So, throughout all this hard work, we’re starting to see somewhat of a pattern emerge. With the various experiments and taste-testing of ingredients, there are certain stages in the process that we’ve identified as being critical to the success. In the spirit if sharing with our own community members, I’ve listed these stages below:

Stage 1: Offer Something Resonant

Note the word ‘resonant’. Not something ‘valuable’ or ‘expensive’. It’s a subtle nuance, but it’s a key differentiator to what will make your community building efforts effective. The point is: if whatever it is that you’re offering your potential community member is not enticing enough, he or she will not join. So, it needs to resonate with them. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you’re targeting executives to sign up as members to a particular group. To initiate your campaign you offer them a cash prize of $10,000. This may seem like a fair amount of money, but the campaign bombs. Why? The problem is that there are too many monetary offerings around rendering your prize meaningless. So you try another tack. This time your message is “Win a holiday worth $10,000″. Again, nobody cares. Why? The offering doesn’t hit home. There are too many competing prizes that renders yours insipid – plus, more than likely, the executives you’re targeting already have a bunch of money.

Now, think about an alternative message: “Win an internet-free, 100% wireless holiday with your partner.” All of a sudden, it stirs interest.  People start signing up, en masse. The difference? You have struck a nerve in the emotional side of your community members – and you’ve not even mentioned how much the holiday is worth. You’re offering the people something that’s relevant and that resonates on an emotional level.

Stage 2: Interact Relentlessly

Now, a whole whack of people are joining your community, but all you can hear is crickets chirping. Believe me, this is more common that you think. There are countless forums, wikis, Twitter profiles, Facebook pages and message boards that are sitting dormant.

Remember this: the yardstick of a successful community is not how many people have joined, but how often those people interact with each other.

How does this happen? Simple. Your community needs a community manager. This is the poor sod who uploads content, news, articles, posts, links, updates, calendar events, images, questions, polls, podcasts and videos. This is the hero/heroine who sits on TweetDeck scrutinizing @replies and mentions relating to your brand. This is the thick-skinned superstar that puts out fires and flags bad behaviour.

A community manager is the person who monitors and stimulates activity within your online community.

There are many ways in which this can happen, depending on the size of your community – but believe me when I say this: your community manager needs to be smart and energetic. We’ve seen it at our own agency: the job of a community manager is something that requires a unique combination of social media nous, general/topical intelligence, street smarts and writing skills.

Whether you’re hiring someone, or you’re managing the community yourself, you need to ensure that there is non-stop interaction. Each day, you should be doing the following three things:

a) using ORM tools to track signals (online conversation threads relating to your brand)
b) identifying interaction opportunities (criticisms, compliments or questions relating to your brand)
b) initiating conversations (updating news, event dates, articles, links or fresh content)

Your community manager is the champion that will  perform the three tasks above, all in the spirit of interacting relentlessly. Without this interaction, your community will whither and fade away.

Stage 3: Repeat

Let’s go back to your executives. The big day comes when you deliver your prize. You announce the winner’s name and triumphantly record that the community has grown seven-fold since your campaign started.

Now what?

The important thing here is that you’ve built up momentum and your members have you top-of-mind. Your challenge is to avoid saturating your audience with irrelevant updates. You need to repeat the process outlined in Stage 1. Once again, the key is to offer something resonant. Bear in mind, this can take many forms: another prize, an award, a certificate, or even information packaged in a unique and valuable way. As long as you ask the question “Is what I’m offering going to resonate with my audience?” and the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

** Note” I’m not talking about setting up a community, e.g. developing an online forum or a Facebook. I’m talking about growing a community.

Its actually quite simple and quick to do. Scan through the “Top Content” section in your analytics and see what the most popular blog posts are on your site. Spot the trends between them and write content related to that. For added effect do the same process with blog aggregators and see what are the most popular posts on the web. Use this as inspiration.

Note: I use the the term “Google” quite freely throughout the talk, when in realty I mean “search engines”. Especially when I talk about the early days before Google even existed:-)

Gavin and Rob from Channel Mobile shared 5 quick tips on how a restaurant could use mobile to make their business more profitable:

1) Decrease your number of no shows by sending them an SMS reminder that they have booked for that evening.

2) On quiet nights push out an sms to your regulars with specials to entice a potential diner.

3) Build your database by enticing clients to leave their cell numbers and opt in to receive special offers – as a loyal customer.

4) Link the sms you send to your clientele to a mobi site which could contain the menu, the specials or just simple directions. It could also be used when they leave the restaurant to gather feedback which can be used to improve customer service.

5) Chasing outstanding invoices via sms has a higher payment rate as they are less likely to be able to ignore it:-)

I’m wondering if we should add ‘Elegance’ to that pledge?

Guy Kawasaki recently interviewed Matt May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, about tips to pursue elegance.

According to Matt, his definition of Elegance:

“Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant. And sometimes the “unusual simplicity” isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what isn’t. At first glance, elegant things seem to be missing something.”

“Unusually simple” and “Surprisingly powerful”. Beautifully brilliant.

capsicum

In the spirit of Heavy Chef, the World Wide Creative team got together on Saturday for a cooking lesson at Capsicum Culinary Studio (a client of World Wide Creative’s). The result: sumptuous food, leisurely eating, great laughs and funny looking marrows.
Witness a bunch of geeks getting ready for some cooking action.

louis

A vital call comes through to Jbg Manager Louis v Rensburg.

marrow

Well, hey there. How YOU doin’ – ?

fred

About 3 secs after this pic, the whole table lurched forward. It wasn’t embarrassing or anything.

wwc chefs

The Tiramisu lady lets rip.

wwc chefs

Miranda teaches us how to chop onions. Yes, there is a right way.

Thanks to the team from Capsicum, especially to Miranda and her crew for doing the impossible: getting a bunch of geeks and marketers to conjure up some pretty amazing food.

More pics here.

Someone called us ‘World Wide Cremators’ yesterday

Let me explain the context. Over the past 6 years or so, since we’ve been in existence, we’ve been called all kind of things. It’s funny how people can get your name wrong – especially when repeating it back to you over the phone. The wierd thing is, people get it wrong almost every time with us. I don’t know what we’re doing wrong, but it seems no one can get our name right.

Trying saying it yourself. ‘World WIde Creative.’ Three simple words. Not that hard to get right… right?

Wrong!

Here are some examples from over the years:

• World War Creators
• Woolberg Creditors
• World Wide Warlords
• Worldwide Creators
• Worldly Wide Credit
• Woolly Widespread Distributors
• World Web Creators
• World Word Creatives
• World of Warcraft
• World Watercoolers

It’s gotten so bad that now, when I repeat our name, I spell our name immediately afterwards, since I know that there’s a 99% chance of the person on the other end getting it wrong.

World Wide Cremators?

Awesome stuff.

Thanks to our three speakers, Bev ‘Feisty’ Merriman, Cath Luckhoff and Kaz Henderson – you guys were great.

The Session started with Bev giving a brief overview of the new tools and how they work. Cath followed with a fascinating insight into the Rocking the Daisies PR campaign, which is a great example of the ‘new style’. Kaz ended off with some examples from Total Media’s stable – giving us some indication of how the bigger agencies (with bigger clients) are making the transition to true offline / online integration within PR strategy.

Thanks again to our sponsors: 24.com, Perderberg and Corona – the beer and wine went down a treat after a sweltering Cape Town afternoon.

speakers

kaz

audience

audience

rapt

crowd

However, an offset of these circumstances is that 2009 has a couple of things we can look forward to – specifically within the digital environment in South Africa…

1. Results. It’s crunch-time and there will be little tolerance for hyped-up buzz-words and flaky delivery. Rather decisions and delivery will focus on things such as ROI, profitability, value, accountability and measurability…i.e. results.
2. Innovation. When forced out of one’s comfort zone, innovation and creativity comes to the for. Companies will re-evaluate their communications internally as well as to their customers - so, expect to see an exciting application of digital channels combined with well thought-out, creative messaging.
3. Relationships. 2009 will see companies, individuals and brands cherish relationships, current and new, more than ever. We can thus look forward to more time being spent on nurturing and growing relationships. The use of appropriate digital strategies and technologies to improve on CRM systems and procedures will thus be prominent this year.
4. More of WWC. World Wide Creative has kicked off this year with some really awesome projects of which we will start unveiling the curtain from March onwards and start shouting from the hilltops!! We have also made a concerted effort to increase our exposure exponentially in 2009 - so, expect to see and hear a lot more of the Heavy Chefs during the next couple of months!

As a side note, you can also view these presentations I found from the guys at TrendsSpotting on ‘Influencers Predictions’ for Online Marketing and Social Media in 2009 – A well summarized piece of work on what key figures on the web are expecting for the new year.

Here’s to a spectacular 2009 to all!