At its most basic level, an online community is an invitation-only, private-access website for conducting research with a carefully selected target audience. Put another way, it’s like having a small, private social network just for research.

Businesses are increasingly turning to customer feedback and specifically online communities to generate insights, but insights don’t just appear (though we often wish they did). Successful online communities are the result of a carefully executed strategy, solid design and patient nurturing. Though they may seem like a lot of work, the benefits an online community can bring to your brand make the efforts worthwhile.

Here are some important tips that we have used over the years to get closer to the heart of true insights in online communities:

1. Start with experiences: We all know the drawbacks of reported behavior, but having people describe their experiences in free flowing ways is a great technique to spot ideas and challenges. Think about semi-ethnographic ways for consumers to tell you about their last experience with your product through online diaries, journals and photo exercises.
2. Don’t let the garbage in: Make sure you are focusing on the right issues for your business. Ask questions and introduce topics that really matter. If you don’t know why you are asking a question, then don’t ask.
3. Give people room to breathe: Don’t overburden your community with too many focused research tasks. Instead, prompt them with softer content (e.g. articles, tips/advice) to solicit more undirected feedback and user generated content that will lead to insights. Avoid tedious and repetitive surveys. Just because you have a continuous relationship with your community members doesn’t mean you should ask them the same questions over and over again.
4. Take a step back: Regularly look at themes and ideas that emerge across the broader community rather than just focusing on feedback for individual issues or activities. Take the time to connect the dots.
5. Say, “so what”: Focus on implications. When reviewing feedback, always ask “so, what” does this mean for my business?

Of course, this list is not exhaustive. I would love to hear about any additional tips you have for generating insights in your communities. What would you add to the list?

Image credit: Chrisjbarker

In the beginning, there were products and services, and some were good. Fewer became trusted brands, but those that did enjoyed unquestioned loyalty supported by a simple yet effective marketing engines built to reach people in mass quantity. The formula worked for decades. An empire was built on the shoulders of Madison Avenue and expanded globally. It is an empire, which still exists today, though arguably it’s a diminished version of its former self.

More recently, technology has had it’s own evolutionary process which it’s still going through. Well over a decade ago, when large organizations developed and updated their complex Web properties, the most popular and rigorous process one could follow in development was referred to as “Waterfall”.  Think of this as a descending, linear staircase where one step of the process was completed in full before moving on the next. The methodology was rigorous, but also left little room for tweaking, testing, adapting and improving along the way.

Responsive Design
Today, digital design and development is often done leveraging the “agile” method of development, which favors smaller, cyclical bursts of development and rapid testing. Start-ups favor this approach as well building not only their tech products but also their business models in a way, which resembles more of an agile philosophy vs. a rigid, sequential approach. Even “large” start-ups like Facebook demonstrate this in how they roll out enhancements to their global platform, often making the changes incrementally, rolling them out with select users and then adjusting based off the data they analyze. Google often works this was as well. If you were to undertake designing and building a digital property today—you would also have to ensure that it would perform across multiple platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile). A popular methodology for developing this way is called “responsive design”—a technique, which leverages code that results in a shape shifting design which auto-magically fits the medium it, is being interacted with in.

Most Marketing Remains Linear And Unresponsive
Despite the pervasive nature of all manifestations of digital, including social and mobile, much of the marketing emphasis remains dedicated to reaching people in mass, following a tried and true formula for advertising designed to build off consumer insights and craft compelling messages which could be distributed across a myriad of channels (including digital). The approach is designed for the broadcast industrial machine including print, radio and television, which, despite rumors of its demise is likely to stay with us for some time. The problem it poses however is that it is an approach that much like its counterpart in tech development, (Waterfall) is neither nimble nor flexible and isn’t built for rapid change nor does it adapt well beyond the dominant media it was designed for.

“Content Marketing” Is Disrupting Modern Day Brand Building
CMOs, chief digital officers and brand managers across many organizations are currently grappling with the notion of content used in the context of marketing—inherently they understand that their customers value content, consume it, create it, and share it—and they want in on the action. They also understand that this type of content isn’t often the traditional campaigns they execute for broadcast so they face a dilemma:

What content do consumers value most?

How do they find it?

What gets individuals sharing content with peers?

How does content scale, reaching the right audience at the right time?

How do brands insert themselves into the content ecosystem in ways that bring value back to the brand?

Responsive Marketing
The solution to the content question lies somewhere between acknowledging that a brand must support both a traditional, linear marketing model in addition to a newer, cyclical construct which is constantly in tune with the current environment and operates in consolidated time frames. Responsive marketing sits at the core of the content evolution that many companies find themselves trying to navigate as they pull together newsrooms,command centers and media operations which are designed to help brands act more like publishers. All of these can be effective in treating the symptoms a brand may exhibit if they possess only competencies in linear forms of marketing, but they do not address the root issue—deconstructing a marketing machine which places the majority of resources on mass marketing will ensure it never gains proficiency in alternate forms of content and media.

A more holistic approach is needed.

The Acquisition & Engagement Funnel
Marketing is by design measurable, and most marketers are trained to value metrics, which can be at minimum tied to awareness and ideally connected to sales and loyalty. This is where the relationship between responsive content marketing and business objectives must be reconciled—what good is content if it is not connected to commerce? Content should be a vehicle, which “fills the marketing funnel” and should be leveraged as the currency, which entices the target to share, thus creating further awareness for the brand, which can lead to bringing others into the funnel. It is the consumption of content via social, web and mobile which fuels the acquisition and engagement funnel—the flow works as follows:

Shared And Found Content Drives Acquisition
Content which is optimized and valuable inevitably finds its target, whether through paid, owned, earned or shared means (usually it’s a combination of all). When content is found valuable, it often leads to an “acquisition” whether it via e-mail or a subscription to a brand’s social property. The “consumer” in this construct demonstrates intent to at minimum engage with the brand. 

Acquisition Drives Engagement
Once a consumer, customer or prospect is acquired, a brand can further engage via content, messages, and through “micro-interactions” over time. Each like, comment, or share on Facebook for example is a micro-interaction, which solidifies the relationship and loyalty between the brand and the consumer.

Loyalty Creates Awareness
Customers “acquired” via social and digital means are now available for targeted content marketing tactics which can be especially effective via paid enhancements whether that be through social or search. In the case of social—shared content leads to further awareness using the networks of peers as a distribution ecosystem while organically raising its profile in organic search results.

Content As Currency: The Four Key Archetypes
For content to be successfully leveraged at the open end of the marketing funnel, brands must understand the full landscape of content types and the relationships they have with their core paid, earned and owned channels. The four archetypes are:

Curated:
A brand can curate content from infinite digital sources and provide value by deriving signal from noise. A popular tactic connected to curating is aggregating it in a single destination for easy access.

Co-created:
Content can be co-created amongst consumers via collaboration or through the consumer and the brand itself. Brands, which encourage consumers to co-create content with it, invite them to participate but cannot often control how consumers will want to co-create.

Original:
Original content is produced by the brand, specifically for its target audience and is owned by the brand. Original content can take many forms and production value and be planned in advance or spontaneously in response to emerging trends and events.

Consumer generated:
Consumer or user generated content is often produced by non-professionals and May or may not include references to the brand. It’s often in highest quantity but also lowest quality.

Building & Maintaining A Responsive Content Marketing Machine
In order to build a content machine for a brand or business, the leadership behind it must buy into the premise that content is a viable brand building tool. This sets the stage for an evolution of roles within the organization—brand managers must at minimum be literate in community management, editorial and digital analytics. Organizations internally should re-evaluate their digital centers of excellence and take stock of partners to ensure that content strategy and execution exists as part of the mix. This foundational work is core to then constructing a an “always ready” content machine, which operates in a continual, cyclical fashion as part marketing, part editorial operation as illustrated above.

Conclusion: Marketers Must Evolve Beyond The Linear
Unlike software or web development, marketers have had less pressure to overhaul their approach despite signs that media consumption is highly fragmented, shifting to digital and increasingly more difficult to track. As more pressure is applied to the CMO to produce results for the organization; it is more than tempting to rely on the mass metrics of the past to demonstrate that reach is being achieved at scale. This undermines the need for marketing to undergo it’s own transformation where shifts in resources go into building up direct media channels (social or owned media) and potentially reaching more targeted audiences who may be inclined to share a brand’s content with their peer networks. An agile and adaptive mentality is badly needed in the marketing arm of organizations—one that is less dependent on historical data to make decisions and is inclined to parse data inputs as they come in daily.
The content conundrum represent the tip of the iceberg for the marketing discipline but must be dealt with as proof mounts that content is valued while overt advertising and marketing is something to be filtered out. Brands will learn to be more flexible, in tune with rapidly changing sentiment and responsive in their approach to messaging engagement and telling their stories across a de-centralized and splintered media landscape.

YouTube Finally Makes Some Videos ‘Shoppable’

Google is beginning to roll out a new functionality on a limited basis: the ability for brands to make products ‘shoppable’ in YouTube videos. Currently only Unilever*, a Google client, has the feature and is using it for their Tresemmé brand. With this update, viewers can click on the products which will lead to details and several retailers to purchase from. Google does not take a cut from the sales pushed from this feature, and the functionality is not available on embedded videos.

Lowe’s Embraces Six-Second Vine Videos for Spring Campaign

A number of brands have capitalized on the launch of Vine, unveiling movie previews and product teasers in tandem with more traditional advertisements. Lowes’ spring campaign, however, may have unlocked the key to making the platform truly useful for its consumers. The retailer recently released a dozen videos that offer simple home improvement tips, including how to remove stripped screws and rust from knives. Vine provides an easily digestible and sharable vehicle for this campaign.

Updated Google Maps

Google recently unveiled a new, more visually interactive look for Google Maps. Search results now highlight businesses in the area reviewed by friends, along with the most popular businesses, and users can click on a location to pull up an “info card” with more details. In addition to these changes, Maps now learns users’ preferences as they search for places, save locations and write reviews, and makes recommendations tailored to these preferences. Ultimately, these updates make the local search experience increasingly personalized.

Alt-J to Premiere New Mobile Footage App at London Gig

On Thursday, the band Alt-J introduced an innovative mobile app with the likely intent of discouraging concert attendees from recording shows on their phones. The app, named Soundhalo, allows users to download MP4 videos and songs to their mobiles shortly after they are performed live. Soundhalo is currently available only on Android devices, but it is expected that an iOS version will be rolled out over the upcoming months.

Google+ Completely Redesigned, Now Automatically Enhances Photos and Highlights Your Best Shots

Google+ has released a new layout redesign, making the platform more user-friendly and interactive. A main focus of the redesign includes hashtags, and Google+ will now automatically scan user updates to add relevant links and auto-tag uploaded photos. Another key new feature is “Auto Enhance,” a suite of photo features that will automatically analyze and apply tweaks to uploaded photos – adjusting brightness, noise reduction, saturation, color correction and more.

Image credit: Amy The Nurse

*Unilever is an Edelman client.

For television networks, trying to attract a Millennial audience is not a surprising move. The Millennial generation, defined as those between the ages of 18 and 33, is now the largest on the planet. But launching new TV channels to reach them may seem counter-intuitive. Some studies say that television is a dying medium as habits shift to newer forms of entertainment, such as social media or YouTube. But the fact is that Millennials are still watching television in great numbers. According to Pew Research, nearly six in 10 Millennials watch at least one hour of television every day. The real shift is HOW they consume television. A 2013 eMarketer study found that 106 million Americans, or one in three Americans, watched TV online. That number is expected to grow to 145 million in the next four years and the trend is led by those ages 18-34. In 2010 a survey of college freshman found 87 percent said they prefer watching TV and movies online rather than subscribing to a cable or satellite dish service. Some television networks realize this shift and are evolving to better engage them.

This Fall, two new television channels will launch that target the Millennial generation. The first new channel, called Pivot, will feature “entertainment that inspires social change” and will include a broad range of shows from comedies to documentaries. Pivot also acquired the highly acclaimed series “Friday Night Lights.” The second new TV channel is called FXX, and is a spin-off from the FX network. The FXX channel will include a mix of re-runs, including shows like “Parks and Recreation,” and also include new original content, focusing on comedies, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” which will move over from the FX channel.

What both new channels have in common is that they are built in a way that acknowledges how Millennials want to view television – online and on-the-go. Both channels will features their shows as a traditional television channel, but their focus will be on content viewable online and offering an app that allows for live-stream or on-demand content via smartphones and tablets.

These two channels are reacting to a new reality in entertainment. Passive television viewing is a thing of the past for the newer generations. Millennials want to view their favorite shows on their mobile devices, and they are using several types of media at the same time to interact with the content they view. The challenge for marketers today is to create content they want to view, but equally important is to make it viewable in the right places and to make it interactive. These two new TV channels represent what most television will look like in the not-too-distant future.

Alex Abraham is a senior vice president at Edelman and the director of the 8095® Millennial Insights Group. Follow him on Twitter @alexbabraham.

Name: Kyle Brown

Image credit: detsang

Multi-Social Network Adventure Primes Pistol Annies Fans For New Album

Leading up to the release of their upcoming album, country trio Pistol Annies led fans through a month-long, multi-platform interactive social experience. “The Great Annies Adventure” campaign began with a digital comic book, in which a rival band stole the women’s concert gear, music and merchandise. Fans then followed clues across social channels to reveal prizes such as fan gear and tickets. Ultimately, the band’s site garnered 20% repeat viewership, with an average of two minutes and 48 seconds per visit.

YouTube to Launch Subscription Plan for Some Channels

In an effort to raise revenue from sources other than advertising and generate videos with higher production value, YouTube will begin charging users about $2 per month to access premium content. Though YouTube is recognized for user generated content, videos on the platform have become increasingly refined by professional producers over the years. This update is important for brands to consider when developing their YouTube strategy as more users turn to online video over television.

Facebook Testing User-Added Emoticons in Status Updates

Facebook is rolling out support for emoji on desktop and mobile. Emoji emoticons were previously only available for Facebook Messenger, but now users will be able to use them in check-ins, status updates, photo captions and more. This feature appears to be geared towards gaining favorability with users in Japan, where emoji was originally developed because of its history with pictorial communication. After usage increased by more than 200% last year, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg called Japan “a really important market” and confirmed that Facebook would increase emphasis on the country.

You Probably Noticed that LinkedIn Looks a Little Different Today
This week LinkedIn Today, the section of the professional networking site that aggregates original content from contributors, received a major redesign that allows users to subscribe to new “Channels” focusing on specific topics. The update lives under the “News” tab on LinkedIn’s homepage and uses both an automated algorithm and human editors to show users stories that they’re likely to be interested in.

Growing ‘App’etite for Mobile Health

How many times have you tried to look up health symptoms or attempted to self-diagnose yourself via your smartphone? There are an estimated 40K mobile health apps that provide access are changing how users control their personal health information. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is stepping in to finalize regulatory guidelines that will have a significant impact on mobile health apps moving forward.

LinkedIn is an Edelman client.

Image credit: zoomar

The importance of visual elements in social media is a new constant in order to grab a user’s attention, but how we engage with our ears is just being discovered.  The launch of mobile apps such as Twitter #Music and musicians themselves embracing social media, presents a new role music can play on social media that goes beyond purely listening.

Twitter #Music leverages the most popular tracks users are sharing across Twitter, via apps such as Spotify, and making them more discoverable. Twitter’s focus on the listening aspect, by making the song discoveries available for instant listening, provides an avenue for brands to build upon the other aspect of music, which is a deeper connection with the overall music experience.

Pinterest

When Alicia Keys arrived to the world of Pinterest, she focused on the platform’s inherent ability to inspire. She created individual boards for all of her songs that visually described the meaning behind the song. While this form of engagement creates a more intimate connection with an artist, the aspect of music itself has carved a place for itself on Pinterest.  Through quotes of song lyrics, YouTube links, and even images that remind users of their youth, a brand that can connect the overall feeling music creates with their message is one that will build advocates and not just followers.

Google +

Google+ Hangouts bring together friends and families regardless of where they are. However, from a brand perspective, it can bring individuals into your living room that you would never have had the opportunity to meet. ModCloth recently partnered with Neyla of The Lumineers to host a Google+ Hangout discussing music festival fashion. As a result, ModCloth leveraged a musical influencer to extend their point of view in the world of fashion and social media.

Instagram

Similar to how music can capture the simple moments an individual is feeling, Instagram captures the simple moments in people’s lives. Artists have already caught wind of this trend and have started to use Instagram to promote album releases. The band Dawes recently released a new album with a song titled “From a Window Seat” and created a full site to capture user generated images of an individual’s view from a window seat. Rather than pushing their own message in promotion of the song, they encouraged users to share their own stories, resulting in a more unique and diverse experience of the community.  Brands can follow suit on this trend by thinking less about how they want to tell their story, and placing more focus on how their fans are telling and living it.

How else can brands use music and social media to share their stories?

Image credit: lambdachialpha

China’s 12^th National People’s Congress (NPC) officially came to a close on March 17th, marking the end of a long transition of power that had first started in October with the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

While the NPC captured media headlines in China and around the world, it also played out in a significant way on social media.

Just hours after the newly-elected Premier Li Keqiang delivered his first press conference, “Meet China’s New Premier” became a top trending topic on Weibo – China’s popular microblogging website (considered a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook). 14,000 ‘tweets’ on Weibo were directly related to the press conference, with almost half tweeted during the week leading up to it and another half posted within the first 24 hours afterwards.

Meanwhile, the topic of China’s “Two Sessions” (the common name for the two week-long political meetings) ranked 19^th out of 100 top topics for the week, with nearly 5.3 million comments tweeted or re-tweeted during the week leading up to the NPC.

China’s online landscape has long been one of the fastest-growing in the world, with more than 564 million internet users, 309 million microblog (Weibo) users and 420 million mobile web users.

In the context of China’s population, this means nearly half of all Chinese citizens (42 percent) are going online for something, and nearly 55 percent of these “netizens” are actively using microblog sites like Weibo.

Weibo has since become one of the richest sources of public discussion around current events, breaking news and top trends – basically, anything from crazy cat videos to critiques of China’s environmental policies.

The power of social media is not lost on China’s government – not only has it gotten more involved in monitoring online activity (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have all been blocked since 2009), it has increasingly taken to Weibo, with an estimated 60,000 government-related Weibo accounts contributing to Weibo’s daily average of 86 million posts.

China’s authoritative State Council recently launched its first Weibo account to announce new rules and regulations, and currently has more than one million followers – though it does not interact with fans or allow questions and comments.

Perhaps the most interesting new Weibo accounts have come in the form of “fan” sites dedicated to China’s leading politicians: the “Learning from Xi Fan Club” (学习粉丝团) was created just days into Xi Jinping’s role as CPC General Secretary and is dedicated to tracking Xi’s public appearances, racking up more than 1.3 million fans to-date.

Meanwhile, an account devoted to Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan, the “Guo Mu (‘national mother’) Fan Club,” recently reached almost 6,000 followers before being mysteriously shut down at the end of March.

So what does this tell us? As an increasingly engaged generation of Chinese citizens continues to move between online and offline sources, it’s clear the government must find new ways to maintain its relevance and to participate in the conversation.

And while we might not see Xi Jinping engaging in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (a la Obama) any time soon, it’s safe to say China’s government will not ignore the power of social media platforms like Weibo.

I predict the government will increase its online engagement and monitoring (censorship) even more as China’s new leaders promote their “China Dream” strategy. And if we’re lucky, we may even see a few more fan sites pop up?

Marissa Bushe is a Global Fellow for Edelman in Beijing, China, and is in her third year with Edelman. You can also follow her on Twitter: @Mbushe