FreshNetworks Blog

Courtesy of the National Trust

Most Facebook users will have heard of FarmVille, one of the most popular games on the social network, with almost 47 million monthly active users. And as social gaming has a massive following in the UK,  it’s interesting to hear that the National Trust have launched a real life interpretation of the popular FarmVille game.

The project, called MyFarm, hands over control of the real-life Wimpole Estate to online users, who then vote on all major decisions about running the farm. It’s worth noting that while membership is open to anyone, it costs £30 to sign up for a year, perhaps as a way of ensuring a level of commitment from members.

As the experiment aims to improve education about food-sourcing, their is the potential for families and schools to join in the debate. The project will accept up to 10,000 “farmers” and is actively driving recruitment through Facebook and Twitter.

It seems that MyFarm aims to eventually become an online community as the site has been seeded with blog content and they are using a community manager to liaise between the virtual and real life farmers. Discussions will be held after voting to reflect on how and why a decision was made, and at least one major decision is expected to be voted on per month. There is already a promising amount of high quality video content available, and I hope that be more produced as a great way of giving engaging feedback to the farmers, as well as showing how their online decisions have affected the real world.

While the site includes The National Trust branding in the main banner of the site, the call to action for signing up to the National Trust is featured well below the fold of the website-potentially a wasted opportunity to promote membership to the main charity. Perhaps it has been designed this way to reduce diversion from the primary aim of signing on farmers.

The first vote will open on May 26th and the National Trust aims to reach 10,000 farmers within 3 months. I hope that they are successful in reaching this goal, as the experimental and educational value of this project is exciting and it will be worth keeping an eye on to see how things develop.

In what appears to be a David and Goliath style encounter through  social media, Colliers Powerful Welsh Cheddar,  a strong-tasting cheese that’s part of the Fayrefield Group,  is trying to mobilise shoppers to lobby supermarket giant Sainsbury’s into re-stocking the brand following its delisting.

Collier’s  Cheddar became the first victim of a branded category range ­review by Sainsbury’s back in March.

The delisting itself came to light following an enquiry on Sainsbury’s Facebook page from a user calling themselves “Beer Kat”. Beer Kat asked about the missing cheese and Sainsbury’s responded – “Hi Beer Kat, this product has been discontinued. I’ll send a product request to our buyers to stock again.”

As the cheese is yet to be restocked, Collier’s Cheddar are now using Twitter and Facebook to get consumers to respond to the delisting by opening up the floor to their customers saying  “We’d like to hear your thoughts…your opinion counts”.

Collier’s tactics on Facebook and Twitter seem to be to get customers to comment on where they will be buying their cheese now Sainsbury’s don’t stock it (“Oh no! I only shop at Sainsbury’s beause they stock Colliers. Looks like I’ll now be a Morrisons customer”). Comments and interaction is fairly low – nothing that couldn’t be sorted out with a well-thought out engagement strategy – but statements have been quite powerful so far.

Before the rise of social media a lot of this kind of lobbying would’ve been done via letters or email protest, with the odd complaint in-store. Nowadays it seems that even smaller brands and businesses feel comfortable tackling the big guns online and in public view, hoping that word-of-mouth will spread about their cause.

At the moment is seems that Sainsbury’s don’t have too much to worry about. But this could all change depending on the way Collier’s Cheese choose to manage future engagement with their audience. If they play their cards right they could get enough impetus to make the voice of the customer an even more powerful force than a supermarket multiple.

Image courtesy of McKinsey

In order to use social media to influence purchasing habits you need to embed it at key customer touchpoints.

Using  McKinsey’s customer journey model as a base, we’ve looked at how and where you can use social media at key customer touch points.

1. Initial consideration

What’s happening at this stage?
Something has triggered a need for the customer to start thinking about making a purchase. The consumer considers an initial set of brands based on brand perceptions and exposure to recent touch points.

How can social media be used?
This is an important position for brands to secure. According to McKinsey, people are three times more likely to purchase a brand that was in the initial stages of their purchasing journey in comparison with those that were added later.

Social media can play a part in this early stage by positioning a brand in the forefront of consumers’ minds at all times. Stumbling across a brand on a Facebook page, reading a tweet about a good experience someone has had with a brand, reading a blog post or forum thread online about a branded product – not only does this  help spread word-of-mouth, but the brand that a consumer is most likely to recall is one that has a constant place in their mind.

2. Active evaluation

What’s happening at this stage?
The consumer is actively seeking more information about the products they have in mind. Consumers add or subtract brands as they evaluate what they want and don’t want.

How can social media be used?
Two-thirds of the touch points during the active-evaluation phase involve consumer-driven marketing initiatives – something which social media excels at.

Reviews and recommendations from “people like me” play an integral part of the customer decision making process. A good review by an influential blogger, or a comment by a social media influencer who appeals to the consumer audience can be more valuable than thousands of pounds worth of advertising. By interacting and engaging with influencers, brands can build up their presence and appeal among their target audience.

3. Postpurchase experience

What’s happening at this stage?
After purchasing a product or service,the consumer builds expectations based on their previous experience, as well as hands-on experience of product itself, to inform the rest of their journey.

How can social media be used?
Post-purchase relations are very important. According to McKinsey, more than 60% of consumers (of facial skin care products) go online to conduct further research after purchase and if a product is marketed effectively online, or has been reviewed or discussed in social media, its most useful functions and features can be discovered at this touch point.

4. Loyalty loop

What happens at this stage?
This is where a consumer moves from making a one-off purchase to developing loyalty with a brand

How can social media be used?
In today’s world consumers can influence marketing and opinions about brands and social media can be the glue that keeps customers loyal to your brand. A customer who has liked your Facebook page, follows you on Twitter and contributes to your company blog is half-way to becoming brand loyal. A careful balance of interaction with consumers through social media and a great product or service could be the extra step needed to maintain loyalty,  turning impulse one-off purchasers into loyal customers. Happy customers can also turn into brand advocates and focusing on retaining repeat consumers can help attract new or prospective customers.

Interested in learning more about social media and the customer experience? Why not come to the European Customer World Experience 2011 from 24th – 26th May. Register for tickets here.

Image courtesy of Flickr

With the release of new technologies and applications almost everyday, it’s likely that the demand for migrating online communities to new platforms that feature some of the latest functionality will increase.

The migration of an existing online community is, at best, a tricky process for the community manager to lead. Get it right and the vast majority of your existing community members will stay to enjoy the benefits of their new home. Get it wrong and you’re left with a mere shadow of your former community.

Any good community manager worth their salt will realise that the most important feature of any online community is the community members and the relationships they have with each other. So here are seven factors every community manager should consider in order to successfully migrate a community:

1. Understand how the existing community currently operates

A community has a culture, a shared history of experiences, and a certain way of doing things. Knowing what works and what doesn’t will help you to avoid replicating pitfalls in the new community.

2. Be transparent

The migration date shouldn’t be a surprise to community members. Tell them what is happening well in advance. It doesn’t have to be too granular in detail but community members need to understand why the migration is taking place.

3. Explain the benefits of new community

Community members will always ask “What’s in it for me?”. Ideally, you should highlight the benefits of the existing community, which will be transferred over in addition to the ones associated with the new community.

4. Explain the potential risks

There will be bumps in the road. For example, community members may loose some personal data in the transition. Be clear as to what the risks are and stipulate which measures you have in place to help mitigate those risks.

5. Keep open lines of communication

The community manager needs to be vigilant and proactive when communicating with members. Providing useful and timely answers to their questions will go a long way to getting buy-in from community members who still need to be convinced.

6. Establish a clear timeline for actions

Community members need to be aware of the timeline for the migration process. They will appreciate regular reminders of the deadlines for performing certain actions e.g. “Make sure you’ve made a note of your login details and backed up your pictures by XX date”.

7. Involve your community champions

Your community champions love to be trusted to perform important tasks for the community. For example, it might be to beta test the functionality of the new community or to act as go-betweens for general community members. Getting your community champions on board early on will help the migration process to run much more smoothly.

Image courtesy of Shoot

It is tempting to focus soley on moderation when discussing online community management, but without driving discussion in the first place, a community manager will have nothing to moderate.

Here are five things every community manager should do to encourage discussion in an online community.

1. Use mixed media

Using different types of media always produces good engagement results. Images and picture galleries often generate the best engagement online and this is certainly the case for the Facebook pages we manage here at FreshNetworks.

2. Keep the community informed about latest updates

One simple tool to add to an online community is a “latest activity” box on the homepage. Members of one of the closed communities I manage regularly comment on how useful this tool is for quickly navigating the site and for keeping up to date with recent activity.

3. Email newsletters

By far the largest driver of traffic to the communities I manage are the weekly email newsletter updates I send. They highlight conversations that are important to the brand and in the early lifecycle of a community the email updates are particularly important in developing a relationship with community members.

4. One to one contact

Contacting users on an individual basis is a fantastic way of building  good foundations. Thank them for performing actions, suggest content they may like or point them towards new activities in order to build long-term engagement.

5. Ask questions that matter to the community

Asking simple questions is recognised as a good way of generating discussion. However, this only works if the questions you ask are relevant to your audience. Take the time to understand what your audience react to and then plan around this.

Using these tactics are just a few of the many ways that you can encourage discussion in an online community. What works best for you?