SocialMedia Talk

Update: Forget to include link to my post from yesterday on Doing Social Media Right.

Woke up this morning to a blanket of snow here in North Carolina. As I warmed myself with some coffee I did a little web perusing and ran across a great series of articles by Mark Miller around a SharePoint community event he helped organize and drive lately (The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: Set Up for SPSEMEA, The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: Opening the Doors at SPSEMEA, and The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: SPSEMEA Post Mortem). Reading them got me thinking. Here we see a group of enthusiastic people coming together to sponsor a high quality event that has tremendous benefits for my company with no support from my own organization. These kind of community events happen countless times, in countless industries again with little to no corporate support most often because there is no awareness of these events on the part of the organization due to lack of engagement by them. So, coffee cup in hand, here are some of my thoughts around what organizations should be considering and how they should be engaging community groups.

When corporations creating compelling products/services/brands that have a positive effect on peoples personal or professional lives the reaction in the user base can be astounding. Take a look at the fan pages for cars. I was recently checking out the Sharpy blog, my wife is a Sharpy fanatic ;-) , and was amazed at the type of customer enthusiasm present. Lately I have been talking about the role and use of social media in engaging customers. I have talked about dedicated roles, methods of online interaction and presence establishment. What I haven't addressed though is the support of those organic efforts that arise out of support for the brand by the same social media efforts. Case in point is support of SharePoint community based efforts.

Corresponding with the explosive rise in popularity of SharePoint has been a rise in grass roots community efforts around SharePoint. Here in North Carolina alone I am aware of 5, count ‘em 5!, SharePoint user groups. The SharePoint Saturday events, which started as a single one off event where some SharePoint professionals donated their time for a day to reach out to their local community has now grown to a worldwide phenomena (this February they are having their first SharePoint Saturday Iceland!! Would I love to be there!) with top notch experts flying in from all over at no expense to attendees. Just over a week ago we witnessed a new type of community driven event in which web 2.0 technology was utilized to deliver a SharePoint conference, free of charge, to a large number of users across Europe, who may otherwise never have the opportunity to attend a SharePoint conference. Using a combination of a website, Microsoft LiveMeeting, and web based chat, attendees were able to tune in to more than 20 hours of high quality SharePoint content delivered by top notch experts, including 8 MVP’s, remotely. There is a great 3 part series detailing the set up/planning, also what happened during the event, and finally a post mortem of the event) The innovation of an inspired community base can be simply amazing as evidenced by these type of efforts.

This type of groundswell, irrespective of the industry, is just the sort of efforts that should be supported, and engaged by the social media evangelism arm of a organization. Engaging with these groups, supporting their efforts, and ensuring they have access to the latest information, is in the best interests of any organization. The axiom that if you aren’t engaging your users and helping to drive the conversation then you will be invariably the subject of it holds true here. If your product/brand is popular enough to drive community interest then it is popular enough to drive news and reporting, not all of which may be grounded in facts. Engaging and supporting communities ensures that these great efforts have access to facts and helps insulate them from FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that are often driven by a misinformed media seeking a provocative story. Furthermore, and most importantly, by engaging these community resources you develop true relationships with their constituents, who in turn become evangelistic advocates further scaling your organizations social media efforts. The question is how to recognize and reach out to these groups?

Traditional marketing and partner programs are ill equipped to recognize and engage community groundswell groups. Partner relationship staff are already maxed out and have a focus that is much different from that required with community groups. Traditional marketing groups while well intentioned will be viewed dubiously as their efforts are recognized as purely sales oriented. The answer is in leveraging dedicated social media resources. As I have previously mentioned social media evangelists are folks who are passionate about a product/service/brand. They are serving in roles where they are engaging other, building relationships, and by virtue of their engagement and assistance building community… just like community groups! These social media resources are uniquely qualified to engage these community resources, participate in their events, and offer support to help them grow and prosper. They will be welcome in ways that traditional corporate resources never will be as they are seen as trusted resources having a track record of interest in, and concern for, the broader community. Through the creation of an interactive social media website, such as the one detailed here, The evangelists can provide a resource to provide exposure for these groups as well as a way of assisting in the coordination and support of community activities. Featuring, and shout outs to, the great work being done by the community through features such as webisodes should be done to provide validation of the great work being done. The communities engaged by the social media resources should also be supplied with materials, prizes and such to help them with their activities as well as supply them with the latest information. These groups are helping the organization through their activities and because they genuinely care about their fellow enthusiasts. It is only fitting that those within the organization who are tasked with reaching out, who genuinely care about fellow enthusiasts, be empowered to effectively reach out and engage these community resources.

So ask yourself does your organization have the pieces and resources in place to effectively support and engage community efforts taking place around your products/brand/services? If not what are your plans to put those in place? If you do have the pieces in place are you effectively engaged and supporting your community efforts? In his Anatomy of a SharePoint Event series Mark Miller did a great job of breaking down preparation, delivery, and post mortem analysis of that events efforts and effectiveness. This is something every organization should do regularly in evaluating their community focused efforts. Well time for me to sign off and great ready to romp through the snow with my 12 year old daughter. A little bit of “community” outreach and support here at home. ;-)