IMV3 : Online Communities

The following is a transcript for IMV3 : Online Communities. The original podcast is located here.

Moderator:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo Podcast, brought to you by MindComet. And now here’s your host, Ted Murphy.

Ted Murphy:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo, Episode Three. I’m your host, Ted Murphy. And with me today is Kelly Kennedy. Kelly is a relationship strategist at MindComet. Welcome to the show Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy:

Thanks.

Ted Murphy:

We are here to talk this week about online communities. Kelly, I think our audience would really like to know what an online community is, and how it ultimately affects their marketing.

Kelly Kennedy:

Online communities have definitely taken off this year. Basically what they are is a gathering place online, where consumers can just come and talk about a product, or service, or anything that they may have on their mind that they just want to express.

Ted Murphy:

I know that I’m a big fan of Google Groups. And I’m also a big fan of MySpace. A lot of my friends are on MySpace. Back in the day, I was on Friendster as well. You know, those things have gotten absolutely humongous. What exactly is going on there? And how are those things affecting how people communicate on the Internet?

Kelly Kennedy:

MySpace has really taken off. It’s kind of taken over Friendster. It’s quadrupled since January to 40 million people, which is just outrageous. But basically MySpace lets you kind of have your own personal website, where you can put your picture. You can have an extended profile of the things you like to do. You can post track songs, and you can connect with other members that are a part of MySpace.

Ted Murphy:

So those are like the ultimate online communities, where people actually go to those websites specifically for the community. That’s all the website is.

Kelly Kennedy:

Teens today spend about an hour and 22 minutes social networking.

Ted Murphy:

I think that’s a great example of what an online community is. And obviously, there’s the big social networks out there. I think AOL was probably one of the original ones, where people were getting online and chatting, and going to message boards, and things like that. But how does that relate to marketers? How can I use online communities, social networking in my marketing mix, to be a more effective marketer?

Kelly Kennedy:

Before we look into corporate individual online communities, let’s first look at Facebook and MySpace, and how they’re benefiting right now advertising on those sites. So let’s take Apple, for example. Facebook is an online community much like MySpace. It’s targeted towards college students. And once the members had started to increase, they started to create groups. And one of the groups was Apple students. And so anyone that had a Mac would come and talk about their Macs, you know, what they liked, what they were having problems with. And then that way, they could be resolved without having to talk to somebody at Mac. And basically, Facebook saw this trend with this group. And so then they went to Apple, and they said, “Would you like to sponsor this group?” And so Apple now sponsors them. And basically now, they give iPod shuffles away to the members.

Ted Murphy:

That’s an interesting thing there, where Facebook is actually going back to Apple, and saying, “Hey, why don’t you sponsor this group?” But I think an interesting opportunity there is what if I am another company? What if I’m Dell? Or what if I’m Ford or GM? And I want to come back and say – oh my gosh! Look. There’s a community there, an existing community on one of these huge online communities. Maybe I can actually approach a Facebook or a MySpace, and say, “I want to sponsor this section of the website. I want to provide more content to these users. I want to enhance that experience, and make that just available to people who are in my group.”

Kelly Kennedy:

They can definitely sponsor on these large communities. Or they can build their own community on their site.

Ted Murphy:

So let’s talk a little bit about creating a community on my own site. What are some of the things that I need to take into account when I am looking at building my own online community?

Kelly Kennedy:

You’re gonna need to have a lot of technical assistance. You’re gonna need to have a moderator. You need to have an administrator. You know, what if somebody comes to this group? Or you gonna automatically let them join the group? Are you gonna need to have certain privileges to join the group? There’s probably gonna be your email verification, so you’re not having people that just want to spam your site. You want somebody that’s trusted, that is going to shed noteworthy education to other members.

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. I know that that’s actually something that we talked about in our last Podcast with blogs in particular, with the legal ramifications as well as – what if somebody’s getting on there and posting pornographic things on my online message board? Or if they’re even going on there and saying that my product or service sucks. You know? I need to be able to have someone who’s in charge there who is able to moderate those boards, and who is making sure that we’re pruning out the things that we don’t necessarily want to communicate out there.

Kelly Kennedy:

That’s why it’s so important to have a moderator, to have the administrator. Because you could have one person that might have had one thing go wrong with the product. And they’re gonna go crazy talking about it, which isn’t really necessary. Because the customer, the client, can definitely go ahead and fix that problem without it having to get out of hand. And so those are things that the client definitely needs to watch out for.

Ted Murphy:

I think it’s interesting too that one of our clients, Speed Channel, has one of the largest online proprietary message boards out there. I think that they’ve got something like 1.2 million posts since we’ve launched that. And one of the things that they actually do is they let people run free, minus obviously the pornography and the other comments. But what they’ve actually done from that is they’ve gotten a lot of feedback from their customers. And it’s truly influenced their programming. It’s influenced the way that they deal with problems. It’s also helped them better understand how we can build a better website, and how we can provide better content for them. I know that a lot of people have also talked about, from a product or service standpoint, the decrease in technical support and assistance needed. What exactly transpires there?

Kelly Kennedy:

That’s what’s so great about online communities. If someone is having a problem, you know more or less, more than one person on that forum is gonna know the answer. And they’re just gonna be able to help you out right then and there, instead of having to wait on the phone, or send an email. It’s almost immediate.

Ted Murphy:

So there’s actually – there’s a benefit to the customer in having that there. And there’s also a big benefit for the company who’s putting that out there. Because they don’t have to have the people manning the phones, or responding to the emails, or whatever else. And a lot of those problems get resolved a lot quicker.

Kelly Kennedy:

Absolutely.

Ted Murphy:

Online communities also play a key role in search engine marketing. I know that one of the things that we’ve seen with the online communities we’ve built is all of that content is being indexed, and it’s becoming part of the spidered content and related content to the site. So we’ve actually seen a lot of the traffic when we launch a community for a client – we’ve seen a lot of the traffic come back to the main site as well. Because now the search engines have so much more stuff to index. What can I do as a company who’s looking to put an online community out there, to make sure that my site is being indexed in the right way?

Kelly Kennedy:

When it comes to search engine marketing, it’s really important that you have the right software, you have the keywords in place, the Meta tags in place. You need to have the proper structure. And basically, the same considerations as you would do with your traditional site, which you’re gonna want to follow over with this community site. You’re gonna want to make sure it’s on a separate server, so that IPs don’t match.

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. So the IPs matching – that’s something that definitely comes into play when you’re looking at search engines crawling your site. Some of your search engines will actually look at web sites that are on the same IPs, or same range of IPs. When they’re cross linking, they don’t give them as much weight. So if you put that on a separate IP address when it’s indexed, and is actually gaining some momentum, you’ll get the full advantage of that indexing.

Kelly Kennedy:

Definitely. And that will increase your traffic a lot.

Ted Murphy:

So I heard you mention software in there. And obviously there are tons of different types of software out there. What are some of the software packages that people are using?

Kelly Kennedy:

Some of the common ones that you might be familiar with are the phpBB, where the php Nuke. But it really depends on what you’re looking for.

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. Obviously people are running on different platforms, whether that be Linux, or whether that be a Microsoft platform. There’s a lot of things out there. But I have seen that some of the software does a better job than others when it comes to rendering things out properly for search engines. So take that into consideration. I know that, as Kelly said, search engines can really play a pivotal role on the traffic that you’re receiving. And you want to make sure that you’re maximizing the value. Now I’ve got this message board up. And I’ve thought about it. I’ve got it up. It’s pretty. It’s optimized for the search engines. And now what? I don’t have any people there. How do I get people there? How do I get people to start contributing to the community, and making it something that’s successful?

Kelly Kennedy:

If you’ve got a well performing site, you know other than your online community – you can definitely discuss it there. And say, “Hey, check on our online community. Go there and talk about our products and services with other members.”

Ted Murphy:

So maybe a banner, or something like that on the home page? Not necessarily a banner. We hate that word.

(Laughter)

But something on the home page that’s driving people to the site, and letting them know that it exists.

Kelly Kennedy:

You got it. And email your subscribers and let them know of this great opportunity for them.

Ted Murphy:

And I guess you could even go onto existing message boards, if there is a Google Groups, or if there is a MySpace, or something like that, where people are discussing your product or service. You can go onto those boards, and see those boards, and let them know that – hey, you’ve created this whole community just for them.

Kelly Kennedy:

They see that you’ve got your own site. Now they’re definitely gonna go there and check it out. However, you know you can’t just throw the site up there, and hope it to be successful, and do one ad, or send out one link saying – Hey, I’ve got a new site. It really takes a lot more than that to get the ball rolling. You really need to have about 500 members before this site is gonna kind of take hold of itself.

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. I know that actually for some of our clients, we become the catalyst for those online communities, where we actually had to become members, and start posting, and replying to people, so that they feel like the board is alive, and that if I make a post, then people are actually gonna respond. Because people don’t have much of a tolerance. If you’re starting a new board, it’s really hard to do.

Kelly Kennedy:

It takes a dedicated team to make this successful. You know once people start coming to the board and posting comments, you need to have your team there, and ready to answer for them. And then as more and more people come, your team’s gonna be able to step back a little bit. But they definitely have to be there at first for the support, to make sure that this is successful.

Ted Murphy:

Eventually, an online community actually becomes self-sustaining, where you can actually get to a point where you can go to other members, and say, “Hey, would you like to be a moderator of the board? And would you like to take over those duties?” I think that’s where you start to see the real benefit, where you still have some involvement, but for the most part, you have people, patrolling the board, and making sure that the content is good, and it’s a place that they want to continue to come back to.

Kelly Kennedy:

That’s what’s so great about online communities. Just because you’ve got the members there that are dedicated to making it successful for you. You know? They want to sure the information, and just as much, get information. And that’s why they can become a trusted source, and you can have them be your moderator.

Ted Murphy:

So I think the bottom line is when it comes to online communities and marketing, you’ve got to be willing to dedicate the resources, dedicate the time to make it successful, to really put in the strategy up front, and make sure that you’re seeing it all the way through. And if you do that, you can have some great success. But if you don’t do that, you’re probably gonna be met with a little bit of disappointment.

Kelly Kennedy:

You’ve got it.

Ted Murphy:

Well Kelly, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Hopefully we can have you back again to talk a little bit more about online communities, and consumer generated media, and all those fun things.

Kelly Kennedy:

Sure. It sounds good.

Ted Murphy:

For those of you who are listening to this on a podcast, you can go to Internetmarketingvoodoo.com, and download Kelly’s “Top Ten Things to Know When You’re Starting an Online Community.” It’s a quick little sheet, where it just gives you a rundown, a PDF that you can print out and read at your leisure.

(Music)

Moderator:

For more information on this week’s topic, visit internetmarketingvoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, The Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

Marketing Resources
Download Top 10 Things Marketers Should Know About Online Communities (PDF - 684KB)

Listen to the Online Communities podcast.

Contact MindComet about creating an online community strategy for your organization.

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online communities, social networking