W³ Awards Recognize DigiKnow

by King Hill November 10, 2008

Received a nice piece of email recently from the W³ Awards recognizing DigiKnow for its work for Ohio Tourism Division. Seems our redesign of DiscoverOhio.com  picked up a Silver Award in the international competition.

The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the Web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning Websites, Web Video and Online Marketing programs. 

The W³ Awards is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms.

Online Communities: Build, Buy or Steal

by Scott Chapin October 31, 2008

Everyone is clamoring to build an online community today.  Not only is it the marketing technique of the year, it is also a very effective way to  strengthen your products and grow your business.  The question is where do you start, how do you grow and what do you do with your critical mass once you have it.  As the title of this post implies, there are a many ways to grow your community, some more appropriate than others.

This whole post was triggered by the recent events by SpeedDate.com.  If you haven't heard (or had it happen to you), SpeedDate has been buying Facebook applications from various developers over the past few months and "stealing" their members over to SpeedDate.  Last week, they bought and took over an app called Oregon Trail (You remember, the game on your Apple II or Commodore 64 where you leading a wagon train across the United States).  To me, this is worse than a traditional bait and switch.  You've signed up for a fun game...reminiscing back to your childhood...and then BAM, you now have a dating application on your profile (and your wife is asking why).  Even though SpeedDate has over 500,000 users, I'll be watching to see if any of this negative press hurts their existing community.

Ok, so we've established that stealing members is just wrong, but what about buying members. This is a little more gray because of the many ways you can "buy" a community member.  If you are thinking about promoting your community though a contest or promotion, be aware of the downsides to this approach.  The majority of your new members are only interested in the prize you are offering, not long term benefits.  That being said, you will get some new members that will stick around, become loyal participants and even brand advocates.  These true gains need to be measured against promotional costs, not the superficial total registration count.

That leaves us with the build option.  Of course this is the best option, but it is the most difficult.  Not only do you need to create an environment that adds value to the member's experience, you need to promote this community and spread the word of your offerings.  I'd recommend starting the promotion process with your own employees.  Hopefully they are your biggest brand advocates and you can use their stature in social networks to start establishing your community.  If you are creating a new site, have your employees link to it from their blogs and network profiles.  If you are creating an area on an existing network, have your employees join in. Using what you have and people you know is a great place to start.

Best practices and techniques will continue to evolve, but being up front and transparent with your potential community members is the best way to create a good reputation and continue to build a strong online brand.

Technorati Tags: best practices, build vs. buy, digiknow, online community, oregon trail, scott chapin, social network, speeddate

Listen, Listen, Listen

by Scott Chapin September 26, 2008

Today a series of events triggered me to share a little bit about one company's ability to serve its customers, rather than just serving itself.  LEGO has been a favorite toy of children for over 50 years.  From their home in Denmark, the little plastic bricks have traveled around the world.  Because of the longevity and popularity of the LEGO bricks, not only are they popular with kids, but they are very popular with adults too.  In fact, in a February 2008 press conference Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp estimated that 20% of Lego sales come from adults.

Today's event was the release of the Castle Advent Calendar and while the product seems interesting, the story is how it came to be released is the real story.  As with many international companies, the products LEGO sells vary by country.  Frequently LEGO will release a product in one location before others and then expand the release.  This calendar set was announced to be Europe-only in early September and the AFOL (Adult Fans of Lego) in the US and elsewhere were distraught that they were missing out. 

In addition to standard ways that fans cry out to a company (blogs, forums, email), fans had another unique channel setup by Lego earlier this year, Ambassadors.  Many brands have official advocates and/or VIP customers, but as with almost everything they do, LEGO went about selecting their advocates in a unique and better way, they let the fans select their “representatives”.   Each of the approximately 10 US fan websites (and many international sites) was able to nominate their slate of ambassadors and in June, LEGO announced the 2008-2009 Lego Ambassadors. 

All of this came together yesterday when LEGO announced that they heard the fans outcry and are releasing the set to North America (sorry rest of the world).  Since LEGO was still resisting a full release of the product, they provided a special product code and phone number for US and Canadian fans via popular LEGO website Brothers Brick. 

So how can you apply this to your business?  Though most of us don't have a fan-base that is dying for our product, we do have customers who want to be heard.  My advice:

1. Build a the best product in your category
2. Establish liaisons selected by the community
3. Listen and react when the community speaks
4. Use the community’s tools to respond back them

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site. You can visit the official LEGO® website at www.LEGO.com.

(On top of listening to fans, Lego is very straight forward in how to use and not use their name, logos and other intellectual property with their Fair Play policy)

Play Well!