“What IS a Digital Community Manager, and do I need one?” a CEO of a small B2B technology firm asked me this week.  My response was, “What is your goal?”

Since almost everyone now is over the hype and hoopla of the newness of social media, the real work is just beginning.  If your company has stayed relatively up-to-date on online marketing trends (i.e. has a blog, regularly updates web site content, and conducts scheduled email campaigns and marketing promotions), then you do have a community of followers/listeners/customers to manage.

Word of caution:  Be careful with the word “manage.”  Think instead words like nurture… encourage… grow.  As a Digital Community Manager, you definitely want someone in charge of shepherding this form of two-way communications with your company who eats/sleeps/breathes brand, messaging, consistency, usability, and conversation.  AND who completely gets your high-level mission and goals.

Be careful to watch your pre-conceived notions about this position.  Check out a few “Myths of Community Management.”  Go ahead and read it… I’ll wait.

Amber Naslund (I’m a HUGE fan of hers, BTW.  Follow her @AmberCadabra.  She’s incredibly smart and has been hands-on in the development and transition of social over the last several years.) correctly points out that Community Management doesn’t just happen online.  Beware hiring a 26-year-old as your Community Manager just because they’re really active on Twitter as this is not a viable strategy for your business.  Hey, I know how to balance my checkbook every night… Wanna hire me as your CFO?  Come on… Please?  Yeah, I thought so.

The most important thing to grasp about hiring a Digital Community Manager is to realize that this person needs to be extremely close to the heart of the action in the company.  They need to have leadership skills.  They should be the point person and collaborate with cross-functional teams… IT, Legal, Creative/ Brand, Product Management, Community Relations, Marketing, Public Relations, etc.  They are your storyteller and image-maker in the digital world.  They also have the ability to smooth things down and react with respect and kindness when customers get really irate online (where the world can see it and WILL eventually find it).  Treat them with respect and you might be amazed at the strength of the community they can build for your brand.

While corporate social media usage is now moving from “Gee, that’s cool!  We need a Twitter page!” to a necessary business practice, most companies have no clue how to measure it.  Plus, there really isn’t one way to measure, and the metrics your business needs to measure may be drastically different from those of your competitors.  Think about measuring:

• awareness
• attention
• reach (fans, followers, subscribers)
• share of conversation
• strength of referrals
• recommendations
• inbound links
• number of social bookmarks
• traffic from shared shortened links
• leads
• conversion rates
• sales
• value per fan/follower
• direct response rates
• web analytics

But, in light of our tenuous economic recovery, let’s touch on what companies are thinking about the most… measuring cost savings.  Because, sometimes the value in a business endeavor isn’t only about what goes up (like revenue), but what goes down (like costs).  Social media can have some very clear efficiencies, most heavily on the customer service side, but also in areas like training or communications.  So, now we’re talking about savings like:

• cost per issue resolution (costs like hardware, software, telecom service, HR, infrastructure overhead, etc.)
• issue resolution time
• cost per dollar raised/earned
• training
• idea generation
• employee education

For measurement to be effective, it has to align directly with the goals you’ve set.  Following the SMART methodology, they should be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timed.  Metrics gain meaning when they’re weaved together to help you realize previously undiscovered insights about your customers and prospects… not just data.

There never is a single, concrete process for how to measure something.  There are equation like ROI or ROE that are more or less fixed, but how you derive the elements of that measurement depend on your processes and what you choose to track.

The battle between the need for marketers to be focused on where the community’s conversation organically leads vs. the urge/want/need to “push” company-centered content out on the world is an ongoing struggle.  Here are a few key truths to building and maintaining a successful, thriving community that picks up your company’s “messaging torch” and carries it better that you can, Ms. CMO.

1.  Your community must be owned: Yea, you’re using social media!  But, just who is overseeing it all?  With marketing, sales, R&D and customer-service involved, the task is to get all these teams working together.  Often, a community is launched without any set definitions of who owns what.  In essence, there are three marketing models for social media:

-  CENTRALIZED-  The social media department functions at a senior level, reporting to the CMO or CEO, and is responsible for all social media activation for the brand.  Dangers?  Having a social media head means departments outside that person’s scope might not benefit from efforts in the medium.  I.E., is customer care really being considered if social media is centralized under marketing?  Example of this model:  Ford and Scott Monty, global digital and multimedia communications director.

-  DISTRIBUTED-  In this setup, no one person technically owns social media.  Instead, all employees from customer care, marketing, media, community/media relations and beyond represent the brand and work social media into their roles.  Dangers?  No standardized practices, and social media uncontrolled can veer a brand off-message.  Example of this model:  Best Buy

-  COMBINATION-  Centralized best practices and decentralized execution.  A brand maintains a committee of social media stakeholders to work up its position and voice, which it disseminates to the company at large.  Dangers?  How do you hold departments accountable to a research council?  Also, when a social media program goes sour, who ends up as the fall guy?  Those who build the strategy, or those who implemented it?  Example of this model:  Kodak

2.  You must let your community go: Pay attention to what’s happening in your community and monitor member interactions, but don’t strive to control the conversations and activity that are happening.  Example:  Mountain Dew.  The soda brand took its “Dewmocracy” campaign one step further to find new flavors and allowed skater dudes to take control of its marketing by implementing crowdsourced consumer involvement.  The more you control, the less people participate. It all goes back to trust.

3.  Figure out how to mobilize your community: A community doesn’t just exist within the confines of your online community, and can’t thrive in a silo.  The days when execs made decisions behind closed doors and expected people to rally behind them are gone.  Find opportunities outside your community, and offline even, to continue driving community participation.  When consumers told Mountain Dew they were also looking at and sharing on 12seconds.tv, the brand wasn’t familiar with the outlet.  After investigation, the company started integrating the site into “Dewmocracy.”

Once you’ve engaged your community, you can’t stop.  Make a continuous effort to talk about your industry, ask questions, provide humor at times, and listen, listen, listen.  Let your customers know when you take their advice… and why when you don’t.

Came across an interesting post by Suzanne Vara, Managing Partner at Kherize5, titled “Is Vanity Killing Your Blog?“  It’s good… go read it.  I’ll wait.

The point about the pressure to constantly strive for more, create fresh new content, put forth more “conversation and connecting” into the WWW is incredibly timely.  Essentially, with all this talking, who is listening?

We all have been taught that the way to be the most interesting person at the party is to be the most interested (in others, the host, the food, etc.), which means asking questions and enabling the next logical and engaging comments from the other person (in other words, basic etiquette).  Gut check:  Does this type of etiquette happen on your blog?  On your Facebook fan page?  In your Twitter stream?  Hmmmm…

Over the weekend, my sometimes-partner-in-crime, V. Scott Ellis, wrote a post for WebLogTools Collection called “Exploring the GPL, Viable Models, and Business Risk.”  WebLogTools is a blog about blogs, blogging, WordPress and best practices therein.  It is extensively read and contributed to by the WordPress (WP) developer community, and since Wendistry and all our client sites are built on the WP platform, I (being non-technical) feel the need to wander by this site once in a while.

First, a definition before you start reading the post:

GPL– General Public License; GPL is one of the most commonly-used open-source sofware licenses.  The distinctive feature of the GPL license is that it requires that any code derived from GPL code also uses a GPL license.  What that means is any plug-ins or bolt-on applications that are created for the WordPress platform ALSO must be open-source.  If you are a developer, that doesn’t mean you have to give them away for free.  However, it does mean that if I create a widget for WP and I sell it to Person A for $29, once A pays for it, A then has full legal right to turn around and sell it on A’s web site for $25 (under-cutting my, the creator’s, price).  If A sells only 2 widgets, not only has he recouped his investment, Person A has made a profit on MY work.  Now, let’s take this further…

Person B buys Person A’s widget.  Now, Person B turns around and sells the widget on his web site… for $20.  Again, same principal.  B now has undercut me (the creator and person who did all the work) and Person A.  Eventually, the whole model breaks down because you finally end up with a product that Person Q paid only $1 for and is perfectly willing to give it away for free.

Now, I agree that money is not the only reward for hard work done well, but as the widgets/ plug-ins/ bolt-ons for WordPress become more complex, the need for deep expertise and ever-increasing amounts of support enter the picture.  At some point a person’s (or organization’s) ability to match the demand will not scale.  The need to make a living or support your family though other means becomes the top priority.

When that happens, by default, the amount of time a developer can dedicate to writing more code or providing support tapers off.  If a developer has provided something of particular value, then the WP community suffers when that developer can’t be there, and it’s especially sad when the main reason is because he/she can’t afford it.  The more complex these things become, (expertise required) the higher the barriers to entry.

Free “love” and free items work perfectly well in a small, “community-like” environment (like the WordPress community has been so far) with limited market size and limited complexity involved in widget/ plug-in/ bolt-on creation.  Where all this gets sticky, and the reason why this discussion should be read by business owners/ founders/ designers/ creators, no matter the industry, is because BUSINESSES EXIST TO MAKE MONEY. A commune is not a sustainable business model.

Finally, to show how truly passionate and committed Scott is about supporting developers financially, he launched “Make a Donation to Your Favorite WordPress Developer on March 1st” before the opportunity for him to write this post on WebLogTools even came up.

Where social media and marketing collide, we’ve got a new brand of communication called social marketing.  Capitalizing on the community-building strengths of the early Internet, companies can be empowered to reach audiences in a deeper way.  However, the double-edged sword is the price for companies that are hesitant to participate.

While social marketing has been around for years among early adopters, it is still not widely embraced by large enterprises.  Marketers (trapped?) within these companies are starting to push and ask their senior management when they can get involved, but many feel they lack the knowledge to take bold steps in this realm.  To many, there are more questions than answers:

• What is all the buzz about?
• Where does this fit into the marketing mix?
• How does it apply to my company?
• Should we participate?
• What is the cost of participation?
• What is the cost of NOT participating?

Wendistry agrees that social media strategies are NOT mainstream, yet.  The weak economy adds to the level of risk most businesses are willing to accept.  However, it is those businesses who put off planning and defining a social media strategy NOW are at an even bigger risk.  Marketers (and companies) who are absent from these new conversations are missing out.

Image by Powered.com

Not just another marketing program to add to your list of options, social marketing is about engagement which is touching every aspect of our society and every level of a company’s communications… from public relations and internal communications to customer support, e-commerce and loyalty programs.  Social media enables and even deepens the conversation and what you need to realize is if you aren’t using social media to create these discussions with your customers… your competitors are.

While there is an inherent urgency, applying social marketing is not a decision to be made on a whim and without a plan.  In fact, just setting up a Facebook fan page and/or a Twitter account could be detrimental and/or devastating to your brand.  If your business doesn’t have the internal resources to develop and devote to a well-executed strategy, please don’t even venture online in this new media space until you do.  Another factor is having other priorities, such as updating an old web site, or perhaps your target audience isn’t involved in social media.  I’m thinking of industries like manufacturing, industrial, farming, chemical, etc.

Many companies may be hesitant to enter the social marketing realm because they are afraid of failure.  However, in waiting until they gain a better, more thorough understanding of this territory, they are losing out on “first-mover” status.  Now, is possibly the best time to get started… realize that this “trend” is not going away.  Consumers still find it interesting and refreshing when brands reach out to them in a conversational and friendly way through social media.  Consequently, companies are earning respect and good will by trying to participate.  Customers are also more forgiving right now than they will be in the future when the expectations are higher.

Social marketing requires new skill sets that can only be learned through experience.  Unlike traditional marketing, social media marketing demands a customer-centric approach that is focused on lifestyle content instead of product content.  It also demands that organizations learn to be comfortable with more transparency.  Both of these criteria take practice and time to develop.

Finally, if the customer loyalty and brand affinity reasons for developing a social marketing program aren’t enough, the financial benefits are extremely compelling.  The ROI studies are revealing phenomenal numbers.  According to Next Century Media, 66% of online community participants are likely to purchase as a result of their social experience with the brand, and 85% are likely to recommend the brand to a friend.  These numbers demand serious consideration, especially when compared to other marketing methods.  Time and effort spent now in considering social marketing’s potential could yield tremendous results and a multitude of positive changes beyond anything marketing professionals have experienced before.

With a tagline live young, the Evian web site continues to reflect its brand of fresh snowy French Alps mountain water.  “Water is essential to life.  It’s a fundamental element to your health and well-being,” says Evian, and to me, the pictures of beautiful mountains and beautiful people reinforce this message.  Cool, soothing, blue, and icy whites just scream health and freshness.

Which is why I’m also surprised by the “Fun Stuff” tab on their site.  Here you can use your cursor as a finger to draw on an icy, fogged over window, to create your specially designed snowflake storms, or to drag-and-drop a “skier” on the slopes and watch him ski down.  Is this video (or any of these tactics for that matter) ON BRAND?   Let me know what you think…

Since I was an Economics major at UT, I do believe that there is no such thing as a “market failure.”  Only the failure of badly run companies with lots of political connections, bailed out at? taxpayer expense.  That’s not a “market failure,” that’s standard government operating procedure.  Market interventions always distort the market.

In “Fear the Boom and Bust,” John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

\”Fear the Boom and Bust\” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

Get the full lyrics, story and free download of the song in high quality MP3 and AAC files at Econstories.

You know your industry.  You know your audience.  But, do you know how to make your B2B web site start making more money for you?  If you rely on affiliate programs or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for all or part of your revenue stream, you already know that the hours and dollars you spend on content creation and SEO (search engine optimization) will be spent in vain if the traffic you drive to your site doesn’t purchase from your affiliate merchants, click on your banners, or follow the links in your contextual ads.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of white papers and web sites offer tips for optimizing your content and driving traffic to your B2B site or blog.  Here’s eight surefire strategies for monetizing your B2B web site:

1.  Give the people what they want: Back in the days of Web 1.0, web site operators learned that the key to repeat visitation (the “sticky” factor) is to give your users a compelling reason to come back.  Today’s web sites take those lessons to heart, building member communities, incorporating RSS feeds, and offering specialized, frequently updated content that visitors are hard-pressed to find anywhere else.  But, what if you could apply the “stickiness”  principle to the revenue generating portions of your site?  You know that users of B2B sites go there in search of reliable information that will help them in their jobs.  Why aren’t you charging for papers, case studies, lessons, training, etc.?

2.  Preserve your integrity: Generating revenue shouldn’t mean compromising the user experience.  The messages and offers in banner ads and contextual links from consumer PPC networks can range from mildly off-target to downright embarrassing on a B2B web site.  To preserve your credibility with a highly specialized (and professional) audience, review the ad content on your site just as you would “real” content.  Depending on the placement and prominence of banners and ad modules, an advertisement may be the first thing visitors see when they arrive at your page, so be sure the offers and images presented fit the tone and topic of your site.

3.  Use your time wisely: Many site owners and content managers, B2B and otherwise, spend hours every week pouring over reports and switching out ads in an effort to maximize their site earnings.  While several major ad networks (and some small ones) offer automated widgets and contextual ad modules to help lighten the workload, the options for dedicated B2B networks are limited, and the relevance of consumer offers on B2B sites can be spotty at best.

4.  Take advantage of every touchpoint: Many advertising networks offer only one avenue for monetizing your audience… through the pages of your web site.  But, if you’re like most B2B site operators today, you also communicate with your users through RSS feeds, a blog, email newsletters, and occasional email “blast” updates.  Given the popularity of feed readers, the timeliness and accessibility of blogs, and the still-impressive response rate of legitimate email alerts, taking one-dimensional approach to promotions can mean missing out on significant opportunities to reach users… and leaving significant cash on the table.

5.  Share your expert opinion: Many B2B web site publishers have become trusted sources of information about topics relating to their field of expertise.  Visitors may frequent your site to get insights on industry trends, read the opinions of the site editors, experts or other community members, and keep abreast of happenings in their profession.

6.  Cover all your bases: Consider implementing Google AdSense, Linkshare, the Amazon associates program, or other affiliate-style networks for additional revenue on your site.

Whether your site is an established web presence or just building its online credentials, the key to maximizing your revenue potential is to make the most of the traffic you have.  If you can offer your site visitors revenue-generating content that’s just as valuable and appealing as your primary site content, your revenues will grow along with your traffic.

If you’re in the Dallas area, come check out John Pozazides of One Man’s Blog and founder of Woopra, real-time web site analytics!!!, tomorrow at the Wordpress meetup.  He’ll be talking in greater depth about how to monetize your blog and web site!

Creating a business blog that increases your search engine visibility, establishes your credibility, generates quality leads and helps you grow your business.  Yet, too many small businesses and non-profits jump into blogging without a plan in place.  This mistake leads to lots of missteps, false starts and costly errors.  Here are final five of the 10 biggest mistakes small business bloggers make… and how you can avoid them.

6.  They don’t leave comments at other blogs: Leaving intelligent comments on other blogs serves many purposes.  It shows that you’re an active, contributing member of the community.  It generates good will with the blogger in question, and it creates a link back to your own blog.  Why does the link back matter?  If you’ve said something of value, visitors to these blogs will follow the link back to your blog to see what other brilliant insights you might have.  WHAT TO DO:   Leave intelligent, appropriate comments on the blogs you read.  However, if your comment comes across as a crass attempt to lure new prospects to your blog, expect that these other bloggers will delete your comment, and might even ban you from commenting again.

7.  They don’t engage their community: Personally, I don’t believe that comments reflect how effective a blog is.  Certain blogs and topics are just going to attract more feedback than other.  Want comments?  Start a political blog or take a stand on a controversial issue.  However, when people leave comments on your blog, they’re most often responding to something you wrote, or an experience they had with your company.  They’ve taken time out of their day to add to the conversation on your blog.  WHAT TO DO:   When someone leaves a comment on your blog, do your best to follow up with them by answering their question or addressing their issue.  You may also want to email a copy of your response directly to them, in case they don’t revisit that post.

8.  They make it difficult to subscribe: There are two kinds of readers at your blog: those who discover it via a search engine of a link, and your subscribers.  Once someone has subscribed to your blog via RSS or email, your content is delivered to them automatically.  Almost all blogging platforms offer RSS feeds right out of the box, and many also allow your readers to subscribe to the feed via email, delivering each post into their inbox.  However, some small business bloggers don’t enable these tools, or make them difficult to find on the home page.  WHAT TO DO:   If your platform doesn’t offer RSS and/or email options, or if you want more control over your feeds, you can use a third party service like Feedblitz or Feedburner.  Both of these services offer RSS feeds, email feeds, tracking tools and more.  In addition, you’ll want to place your subscription options “above the fold” on your blog, making them easy to find.

9.  They don’t take advantage of social media: A blog is not an island.  It’s part of your social media activity.  These days, sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon can deliver substantial targeted traffic to your blog.  Ignore this at your own risk.  WHAT TO DO:   Encourage your readers to share your content on a wide variety of social media platforms with a tool like ShareThis.  Although it might seem redundant if you already have ShareThis enabled, you can also get great results from a “TwitThis” or the “Retweet This” button that appears at the top of blog posts encouraging people on Twitter to tweet a link to your post.  Of course, you don’t need to wait for others to promote your post.  However, people who only submit their own work usually don’t see the same level of results as people who also promote the work of others.  If you are going to use StumbleUpon or a similar tool, try and promote other people’s work in an 80/20 ratio to your own.  Trust me on this one…

10.  They measure the wrong things: They focus on how many comments they receive, how many “followers” they have, or how many people have subscribed to their blog.  Comments aren’t customers, and subscribers aren’t sales.  Measure what matters… what moves the bank account.  WHAT TO DO:  Review your business goals, then take a look at your traffic reports to determine if you’re achieving your goals.  If you wanted to increase your search engine traffic, your analytics will show that.  If you wanted to double the number of qualified leads to your web site, your analytics can show you that as well.

Final Bonus: They’re not committed to the blog’s success:   Too many entrepreneurs are excited about the idea of a blog, but aren’t willing to put the work into it that it requires.  Or, they start strong, but after a few months with little to show for it, they cut back on their blogging.  Few blogs are successful in the first six months.  They take time and commitment to the process.  WHAT TO DO:  Budget 3 hours a week to blog for a minimum of six months.  In that time, you should be able to generate at least three posts a week, and leave comments on a handful of related blogs to drive traffic back to your blog.  Don’t use the excuse that you don’t have time.  One of the great things about blogging is that it can be done at off hours.  Fit in some time on the weekends and when the kids are in bed.  Sacrifice a night of TV each week, or eat lunch at your desk and create another post.  It’s your business after all.  Probably, your blog is the most versatile tool in your web marketing toolbox.  It powers both your search engine optimization and acts as your social media hub.

By avoiding these Top 10 11 Marketing Mistakes, and by committing time and resources to your blog, you’ll increase your online visibility, drive more qualified leads to your web site, and help convert those leads into real business.