One of the issues our team has been trying to address is, “How do you attract and retain new community members—when these prospective members start out with little in common with current members?”

Luckily for me, I attended a social media breakfast in Boston(#15) this morning. There, Communispace CEO, Diane Hessan, was the last speaker at an event entitled “SMB15: The Power and Peril of Online Communities.

If anyone has deep insights into the power and perils of online communities, it’s Diane Hessan. Her team at Communispace has been building online communities for ten years.

Today, Communispace hosts vibrant communities for some of the biggest brands in the US—companies like GlaxoSmithKline, HP, and Hallmark. This morning, however, Diane told us that her company didn’t achieve success overnight.

As Diane began to speak about lessons learned, I quickly realized that my client could learn a lot from her experience. Yes, my client’s community is a conventional offline community. Yet, I believe many of the same principles that the SMB15 speakers presented will apply.

Online communities are like cocktail parties

One of the speakers likened an online community to a cocktail party. As with a cocktail party, the success of a community depends on a lot of effort on someone’s part.

This effort includes welcoming guests when they arrive, encouraging them to stay by introducing them to others, including them in the conversation, and giving them a great experience so that they come back again.

In short, as the first speaker, Bryan Person, Social Media Evangelist at LiveWorld pointed out, it takes a great host to throw a great party. He then remarked that in an online community, the host is the community manager.

Community managers play an important role in on-line communities

Up next, Rachel Happe, Principal at Community Roundtable, spoke about the important role the community manager plays in building a strong community. Both Rachel and Diane suggested hiring an event manager for this role.

Just as at a party, this person needs to set the tone. Online or offline, it’s important that this individual engage with other members of the community directly.

People are attracted by other people. Diane said that just as you’re asking community members to share their thoughts, ideas and/or experiences, it is important for community managers to also reveal a little bit about themselves.

Social glue binds on-line communities

Another related concept is “social glue”. Social glue is what holds communities together, and keeps participants coming back. Diane noted that the more involved people are in the community, the stronger the social glue.

The key to involvement over time, therefore, cannot fall to the community manager alone. Instead, community managers need to stimulate conversations between members.

For some communities, these conversations come about quite naturally. As an example, Diane referenced one airline’s frequent fliers. These road warriors spend all their time on planes–so the airline and the passengers’ travel experiences are top of mind.

It’s much harder to build a social community around brands that are central to peoples’ lives. Diane described the challenges a toothpaste company faced when trying to build the strong ties among their members.

Since most people spend relatively little time thinking about brushing their teeth, it was unlikely that they would bond over their brushing experiences. Hence, the community manager encouraged conversations by reaching out to a subgroup of young mothers.

The community manager then engaged these women in conversations about their family lives. As Diane explained, dividing a large disparate community into subgroups makes it easier to nurture the “social glue” it takes to hold a community together.

Building on-line communities takes patience and sustained efforts

One of the cautions that Rachel offered, and Diane reinforced, is that communities take a long time—and sustained effort–to build. In Rachel’s experience, it’s not uncommon to see relatively low flat participation for a long time.

Sometimes, there are spikes when a community manager initiates an effective campaign. Yet, the overall trend is still flat–until the community reaches a critical point. Then, if everything goes right, growth will accelerate.

Would be community builders, such as my client, therefore should prepare to make a sustained effort for a long period of time before things take off. My sense was that that time period can be a year or longer.

Listening is an underrated marketing strategy

The need to sustain one’s efforts throughout brings me to the next point. Diane quipped that “listening is an underrated marketing strategy”.

Communities are a great way to learn about what matters most to members. On the other hand, once you set the expectation that you care about what others think, it’s important to follow through. If you don’t sustain your efforts, and respond to their recommendations, you’ll just alienate your community.

When you do listen, however, it pays dividends. Diane told us about the first time one of Communispace’s early clients experienced a spike in traffic. The SWAT team–that Diane assigned to figure out what created such a high level of engagement—identified critical success factors and what Communispace and its client could do to achieve even better outcomes in the future.

Case Example: Millenials and Gen Xers

Toward the end of her presentation, Diane provided some specific case examples. My ears perked up when she began discussing the experiences that Charles Schwab had when it first tried to attract younger investors.

I began to listen very hard, when as an aside, she mentioned the difficulties that financial service companies, and for that matter health care providers, face in getting social media communications approved.

This was of particular interest to me because this is something my health care clients and financial service  clients worry about a lot. It is also one of the questions that my colleague, Robert DeSimone, of Medicomm Inc., and I are currently querying medical device companies about in our survey about medical device companies’ use of social media–but I digress.

Diane quickly reviewed what Charles Schwab and Communispace learned when they set out to attract millenials and Gen Xers. For one thing, terms such as “retirement” and “no load funds”–which are part of the vernacular for baby boomers–mean little to the next generations. Retirement is far away. Since, as it turned out, most young people use checking accounts as their primary investment vehicle, “no load” was not a term with which they were familiar.

Different communities require different marketing tactics

Communispace and Schwab also learned that communicating with young people is fundamentally different. This population is “always on” from the very moment they awake in the morning. Moreover, the technology of choice is likely to be a mobile phone.

Once again, “listening” paid dividends. Schwab introduced a high-interest checking account that was a great success.

What does this all mean for would be community builders?

What does all of this mean for my client? It appears that if they want to attract individuals from a younger generation, they may have to do things differently—and it may take a lot of time.

On the other hand, if they are patient, invest in applying some of the best practices the SMB#15 speakers recommended, and sustain their efforts, they have the potential to attract and retain the prospective members they most want.

Social Media Breakfast: Go directly to the source

Thanks so much to Bob Collins, who hosts Social Media Breakfasts in the Boston area, event sponsors LiveWorld and Communispace, and the speakers that made this a fantastic event. This is just a taste of what they served at breakfast. You may want to check out hashtag #SMB15 on Twitter to get all the details

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One way or another, that’s what a lot of people that I know are asking. Here are snippets from five conversations I’ve had in the last week—followed by my own observations.

So what’s the big deal?

Tuesday morning, I gave a presentation on Social Media 101 to the Boston Chapter of the Wharton Alumni club. There was a lot of interest and a lot of questions about how members could use social media to increase their revenues.

Nevertheless, at least one person wondered whether it was just a fad—and a tremendous waste of time. His experience was that most posters’ communications seemed to focus on the details of the publisher’s life—things that would probably be of little use or interest to anyone outside the poster’s closest associates.

So what am I missing?

Wednesday afternoon, a prospective client called to discuss the first draft of her social media marketing plan. She had clearly outlined her business objectives and developed a detailed tactical plan. Specifics included target social media platforms, desired frequency of communications, examples of tools/content needed to foster (internal and external) participant engagement, and resource requirements. Her question was: “So what am I missing?”

So what’s the best use of our time?

Last Friday, I met with the Marketing Director of a sizable division of a large firm. His greatest concern was the amount of time it takes to produce—and even keep abreast—of relevant social media. And, I thought that was mostly a problem for smaller companies.

His greatest need: metrics on the ROI of various social media marketing strategies and tactics. As he said, without that information, it’s difficult to decide where to invest constrained staff time—and impossible to justify decisions to company executives.

So what is working?

While there aren’t as many metrics on the ROI of social media – yet – as there are for more conventional marketing strategies, there are some. Yesterday morning, I attended a meeting of the Business Lawyers’ Network organized by Roger Glovsky where Erik J. Heels spoke about one of his successes. Upon realizing that the ROI he was getting from direct mail – which in the past had returned in excess of 400%–was approaching zero, Erik ramped up his social media marketing efforts.

About six months ago, building on what he had learned from his direct marketing experience, Erik launched a Twitter campaign with a compelling offer–free trademarks for start ups. Since then, other social media publishers have spread the word by retweeting it and commenting on it in their blogs (just as I’ve done here).

The result? Erik broke even in 30 days and has added one new client per week since launching the campaign six months ago. Each client, on average, files four trademarks, so he counts on the follow-on business to pay for the first free filing. The offer keeps on giving since his Twitter bio features the website link: http://FreeTrademarksForStartups.com.

So what can we learn?

Social media marketing, when backed by strong strategic thinking, is very powerful. Witness Erik’s success. That said, having a social media marketing strategy is key. Else, as the Wharton alum noted social media marketing can be a tremendous waste of time—both for creators and for consumers.

For that reason, my advice to the prospect, who yesterday asked me what she’s missing from her plan, was to suggest that she approach social media marketing as she does conventional marketing. That is start by identifying who she needs to reach—and what events need to occur—before she can achieve her business objectives.

Then, it’s a matter of figuring out how to engage these individuals by finding out:

• where do they turn for information,
• what sources do they trust most, and
• what format works best for them.

Only then, will she know whether to invest in testing social media platforms and tactics, which ones to choose, and how to make the most of her company’s time and money…

Finally, I advised her to review her metrics. Her plan had been to generate a large number of visitors, page views, and followers. But, the plan didn’t indicate how she knew that any of these metrics would actually translate to

• greater performance of the actions she hoped to motivate,
• faster performance of the desired actions,
• or achievement of her ultimate objectives.

I suggested, therefore, that she test these assumptions before making major investments. One way to do so would be to collect initial data and then look backwards.

Was there any correlation between execution of the desired actions and passive or active use of social media tools? And, if so, where was the correlation greatest—and did it differ by type of target audience? In short, I recommended that she gather exactly the information that the Marketing Director was seeking to determine where, and if, to invest in social media.

In conclusion

The questions that I heard this past week are pretty similar to the questions I hear every week about social media marketing. Different people are using social media for different things—and some have more experience than others—so it’s not surprising to hear a broad range of questions and/or conclusions.

I believe it’s foolish to dismiss social media just because a lot of people aren’t using it effectively. What matters most is not how others are using it—but what’s in it for you both as a content consumer and a content creator. Much like other marketing initiatives, it’s all about data-driven choices.

So what is on your mind about social media marketing?

Are you thinking about it at all? If not, why not? What’s worked for you and what hasn’t? If so, what questions do you have?

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