Archive | April, 2009

Intuition and Innovation

by on April 14, 2009 in Business

Are you getting caught up trying to sell a process? Perhaps trying to sell a process that is probably easily replicable? Or worse, trying to sell a process that’s proprietary and mired in so much paranoid legalese and bureaucratic crap that the client really doesn’t know what they buying? Josh Kamler at tiny gigantic urges you to stop:

I’d say that intuition and innovation are similar beasts. That innovation doesn’t actually happen without intuition. The sooner you get your your clients to realize that they’ve bought not a process but a rare group of people who have the courage, creativity, humility, and perseverence to begin making a thing without knowing what it will be and who have the intuition to suddenly see it when they’ve stumbled across it, your services become way more valuable and way less common than some guaranteed proprietary process.

Sell what truly makes your service marketable – the unique genius of you and your people. All the other stuff isn’t really that remarkable.

BONUS: Rosa Say also wrote a post called When Made to Stick Will. You’ll find similarly intriguing ideas there.

The Relationship To Free In Online Communities

by on April 14, 2009 in Communities

We all have expectations of service when we pay for something, right? Go to even a moderately priced restaurant like Outback Steakhouse and you expect to be served well. If you purchase a computer online from Dell, you want to be taken care of if something doesn’t work. And if you pay dues to your professional association, you expect a level of service to match the cost. So, how does free membership in a community alter our expectations? Should we expect the same level of service for something that we pay no money to support?

I offer two cases: Twitter and Facebook. When things blow up on either of these services, do we as users have any right to demand quick, speedy or personal support? We don’t give one dime for the ability to communicate and expand our networks. The cynical among us might even suggest that we users are really just leaching off of both Twitter and Facebook for our own gain. So if we don’t pay anything for these services, what right do we have to express outrage when we’re met with failwhales, questionable changes to terms of service or disabled features?

This is the conundrum facing most online community managers: delivering service in an age where its expected even on free sites. Perhaps the solution here is that we have to change our ideas of what defines a relationship. We can no longer strictly use the financial transaction as a point for determining service level. Since users bring value to the community through their interactions, it seems that we community management professionals need to adjust our own thinking. That failwhale impacts a user’s overall experience which, in turn, impacts the service’s brand. It’s a rippling effect that defines a daily reality for online communities.

Thoughts?

Bailey WorkPlay On Semi-Hiatus

by on April 13, 2009 in Chris Info

Don’t worry…I’m not abandoning Bailey WorkPlay. But I am putting this enterprise and blog on semi-hiatus to focus my attention on building my consulting practice and Gravit8 Social Marketing. Right now, Gravit8 and the consulting I provide to organizations building online social communities is where more opportunities lie for business growth. So, here’s the plan and how you can help:

  1. Visit Gravit8 Social Marketing and subscribe to my feed – in particular if you’re engaged in work involving online communities, engaging customers/members/constituents, and social media.
  2. Visit Chris Bailey Consulting Works and subscribe to my feed there. I’ll be posting new resources, upcoming presentations and speaking gigs, and other goodies there.
  3. If you like what you read and know about the work that I do, please consider referring business my direction. As someone who has spent his career working with organizations to increase their customer acquisition and retention, I can’t say enough about how important referrals are (and how much I truly appreciate them).

Thanks, y’all…I’ll be back soon.

From Membership Professional to Community Officer

by on April 13, 2009 in Communities

Imagine the scene. Two nonprofit association membership pros talking in a crowded restaurant at lunchtime, commiserating with each other and sharing their professional anxieties that they fell into the wrong line of work. Not that they dislike what they do…quite the opposite. They enjoy working with members, building relationships to improve the member experience, strategizing new features and the like. But there is something nagging at both of them: they wonder if anyone outside of association management understands and values what they do. They worry that they’ll always be confined to associations because they don’t think there is any clear parallel in the corporate world. They leave the restaurant thankful for each other’s company but no closer to putting their anxieties at ease.

Okay, one of these characters is me and this is a scene from my life roughly six years ago. After graduating from college with a liberal arts education, I fell into the nonprofit association membership profession purely by accident. And after doing membership work for five years, I was concerned that few of the skills and experiences from that work would be appreciated outside of my narrow niche.

Let’s fast forward to today. Do I still think the skills, experiences and insight gained from a membership career is unappreciated outside of associations and not viable in the corporate space? Nope…quite the opposite. In today’s business reality, this unique experience translates incredibly well to the needs of social media, most specifically to the role of online community management.

Drawing on a recommended community manager job description posted by Connie Bensen, here are the parallels to membership management:

• Creatively and proactively assist customers.
• Serve as the initial point of contact for inbound requests from online company properties and the web at large.
• Monitor online conversations and participate in them to build brand visibility and thought leadership.
• Author blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos and screencasts – whatever media you want to use – to creatively communicate product uses.
Association membership development is about attracting prospective members and retaining current ones. That means knowing how to communicate well, building strong relationships with members, helping them get more out of their membership, and assisting them with thorny issues. Membership pros are multifunctional in role and serve as customer service, product management, marketing, and corporate communications.

• Identify and analyze issues, patterns and trends in customer requests and product performance.
• Transfer the information to the appropriate departments so that they can respond accordingly.
• Proactively escalate issues, observations, opportunities, and insights to the executive team.
• Communicate issues, opportunities and insights to the company at large.
Membership professionals serve on the front line, listening to members and determining whether their issues are problems needing resolution or opportunities needing to be addressed. Membership professionals must then be able to influence key stakeholders to effect changes on behalf of the audiences they serve.

• Identify and engage advocates.
Membership professionals must connect with their organization’s volunteers and help them put their enthusiasm to good use. Knowing how to find and then successfully guide passionate supporters is a must, particularly since most associations need these volunteers to help put initiatives into action.

• Stay up to date on new social media tools, best practices and how other organizations and companies are using them, so that the company can continue to be an early adopter of these technologies.
• Participate in professional networking by interacting with peers and influencers and attending events.
Membership professionals must explore the latest technology, leverage networks and resources, and plot a strategic path that will provide the most beneficial products and services to their association’s members. It requires a curious and creative individual who enjoys collaborating with people.

I write this post for a couple of reasons. One, I hope it gives a closer look at who I am and why my current work in social media and online communities is simply a natural extension of the work I’ve done since I first started my career. Two, maybe it offers membership professionals a roadmap to guide them toward other career possibilities and emphasize that their expertise is valuable beyond associations.

If your company is seeking its next great community manager or chief community officer, consider expanding your search to individuals beyond the corporate world and include nonprofit association membership professionals.

Online Community Roundup: Webstock Edition

by on April 12, 2009 in Communities

I’m too late for Webstock 2009, but I’m keeping the 2010 conference in my sights. It looks like they put together a powerhouse learning experience. Plus, it’s in New Zealand. So, I have a little less than a year to woo these good folks into a speaking gig.

One of their key workshops in 2009 was on Online Community 101 and presented by two online community heavyweights: Derek Powazek and Heather Champ. Even though it focused on the basics, both speakers delivered some strong recommendations for anyone creating communities.

These four summaries provide a terrific overview and are chock full of useful ideas:
Julie Starr at Evolving Newsroom
Courtney Johnson at LibraryTechNZ
Sarah Jones at Lunchbox
Dean Stringer at the Waikato Centre for eLearning

Maybe 2010 will be the year I finally make it to New Zealand? Even if I can’t land a speaking engagement it looks like a great opportunity to share experiences with a dynamic group of folks.