Welcome to the Digital Web 2.0 Academy

Harry Potter and the home made web cams

Some viewer created content you can predict, and some you can't. When Harry Potter's final instalment launched, you could be sure that there would be tens of thousands of wizard fans out there chatting and mailing images, screensavers and links to each other. It's fantastic free publicity for the publisher and the film franchise, but once a cult is out on the web, firms have to bite the bullet and accept there's little they can do to manage what happens next.

A few will sceptically see much of it as contrived, but one small activity that caught our eye was the webcam frenzy from a few particularly passionate readers. Take a book, a confident webcam user, and the buzz of a major cultural event (whatever you think of Potter Mania, the release of the final instalment was a cultural tsunami in the world of children's books), mix it together and you have the right ingredients for a potion of literary webcasting.

Out of control of the book publisher, watched by friends and strangers, an ensemble of Potter fans set up a webcam to show themselves reading the book from a London hotel room hours after its midnight release. I'd like to think that a visionary PR agency set up the whole idea, but it's hard to imagine that this was anything other than a massive wave of fan action.

In terms of viral marketing and online social networks, this caught our eye for several reasons. Firstly it was unplanned by the publishers and entirely under the control of the audience. Secondly there's the immediacy: this all kicked off on the day of the book's release - combine that with the global nature of the web and there's an interesting point about geography and territoriality. Finally this is the sort of free advertising that fuels book sales and yet is almost impossible to engineer.

Hungry for more Potter Mania? Check out www.mugglenet.com

TECHNOLOGY FIRST OR LAST?

Too many social media projects have begun with the technology rather than the strategy and business need. The technology – the ‘how’ part of the equation - is normally the simple part to figure out. The ‘why’ is a tad trickier, and all too easily glossed over.

Start with the business objectives, map these into a marketing plan, and let that determine your channels. Then select the technology that fits with your needs. There are numerous ways that you could develop your social media or social marketing strategy, and too often firms see the technology as being the main step, that’s why we suggest in the Digital Community Academy that it’s just a small part of the real process.

Why technology is just the starting point of your strategy?

EDITING WIKIPEDIA

The editing structures in online communities vary between communities and over time. Wikis can be edited by anyone their creator allows, and while simple Wikis (like ours at www.DigitalJargonBuster.org) have little filtering, some will have multiple levels of access for different authors.

Start by looking at the page history to see how edits have worked in the past. Take part in the social space and learn about the culture of the social media space you’re investigating. Look for what sort of editing has been useful and where there has been value created. Most wikis will have some rules, models or suggestions, like those here for Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contributing_to_Wikipedia

Editorial or advertising? That’s the big question to ask yourself before diving into a post. Just like taking part in communities or posting on a blog remember a few of our golden rules.

1. Remember this is someone else’s space and you are a visitor; it’s a personal space so treat it with respect
2. If you make comments be courteous and keep on topic
3. When you are writing as a firm, make it clear and be transparent in how you present yourself – there’s a massive debate here about ethics in marketing and although many agencies are establishing themselves as subversive posters, it’s not something we’re going to support
4. Every community and market is different, so walk through a few people from different sides of your industry first to sound them out ; remember once you’re in the public domain it’s out there – so a gentle dry run is well worth it
5. Check your posts carefully before they go live, in blogs create a voice and personality, in communities have a strategy for why you’re contributing, and in wikis do some clear fact-checking before anything goes up

As a few heads are normally better than one, try involving a couple of colleagues to act as a sounding board about what is going up and how it’s being presented.

Are there rules which stop firms (e.g. PR companies) from posting and editing entries in Wikipedia?

BUDGETING FOR COMMUNITIES

Getting the budget right for an online community is like answering the proverbial piece of string puzzle, but the great thing is that many web tools have entry level services that are almost zero to use. Finding the time will be the toughest part...

Comment and participation software from the likes of Blogger and Moveable Type can be plugged into any website simply and at almost no cost. The same is true for FaceBook and MySpace profiles, where the costs are entirely in the time it takes to set them up and invest in the content.

If budgets are tight and you have some internal resource that can build these in the downtime between other projects, then that’s a great start. Look for people who are naturally drawn to digital communities – bloggers, online gamers, people with their own social profiles – as they’ll be a great starting point for you.
If they’re proving elusive inside the firm, then look to your friends and family network for more help.

Can Digital’s team help? We’ve had heaps of experience in online publishing and can quickly get you up and running at a relatively low cost. It’s not something we routinely offer, but email us the objectives and let’s see if we can help.

BUDGETS FOR BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES

There’s no standard budget, and not yet many standard models. Also, today’s sort of web marketing can be highly labour intensive so it’s worth scoping out what resources you have in-house.

Start by setting your marcoms objectives and then figure out the sort of models that are right for the task. This might mean anything from building your own community to simply adding a couple of pages for comments to be posted. At the entry level the tools from Blogger and Six Apart are almost free, but it’s the people who customise them that will eat into your budgets.

Remember that some material will get picked up by a community without costing you a penny, so focus on viral materials alongside that of the community itself.

How much should we be spending? We’re a smallish firm and don’t have spare people in the office who could build a "facebook" system for us?

POSTING ON FORUMS; WHEN DOES IT START?

Among the novice web publishers, the mantra of the early nineties - 'build it and they will come' - can still be heard from time to time, particularly when it comes to online communities. Do visitors leap into action on a first visit posting as much as they ready? Sadly, no.

Forums need some love and attention to get going properly. Think about how you can help by seeding some of the first posts and actively encouraging your viewers to do the same. Channel their energy from emails, calls or even face to face meetings into posts as a really good source of material.

Then develop a clear plan for nurturing your star posters, and remember the Digital Training Academy tips for how to segment your audience by their level of engagement with your site.

Do people normally expect to immediately post on forums?

GETTING THE MOST FROM CUSTOMER PANELS

The web is an awesome way to learn about your customers, and I’ve long been an advocate of customer panels and ‘friends and family’ groups.

1. Create a value proposition: if you’re asking potential customers to give you their time, then what do they get in exchange? News ahead of the rest of the market? Materials? Access to some events? Price discounts? Exclusive promotions?
2. Find ways to invite them to participate: alongside the usual invitations on the website try mentions in your email, invitations in the template of letters, or promotions on physical products you are shipping.
3. Invite your customer panels to comment: give them simple mechanics such as single click surveys, text boxes in emails to them, comment boxes on pages you’re inviting them to look at, simple email responses. The easier it gets, the better your response.
4. Remember that your panel are also customers: after a while it’s easy to forget that as well as being a sounding board they’re also frontline customers. When you’re creating promotions, inviting people to events, spreading news about the business, be sure to include them. If you have time, go even further and give them special versions of the same offer mailings.
5. Member get member: there’s bound to be some attrition in your panel, so why not incentivise your panel members to find you more panel members? It’s a simple way to ask your community to help itself grow.
6. Can you make stars of your panel members? Depending on the nature of the group you might be able to profile panel members, flag up their involvement in different projects, or boost the content of your news services by referencing them.

SELECTING YOUR COMMUNITY

If you’re looking to persuade audiences to take up your marketing message then finding the right communities will be key. In some ways this is just like online media planning: start with customer insights, build up the profile, then start looking where they go. Just don’t expect to press the Google search button and suddenly find all the answers. This process takes a great deal of effort and, some strong web understanding. Some of the communities will be tiny so they’ll never show up inside the broad based research panels like Comscore or NetRatings. They could also be buried so obscurely inside Facebook or MySpace that you’d never find them by accident.

Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Set up an internal customer panel and ask them
2. Look for where influencers in your market hang out online; watch them and follow their links
3. If you can’t find the right niche then look for an umbrella community that includes many other areas too. Dive in, take a look around, ask if it’s appropriate and then follow the links
4. Check your inbound links: go to the search engines and find out who is linking to you. This may help pinpoint your fans straight away.

There are so many online communities out there – how do you find a specific one? Is it possible to target them by criteria?

CREATING SOCIAL NETWORKS

Before you leap into trying to build your own social network, think about whether you can enjoy marketing through someone else’s channels. Creating a social network normally takes a great deal of energy and resources: reaching the right people, figuring out the message, creating a place people want to talk through – it’s a challenge that’s beyond the time and resources many companies have.

Here are some simple tips for the process of selecting the right channel:

· As with all digital marketing, start with the business needs and map them out in detail
· Look for the channels that are available
· Rank the channels in terms of the scale of the opportunity, and the costs of using them – if there are specific risks then include those as well
· If social networks, communities and social media appear likely as an avenue that’s worth considering then look at whether you’re participating in someone else’s or trying to create your own
· If you are creating your own community, then here are some tests to apply to your audience:
1. Is the audience large enough and the payback high enough to justify the investment?
2. Is there a genuine single community here? Consider whether the audience has a consistent centre of gravity or whether they are pulling in different directions. For example, in book publishing, the customers might be loyal to a brand or a topic rather than an imprint, so this could mean that the way a book publisher is structured is very different from the way its customers structure themselves.
3. Look for budget and technology leverage: web publishers should be able to lever their technology when they run across several sectors so think about communities you are involved in and look for ways to extend the publishing platform, analytics engine, voting and chat software etc to run across many sites and areas. This can make running sites for niche audiences viable.
· Create a plan and then implement steadily: If you’re experienced in web publishing then the disciplines of project management will be familiar, but those new to the web sometimes see it like a print medium and fail to appreciate that the processes for creating the architecture, content and code for websites are both more complex and less predictable than the materials for many other marketing channels.
· Measurement: From the start, look for ways to measure the effect you’re having.

Do you think there is any worth in creating social network sites for non fiction titles. we publish a very broad range of titles and it is quite difficult to see how you would create a community with books that are so different?

WELCOME TO YOUR DIGITAL TRAINING ACADEMY

We're really looking forward to working with you. When we designed these Digital Training Academies, the aim was to give publishers and marketers an instant boost in their knowledge of what is possible and what can be delivered through online channels. Your half day Academy is a broad based orientation to three digital disciplines selected by the team at The Bookseller.

Here in this Digital Classroom you can post questions to your Academy Manager to ask about the way your Academy will work.
http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/web2/2007/06/digital_web_20_academy_the_boo.html

If you have questions about the topics of community, social networks, blogging and viral marketing, then post them in our general Web 2.0 classroom, here:
http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/web2/2007/06/22_november_2007_digital_commu.html

If you’re finding there’s lots of internet jargon in your conversations about online marketing, then try our jargon busting pages at http://www.digitaljargonbuster.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Jargon.

Ahead of the Academy we’re sending you some simple research summaries such as Digital Intelligence or our Digital Insight Reports, and we hope you enjoy them and that they get you thinking more about digital marketing.

Back in 1995 I began teaching digital marketing and media, and our tutors and Academy Managers will help accelerate your knowledge by sharing the best in best practice, and some of the freshest ideas.

Enjoy your academy.

SOME READING BEFORE YOUR ACADEMY

Ahead of your Digital Training Academy we’re keen to get you thinking about the issues and the language of digital marketing. We’ll be helping you get up to speed on the state of the industry, and that’s why we’re sending you a recent edition of our Digital Intelligence news service and also one of our Digital Insight Reports. Look out for them in your email before your Academy. They’ll come from me directly.

If you’re already skilled at digital marketing, then these should simply confirm things you already know. If you’re new to online then it’s a chance to learn the language as well as seeing research about the state of the industry.

The report explores online communities and gives you some sense of the way brands are using the web. It's an entry-level report and is just designed to cover off some of the basics. It should be a simple, fast read, but each report makes points that we’ll be touching on in the Digital Training Academy.

AN EXERCISE BEFORE YOUR ACADEMY

Ahead of your Digital Training Academy why not go online and take part in a community? Pick something from outside of your working life, explore the site and see if it engages you. Whether it’s about your favourite hobby, sport, travel destination, or author, think about the experience as a viewer and what could draw you back.

You also might like to check out the STA Travel case study we’ve put in the classroom. STA is a powerful travel brand among the 16-34s, but facing the challenge of commoditisation of prices, and the competition from the web-only travel stores, they began an ambitious strategy to create blog pages that their customers could use to write travel journals and stories for their friends and family. As a consumer retail outlet they successfully repositioned themselves as a travel companion for their customers, and encouraged their customers to mail news of their travel blogs to all of their friends.

It’s a great example of a brand that’s succeeded in creating an online community and one that’s tapped in to thousands of social networks.