “Introduce yourself” type threads. These threads provide an environment where new users have an opportunity to start their involvement with almost no risk of being persecuted by the existing community. It is safe because it’s about something they know better than anyone else – themselves.

Ease-Ability Example:
Ease-ability plays into this when it comes to how you direct new community members (or existing ones) to these focused threads (or activities). The easier you make it for them to understand what’s going on, get to it, and complete it so they feel more engaged with the community, the better. I will address this more when I write my Engage post.

In addition, there are a number Internet utilities that allow you to institute the concept of ease-ability and ease of mind. These utilities are often good ice breakers for new community members. Frappr, for example, is a great one. Not only that, it is a hidden power. Frappr is a utility that allows people to place their location on a map. This spurs conversations both within the thread itself and between members. Best of all, it also allows you (the “community manager”) to get a much better idea of where members of your community are located. This is especially helpful when it comes to planning events, estimating shipping costs for giving out free swag, and so forth.

Encouragement isn’t just for new members, it’s for every member.

While this partially deals with engagement, which I will write about soon, it is important to comment on now. Encouraging existing members for their efforts, their energy, their time, and their posts is just as important as encouraging new members to get involved and make it easy and pleasant. In fact, some of the nicest things community members have said have been sparked from the simple fact that they were made aware that people noticed their efforts and thanked them for it.

My messages were always hand tailored (again, more on that in my engagement post). They often looked something like:

“Hey X!

I notice that you’ve been posting a lot lately, but not only that, you’ve been posting a lot of really valuable information! It’s great to have people who are a part of this community and who are so eager to help others. I especially found X thread helpful, not just for new members, but for myself as well!

Thanks for spending the time to help us in creating the best community we can. It couldn’t get to where it is, or to where we all hope it will go without you!”

I often got many messages in response along the lines of:

“Thank you so much! I love being a part of this community but I never knew that people took such notice of my posts!”

Or

“Thank you for your kind words! I always try to encourage new people in the community and be as open and sharing as possible. I am that it sounds like I am glad succeeding in that :-)”

Growing a community isn’t about bringing new people in, as important as that can be. It’s about making sure the current members feel valued and appreciated. If they feel that way, then chances are you won’t be worrying too much about new, dedicated community members joining.

So I say “Encourage” is lacking. Instead, I say encourage everyone through simplicity.

The Rushed Community

“If you’re in too much of a hurry to build a real network, you’re probably in too much of a hurry to get elected.” – Seth Godin

“What at any rate seems certain is that when Friendship bears fruit which the community can use it has to do so accidentally, as a by-product.” – C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves).

The project I was last working on had me spearheading the growth, activity, and general happyness of the community that supported the project. If there was one thing that became very evident to me during that time it’s that you can’t rush the trust that creates friendship which leads to a loyal community. You can only encourage it and try to be a part of it. When you try to rush it, you try to force it. And when you try to force it, you’re not being real. Companies who really care won’t rush relationships, and the people you want will wait for the companies that care. In the end, the results from taking your time are awesome because they’re genuine.

Relationships between people take time. Relationships between companies and people will take even more.

Your community is a privilege

The community that supports your company is a privilege, not a chore.

As I have been doing much in the way of online community building as of late, one thing I have been noticing is that businesses tend to treat the community that supports them as a chore more than a privilege.

When you treat your community (customers) like they’re just part of a chore, they can tell. They can tell because you’re still focused on yourself. It’s not about your business, it’s about your customers, and the community those customers create which may or may not choose to support your business.

When business’s treat their community like a privilege rather than a right, they won’t be needing fake antics to encourage potential additions to the community that supports them.