1:30 — SocialMedia.org’s Kurt Vanderah introduces Newell Rubbermaid‘s VP of E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Bert DuMars.
1:31 — Bert begins by talking about MimioConnect, a branded community for educators to learn how to use their Mimio product.
1:33 — Bert: Mimio is a smart whiteboard for the educational marketplace, featuring teaching systems, distance learning, etc. It’s designed to help teachers teach.
1:34 — The big problem is that teachers are given little or no training on using the new whiteboard technology. In 2005, a distributor created the community with 5000 people in New Zealand. Teachers were helping each other use the products to their full potential and to teach students better. Newell Rubbermaid decided to hire the community manager from New Zealand and move him to the US.
1:35 — They also hired the super users in the community to start with as part-time contractors, and eventually hired some of the best as full-time employees.
1:37 — Bert: For us, the technology running the community is not as significant as getting participation. So the technology running this community is not a major issue.
1:38 — Bert: Today, the membership of the private community is 95,000 with high engagement and participation.
1:39 — Bert shared some of their biggest lessons learned from the program:
- Engaging the most influential advocates and actually bringing them into the team which runs the community can make the difference between success and failure.
- Embrace video tutorials, as they make learning to use the product easier than any other technology.
- To be a successful branded community, it must solve a customer’s problem.
- The best ideas to grow the community come from community members.
- Identify the strongest advocates and leverage them, and sometimes hire them.
1:44 — Bert says that by paying attention and listening to your community, you’ll find:
- New Product ideas
- New ways to use products
- Quickly identify product problems
1:50 — Bert says that Newell Rubbermaid feels that in the BtoB space, private communities will grow in importance and effectiveness.
Q&A
Q: Does the community know that you have paid advocates?
A: Yes, we are sure that everyone knows that we have hired someone as an advocate.
Q: What are some of the challenges from going from 5,000 to 95,000 people?
A: As it is scaling, you need to make sure the technology is running fast, to ensure the quality of the online experience is still very high. They plan to offer more features in the future.
Q: Does this help with SEO and awareness?
A: The goal of the community is to keep the focus tight on the product line and not expand the focus.
Q: How do you monetize the community, does it move the needle for sales?
A: In the education market, word of mouth is very important because the customers are advocating for us whenever they gather together.
Q: Are you doing any gamification in the community?
A: No, not today — but possibly in the future.
Q: What is the ROI of the community?
A: Pinning down the ROI is very difficult as with most social media channels. But we believe that 95,000 advocates who find better ways to use the products and be more effective in their jobs are happy with us.
- Blog by Sprinklr’s Chris Kieff, reprinted with permission from blogwell.
11
Nov 11
NCR Corporation: Blogs: Changing the Perception from Risk to Reward — Live from BlogWell
2:10 — SocialMedia.org’s Erin McDaniel introduces NCR Corporation‘s Director of Design, Digital, & Events, Colleen Swanger.
2:11 — Colleen opens by asking who works with BtoB companies, and most of the audience raises their hands.
2:12 — Colleen: Getting a blog program started in a non-marketing, risk averse organization can be a challenge. But if you’re a Fortune 500 company and you’re not using blogs to talk with your customers, you are missing out.
2:13 — Colleen: Not everyone wants to get their information from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. A sizable portion of the audience wants to get it from blogs because it’s a familiar format.
2:14 — Colleen describes how important listening is to a social media program.
2:15 — Colleen shares how valuable blogging can be through announcing events, linking to registration, building lead gen lists, and sharing case studies — and to showcase thought leadership and innovation. She also talks about how it can support inbound marketing efforts and SEO.
2:16 — Colleen: But for every reason to blog, there is a reason why you shouldn’t do it: No resources, no time, nobody reads blogs, no management support, long approval processes, or too much risk.
2:17 — Collen says that while those are excellent points, if every other marketing effort doesn’t need senior management sign off, why does a blog?
2:18 — Colleen addresses the common hesitations to launching a blog:
2:25 — Colleen: How did we do it? We found someone in senior management who was willing to take responsibility and champion the process.
2:26 — Colleen describes their goals: Regular posting schedule, increase touches over time, list building. Colleen says their blog also sparked the jealousy factor with other departments in the organization. When the first blog launched, many other departments wanted one quickly.
2:27 — Colleen says they avoided the ROI discussion by saying that it’s an experimental program.
2:28 — Colleen says it took longer to launch than anticipated, but that they’ve now been up for a couple of months. They’re promoting it through their internal sales force, on their website, and via Facebook and Twitter. For measurement, they’re looking at frequency of posts, comments and shares, internal feedback, and visitor metrics.
2:29 — Colleen shares her lessons learned:
2:30 — Colleen closes by saying it doesn’t require a big launch with bells and whistles. You can use a soft launch that helps to get it going smoothly.
Q&A
Q: Do you use names, and well-known people?
A: No, we post today anonymously. Due to the regulated nature of financial services, we didn’t want to try with a big name.
Q: Why did blogs come last after Facebook and Twitter?
A: Some people felt that Twitter and Facebook were good for PR so they were easier to start. Blogging felt more risky to the organization so it was more difficult to get started.
Q: Are you doing interactive, multimedia, video, images etc.?
A: We are working to start and want to add more video, images etc. We’re hearing from customers who want to see more of the “behind the scenes” stuff from the organization.
Q: Do you have plans to expand the blog to open it up to more employees and other topics beyond the initial launch of product-centric topics?
A: Yes absolutely, we’re going to let the audience take us where they want us to go.
Q: How do you moderate questions and comments in a regulated industry?
A: We have a communications tree with SME’s that we can get answers to any questions which are challenging in the regulated area.
Q: How do you determine what your blog readers want to know?
A: We use other channels like, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and ask questions there to find out what people want to know. We also crowdsource internally for content ideas.
Q: What types of technology do you use?
A: We use WordPress, Lithium, and CoTweet.
- Blog by Sprinklr’s Chris Kieff, reprinted with permission from blogwell.