FreshNetworks Blog

It’s almost Spring and time for another Online Community Manager meet-up in London, in association with e-mint, the Association of Online Community Professionals. The event we organised in November was well attended with a great bunch of online community managers, social media strategists (and many other job titles) getting together for a few drinks and a chat.

At FreshNetworks we know that good community management is critical. We’ve worked with clients who have launched communities without them, and whilst they may be able to drive traffic to the site, they lack the kind of real engagement and direction you get from a community with that good party host in place. The more communities that organisations and brands launch, the more important this kind of role becomes.

We need to capture best practice and share ideas; debate and discuss terms and techniques; and work together to make sure we help promote and improve the quality of online communities. And the best way to do this is for us all to share and learn from each other.

Whilst there’s no point changing a winning formula, we are adding a speaker into the Spring event. We can’t say too much about who it is just yet, but we’re excited already. We’re also sponsoring the location and will put some money behind the bar to pay for what should be a fair few drinks and snacks before the tab runs out.

It would be great to get as many people who are interested in community management as possible along. Come for the whole evening or just pop in to say hello.

When is it happening? Wednesday 15th April from 6.30pm

Whereabouts? The Square Pig, 30-32 Proctor Street, Holborn, London, WC1R 4QG (we’ll be downstairs) map

How do I sign up? Just click below or go to the Eventbrite page

What else do I need to know? We’re using the Twitter hash tag #emint

In the latest Technology Quarterly in this week’s edition of the Economist, there is an article about reviews online. This piece explores well why people read and trust reviews, and the value of both positive and negative reviews. John McAteer, Google’s retail industry director is quoted as saying:

No one trusts all positive reviews

For him you need some negative reviews as well as everybody knows that no product could per perfect. And this is certainly true. In fact, negative reviews can help people decide if a product might be for them, especially if they don’t associate themselves with the negative reviewer (“it wasn’t for them, but it might be for me”).

The article also looks at the value of having multiple reviews and cites a great experiment conducted by Bazaarvoice showing how products with more than ten reviews saw “drastically” higher conversion rate both for the products actually reviewed and for other products from the same brand.

So the value of reviews to brands and customers is clear. What is explored in less depth in the article is why people would write reviews in the first place. The example of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Amazon is cited, which has over 3,200 reviews. Why, the article asks, would people continue to write reviews? They quote Clay Shirky in response to this:

Mr Shirky suggests that in many cases, writing a review is more like writing fan mail (or hate mail) for a product, and the people who post them do not really expect it to be read.

I think this issue needs to be explored in more depth. There are a number of reasons people might write a review:

1. They are paid to do so (as per the recent case of Belkin hiring people to rate their products five star)
2. They are forced to do so in order to gain some other incentive (TopTable requires you to rate restaurants you have been to in order to gain points for their loyalty scheme)
3. They write reviews to increase their standing in a community (where, perhaps more reviews give them more credibility or access to more features in the online community)
4. They write reviews because they want to look good / impressive / intelligent amongst their peers
5. They write reviews because they had benefit from some and they want others to benefit in the same way from their advice
6. They write reviews because they have something to say

I am sure there are examples of all six out there – from people gaining financially or socially from the review, through people wanting to share their knowledge, to people just wanting to air their opinion (whether or not people read). But, I suspect people write reviews more for the reasons at the bottom of the list than at the top. And it is certain that the reasons nearer the bottom of the list lead to more genuine reviews.

Why do people write reviews? Well most likely because they are given the opportunity to voice their opinion. They want want to help others or may just have something to say. But once we give them the chance of doing so they will. That’s one of the real benefits of social media. It encourages us all to share our thoughts and opinions and then gives us other tools so we can sort these and only the most interesting or relevant rise to the top. Give people the chance to write a review and many will do just for the chance to air their views. Show the benefit they can get from reviews and even more will write their own. Allow voting on reviews or promotion of good reviews and you will get a higher quality of comments in return.

In social media people model behaviour. They want to express themselves and if you give them the tools and permission to do so, and you show them how to express themselves then they will do. You really don’t need to pay or incentivise them, in fact this can generate a lot of much lower quality reviews. What you do need to do is understand your customers, why they might want to review and how. Then offer them the ability to do what they want to do anyway.

Reviews are useful. They increase conversion, time spent on site and have a positive halo effect for other, associated, products. And people want to write the reviews in the first place. You just need to get the social architecture right so they feel they can.

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Some more reading

• Do You Trust User Reviews on the Web? (technologizer.com)
• Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges (technologizer.com)

For the next in our series of Online Community Examples we are looking at examples of online communities in the travel industry

Online communities in the travel industry

The travel industry is one well suited to online communities focused on engagement. Whether you’re an airline, holiday company or hotel chain, your guests typically only experience the brand on a limited number of occasions annually. They may be leisure travellers who might only stay at your hotel once per year or even business travellers who use your airline each time they fly to New York. In all cases the experiences these consumers have with your brand are limited and for a fixed period of time only.

Online communities offer you a way to extend this brand experience between visits or experiences, they allow you to engage and interact with your consumers even when they are not staying at your hotel or flying your airline. This is of critical importance when it comes to rebooking – if you can keep your brand at the forefront of your consumers’ minds then they are more likely to rebook with you. If you can offer them extra services, or offer a way to extend their holiday experience, they are more likely to rebook with you.

The three examples below show different ways in which companies in the travel industry are using online communities to engage their customers with a view to increasing customer loyalty.

Best Western’s On the Go with Amy

One of the real benefits of social media for travel is it puts a human and personal face on what is a very personal experience. One reason why people use Tripadvisor so much is that it contains real reviews from real people talking about their own experiences. But rather than just using experiences as reviews, we can also use personal experiences as inspiration tools. And this is what Best Western do so well with On the Go with Amy.

As with many great examples of online communities, On the Go with Amy is simple concept, but one that delivers well against Best Western’s objectives. The community is a blog from travel journalist Amy Graff, where she share first hand travel experience and chronicles her trips and visits. From a business trip to New York to a family road tip down Route  66 in the US.

By using this medium, Best Western are putting the excitement and experience back into travel. They are giving people a set of first-hand experience and by juxtaposing business and leisure travel they are associating themselves with both of these experiences. Amy has become the company’s travel spokesperson. As well as chronicling her own travel, she gives on issues from advice on travel accessories and on historical sites to visit with children.

This community gives people a real insight into travel, ideas and advice but does it with a personal voice and a very public face. The site is clearly branded and supported by Best Western but it is not overtly selling their hotels. It is engaging people in a personal experience, which is what travel is all about.

Marmara’s Marmarafit

Marmara is a French travel agency that specialises in package holidays in the Mediterranean. They have a loyal customer base and people will often return to a Marmara resort for their annual holidays. In 2008 they launched an online community site to allow people to continue their experience even when they are not on holiday.

The community site has two basic parts:

1. Marmaramis: every Member who joins the community gets a profile which allows you to upload photos of your vacations, tell the community where you have been on holiday and which resort you are going to next (and the dates). You can also make friends with people you have met on holiday or with people you are going away with.
2. ClubMarmara: using this profiling data, individual members can be associated with the Resorts to which they have been or that they are going to. Their photos, videos and discussions are associated with the relevant Resort.

The site provides a way for people to share their experiences when they get back from holiday, keep in touch with friends they met on Resort and post photos and videos of their vacation to share with these people. They can also find people who are going to be on the same holiday as them before they go, ask questions about Resorts they have never been to and find out what it is really like in the words of people who have been before. In this respect, the site is a great customer retention tool. It provides a way for customers to extend the holiday experience even when they are not away.

But the site also offers significant benefits in terms of customer acquisition. It is building a large quantity of discussions and descriptions of holidays, great both from a search perspective but also as peer-to-peer marketing. If you have never been to a particular resort before, or indeed never been on vacation with Marmara, you can read real reviews, see real photos and even contact people who have been on holiday to ask them for their thoughts. Getting your customers to really do you marketing for you.

Qantas Travel Insider

Many airlines have launched online community sites in the last year. We have already written about BA’s MetroTwin and the Air France-KLM Bluenity sites. Qantas launced it’s own online community at the end of 2008: Qantas Travel Insider.

The site is aimed specifically at the airline’s Frequent Flyers and allows them to describe their first-hand experiences of destinations, recommending places to stay, eat or drink and things to do in the various cities to which Qantas flies. This is a clever use of passenger experiences and knowledge. The Frequent Flyers are the ones who know the destinations best, and they are also those most likely to find themselves going to a new city and needing advice like this. By focusing on this group, Qantas is also catering for the desire for us to share with and learn from ‘people like me’. The Frequent Flyers will associate with each other and so lend credibility to the advice.

Alongside the user-generated travel advice, Qantas Travel Insider also has a large amount of more editorial content. From articles and recommendations to blogs and the Ask the Crew feature. This is a good approach to online communities – users don’t necessarily care about who gives them advice or tips, they just want to know that it is both from a credible source and of use to them. Mixing user-generated content with editorial content and expert advice can be successful online community strategy. In the case of Qantas, it also lets them use their own expertise – getting cabin crew to answer questions about things to do and places to go at destinations. Adding a concierge service to their on-board service and  thus really enhancing the passenger experience.

See all our Online Community Examples

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Some more reading

• Improving user experience on travel websites (travel-rants.com)
• How does one measure “engagement”?
• Olivier Roche: “Avec marmarafit.com, nos clients se rencontrent avant leur départ”

Last year we reported on the 2008 Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris, this year we’re returning to Paris for the 2009 conference and this year we’re speaking. The Marketing 2.0 conference is a high-paced two days discussing the latest developments, case studies and thinking in social media and word of mouth marketing.

I will be speaking about using online communities specifically as engagement tools. Presenting some examples of how we have helped brands to engage their customers (or their target customers) and concentrating on ways in which you can leverage the expertise and knowledge that sits inside any brand to build this type of engagement. Sharing this expertise with your customers and using it to

1. engage them in a way you haven’t before and make them feel part of the company
2. position the brand as thought-leaders in their space
3. reward customers for their loyalty

Online communities are a great way to engage customers, and they let you extend the brand experience that they have. You may just manufacture an FMCG product, but by leveraging the expertise inside your firm and offering this to your customers using online communities you are offering them a real service. It’s not about marketing to them it’s about engaging them.

More on this in Paris later this month.

Marketing 2.0 Conference, Paris, March 30-31

Alongside FreshNetworks, a wealth of great speakers are on the agenda for the conference,  including:

• International brands with great stories to tell, including Lego, Virgin, Nokia, Ford, Nike and L’Oréal
• Social media players, including Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Ebay, MySpace, Netvibes, SlideShare, Dailymotion, JustinTV, SixAppart and Slide
• And analysts from firms, including Forrester, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Critical Mass, Edelman and pourquoitucours

For more information about the conference click here.

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Some more reading

• The Most Innovative Companies in Advertising & Marketing (scotttesta.com)
• Une conférence sur le Marketing 2.0 le 30 mars prochain à Paris
• Marketing 2.0
• Marketing 2.0 et réseaux sociaux

Two-thirds of the world’s entire online population have visited ‘Member communities’, including social networks, online communities and blogs, according to Nielsen’s Global Faces and Networked Places report. This places social networks and online communities as the fourth most popular category of online activities, ahead of personal email. Other statistics also support the growth and importance of these sites, with time spent on site growing at three times the rate for overall internet use. Now one out of every eleven minutes spent online worldwide is spent on an online community or social network. In the UK, this figure is one out of every six minutes spent online.

There are many reasons for the shift from email to social networks and online communities. On a very structural level, many of these sites offer inboxes through which people can communicate either with their network of connections (in social networks) or with people who share similar interests or are working on a similar issue (in online communities). So people may be using multiple inboxes – each for different purposes and some of these actually social networks and online communities rather than traditional email providers.

On a behavioural level, however, this data reflects a shift in the way we use the internet to communicate. Email used to be the way that we communicated and, to some extent, it was using the internet to do a very traditional process (sending mail) using this new medium. But as our use of online has changed, we are now not just doing old things in new ways but doing completely new things. We can connect and stay connected with friends and contacts like never before; and we can find and share common experiences and discussions with people we might not even know. In this environment it is unsurprising that social networks and online communities have overtaken email. These sites allow us to communicate and share ideas with people based on connections (direct or indirect) we have with them or interests we share in common.

With email we need to know and remember addresses, it’s very much an old way of communicating using new means. With social networks we can communicate with people directly through our networks and with online communities we can communicate with people who are interested in the same things as us. They allow us to do new things, and do them in new way.

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Some more reading

• How To Value Social Networks? (stoweboyd.com)
• Social Networking More Popular Than Email (mashable.com)
• Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses (freshnetworks.com)