Brace Yourself

Gamification for Communities

May 22, 2012 in B2B Marketing, Community Engagement, Gamification, Marketing Strategy, Social Media | Tags: #Community #Gamification, Community 2.0, community engagement with gamification, gamification and community metrics, how to implement gamification for communities | Leave a comment

A few weeks ago we integrated the Badgeville gamification engine into our Jive community to recognize, award and motivate our community members for their participation. We launched project R.A.M.P official this week and our largest event in Las Vegas… So far the results have been nothing short of outstanding. The interest and excitement from our members to participate in the defined missions far exceeded my expectations. I haven’t had a chance to deep dive into the data analytics just yet but preliminary results suggest more members are interested in completing and viewing the profile as well as an increase of 25% in reply to discussions. I am a firm believer that social media and community programs are complimentary to existing traditional marketing programs. So, when we decided to launch rewards and recognition at our event it not only created an excitement for those attending the event it provided a renewed interest for engagement.

It is a simple concept to recognize those who contribute the most and adding a leader board which features those members as the most active contributors seems to be a big kudos the our community members. However, the most intreguing result has been the outreach of our community members suggesting missions and actions that they would like to participate. Many of these comments have helped us define our Elite Program to engage our most active contributors. They have requested everything from speding a week in our development labs, to getting access to product engineers as well as roadmaps. This is exactly what technical community engineers and professionals want and what most companies would love to have. A passionate and experienced customer base to help innovate better products. When I launched communities five years ago the primary purpose was to connect our customer base with our product management teams for real-time product evaluation and feedback throughout the developement cycle. This agile methodology not only allows our customers to feel more engaged and responsible for the products they are implementing but also help innovate better features for product releases.

Stay tuned for more as I continue to monitor the progress and have a chance to provide some in depth metrics from our results.

What is Community 2.0?

April 3, 2012 in B2B Marketing, Community Engagement, Social Media | Tags: Community Engagement, Community Marketing 2.0, Persona Behavior, Social Community Strategy, Social Profile, What is community 2.0 | Leave a comment

Imagine by John Lennon painted a picture of what life might look like without barriers, silos of war and religion and everyone just accepted each other as they were. Now, imagine being able to engage in conversations across all communities, twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or any other social property also without silos or barriers. Communities are evolving and are not limited to just discussion forums. Engaging conversations are occurring all over the social web which can be tough to find and engage if you aren’t listening. However, this is really easy to do. There are several tools that allow you to monitor the web for specific keywords (either positive or negative in sentiment) and allow you to respond in real-time.

Engaging in those conversations allow you to act as a social concierge and help answer or even guide discussions to where helpful resources and or knowledge experts might reside. There was an interesting comment on VirtualGeek Blog where someone had said how it could be difficult to navigate the web for answers across all the social properties available. This is where a content linking and syndication strategy can help casting a wider web with links all back to a central location for information. So, when someone performs a search they may get multiple hits across twitter, Facebook, .COM and images but ultimately they all lead back to the relevant conversation regardless where they click.

Now, if we assume this web search is performed by a prospect or even an existing customer, then they are probably already made the decision of what it is they want. What most web visitors are looking for is confirmation that their choice and solution is the correction solution for solving their challenge. So, what if when we navigated to the product page of a website we could see community conversations about similar topics and peers discussing the same challenge we were looking to solve. Not only can that visitor engage directly with peers who may have already solved this problem they may innovate new solutions the company hadn’t considered. Guess what? You not only just reduced your sales cycle by providing a customer reference of someone who has already solved the challenge but may have also helped drive creative product innovation via peer collaboration.

This is Community 2.0: Where prospects looking for a solution, can engage with customers who already have the solution and then are transformed into product advocates to help drive better and more innovated products. These three social personas (Prospects, Customers and Advocates) are transforming how companies do business and interact with their customers. This is Community 2.0.

How are you engaging your community?

Visual Thinking for Creative Marketing

March 4, 2012 in Management Style, Marketing Communication, Marketing Strategy, Web Strategy | Tags: Jim Henson Visual Thinking Marketing, keep it simple marketing, Marketing using visual thinking | Leave a comment

I had the pleasure to visit the Jim Henson Exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, NY last weekend. What I thought was going to be a reminiscent trip of my youth turned into an extremely intellectual education in visual thinking.

As I started walking through the exhibit with many other muppet enthusiasts as well as many children I began reading Jim Henson notes on how he came up with his ideas. I was hooked and have been trying to read as much as I can about Jim Henson and his thinking process. One quote that stuck out to me was “Simple is good”. That’s it. Simple is good.

We often try to make things so complicated when trying to be expressive and there is something about just keeping our ideas and programs simple. People understand simple. Simple is what allows the masses to understand what is being discussed. Simple is easy to explain. Marketing should be simple. I think we often get lost in trying to come up with the most unique, original and creative advertising in order to stand our from the herd of others vying for attention. And in that process we lose sight of what it is we are trying to achieve. The great thing is that Jim kept notes since 1956 on his visual thinking ideas and the Jim Henson Company has posted them called Jim Henson Red Book.

With the recent passing of Steve Jobs who many credit as one of the greatest innovators of our generation, I quickly realized that Jim Henson’s name should be mentioned in that conversation. He may have not changed the way we consume information like Apple did but he did revolutionize childhood developmental education. I bet you can’t find one ”Generation X’er” who didn’t watch Sesame Street, Muppets or Electric Company when they were growing up. These programs taught us how to spell, speak spanish and most of all be compassionate. And how did they do it? How could these programs consistently keep the attention of children every day? They kept it simple. And simple is easy to understand.

I think there is much we can learn from the “Visual Thinking” of Jim Henson as Marketers and more importantly visual web marketers because that is what we are. Like Jim Henson did in the 50′s but utilizing a new media to innovate messaging we today are trying to do the same. Using the age of new media we try to innovate messaging and best thing to remember may be to keep it simple.

Take a look at some of the links and would love to hear your comments below. I think Jim Henson has taught us a lot over the years and probably can teach us more about using simple concepts for marketing. And maybe the quote below should be our new marketing mantra, trying to leave the world a bit better than when we got here.

“My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.”
― Jim Henson

Twitter Flash Mob: A Social Experiment

February 17, 2012 in B2B Marketing, Social Media, Twitter | Tags: #VMwarePEX, Social Media Experiment, Social Media Strategy, Twitter Flash Mob, Twitter Hashtag | Leave a comment

My colleagues and twitter nation had a little mischievous fun this week. Over the last few years most large technology events have some sort of Twitter board that streams the event member tweets using a particular hashtag. So as a colleague of mine was watching the twitter monitor he decided to send a tweet and watch it appear. Then he thought began thinking how many tweets would it take to dominate the twitter board for a short period of time. And so the Twitter Flash Mob concept was born. Given the relationship of the event sponsors and the demographic of the attendees an inside joke tweet was created based on a poorly translated arcade game phrase (#AYBABTU) that became and internet phenomenon. Clearly as I collaborate toward a holistic localization strategy for communities this is a good example of how important it is to get translations correct.

All your base are belong to us

So, the concept of a Twitter Flash Mob came to light and several of us in the network decided to send the same tweet all at the same time to see what would happen to the twitter display. I can only say it was a tremendous success and those that were familiar with AYBABTU had a good laugh and even those who didn’t, still found it amusing to watch. There is a great write-up and video of the event from the creative genius who had the original idea here Social Media Experiment 1 TbaaS. Check it out it is pretty cool.

However, I now know what consequences we might expect from our friends at our next event which could get interesting.

Technology Predictions for 2020

December 2, 2011 in Demographic Marketing, Social Media | Tags: future of social media marketing, geo-location target marketing, Technology predictions for 2020, The future of online social communication | 1 comment

This time of year everyone starts making technology predictions. So rather than making my own predictions for 2012 I thought it would be more fun to predict what 2020 could look like. Don’t worry even the Mayan’s don’t believe in the “End of the World” 2012 prophecy so I am fairly confident humans will still be inhabiting the earth. If you put it into perspective the Mayan calendar has cycled three times already and will do again. The earth is over 4Billion years old so any disruption would be a microscopic blip on the historical radar. So what could we expect in 2020?

Anyone remember 8-track tapes, vinyl albums or cassettes? This generation doesn’t. They don’t remember life without instant messaging. Every pre-teen has a cell phone and pre-schoolers have tablets. So, eight years from now how will they further the technology evolution?

Social Media is not an option anymore it is the way we communicate. So communication will change drastically. E-mail won’t exist in 2012 and neither will print publications. Communication will be based on online community interaction and will travel with us where ever we go.

Mobile devices we know today will become stylish intelligent fashion. Think of a pair of sunglasses that accompany an outfit but also stream multi-media communication. Or maybe communication becomes a nano-graph on our wrist like a tattoo. We can show off our unique designs all while our personal information is just a scan away from being granted access to bank accounts, express lanes or TSA security lines.

Geo-location will know everywhere we go and in combination with behavioral computer models will be able to predict our needs before we think we need. Humans are creatures of habit and slaves to routine. We like certain foods, have certain tastes and predictable patterns of movement. You can walk by a vending machine today and receive a text message asking you if you are thirsty. The “Net” will know us better than we know ourselves. We won’t have to create shopping lists because we will receive communication that we should buy more milk based on our pattern of consumption. Marketing will be so targeted that we won’t have to think anymore what we might like; the “Net” will anticipate and remind us when it is time.

Personal data will be the new currency. There will be no more privacy but charges and income based on sharing your medical, historical, personal information with the “Net”. Fraud will become useless because everyone’s information will be available to anyone. Unfortunately, poverty and the impoverished will still exist and likely increase because their personal information won’t be as valuable.

Sounds scary similar to “Big Brother is Watching” doesn’t it? The one wild card in this scenario is “Free Will”. As humans we are as unpredictable as we are creatures of habit. And just when we begin to believe that we can anticipate and accurately predict the future free will and or the thoughts of one can change the outcome. Look at the “Occupy” movement, banking fee credit petitions or the Egyptian revolution earlier this year. Do you think these events were in anyone’s predictability models? Maybe… However, all it took was the free will and independent thought and power of one to set these change of events in motion.

What are your thoughts?

Brace Yourself

Visual Thinking for Creative Marketing

Email Subscription

Share This Blog

Follow Me!

Blogroll

Categories

Follow “Brace Yourself”