Comundia

Our Linqia team attended the Next09 conference in Hamburg this week and rated this event as amongst the best in Europe. With over 1,300 participants, 100+ speakers and moderators and a host of innovative sponsors and partners, the event exceeded our expectations.

Our CEO, Maria Sipka, presented to a group of more than 200 people on the topic of ‘Collaborative Communities’ focusing on the role of an online community within the sales process/ cycle of a company. One of our key missions is to increase the % of vibrant, active and engaging online communities drawing on the wealth of knowledge and experience our team has accumulated over many years.

Whilst the majority of online communities and groups have been created by individual users on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, XING, LinkedIN and Bebo, companies and brands are also playing and positioning themselves in this powerful social media channel. P & G have built more than 2.000 communities (e.g. Being Girl ) over the past 7 years whilst Nestle has only a handful. Also companies have realised that they cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the power of online communities and groups. The fact is, there are more than 80 million communities and groups online. Most of them existing within 2,000+ Social Networks. 250 million people are registered and active in at least one online community or group.

During the presentation Maria shared the 6 essential ingredients for launching and maintaining a vibrant, active and profitable online community. Her specialty and focus is on monetization and identifying value drivers to ensure the end users experience is a positive one.

Following the presentation, feedback and comments again proved that companies are still in the early days of exploring the possibility of integrating social media and online communities. There’s uncertainty around where to start, what type of resources are needed internally and externally, the cost to setup and manage, which technologies to use and how to deal with the level of transparency the web has lead people to expect.

In their latest study on The Global Online Media Landscape, Nielsen Online analyses current online media trends, looking at audience engagement, video, mobile, e-commerce, online advertising and social media, facing the current context of the economic recession.

Trends
Nielsen shows that social media and especially video sites have reshaped the web and the online advertising market. Active Internet users tend to prefer sites that contain more specialized content, such as video and social networking sites, which are the two fastest-growing categories this year.

Since 2003, the time spent on video sites has increased by over 2.000%, and the number of Americans who visit online video sites like YouTube, Blinkx, Nickelodeon and Hulu has climbed 339% over the same time period. “From February 2008 to February 2009, the viewers of online videos grew 10%, the number of streams grew 41%, the streams per user grew 27% and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71%.”

Implications on TV
Obviously, the question arises if this means that the audience is taken away from watching classic TV. According to the study there is no evidence that the Internet is cannibalizing TV use. In fact, Nielsen studies have shown that high consumers of TV are also high consumers of the Internet: “high-intensity media consumers are high intensity media consumers regardless of media type.”

Implications on Advertising
The current trend towards watching more online video should drive more advertisers towards this medium, as for social media, so Nielsen,  “a monetization formula continues to elude the globe’s brightest marketers.“

“In recent years, the Internet has changed dramatically as people seek more personalized relationships online,” says Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen Online senior vice president of research and analytics. “In particular, time spent on social networks and video sites has increased astronomically. Advertisers are starting to positively re-assess the value of the online experience and create more meaningful relationships with consumers.”

The fact that Nielsen includes online video and social media in one report indicates that the two are merging. Many video sharing sites already offer interactive features like commenting, rating, sharing and to make the video viewing experience more social.

Videos
Watch the Video on the Global Online Landscape: John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, summarizes the highlights of the report
See also: The Next generation end user with online video by John Burbank.

Moderating a special interest group within a Social Network is can be an honourable and fulfilling task but also a very challenging one. Below we’ve created a basic checklist of the do’s and dont’s to consider when moderating groups within social networks.

10 things moderators should NOT do

1. See it as a “pass by” work – it takes time and effort
2. Link yourself with everyone – you won’t be able to handle it
3. Dismiss people without warning them clearly beforehand (a “3 strikes and your out” system is preferable depending on the severity of the violations)
4. Move, edit or delete articles without communicating, with a valid reason, to the thread starter or the members (depending on the importance for the members) – and always take a screen-shot beforehand
5. Accept sexual harassment, defaming, racism or anything else which is clearly criminal
6. Allow directly selling of ‘anything’
7. Spam members with mass messages or dump large quantities of (irrelevant) content
8. Force your views, beliefs, points
9. Appear defensive in your posting style
10. Appear emotional

10 things moderators should DO

1. Clearly state the groups rules, atmosphere and style on your “About this Group” page and the “Welcome-Message”
2. Be there (responsibilities during holidays?) and be reachable (allow the members to send you personal messages)
3. Check your guestbook entries, your contact requests and your private messages regularly (You wouldn’t believe where you can find urgent information!)
4. Be quotable (otherwise the members react negatively)
5. Look after your network – figure out VIP members, link yourself with core connectors – and inspire them to support you
6. Develop knowledge about your group – otherwise people won’t build up trust in you and your role
7. Ensure it’s all about people (passion and emotions), not about profiles or virtual lives
8. Be neutral in conflicts – if you are not, ask another moderator to intervene
9. Use verbal communication (i.e. phone) to solve conflicts especially when dealing with problematic members
10. Allow criticism and discussions about you, set the limits though

A free report from Forum One Networks on how to generate revenue from your community.  The report is available here.

Key Learnings are:

• Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty, over direct revenue.
• The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
• A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want? Ask them.

An old man was picking up objects off the beach and tossing them out into the sea. A young man approached him and saw that the objects were starfish. “Why in the world are you throwing starfish into the water?”

“If the starfish are still on the beach when the tide goes out and the sun rises high in the sky, they will die,” replied the old man.

“That is ridiculous. There are thousands of miles of beach and millions of starfish. You can’t really believe that what you’re doing could possibly make a difference!”

The wise old man picked up another starfish, paused thoughtfully, and remarked as he tossed it out into the waves,

“It makes a difference to this one.”

from The Star Thrower (1979) by Loren Eiseley.

About the powerful social and economic change when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

There are 600 million adolescent girls living in poverty in the developing countries. By giving one of these girls a chance, you start the girl effect. If you help these girls to have safe places to meet, education, legal protection, health care, and access to jobs, they can thrive. And if they thrive, everyone around them thrives, too.

Visitors to the website learn about “the girl effect,” the ability of adolescent girls in developing countries to bring unprecedented social and economic change to their families, communities and countries. For example, studies show women reinvest 90% of their income into their families but a man will reinvest 30-40%. The website helps to learn, change and share and gives tools for girls and women to spread the word.

I was deeply touched when I watched the girl effect.

It’s well known that Social Networking Activity is growing enormously worldwide.

An interesting study provided by Datamonitor predicts within the next four years there will be 107 millions members of Social Networks in Europe – compared to a current total of 41,7 mio Europeans.

The European Ranking is:
No 1: UK is the leader with 6 million users growing up to 27,1 mio in 2012.
No 2: France follows with current 8,9 mio users increasing up to 21,3 mio in 2012.
No 3: Germany currently has 8,6 mio users growing up to 21,7 mio of users in 2012.
No 4: Spain has 2,9 Social Network users and is very likely to reach 7,3 mio within the next four years.

This enormous growth introduces significant opportunities for today’s marketers assuming that they have the right strategies in place. Marketers who would like to be successful need to know which kinds of advertising formats are effective within Social Networks.

The survey Community Effects 2008 has verified that sponsored music, viral videos and games are most accepted by community members. “A particularly promising strategy is a combination of decently communicated advertising messages, a high fun factor and the possibility to communicate indirectly with other users.”

More than every second questioned participant evaluates music-clips (59%) and video-campaigns (51%) as a throughout positive advertising medium. On the contrary, most community users reject classic contests (30 %) and implored Flash-Layers (31 %).