Connie Bensen

Every Community Manager knows how much effort it takes to grow a young Community and encourage engagement in an established one. Most Communities also include social outposts on channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and possibly LinkedIn depending where customers are at. Participating in and growing this multi-channel presence is more than a full time job. The irony is that we all know that Community building takes at least three to six months before one can start to realize business objectives. We are all in agreement that Community is not a campaign that can be accomplished in a quarter.

How many of you wish that you could have more headcount to grow your social presence? Have you recently mentioned you wish that you could clone yourself?

A couple of months ago I faced this exact dilemma. My community strategy included a long list of ideas, but I did not have the luxury of a dedicated team to get it all done.  This is the challenge that I was struggling with before the holidays. I launched the Social Business Community less than five months ago and I wanted to fast track my vision.

One day it dawned on me that I had the perfect test grounds for an experiment! And the solution became clear. The concept of advocacy programs in customer facing communities is not a new concept. One of my first projects at Dell was to implement the Rockstar program and re-engage the loyal brand advocates in the forums. But what if one created a similar program for staff members?

I am presently training in five Dell team members. They come from various business units and have their own reasons for wanting to volunteer in the @DellSocialBiz Community. Two are from HR, one is from Sales, another is business analyst and the fifth works in social media every day. It’s an exciting next step for the community, for the volunteers and for me to evolve a different framework for advocacy.

They will be using our enterprise tools to grow the social channels, contributing ideas to our editorial board, and assisting with community related tasks and helping organize virtual events. I am segmenting the responsibilities so that each has a focus (and doesn’t get overwhelmed).

You may ask, ‘Why would anyone want to add extra work to their day job?’ What’s in it for them?

I have offered that they will receive the following:

• mentorship to learn social best practices that will augment their career growth and future
• ability to grow their personal presence by representing Dell in the Community and on social channels
• an understanding of the behind the scenes for content marketing, content calendering, SEO best practices, reporting, inbound marketing, etc

I am excited to start this journey with them! Their energy is contagious and I appreciate their willingness to go the extra mile.

Many people are interested in learning to use social for their roles. Have you considered recruiting staff at your company to help with your Community and social channels? What challenges would you have in doing this at your company?

Photograph credit: Woo-Suk Hwang

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Sean McDonald, former Director, Online and Marketing at Dell, about his vision for community. We had a very similar philosophy about the shortcomings of having a community manager or a team of them and how the concept of empowering the organization would be necessary. We agreed that staff across the organization needed to be trained and empowered, but we pondered what that looked like in regard to a culture shift and the huge challenges that presented.

That is the objective of my present day job. I just published my tenth white paper in a series on the ROI of Social Media on the topic of ‘Creating A Social Business Through Listening’. It is a culmination of over two years of direct focus in the social media monitoring industry. My work with Alterian SM2 (formerly Techrigy) has contributed to evolving online listening based on customer needs and industry requirements along with the measurement of value and ROI. So this was indeed a momentous occasion for all I evangelize and represent!

My vision is that every company needs a community strategist to guide the culture shift in a company so that the organization can embrace and leverage social channels in order to meet it’s business objectives. It is only through building community internally that the company can realize the full potential of the social web and build an external community along with realizing all the benefits.

Dell gets this! and they are executing on a massive community building project internally. They have trained 5,000 staff of their 100 k strong. And they are listening to their community (both internally & externally). I see the new listening control center as a statement to their commitment to not only listen to their customers, but to make sure that change happens. As we all know, Listening is the first step and the most imperative!

It was amazing to hear the passion that these people have for socializing Dell and making their brand strong. I was touched to see Michelle Brigman, Social Media Listening & Engagement Operations Sr. Manager, get emotional when talking about what they’re trying to accomplish. I watched her express how they want to provide their customers with the best service in the upcoming seasonal rush when everyone gets harried. They are working as fast as they can to empower their teams company wide to provide the best customer experience possible. Imagine the scope of this project.

In the near future I will be sharing some videos that imparts the efforts and passion of this amazing project that Dell has taken on. Manish Mehta, VP Social Media & Communities, asked me if I thought other companies would be doing this and my response was, “Absolutely! This is the future!”

Thank you to the Social Media team for inviting me to join your celebration of Community Building and Listening. Special thanks to Lisa Grimes for coordinating it. I appreciated the opportunity to be introduced to Michael Dell and shake the hand of a man that is leading such a huge change in the profession and industry that I’ve been pioneering. Congratulations to Dell on making great strides in setting a new organizational standard.

More information from Dell’s perspective can be found on Mashable. And you can read about my experience with Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel:

Dell Takes Listening to a New Level with #DellCAP

What companies do you think are doing a good job in operationalizing social media?

The much anticipated Forrester Wave Report was released today. Jeremiah Owyang has invested much time in gathering, evaluating & reporting on companies that offer community platforms.

I appreciate that the focus was on more than just technology. Building a community requires a strategy combined with an integration of resources (including people!).

… applied over 60% of our weighted criteria based on what our clients tell us they want, a solutions partner that delivers strategy, education, services, community management, analytics and support.

Nine companies were chosen for the Wave Report. They are Jive Software, Telligent Systems, KickApps, Pluck, Awareness, Lithium Technologies, Mzinga, LiveWorld & Leverage Software.

Over the past year I’ve gotten to know people from these companies. How? Many of them are providing great resources.

Lithium has some great whitepapers. And Scott Dodds commented on my blog enough times so that I sought him out in person at Defrag & we had a great chat!

Awareness offers great webinars & whitepapers! Check out their archive of webinars . Dave Carter, CTO has been a great friend & mentor. He gave me insight into the vendor’s side of this process. Robin Hopper is another great resource there.

I met Mzinga folks at the Social Media Strategies & DeFrag conferences. I have their book here. And I met Mike Walsh from Leverage at Social Media Strategies conference too. Lawrence Liu of Telligent & I had a great chat at DeFrag! (His intensity reminded me of Jeremiah’s!). And George Dearing, also from Telligent & I have crossed paths online.

And last but certainly not least, I’ve had the good fortune to get to know Bryan Person, Community Evangelist, for Live World. In my opinion every community platform company should have one – so take note guys! Bryan is doing a great job of defining that role.

Tom Humbarger had asked if these companies are – Walking the “Social Media Walk”.? I spent time outlining all of the ways that these companies are contributing to establishing community best practices. I’m a huge proponent of education & many of these companies are contributing to the conversations in addition to participating on social networking sites.

Thanks to these companies for setting the bar for community building & I look forward to your contributions in 2009!

(I’ll let each company link to their resources in the comments & I’ll put them in the post. Thanks!)

As companies consider how to add a community manager to their repertoire, Nattergalen offers a unique option. I had the opportunity to speak with Marguerite Jussuf, COO & Scott Hammond, VP of Biz Dev’t about their company & philosophy. I was intrigued because I’ve seen them posting in areas where I frequent.

Nattergalen offers community management services. That sounds simple enough, but it brought so many questions to mind. They also offer tech solutions for setting up white label platforms so that they’re branded for the customer & personalized. But it was the people solutions that we spent the most time talking about.

Marguerite & Scott are very excited about their young company & their aspirations. They started it in April 2008 & it’s growing steadily. They offer community planning & the high level skills of ongoing community management. Their customer is able to have the benefit of a community manager without having it as an in-house position. The position is provided on a remote basis but with much planning & support before the implementation of the position. Our conversation came back to the pro’s & con’s of ‘working remotely’ a few times.

I asked them about their philosophy of dealing with communities & I was quite pleased to hear that we share many of the same ideas. Whenever I see ‘services’, I have a concern – what are the standards? We had a nice discussion about standards for this emerging profession. Scott had an excellent point that companies are being really trusting when they allow a community manager to serve as the voice for their brand. It’s an incredible responsibility & requires considerable trust.

The one thing that I wonder about when I read about ‘people services’ is if it’s moderation or providing the full spectrum of services. Nattergalen offers the external role of community building as an additional option – Marketing 2.0 services. In my opinion I think that that’s a key piece to grow the community & be a part of the extended community. It’s a time for the community manager to connect with others in the niche, share ideas, learn and promote the brand & community. I think that companies should definitely consider it a necessity.

It was great to hear Scott & Marguerite’s passion in regard to community building & for providing exceptional service to their customers. I look forward to watching their company grow!

For further reading, I have specific information on the community manager role.

What questions do you have for Marguerite & Scott? I’m sure that they’ll be glad to answer them.