Communicating Integrated Digital Media

Cartoon: Crowdsourced Homework

Online Community ROI

Occasionally I’m asked to explain what the purpose of social media is for individuals and businesses. Too often I’m greeted by sceptical views and a strong belief that social media encourages people to waste time. First of all, TV wastes time. Social media enables participation.

As Clay Skirky points out in Cognitive Surplus, “Someone born in 1960 has watched something like 50,000 hours of TV already, and may watch another 30,000 hours before she dies.”

Clearly, we have an excess of time. We are idle when taking the train to work. We are idle after dinner and once the kids are in bed. Despite our good intentions of maximizing our twilight years we tend to find other things to do rather than build that boat or write a novel. As much as we’d like to believe that we are all making the most of all of the hours in the day we do have some form of down time and it’s within this time that people chose to participate online.

The return on investment is the part that many businesses struggle to define. In meetings online community advocates are shouted at by finance to, “show me the money!” Top dogs want proof before business as usual gets derailed.

Here are a few quick facts to throw into your next presentation:

Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)
In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)
Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)
Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007)
Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)

Statistics provided by Bill Johnston

The simple truth is that consumers don’t want to be passive. We don’t buy something these days without doing a little research. We ask our friends and family what they recommend. We ask our co-workers and post on Facebook or forums. We have access to our own “experts” who know us better than any marketer. In a world overwrought with too many products and services competing for our attention we need more information as consumers to make informed decisions.

Image by Creating Passionate Users

The psychology of the consumer can no longer be assumed. How a product is used is not always how it’s advertised and the ROI of opening up a dialogue is discovering the true potential and reach of a commodity. Brand longevity is a result of faster processes to address customer service issues and quicker innovation. Customer loyalty is possible when brands are transparent and stop taking their customers for granted. By inviting consumers into the production space fewer advertising costs are incurred.

Think about how an online community could improve your business:

How many customers do you lose because your current processes don’t allow you to respond fast enough?
How much do you spend on advertising to new customers?
What would change if you focused on empowering existing customers to spread the word instead of expensive TV or print campaigns?
Can your community members answer customer’s questions for you?

Three Little Pigs: A Transmedia Case Study

If the Three Little Pigs were told as a transmedia story it might be designed like this:

The basic story would be told in an anchoring medium, such as a novel, TV show, or film. View the entire idea under construction at athinklab.com
The hypothetical transmedia version of the Three Little Pigs is not the repurposing of story across different platforms. It is the creation of a holistic narrative that unfolds in different and unique manners across different media. It allows for a dialogue between creator and participant. Developers could decide if participant interaction, such as solving the sustainable materials problem, finding the wolf through clues and maps, or creating another character for the story, could move the story in different directions than the original version. Participants might urge the first little piggy to trust his instincts about the dark figure or create a hunter who steps up the stakes for the wolf and alters the time dimension of the wolf’s schemes.

Additional options might be a Three Little Pigs Kei Tai novel distributed in chapter segments to mobile devices; a geo-based iPhone app; Wolf Attack, an educational video game based on the physics concepts of construction and destruction; and development of an MMORPG.

Content by http://athinklab.com

18 Days In Egypt: A Crowd-Sourced Documentary

18 Days in Egypt aims to be a crowd-sourced documentary about what happened there. Launched just a week ago by former New York Times video journalist and current Knight fellow at Stanford University, Jigar Mehta, the site wants to tackle the difficult task of providing the right context for the raw videos and news that others have posted and collected.

Thinking about becoming an online moderator? Are you ready for parenthood?

There are all kinds of excellent resources out there about community moderation, but the absolute best practice is effective parenting. Both kids and community members need to know where their limits are in terms of their behaviour. Rules make us feel safe. As much as we like to think all we want is freedom the limitless unknown doesn’t bring out the best in most people.

The role of a moderator is not to spend their time hunting down every instance of bad behaviour. Just like the role of a good parent isn’t to monitor their children 24/7. The best way to teach is to lead by example. When a person is micro-managed they learn that they aren’t perceived to be capable of making good decisions. Consequently a person who is suppressed from forming their own better judgement hasn’t any.

Modelling is by far the best way to lead a community. Instead of focusing all the moderation time on tracking down rule-breakers look for the best examples of community participation. Spend your time reinforcing these members and rewarding their contributions. The more you push forward good behaviour the less reward there is for members to abuse the community. Just like teaching a toddler not to throw a fit community members need to learn the right way to voice their frustrations.

Time-outs are effective. The time to intervene is when negative behaviour affects you personally. Only when a child’s problem becomes a parent’s problem should they get involved. Members need to learn how to manage issues on their own and shouldn’t be encouraged to report abuse instead of speaking up for themselves. If a child hits another child it’s important for a parent not to take on the anger or emotion of the victim. Instead hitting should be discussed and use leading questions to allow the child to reach their own decisions about how to react. By reacting on behalf of the child a parent is taking the child’s ability to think for themselves away from them. No one learns from lectures or emotional reactions. We all learn best when able to form our own opinions through supportive guidance.

We guide and lead as moderators. We’re not a Gestapo or private police force. Raising responsible kids who are considerate and thoughtful isn’t hard when parents get out of the way and let kids learn from their mistakes. Swooping in to rescue members doesn’t teach them how to take care of themselves and moderators waste too much time solving other people’s problems. Managing an online community is extremely rewarding – just like being a parent, but the value isn’t from how strictly you enforce the rules. The value is from enabling empowered individuals with common values to work together to solve problems for themselves.