Bernaisesource

We view this alliance with Facebook as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways. This is beyond advertising. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends.

As one of the most-trafficked websites in the United States, we believe this alliance gives us a valuable opportunity to engage in an on-going dialogue with a tech-savvy audience, increase our brand relevance, form long-lasting consumer relationships, establish digital relationships with millions of media entertainment fans, and importantly grow our membership base, both in-store and online.

The decision to create a corporate presence on Facebook was driven primarily because our customers were using Facebook. It is important for us to talk to our customers where they work and play so Facebook is one more avenue to reach our customers. One of our strategic goals is to create more interactivity for Verizon Wireless customers who are also Facebook users.

Currently, Verizon’s Facebook page has two applications: Text to friends is the primary one. A recent one allows customers to go to the Verizon Wireless profile page, download a Keith Urban video and send it to friends. Friends who want the song, can hold their Verizon Wireless phones up to the computer and use SongID on their Verizon Wireless phones to purchase the song directly on their phones.

In one of my favorite movies, “Field of Dreams,” the main character Ray Kinsella struggles with the idea of building a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. Questioning his sanity, he does so with the assurances from a voice that tells him: “If you build it, they will come.” In the end, he is amply rewarded.

Today’s corporate communications professionals probably don’t worry about baseball fields, but when faced with the idea of launching a social network they should not be faulted if they ask themselves the same question: “If we build it, will they come?”

As more companies launch forums, build social networks, or create FaceBook or MySpace pages, there is pressure to follow suit. And that’s not an easy task. Social networks force corporate communications professionals to face a legion of concerns, none more pressing than achieving critical mass. The blogosphere is rather unforgiving, and an irrelevant social network can be worse than no network at all.

Personally it reminds me of the time when I did advance for the Dick Gephardt for President campaign in 1988. Large crowds were your measurement for success. Failure to deliver was hazardous to your political career.

In launching a social network, it is tempting to create a FaceBook page and declare mission accomplished. Yes you can check off that item on your social media to do list. But having friends on your company page rarely taps a user base looking for a meaningful forum to engage with your brand or company.

That is why I called some social network companies KickApps, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Broadband Mechanics, Snapp Networks, Haystack, and ONEsite. They provide tools to help companies build and brand their own unique social networks. Mark Hendrickson’s Techcrunch piece based on initial research by Jeremiah Owyang was very helpful in identifying these companies.

Tapping Your Potential

So how do you build a crowd? Shaun Callahan, chief involvement officer at CollectiveX, told me it’s usually best to tap existing constituencies and their ability to self organize. Just as it is easier to lead a parade by finding one already in progress, it’s easer to find an existing conversation to engage a brand. Having a strong brand doesn’t mean a strong community. Even if you help build a community from scratch, social networks have to have a reason for members to join and remain engaged.

Knowing Your Audience

Universally, respondents said that understanding your audience was key to achieving critical mass. As Robby White at ONEsite wrote me:

“If the right marketing strategy is achieved, it is not difficult to obtain a critical mass. You just need to be able to see what users like/dislike and be able to customize to those changes and recommendations.”

Serving Their Needs

And Mark Sigal at Snapp Networks offered up some tough love. He gave me an emphatic “NO” to the question of whether visitors will magically appear from the cornfields. “Communities are living organisms that must be tended to, cultivated, and fertilized similar to the way gardens are tended.”

He cites three elements to successful online community building:

One is the raw ability to design a communal space that is engaging, speaks with a clear voice to the target audience, has a clear target audience and a well-defined set of “hot spots” that you are trying to drive users to.

The second item of importance is having someone on the community-building side that is effective at reaching out to the spots where a community’s target audience currently hangs out (e.g., related blogs, discussion groups, etc.), and having a strategy to compellingly communicate the WHAT, the WHY and the SO WHAT to that audience.

The last item that drives success in communities is the existence of one or more community leaders that drive conversations, post and spotlight relevant content and the like.

Defining Success

Ideally, success is identifying a need, solving the problem, and branding the solution – whether it's a television network providing a forum to discuss the TV show “Lost” or a company wishing to shore up it's green creditials by mobilizing a community to save a local park. But even then, the branding experience should serve the larger brand of the company sponsoring the social network.

When it comes to achieving critical mass, there is no such thing as a sold out stadium. Critical mass is about relative measurements, not absolutes. In talking to Cerado CEO Christopher Carfi, the number of members, number of contributors, or number of comments or posts can't be applied uniformly. Your target will vary by size of your constituency. A small community of highly engaged members may serve your brand better than a large group of members who visit infrequently. Or as Marc Canter at Broadband Mechanics wrote: “I’d rather have the right 50 or 150 people - than 5M wrong people.”

Shaun Callahan offered an interesting critical mass metric:

the ratio of the number of invitations to join a network to the number of acceptances and then the ratio of acceptances to the number who actually contribute.

It is also useful to gauge who has contributed in the last 90 days and who did so in the last week.

Beyond metrics, Michael Chin, senior vice president of marketing at KickApps pointed to a useful white paper that listed nine steps in building a successful community. Number one was to define your community’s purpose and audience.

Scene from The Candidate

Given the political season, I am also reminded of the movie "The Candidate." Here the underdog senatorial candidate played by Robert Redford wins a long shot election with his good looks and effective marketing. In the final scene, as the candidate assesses his victory, he turns to his advisor and asks “What happens now?”

For those who successfully reach critical mass, the ball game or the campaign (pick your movie metaphor) has only begun.

Jon Corshen, president and CEO at GoingOn, looked beyond reaching critical mass to sustainability. It is one thing to drive traffic to a site; it is quite another for the site to remain relevant.

“At the end of the day, it’s about dialogue and better ways to create more meaningful discussions. Otherwise you have a static website.” And that requires resources to ensure fresh content, users and moderators to facilitate discussions, and support to handle technical glitches.

I have not done justice to all the insights that these folks shared with me. There is too much to cover in one posting, but I wanted to share with you some of their thoughts.

For now, it’s enough to reflect on the basics of building a social network. I will need to dive deeper in subsequent postings. But I will leave you with one more thought. In successfully targeting your audience and reaching critical mass, the problem may not ultimately be whether they will come, but what will you do when they come.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Social Media; Social Networks; KickApps; GoingOn; CollectiveX; Broadband Mechanics; Snapp Networks; Haystack; ONEsite;

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Is your city social media friendly? Do businesses in your area have a reputation for embracing blogs, podcasts, and social networks?

I live in Atlanta. Forbes Magazine recently named it the most wired city in the country for the second year in a row. That’s a notable distinction, but when it comes to the next wave of the Internet, nobody would say Atlanta is the leading trendsetter. There are of course exceptions. Atlanta has hosted Podcamps, Barcamps, and a Startup Weekend.

But many of the largest companies have yet to significantly embrace social media and only a handful of social media start-ups have achieved significant success.

The question is why?

It is not a matter of brainpower. Atlanta is the home of Georgia Tech and Emory. It is also the headquarters for social media companies like ViTrue, Meetsee, Kaneva, and Esgut, which is one the biggest FaceBook app developers.

SoCono8

Leonard Witt, one of the conference organizers told me that SoCon08 has three goals:

• Learn Something
• Share
• Network with other people
  

I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the attendees. It was the kind of participation that I hoped to achieve when EarthLink hosted the Social Media Club last year. While we had some great discussions, our meetings never achieved a critical mass that other cities had managed to build.

During the day of presentations and break out sessions, I spoke with several attendees to get their perspective on the challenges of raising money for social media companies and why so few companies were using social media in a meaningful way.

New media consultant Sherry Heyl attributed the challenges to the Dotcom bust. “We were one of the first to be hit hard and one of worst hit cities overall.” She believes that we are still a bit shell shocked.

Kevin Howarth at TechLinks and a founder of Atlanta Media Bloggers attempted early on to bring together social media early adopters. He doesn’t see a disconnect between the most wired and the lack of a strong social media presence. They are measured differently.

Atlanta is a traditional town and uses traditional ways of networking. As opposed to Silicon Valley, it is more whom you know than what you know. But he emphasized that Atlantans should not be too hard on themselves. It is generational and more and more younger members of the workforce are embracing social media.

Another obstacle according to Tim Moenk is geography. Urban sprawl has fragmented the area making it more difficult for like-minded social media advocates to get together.

That thought was reflected by Chris Heuer. who highlighted the Inside the Perimeter/Outside the Perimeter mindset. The Perimeter for those who don’t know is the 285 loop that encircles Atlanta. It's a kind of geographic and cultural divide between downtown and the suburbs.

Heuer pointed to Atlanta’s intolerance for risk and conservative culture. In Silicon Valley, there is less fear of failure and willingness to forgive ideas that don’t pan out.

Grayson Daughters, who is always colorful, thinks old media and old world business view social media as “something for children.” They are accustomed to Board rooms not chat rooms and don’t know another way. “They don’t know who is using it.”

Serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Appcelerator Jeff Haynie also points to the region’s risk aversion. At a break out session at SoCon08 moderated by Haynie, entrepreneurs and investors alike shared their observations about social media startups.

Some of the challenges: the persistence of a good old boy network, the lack of an aggressive M&A culture, and a reliance on outside VCs to fund ideas.

Lance Weatherby a venture catalyst with the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech and a principal organizer of Start Up Atlanta observed that “fundamentally entrepreneurs lack a knowledge of what it takes to build a social media company. There are only a handful who know how it works.”

He is confident that social media companies can thrive in Atlanta.

It seems building networks, creating awareness, sharing ideas – the very goals of SoCon08 – are clearly a great way to establish a climate for change.

It is worth further examination to determine how a region’s business culture drives social media adoption and investment. I suspect what is true for Atlanta is also true for other cities across the country. In business cultures resistant to change, social media adoption will come collectively through grassroots efforts and individually from entrepreneurs and employees inside companies who are willing to champion social media’s cause.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Atlanta; SoCon08; Social Media; Corporate Culture;

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