Operating a social site becomes a challenge when you make what appears to you to be a small change to the system and the users revolt.  This is being experienced by the operators of Twitter, the exploding social microblogging site.  Twitter made a small change to the way their system works without announcing the change, or apparently consulting the users beforehand.  You may recall that Facebook has seen a series of these user revolts recently over their change in the layout, and changes in their terms of use.

So what is a concerned community manger to do when they want to change something?

Talk with your users-Duh!

So what is a concerned community manger to do when they want to change something?  Talk with your users.  Identify your most vociferous, super-users and invite them into a VIP Group.  Discuss changes you’re considering with this group.  Seek their feedback, and see what they find interesting, frustrating, useful and useless.  If you happen to be running your community on the Ripple6 platform, you can use our consumer research tool  Social Insights to help you create this group and monitor it.  (Marketers use Social Insights to conduct consumer research too.)

You may also want to create a second group of newbies who are not experienced with the site, who can look at it with fresh eyes.  The newbies will see the that your super users have grown immune to over time.  Taking input from both groups and giving them a little advanced notice on upcoming changes will defuse the Revolution before it begins.

But the bottom line here is that you should be communicating with your community.  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking like old media and declaring that you know what’s best for your audience.  Because it’s not an audience any more.  “Audience” comes from audio and it means to listen.  Community is related to commune which means to meet.  You work with a community, not an audience as long as you keep that in mind you’ll do fine.

Photo credit Flickr Uploaded on February 26, 2006 by weaponofchoice

On his widely read blog this week, Web Strategy by Jeremiah, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester talks about the coming ages of the social web.    It’s an excellent post and you should read it. He discusses the coming age when websites will be able to offer capabilities like social commerce.  We here at Ripple6 agree wholeheartedly with Forrester that social commerce will change the face of the web as we know it.   However, we disagree with them in one tiny area- the timing of this occurrence.  That’s because we believe that the Era of Social Commerce is upon us.

In the chart at right you can see that Forrester is predicting the Era of Social Commerce will begin in 2011 and reach maturity in 2013.  Ripple6 believes that this assessment misses the mark because Ripple6 is offering Social Commerce products today.  So while it may take 1 or 2 years for the market to mature, we believe that the advantages of  social commerce will be so dramatic that online businesses will need to adopt social commerce into their sites merely to stay competitive.

Why will the ubiquitous adoption of social commerce  happen so quickly?  Because it will change the face of the online purchase experience for the consumer and create such a tremendous advantage for the websites that deploy it that it will force the competition to match them or go out of business.

Let us give you an example; you just bought a new book and the estore you purchased from suggests that you may want to join a reverse book club.  What’s a reverse book club?  In an ordinary book club the club tells you which book to read and everyone discusses that book.  In a reverse book club, you decide which book you want to read and then join a club based upon people who bought that book at the same time.

The social commerce site will connect you with the people in the community who share your tastes.  With the next gadget you buy you are offered to join a club of people who’ve all purchased the same gadget at the same time.  Everyone in the club can share their experiences, their knowledge and how they use the gadget.  Ripple6 is offering this Smart Group technology to ecommerce vendors today.  And when added to the already “baked in” high value social applications our system offers it creates an unbeatable social commerce capacity.  (If you would like to discuss this technology for your ecommerce site contact us today.)

This technology will cause a revolution in ecommerce that will make the adoption of user reviews seem minor in comparison.  User reviews first appeared on ecommerce sites about 2005, and in 2008 they were nearly ubiquitous.

The first websites to deploy social commerce technology will be live this year, and their competitors will need to jump on the bandwagon very quickly to have any hope of competing with game changing technology like this.   We feel that social commerce will be such a great advantage that sites will be forced to deploy in 2010 in large numbers to stay competitive.

Therefore, while we agree with Forrester on their assessment of the coming changes, we feel that the time frame may be compressed significantly for the Era of Social Commerce.

How long do you feel it will take social commerce to be adopted by a majority of ecommerce sites?  Please leave your comment below:

Image credit- we copied a small portion of the chart Forrester published for purposes of illustration.  The original image is Copyright Forrester all rights reserved and can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3478041905/

Brands aren’t simply brands anymore. They are the center of a maelstrom of social and political dialogue made possible by digital media, said Unilever Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift, who warned that marketers who do not recognize that — and adapt their marketing — are in grave peril. AdAge Magazine 04/13/09 by Jack Neff

The above remarks are from from Mr. Clift’s keynote speech at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York.

So how does a brand a plan to ride out this maelstrom of change in the advertising landscape?  By looking at new technologies and techniques for reaching their prospective customers.  And by investing the time and resources to learn the new rules in the digital landscape.

One aspect that needs particular attention is engaging with customers in the realm  of social media.  People today are not only empowered by digital media and social media technologies, they are feeling that power.  People know that they can talk to brands, and the brands had better listen and respond.  If the brand fails to respond people will have the discussion with others in the digital landscape.  Brands that fail to engage in that discussion are ceding the territory to their competitors.

Forward thinking and acting brands are finding methods, technologies and people to lead the way into real engagement with customers.  An excellent example is Better Homes and Gardens, a Meredith brand.  They were recently named one of the Most Engaged Media Brands by Min Online.  One of the reasons BH&G was honored was their Mixing Bowl (a Ripple6) social community which was given Honorable Mention for Best of the Web in the Social Community category.

The Better Homes & Gardens brand stays ahead of the curve by creating an online community. This kind of adapting your marketing plan to the new realities is what will keep the Better Homes and Gardens brand in the lead in the years to come.  And you can expect some announcements from Ripple6 shortly about other major brand names who are taking leadership positions in social marketing as well.

(For a great perspective on Mixing Bowl check out The Marketing Diva’s interview with Heather Morgan Shott.)

Photo credit: Flickr by pedrosimoes7

On April 2nd the Federal Trade Commission announced revised guidelines on endorsements and testimonials which are now under review and expected to be adopted according to The Financial Times 4/2/09.

These new rules, “…would hold companies liable for untruthful statements made by bloggers and users of social networking sites who receive samples of their products…”, according to the FT article, “…If a blogger received a free sample of skin lotion and then incorrectly claimed the product cured eczema, the FTC could sue the company for making false or unsubstantiated statements. The blogger could be sued for making false representations…”

What remains unclear is the impact this could have upon community owners where users make untrue statements. Can a company that owns and operates a community be liable for the actions of bloggers on their community and liable with an advertiser?

What about the case where the community owner works with an advertiser to distribute free samples of a product and then solicits comments from the user community.  Could the advertiser and the community manager be held liable for false advertising if claims were made by users who received free samples in that case?  And the situation can get more muddy, what if a blogger receives the free sample and then makes a simple comment on another blog with a misstatement in it?  Or what if in a general free sample offer a blogger is inadvertently a recipient of a free sample and subsequently makes a misstatement?

It’s impossible to separate a blogger from non-blogger.  Does anyone who writes a comment on a public community site become in effect a “blogger”?  What about people who only write comments on other blogs but do it in large volume and develop followings with technologies such as Discus?

The implications for community managers, and brands that wish to advertise and utilize social media marketing techniques can be very serious.  You should read the FTC notice and pay close attention to this rule change.

This is going to be a sticky wicket that the FTC will have to figure out and they will need to make sure they understand how it will affect the common man before they move forward.

And finally, since the FTC may be listening, these opinions are those of the author and do not reflect the official opinions of Ripple6 or Gannett Company.  Image by Uploaded on August 20, 2005 by dbking on Flickr

Ripple6 is honored to have formed a partnership with Chris Brogan and New Marketing Laboratories to help promote social media to the marketing community.  Chris is a thought leader in the field of social media we are very pleased that he has chosen to work with us.  You can follow Chris’s ideas and work through his blog and New Marketing Laboratories his company.  Our first joint venture with Chris and NML was the American Innovators Road Trip which began like this:

4 bloggers climbed into a borrowed 2010 Ford Escape (Donated by Scott Monty of Ford) to make the drive from Detroit, Michigan to Austin, Texas on their way to SXSW. Along the way they found lots of innovation including some great people at Gannet’s MomsLikeMe.com in Cincinnati. Here is that story (18 minutes):

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You can read all about the (mis)adventures of the bloggers here and each of the bloggers has some personal tales of the trip as well: Colin Browning, Jim Storer, Jeff Cutler, John Johansen

(On a personal note I’m very glad they found Colin in Cincinnati, he went missing for several hours. He’s a personal friend and I would have missed him. Although I did offer to help Chris Brogan in his search to fill the position during Colin’s absence.)

Welcome to the inaugural B4 List.  Here we have gathered a list of the best blogging sources for people involved in Social Media at the enterprise level.  That’s because many of us who work for large companies have a different set of problems than those who may work for smaller organizations.

The purpose of this list is give those of us in larger companies concerned with social networking a place to go to find ideas and discussion about the issues we face.  Therefore we decided not to make this a ranking of best to worst, but rather a list of resources.  So position on this list only reflects the alphabetical order of the name of the website and nothing more.

We are going to continually update this list, so if you don’t see your favorite big business blog here, please contact us via the comments and let us know.

The B4 Blogs List 3/18/09:

123 Social Media	Good coverage of issues relating to B4.
Chris Brogan	Chris is one of the best bloggers in social media today with lots of great lists for planning.
Dirkshaw	Great depth and breadth.
IT Business Edge	Appears to have recently started heavy social media coverage, excellent B4.
Marketnet	Excellent articles, however publishes erratically.
Mashable	Completely covers social media with many articles of note for B4’s, sipping from the fire hose.
Principled Profit	Clearly one of the best on blogging with good coverage on B4 issues.
Seth Godin	Great stuff about remembering the forest not the trees.
Social Customer	Good social media and enterprise coverage.
Social Media Club	Heavy focus on B4 issues.
Whats Next Blog	Social media issues with excellent coverage of B4 topics.

Agree or Disagree with our list?  Tell us in the comments below and help us improve it for next month!

Recently, there have been several reports and articles relating to the fantastic growth of online communities.  These trends point to the growing comfort people have with using the Internet as way to connect with others.  The fact that people have grown accustomed to working with each other via electronic text (like email, SMS, Twitter, etc.) instead of telephone calls, meetings and other forms of information sharing is fueling the rapid growth of social networks. 

As we become more adept in electronic text communications they become more willing to expand our use of it into new areas.  Therefore we are moving to where other people are gathering online to expand our repertoire.  The biggest place where we are gathering online is member communities. 

Community is Growing

Communities are growing over twice as fast as all of the other top sectors of the Internet, according to a Nielsen report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint:   The chart below is from the Nielsen report.

Communication Overtakes Entertainment Online

Netpop Research : Stated simply, 7 million people in the U.S. are contributing content online through six or more activities (uploading photos, publishing blogs, posting ratings/reviews, etc.). These heavies are also connecting with 248 people in a typical week, on average

Time spent online for communication has increased 18% since 2006!  (From 27% to 32% of total time online.)  While time spent online on entertainment has declined 29% during the same period.

More, More, More

So more people are talking (with each other) more frequently about more things than ever before.  We are more comfortable with using the Internet as a form of communication.  What does this mean to your brand?  You need to be where people are communicating  and you need your entire company to be doing the communications. 

Consequently, social networks and blogs are eating into the share of time held by other sectors
Because time spent on social networks is growing at a dramatically faster rate than the Internet average, social networks are gaining a larger share of all Internet time.  (from the Nielsen Report)

Big Brands Belong

And finally Mashable’s Tom Smith discusses Why We All Benefit From Big Brands Being in Social Media.  Tom talks about how social media will change big brands and cause them to conform to the new norms of social media.  He sees more transparency, better customer feedback resulting in better products, and the deep pockets of big brands paying the fare for the rest of us- just as they do for TV and Radio.  Here are his 8 main points, please read the full article for the details:

1. Social media drives complete transparency:
2. Social media drives quality product:
3. Social media can be a great customer service channel:
4. Social Media creates products that we want:
5. You control the relationship:
6. Big brands keep our access free:
7. Big brands have interesting stories to tell:
8. Users drive the content and conversation:

Our comfort with the Internet and with electronic text communications makes online communities the fastest growing sector on the Internet.  Brands and large companies need to be involved with this movement to communities so they can keep a competitive edge or they will go the way of all companies that failed to adapt to changes in technology.  The history of business is littered with the names of those failed to adapt.

What are you doing to ensure your company isn’t one of them?  Please leave your comments below:

There are lists of the  best blogs, the best blogs on social media, and best blogs for Small and Medium Sized Busiensses. 

But what if you are one of the hundreds of thousands of social media trail blazers in a large corporation searching for help, guidance and resouces?  The problems of the enterprise are in many ways unique compared to those of smaller organizations.  And starting a social media outreach effort in an enterprise is a very different proposition compared to starting it in a smaller business.

B4 Social Media

The Best Big Business Blogs 

 

Ripple6 will complile a list of the Best BIG Business Blogs on Social Media hereafter known as B4 Social Media.  The first list will be published next week.

Please use the comments section below to tell us the blogs you find most interesting and useful for people in enterprise environments or shoot us an email “marketing (at) ripple6 dot com”, or twitter @Ripple6 .  The blog doesn’t need to focus exclusively on large organizations nor exclusively on Social Media, but should have content addressing concerns or issues that are unique to large organizations.  Feel free to nominate your own blog.

We will compile the list of the most recommeded blogs and post it here next week.  Thereafter, we will review the list regularily and provide updates.

Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned

This is a part of our series in Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned.  It’s always best to start at the beginning and you’ll find that here.

Ripple6 CEO Sang Kim asks P&G’s Susan Ross “What is P&G measuring in Social Media?”  Susan answers with the perfect quote for social media, “I hear the word engagement all the time.  I would love to know what that word means!”  Then Susan proceeds to help define how P&G sees measurement in social media.

 Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Question:  What is your definition of “engagement”?  Please tell everyone in the comments below:

Next: The Role of Moblie in Social Networks (Part 15)

Previously:

1. Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned (Part 1)
2. Determining What Users Want (Part 2)
3. Advice for Publishers Starting In Social Media (Part 3)
4. New Revenue Models for Social Media (Part 4)
5. Generating Engagement with the Audience (Part 5)
6. Implementing Social Media in the Enterprise (Part 6)
7. Creating Value for Publishers (Part 7)
8. What is Mom’s Like Me (Part 8 )
9. New Brand or Old Brand? Meredith’s Decision (Part 9)
10. Gannett’s Social Media Approach (Part 10)
11. P&G’s Approach to Social Media (Part 11)
12. Merdith’s Approach to Social Media (Part 12)
13. Meredith’s Mixing Bowl Community (Part 13)

Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned

This is a part of our series in Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned.  It’s always best to start at the beginning and you’ll find that here.

Dan Hickey explains that Meredith has been spending a couple of years laying groundwork to get ready visitors for the introduction of Social Networking.  They are looking to the next level of women connecting to each other, sharing content, and communicating with each other.  Syndicating community is very important   And they are looking to Marketers to participate with the community, be engaged and provide value to the community, not just advertisements.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Disclaimer: On this blog we don’t speak for anyone else; these are opinions only.  It’s intended to give you a lesson in how we think social media has been done successfully and that’s all!

Question:  Is MixingBowl going to be able to transition users from sharing photos to sharing their lives via social networking?

Next: Measurement in Social Media (Part 14)

Previously:

1. Enterprise Social Media Lessons Learned (Part 1)
2. Determining What Users Want (Part 2)
3. Advice for Publishers Starting In Social Media (Part 3)
4. New Revenue Models for Social Media (Part 4)
5. Generating Engagement with the Audience (Part 5)
6. Implementing Social Media in the Enterprise (Part 6)
7. Creating Value for Publishers (Part 7)
8. What is Mom’s Like Me (Part 8 )
9. New Brand or Old Brand? Meredith’s Decision (Part 9)
10. Gannett’s Social Media Approach (Part 10)
11. P&G’s Approach to Social Media (Part 11)
12. Merdith’s Approach to Social Media (Part 12)

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