Building Vibrant Virtual Communities

The Fundamentals
A successfully executed community building strategy can provide you with direct insight into your prospects and clients complex needs, facilitating the identification of new business opportunities, increasing the probability of closing new business and retaining existing clients. No other method provides such a powerful source of business information about your clients and prospects alike.

Barnard L. Crespi http://www.linkedin.com/in/barnardcrespi crespib@datatel-systems.com 1-800.831.6660 x 251 2007 2008 Datatel Marketing, Datatel Communications, Inc. 2007 Datatel Inc (Canada) All rights
reserved. The contents of this document are subject to change without notice. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi Virtual Communities (as social media environments) embody one of the most significant sources of business opportunities for both B2B companies and marketers today. If you are able to break through the chatter, building a Virtual Community can help you systematically acquire powerful business intelligence. This business intelligence can be used to help you understand the complex needs of your prospects and customers, while providing you with the insight to build strong lasting relationshipswhich conduce to new business opportunities. During these challenging economic times, businesses are struggling more than ever to understand their clients and prospects complex needs. They are also struggling to generate more sales leads, build customer affinity, and ultimately, deliver real value to their customers in an effort to retain them. What I am about to share with you are some of the basic principles which have helped me build vibrant B2B Virtual Communities. These principles will help you leverage your Virtual Community and Social Media investment to acquire ongoing marketing intelligence which you can use to shape the development of products and services and drive marketing and sales strategies. In this guide, I will share with you what I have learned from building the Marketing Executives Group (http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36393), a virtual community of over 13,000 marketing executives and growing by 40 new qualified members a day, as well as from the experience I have gained from building the MIT Sloan CIO Symposiums virtual community (www.mitcio.com), exclusive to CIOs and Senior IT Executives. I will outline how you can apply these same principles to drive your organization's virtual community strategy and increase the ROI of your social media strategy. As many virtual community builders have experienced, mostly by trial and error, a virtual community can be turned into an organizations most valuable business intelligence resource. A successfully executed virtual community building strategy can help organizations acquire targeted knowledge and intelligence, which can then be used to refine your marketing and sales strategy and develop products and services that clients and prospects are willing to buy. The information contained in this guide will certainly challenge your thinking. It is unconventional but makes complete sense. You will say to yourself: Why didnt I think of that before? You probably have. This guide simply connects the dots. It is NOT old school, although it does use proven old school methods. It works. It works every time. Best of all, the more you do of it, the more you refine it the better it works.

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi There is no better way to gain the intellectual understanding of how to build affinity with your clients, prospects, constituents, and members alike, than to submerge yourself into the depths of a living social community organism. Spending the past 18 months living, breathing, experimenting, interacting, and speaking with thousands of people, and accumulating a wealth of knowledge has provided me with a perspective on social communities, social media, marketing intelligence, and human behavior, which no other learning experience could have taught me. ...And the learning continues...

I know that what you are about to read will fundamentally change the way you view the world of marketing, just as it has done for me. It will make you say, Aha! That is how I can make social media pay off! To your success,

Barnard L. Crespi LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/barnardcrespi Email: crespib@datatel-systems.com Tel: 1-800.831.6660 x 251

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Human Nature: The Foundation of Virtual Community Building

Inherent human nature, compounded by the proliferation of online professional networks has opened the door to unlimited possibilities to connect with and understand prospects and clients alike like never before. Professional social networks, such as LinkedIn, have facilitated the creation of online business communities and provided a natural environment for people to seek help and connect with one another. These communities also offer a venue where professionals can collaborate with peers who are facing similar challenges or share common interests and / or activities within a business environment. Professional Virtual Communities offer a natural environment for people to: Connect at a professional level Network and collaborate with peers Seek help Find comfort Brainstorm strategies / innovation Address issues / challenges

Breaking Through the Social Media Chatter

Online social networks and their communities embody one of the most significant sources of business opportunities for both companies and marketers today. If you are able to break though the chatter, virtual communities can help you to systematically acquire powerful business intelligence, which can shape the development of new products and services and drive your marketing and sales strategies. Overnight, thousands of online communities have surfaced, mostly populated with individuals looking to network with others and searching for answers and direction on how to address their challenges. However, as you might have experienced first-hand, trying to identify which communities and blogs are worth participating in and can deliver value can be hit or miss. Unfortunately, this reality has made it more difficult for business executives to qualify how to leverage social media and virtual communities for their benefit and as such, prevented social marketing channels from being adopted more rapidly as part of the marketing mix. It is exactly
2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi this reality that offers a truly unique opportunity for innovative businesses that are willing to invest in building a community that delivers concrete value to its members.

To Get Results, There Must be a Shift from Traditional Thinking

A shift in thinking and behavior from a traditional marketing approach is fundamental in building a virtual community that has the potential to deliver any value to its members and to the business that invests in it. To successfully execute a virtual community building strategy, you require in-depth knowledge from a broad range of disciplines, including: marketing, sales, market research, behavior analysis, and group dynamics. You must have the ability to create the kind of environment where collaboration and exchange of ideas thrive; where you are able to deliver targeted resources in response to real problems shared by the community members; and where you are able to deliver ongoing value.

Measuring Success
A successfully executed community building strategy can provide you with direct insight into your prospects and clients complex needs, facilitating the identification of new business opportunities, increasing the probability of closing new business and retaining existing clients. No other method provides such a powerful source of business information about your clients and prospects alike. However, because virtual communities and social marketing are so new to the marketing mix, it is important to understand the potential outcomes in order to develop appropriate performance and success metrics. Some of the business objectives that can be achieved include: Understanding Your Clients and Prospects Complex Needs Drive Your Product / Service Development Strategy Refine Your Marketing and Sales Strategy Develop Prospect / Client Affinity Models Discover Untapped Business / Revenue Opportunities Facilitate the Transition of Your Virtual Connections to Live, In-Person Relationships (face-to-face and over the telephone)

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi However, your first measure of success will be in the feedback that you receive from your members. To successfully build a sustainable community, your primary focus must be to deliver meaningful value to your community members.

This orientation, and your thoughtful organization of the community, makes Marketing Executives Group stand head and shoulders above all the rest of the LinkedIn groups. Great job! I look forward to participating. Patricia Cockerham

Member Attraction
Lets face it; getting your prospects, clients, and partners to join your newly formed virtual community is no easy task, whether hosted on an existing social network platform such as LinkedIn or your own corporate platform. At the time of writing this guide, only 500 of the 300,000 groups on LinkedIn had more than 6,000 members; that is 0.0016%. If you want to succeed, you have to be equipped to do things differently than everyone else - drastically different. You will probably agree that there is no one thing that will bring you all your new clients the same applies to attracting members to your virtual community. A good membership attraction system does not consist of just one thing. It is not just about email campaigns, LinkedIns viral characteristics, Google AdWords, advertising, PR, or member referrals. Only through the union and fusion of ALL these mediums and mechanics will a well-refined member attraction system yield great results. I have discovered that the more mechanics I add to my member attraction system, the more qualified members join our communities. You need to focus on developing mechanics that can be easily tested and modified. By now, I must have 5 to 10 different mechanics generating 70% of our new members; 30% of new members are still produced by public social networks, such as LinkedIn. At the core you are still marketing the value your community will deliver to your members.

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Identifying Needs & Exceeding Expectations

To develop a value-driven environment which is paramount for a community to thrive, you must build a sense of trust with your members from the moment they join. This sense of trust will help you build affinity with your group members over time. You must focus your energy on tailoring the direction of the group to their specific and shared needs, and deliver resources and opportunities that will help them excel in their role. This means developing a real level of intimacy and understanding with your group members. To accomplish this, you must: Listen to whats important to them Address the issues that are relevant to them, and Deliver the right resources and information back to them, in turn, helping them achieve their personal and professional objectives

Thanks again for reaching out to me Honestly, I belong to several groups and your group is the only group that is trying to make a difference in helping other group members succeed. I was quickly impressed with your leadership when I received an e-mail from you asking me what my intentions for joining the group were. This showed me that you are taking this group leadership seriously and that this group is heads and shoulders above the other groups. Doug Sartain, President MultiMedia Alternatives

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Delivering Knowledge, Leveraging Resources, and Building Relationships

If there is one thing I invest time in while building a virtual community, it is in understanding the needs of the community members. Over 90% of community members that have connected with me share something in common; they are all looking for solutions to their problems - ways to become more successful. As a community builder you have the ability to facilitate this process by leveraging your business assets, connections, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of subject experts which are part of your community. The key to your success lays in your ability to continuously engage your members and to understand the current issues which are most relevant and important to them. If you have been in business for awhile you have probably written dozens, if not hundreds of responses on how to solve the problems of your clients and prospects. You can use this previous investment of time to build a community communication strategy that re-enforces your position as the expert. Reach out to your community with questions or concepts and employ the tools which you would normally use to communicate with your members to deliver this knowledge back to them. In the communities Ive built, I have partnered with webcasting companies such as Thomson Reuters (a valued sponsor), to deliver expert content. I employ Web 2.0 technologies (blogs and a CMS) to deliver timely content by expert sources from across the globe to community members. I leverage advanced email and content delivery technology to build 1-to-1 relationships that allow me to understand the needs of my community members while delivering timely relevant knowledge. Your ability to deliver sequentially timed information that will solve your members problems will truly establish you as the leader of your community and as the expert in your industry. You will engage your members time after time, and will accomplish what no other marketing medium can do in the Businessto-Business space build a progressive, trusting relationship with your members, and begin to develop affinity with them.

I'm a member of 10 groups and I must say, yours is the most impressive. I love the basic rules and even more, the engagement of ideas. I have already been involved in two intriguing discussions and look forward to the webcast. Thank you for your expert leadership. Jill Shtulman JSA Creative Services LLC

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Managing Your Community: Get Your Members Involved and Collaborating

You are probably wondering how much time it is going to take to manage this process. Once you have your community action plan in place (which is your blueprint to building a community), you should engage the business and technical resources you will need to communicate with your community members. How much time you spend is a function of the outcome you want to achieve from building your community. For most organizations that are building a new community (or re-organizing an existing one), the most challenging part is arriving at a plan which will deliver results; I will outline those steps later on. The key to a successful community is getting your members involved in the process. This can take many shapes: Member Moderators: Members are appointed as moderators to enforce your community rules of conduct and guidelines Discussion Seeding: Selected members facilitate relevant discussion topics to stimulate engagement Subject Experts: Leverage the knowledge of your community members to deliver expert content Partnerships: Partner with your members to acquire the tools necessary to deliver resources that can help you reach your goal of delivering ongoing value to your members Collaboration Projects: Introduce collaboration projects, where members get involved by sharing their expertise towards a community project

In a recent community survey I conducted, over 85% of respondents stated that one of their top three priorities was to collaborate with other like-minded professionals, to share experiences, ideas, and knowledge. The objective is to systemize your community management process to the point that for every hour you put in, you get demonstrably more value back.

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Facilitating the Transition of Your Virtual Connections to Live In-Person Relationships (face-to-face and over the telephone)
In all my years of marketing and sales, I have consistently found that Ive been able to close more business when I have convinced a prospect to meet me in person. This task is easier said than done, however if you can use your community to build strong, value-driven relationships, you will be able to fill your calendar (or that of your sales team) with opportunities to meet new prospects and clients. However Im not referring to the old appointment setting method, I am talking about setting up an environment where your members can engage in thoughtful discussion, and where you and your team can facilitate the process. Over the past several months, I have asked dozens of B2B marketing executives to share with me which programs they were forced to cut from the budget first. The most strikingly common answer was eventbased marketing. So the meet and greets, where the objective is to try to fill the room with prospects and customers, are among the first programs to be perceived as lacking a quantifiable and measurable outcome. Moreover, I asked these executives to elaborate further on the reaction to these cuts by their sales team - not too great was the unanimous response. Ask any sales person, and they will tell you that face-to-face time with a prospect will accomplish more in terms of relationship building, than any other marketing effort aimed at engaging prospects to close a sale. Yet, those marketing executives with whom I spoke were candid enough to share that, irrespective of how the sales people feel, it costs too much to run these events and it is too hard to recruit prospects to participate. On the other hand, I just completed a survey where 91% of respondents (91% of 1200 individuals) indicated that they would be willing to attend a live event if it meant they had the opportunity to network and collaborate with their peers in person, and solve common professionallyrelated challenges. So why are marketing executives cutting the same events they are so willing to participate in? This willingness to meet in person is not unique to marketing executives. Another survey, directed at CIOs, revealed similar results - 96% indicated that if given the chance, they would like to network in person, to address professional challenges. Other surveys, currently in progress, which are targeting professional virtual communities, hint at similar results, with members of these communities expressing their willingness to meet in person. Most individuals develop stronger relationships through personal face time. As much as technology and virtualization of the workplace has contributed to financial efficiencies, human beings will always have a stronger propensity to build relationships and establish a sense of trust through face-to-face time. This cannot be replaced by virtual collaboration tools, video conferencing, or remote office technologies. B2B companies can leverage virtual communities to gather the right intelligence to develop an event marketing environment, which can address the growing need for face-to-face interaction, while serving their revenue generation objectives

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Choosing a Platform: Where to Build Your Virtual Community

Choosing the right platform on which to build your virtual community is not a simple task. When deciding on a platform, you should start by determining which approach will attract more members, drive more value for your members, and provide you with the ability to foster engagement while addressing their needs. To simplify your options, lets place virtual community platforms in two distinct buckets. If your plan calls to develop your community, in a public space to take advantage of its social networking and viral characteristics, then platforms such as LinkedIn (B2B) and Facebook (B2C) may be the best fit for your needs. If your plan calls for a community environment which is tightly integrated into your corporate infrastructure, where you will have full control over terms and conditions of use, data ownership, and freedom to do whatever you choose, then you should be looking at proprietary community platforms. Proprietary platforms are usually offered as hosted or in-house models, such as Jive, Open Text , Social Go, and dozens of others. The good news is that whatever the need, there is a model that is right for you. In many cases it may mean combining more than one platform into your plan to optimize the outcome. For example you could build a LinkedIn community as a feeder to your in-house community built on a Jive platform, thereby capitalizing on LinkedIns viral characteristics as an attraction strategy, without compromising control over your community. It is important to understand three (3) factors which will influence your decision: (a) Cost: Building your community on a public or hosted platform can be far less expensive to implement than when done in-house. Building your community will probably take less time to implement if you choose the hosted model (public or private) and you will typically only pay for what you use, (or as in some cases its free, as is the case with (LinkedIn and Facebook). However there are some significant benefits to building a platform in-house. If ownership of member data is vital to you, and / or flexibility is at the top of your priority list, in-house options may be your best bet. (b) Flexible Technology: In todays environment of rapidly changing business demands, technology must be flexible enough to adjust quickly and cost effectively. The hosted approach protects you from having to continuously adapt to these changes, as the responsibility is shifted to the service provider, protecting you from technological obsolescence. (c) Higher Levels of Expertise: If you dont have the time and /or resources to keep your application running current and glitch-free, a provider who offers Managed Community Platform Services is worth looking into. There are various levels of virtual community services available some provide higher levels of expertise and support than others. Hosted service providers have an expertise that is difficult or almost impossible to maintain in-house, that is, having the experience of deploying 100s, if not 1000s, of communities, and knowing what works, what doesnt work, and what works best.

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

Identify Opportunities, Acquire Business Intelligence, and Deliver Results: Turning Your Community into a Sales and Marketing Powerhouse
Your Virtual Community can represent your single most powerful source of business opportunities. However you must leave behind your traditional marketing and sales tactics. You have to be prepared to do things differently if you want to reap the rewards for your business. Based on my ongoing research and real-time experimentation, no other relationship building strategy, social media channel, or lead generation tactic provides organizations with such a powerful source of information about your clients and prospects alike, as building a virtual community. Businesses are struggling more than ever to understand their clients and prospects complex needs. They are also struggling to generate more sales leads, build customer affinity, and ultimately to deliver real value to their customers in an effort to retain them. My experience has been that a successfully executed virtual community strategy, assisted by the right social media channels can help you drive more sales opportunities by: Helping you understand the complex needs of your members, clients, prospects, and constituents alike Positioning yourself (and your company) as the expert, enticing clients / prospects to actively engage you Flagging potential members who have a problem that you can solve. People dont buy products or services, they buy solutions to their problems. Facilitating the transition of your Virtual Connections to live In-Person Relationships (face-toface and over the telephone) Delivering an affinity-building model which is unique to your community and can help you build stronger lasting relationships which can conduce to new business opportunities.

When you are building a virtual community, you are making a commitment to your members which, if you can manage with care and dedication, will result in building trust. This trust is sacred, and can open the door to understanding the complex needs of your members, clients, and prospects. You can turn this knowledge into the most powerful sales tool, no other medium provides you with this intimate knowledge, which you can use to increase your probability of closing new business.

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.

Building Vibrant Virtual Communities - The Fundamentals

By Barnard Crespi

HOW WE CAN WORK TOGETHER

I help companies build Virtual Communities as well as the supporting Social Media Channels that deliver ongoing value, marketing intelligence, and revenue opportunities. We do this by providing them with proven strategies, tactical support, and systems designed to engage, communicate, and build lasting one-to-one relationships. We can help you:

Arrive to a community building plan which is aligned with your business objectives Arrive to a common language which all your stakeholders are aligned with (Executive Alignment) Plan, design, develop, implement, maintain, and grow your virtual community and social media initiative Define community success metrics to help measure ROI Understand the complex needs of your members, clients, prospects, and constituents alike Build stronger, lasting relationships with your community members Facilitate the transition of your Virtual Connections to In-Person Relationships (face-to-face / over-the-phone, etc.)

I accomplish this by implementing highly specialized social media marketing processes that integrate old school proven marketing methods, market research, behavior analysis, and group dynamics, with new media and technology that produces breakthrough results. To your success!

Barnard L. Crespi LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/barnardcrespi Email: crespib@datatel-systems.com Tel: 1-800.831.6660 x 251

I Can Help You Plan, Build, and Grow Your Community! 1-800.831.6660 x 251 | crespib@datatel-systems.com

2007-2010 Barnard Crespi. All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are property of their respective holders.