Social by Design

Big News! RightNow Technologies Acquires HiveLive (2 Comments)

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:11:25 +0000

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Hello? Is this thing on? ... I know I've gone mostly quiet on the social channels this summer, but today I'm breaking the radio silence to share some exciting news. I'm extremely pleased to announce that HiveLive is joining RightNow Technologies, a leading provider of on demand CRM solutions and an incredibly sharp team out of Bozeman, Montana.

With 1,900 customers worldwide, RightNow is a powerhouse in the industry. And what's driving this acquisition forward is a powerful vision. Combining its market-leading CRM solution with HiveLive's online community platform, RightNow will emerge with the broadest social CRM solution available in the marketplace. Plans are already in motion to bring the two technologies into tight integration. I believe the benefits will be enormous for organizations that are focused on the customer and intent on delivering a great customer experience.

HiveLive's platform and expertise will play key roles in driving the social experience -- engaging customers, enabling peer-to-peer support, increasing loyalty, gathering insights, and driving innovation. These have been our core competencies since our launch in 2007, and I'm happy to say that they'll continue to be an important part of RightNow's value proposition. RightNow knows CRM, and they also know that the social web is fast becoming a major part of the customer experience.

We're looking forward to sharing more details as we can over the next few weeks about this exciting opportunity. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts and comments. And of course, never hesitate to contact me directly.

Hello Adobe Groups! (2 Comments)

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:13:40 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

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Ok, I admit it: I'm one of the 90% of creative professionals who have Adobe Photoshop installed... in fact, I rely on a number of Adobe products every day. And I'm sure that you also rely on an app or technology create by Adobe, or something created with an Adobe product. But, did you know that a million design and dev folks use Flash, that three million use Dreamweaver, and that Adobe's got the number 2 spot on Fortune's Most Admired Companies 2009 list? What a brand. What a community.

As someone with a design background, you can imagine how thrilled I was when we were presented with the opportunity to work with Adobe to help design, launch, and power their international groups community... something that we can finally (as of today's announcement) toot the horn about! Take a look: http://groups.adobe.com

Before going into more detail, you have to meet two of the folks behind Adobe Groups, and with whom we've had the great pleasure of working: Ted Patrick and Rachel Luxemburg. Ted manages developer communites and events, and Rachel is the Community Manager for Groups. And, as you'll see in a moment, they've certainly rolled up their sleeves and pulled off some exciting things when it comes to building community. The back-story: they launched Adobe Groups on HiveLive's LiveConnect Community Platform at their recent MAX conference in San Fancisco. Since then, the community has been growing and picking up steam. Here are a few stats:

Adobe Groups is now over 23,000 members strong with thousands of new folks joining every month
Each user group (think passionate customers organizing by product and by geography) has a dedicated area within the community that supports specific activities such as blogging, discussions, event calendaring, job listing, and more
Each group is launched, configured, and managed by members themselves (decentralized management strategy)... which means that Rachel and team get a lot of help from their own customer base when it comes to keeping the ecosystem living and breathing
Adobe launched the community with around 200 registered groups, and now support over 700 (3x growth overall, 8x growth internationally)

If you'd like to explore more of what they're doing, here are a couple interesting places to start browsing:

Watch Adobe's video introducing Groups
Start at the top: http://groups.adobe.com (you can create an Adobe user account to log in)
Browse groups by geography (e.g., North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, Pacific, India)
Explore how community events and job listings roll up from local listings to the global community level
See how different each group can be... e.g., compare: animotion nm, TAUG in Thailand, and ActionScript 3.cn in China

Hats off to Adobe's commitment to community.

Takeaways from the Executive Panel Conference Call

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:27:39 +0000

blog entry by Tracey Floming

As promised, I wanted to share my thoughts on the AMA Executive Panel Conference Call we sponsored last week through the American Marketing Association. We've successfully used AMA webcasts in the past to reach a large audience, but with this event we wanted to have a more social, community-like conversation with a targeted group of people. The AMA recommended this panel discussion format. It was a bit of a throw-back to the 90s; it was a conference call, not a webcast. The panelists -- John Kembel from HiveLive and Brad Bortner from Forrester -- chatted for roughly 20 minutes about the trends in market research and specifically about the potential of online communities in this space. Then we opened up the call and took questions from the attendees. The questions were queued up the old-fashioned way by an operator on the phone line.

The AMA posted the conversation as a podcast on their site. I'd encourage you to give it a listen and let me know your thoughts.

By all my measures, the event was a success. Brad Bortner is an engaging speaker, and clearly knows his space well. He and John had an easy time talking about using online communities for market research during the opening portion of the event, then we got interesting, relevant questions from the attendees.

There were a few discussion points from the conversation that I'll share. First, Brad talked about how qualitative research has looked pretty similar for the last decade, but that online communities used for market research have the potential to really mix things up. Rather than having to stick to a variable cost model where a brand pays for each research activity they do, online communities "take the lid off" the amount of research a company can do, all at a fixed cost. He also mentioned that some of the most exciting insights he's seen come from online communities are from the unsolicited interactions -- get consumers to have a genuine conversation in adhoc discussion threads, and you never know what "exciting needs" you may uncover. I also thought he did a good job of explaining the difference between some of the existing online technologies, e.g., online chat rooms or focus groups, and true online communities. He offered that an online community serves more than one function -- a true community can do polls, focus groups, panels, forums, etc. -- and there's also much more potential for structure in a community. We agree with both of those points, and feel that breadth of activity types and the ability to structure activities will translate into deeper insights for the market researcher.

Have a listen. I'm interested in your thoughts on the format and on the discussion.

John Kembel and Forrester's Brad Bortner Speaking on Tuesday AMA Teleconference

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:08:31 +0000

blog entry by Tracey Floming

Last year, much of the conversation in the social software marketplace was about the technology behind community -- platforms, features, reporting, etc. Buyers were evaluating community vendors on the merits of the technology itself. But as the market matures, the conversation naturally shifts to business solutions the technology can provide. The state of the economy is only serving to accelerate the shift. No one can afford to deploy technology for technology's sake in this economic environment.

During this maturation process, we've been discussing and pitching four primary business benefits for customer communities: customer loyalty, lead generation, peer-to-peer support, and consumer insights. We're starting to see consumer insights really pick up steam as a leading application for online community. We're not the only ones noticing this trend. Brad Bortner, principal analyst at Forrester Research, coined a term -- Market Research Online Community (MROC) -- to describe this valuable way to use community. So when we decided to host an Executive Conference Call through the American Marketing Association to talk about how community can benefit brand managers, product owners, and market researchers, it seemed natural to ask Brad to join us.

The teleconference is tomorrow (June 9th). We'll start out with a discussion between John Kembel and Brad Bortner about trends in market research and where online communities fit in the mix. Then we'll open it up for Q&A and discussion amongst the attendees. It's not a webcast, it's truly a great big conference call. I'm looking forward to the discussion, and as a marketer, very interested in seeing how the format works. Stay tuned and next week I’ll share some feedback from the event.

General Mills Using Community for Insights and Innovation

Fri, 08 May 2009 20:38:26 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

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In yesterday's AMA webinar (Online Communities + Market Research), I briefly mentioned that General Mills was using community for market research and consumer insights. Given the great questions during and after the webinar (some of which occurred on twitter), I figured I'd provide a little more detail here.

So far, General Mills has launched four HiveLive-powered insights communities running in parallel, for well-known brands such as Nature Valley and Yoplait. Each of these brand communities engages about 50 select members and has its own set of community and research activities (like discussions, idea generation, concept testing, etc.). Researchers, product owners, and participants are actively engaged in daily, continuous conversations. Across the whole environment and in a very short time, there have been about 1,100 posts with nearly 15,000 responses/comments, and counting.

We've been fortunate to work with some fantastic and forward-thinking folks at General Mills on these community projects. I've been amazed at how readily and capably they are rolling up their sleeves, jumping right in, and directly interacting with their brand communities. In an industry where many brand-to-consumer interactions are through blind studies and based on researcher-subject relationships, it's refreshing to see this new face of market research.

When it comes to customer communities, we've always believed that the heart and the start of community is with insights. It's been great to see, first hand, how the ongoing, on-demand, continuous nature of community applies to market research. The potential for communities to impact how big brands engage and understand their customers, and ultimately innovate, is clearly exciting.

Join Us Thursday: Using an Online Community for Market Research

Tue, 05 May 2009 23:46:12 +0000

blog entry by Tracey Floming

We're sponsoring a webcast through the American Marketing Association (AMA) this week called "The Five Reasons to Do Market Research in an Online Community." It's all about how the intersection of online community and market research is creating a dynamic new way for companies to gain consumer insights.

HiveLive CEO John Kembel will be speaking, along with Christopher Wilshire, a founding partner of market research firm Egg Strategy. We'd love to have you join us on Thursday at 1:00 EDT if you're interested. John and Christopher will talk about:

How social networks and online communities are changing market research and are ideal for uncovering deep, disruptive customer insights
Why audience precision is important and how you can make it work in a community
The signs that your business could benefit from an online community
Tips for taking your market research online

To register for the webcast, go to the AMA registration page. Also, follow the conversation on Twitter using #5MROC. Hope you can make it.

Discussing how to develop, nurture, and grow communities at #ims09

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:07:44 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

I'm at the Inbound Marketing Summit in SF today. A fantastic lineup of folks are scheduled to participate.

Second on the schedule this morning (at 9:50a), I'll be on a panel with Chris Brogan, Mike Walsh, Marcus Nelson, and Ross Mayfield. It should be an exciting conversation. Here's the panel summary:

"Discovering the Power of Your Community - One of the benefits of social networking tools is the ability to discover and bring together groups of people around central topics. But, developing a community sounds so difficult. Learn how successful communities are planted, watered and then assisted in growing into powerful, dynamic networks. During this session moderated by Chris Brogan, you will hear from some of the leading community platform developers who are on the bleeding edge of community development, nurturing and growth."

In preparation for the panel, I've been reflecting on some of the most successful techniques our customers have used to help nurture and grow their communities. Here is some of the best practices that came to mind... and what I'll likely refer to this morning:

Design the setting - think beyond just having conversations to also designing the setting in which those conversations will take place (open/closed, directed/undirected, structured/unstructured, etc...). I like to think in terms of activities and experiences rather than simply having conversations.
Selectively engage - grow the community organically. Start by engaging a select audience, then energize them, extend your reach, and repeat. One of the most active communities we power started with 20 people and is now over 7,000 members strong.
Start with understanding - listen and ask. Instead of thinking first about leads or loyalty, start by seeking insights. Better understanding your customers is the best fuel for nurturing your community, and also for driving your business (regardless of whether you're looking to improve product innovation, marketing performance, and/or customer experience)
Actively relate - know your audience. More likely than not, they're not exactly like you. One of our customers went as far as figuring out what TV shows and sports their members watched and engaged accordingly. Actively connecting and relating promotes authentic interactions and the relationships that those interactions are based on.
Act and iterate - Not surprisingly the most successful strategy that we've seen for nurturing and growing community is an attitude of iteration. Some things will work, others won't. Failing early and often is the best way to succeed sooner.
Co-create the community (share ownership) - The more your community members own and shape the community (not just contribute to the conversation), the more participation and loyalty you'll get. We have a customer who has seen this work amazingly well at global scale.
Promote organization crosstalk - One of our customers has regular cross-organizational stand-ups to keep communication open, strategy clear, and actions aligned. Since community connects with most areas of their organization (marketing, product, sales, support, engineering) this has proven invaluable.

I look forward to sharing specific examples of companies/brands doing these things and more this morning. Please comment or DM me (@jkembel) if you have any other ideas or thoughts of topics we could discuss this morning.

Pic of Panel Discussion at the Inbound Marketing Summit (#ims09)

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:13:20 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

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Thanks and credits to kyeung808 (via flickr) for snapping this pic of our panel discussion at the Inbound Marketing Summit. Left to right: Marcus Nelson of UserVoice, Joe Kleinschmidt of Leverage Software, me (HiveLive), and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. For the record, everyone's twitter IDs: @marcusnelson, @joek, @jkembel, @ross.

Panel trivia: If you haven't heard, I'm an identical twin... it turns out that someone else on the panel also has an identical twin brother. What are the chances? Any guesses who?

Fresh community, fresh ideas (2 Comments)

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:21:35 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

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One of HiveLive's customers, BeyeNETWORK, recently launched its new online community. Their community, BeyeCONNECT, got me thinking about an important characteristic of business-purposed networks that we continue to observe.

As companies become more comfortable with the idea of using online communities to connect with their customers, I think they're realizing something critical: They need extensive powers of segmentation. They need to know who their members are and engage them accordingly. They need to create both public (anyone can join) and private (invitation only) groups, so they can run targeted programs, deliver relevant information to the right audience, and allow like-minded members to network. And -- beyond groups -- a lot of folks are establishing whole subcommunities to host different brands or areas of interest.

BeyeCONNECT is a great example of a community exercising these powers of segmentation. As the name implies, BeyeCONNECT is a network of business intelligence (BI) professionals. The new community provides an umbrella platform for the entire network, but allows individual thought leaders and experts maintain their own subcommunities. These subcommunities, or channels, can establish their own followings through member subscriptions. So members get only the information they want, and it's all very focused and targeted. Just as important, members can create their own groups for professional networking.

Though the HiveLive platform has been geared to support this level of segmentation and audience precision from the start, I think we're just beginning to realize its full potential. As we see it, richness and depth continue to be a critical characteristic of business-purposed networks. What do you think?

From Marketing to Climate and Energy Security

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:07:20 +0000

blog entry by John Kembel

What a week so far! On Monday, I had the opportunity to learn how a global brand is reinventing their models of marketing based on community and conversations. This morning, I participated on a panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit with a host of great folks (@chrisbrogan, @marcusnelson, @joek, and @ross) where we discussed developing, nurturing, and growing communities. And tomorrow, I'll have the opportunity to participate in a very different kind of conversation.

I'm off to D.C. to participate in a working session to generate recommendations for the Administration's energy and climate security agenda. The meeting - Mapping U.S. Energy and Climate Security - is being hosted by Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Markle Foundation.

A lot of exciting topics on the docket (innovation, energy diversification, conservation, infrastructure protection) and a lot of interesting attendees from the private sector, NGOs, and government agencies. I've been asked to bring the perspective of community for new models of collaboration and information sharing.

I would value any ideas or thoughts you may have. How might communities and social media be applied in the context of energy and climate security? DM me (@jkembel) or comment below.

And, I'll twitter/blog on how this goes. Ok, plane is pushing back...