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Aaron Strout

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EDR’s Community Wins Groundswell Award: An Interview with VP Mark Wallace

November 3, 2009 By Aaron Strout 5 Comments


A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with my friend, Mark Wallace, at a company called Shared Insights (subsequently merged with Knowledge Planet and became Mzinga). At Shared Insights, Mark was the head of sales, our mutual friend and colleague, Jim Storer, headed up product/community management and I lead our marketing efforts. The three of us were not only lucky enough to get into the social/community space well before the social web started to gain critical mass but we also had the benefit of working with some smart companies like Deloitte, Webex/Cisco and Environmental Data Resources (EDR).

Since that time, we’ve all gone our separate ways with me heading to Powered Inc., Jim co-founding a company called The Community Roundtable and Mark jumping over to EDR to run their community. I mention this only because the three of us stay in semi-regular touch and of course I’ve taken more than a passing interest in Mark’s social and community efforts at EDR. To that end, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that EDR’s community, Commonground, had just won Forrester’s prestigious Groundswell Award for Best B2B Support Community.

As someone that likes to know about these things and is always interested in sharing great case studies, I couldn’t resist asking Mark to do a quick e-mail interview with me:

  1. Tell us a little bit about EDR and what they do?
  2. Environmental Data Resources, Inc. is the leading provider of environmental risk information services and related workflow applications in the United States. As the innovator of the most comprehensive database of environmental and historical land use information, the company provides reports, subscription services and other solutions to help its customers reduce environmental risk.

  3. How did you come to work at EDR?
  4. EDR was one of our early clients when I led sales at Shared Insights. When SharedInsights was recapitalized, I worked with them from while I was with Mzinga. Shortly after I left Mzinga, I was attending the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas when Rob Barber, CEO of EDR, Barry Libert, CEO of Mzinga, and I started talking. Next thing I knew, Rob and Jay Gaines, CMO of EDR, created a position and I joined the company shortly thereafter.

  5. Talk about how the commonground community came about?
  6. EDR has always prided itself on innovation. We believed strongly in the importance of social networking and the value it would have for businesses moving forward. EDR invested resources to build commonground to enable our marketplace to harness the power of social media to improve customer loyalty, educate our marketplace, improve our web presence, expand both vertically and horizontally, and ultimately generate new sources of revenue.

  7. What role do you play in the EDR commonground community (strategic and day-to-day)?
  8. My title is VP of Social Media for EDR. In that role, I am responsible for leading social media strategy and monetization efforts. I do whatever is required to deliver a valuable experience for our members while focusing on achieving the objectives outlined above.

  9. So you just found out that you won Forrester’s prestigious Groundswell Award for best B2B support community. Who was your competition?
  10. That is a great question. When we saw the other submissions from SAP, Aflac, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Pitney Bowes, NetApp, we were pleased just to be in the same category as those market leading companies. When we found out from Josh Bernoff that we won, we were absolutely thrilled as it validated all the hard work of our members, partners, and staff.

  11. Why do you think that Forrester picked you?
  12. I think Forrester picked us because we were able to share real success metrics on the true business benefits to both members and EDR. Plus we have an extremely high customer satisfaction rate.

  13. What are 2-3 lessons that you’ve learned that you might share with other companies thinking about community?
  14. The three most important lessons I can share are a) Before you select technology, make sure you have a clear and concise strategy with defined metrics b) Content, either user or expert generated, or both, is the key ingredient to a thriving community. c) Many companies fail at building communities. It is not easy to build a thriving community. Therefore, set reasonable expectations up front and make sure you have the proper senior management support, resources, and organizational commitment to realize them.

  15. Thoughts on “build vs. join” i.e. do you feel like you’ve got all your bases covered with your community? Or are you a believer in participating in 3rd party social networks?
  16. I believe in both. It depends on your goals and objectives. Those will drive what makes the most sense. Often times, both in tandem are the best option. As the leader in our market, we decided the best approach was to build commonground. We also have a LinkedIn Group and a Facebook Fan page.

  17. Freestyle – give me any other pearls of wisdom or color commentary you’d like to share here. If you feel like you’ve answered everything you can skip this.
  18. When building a community, it is way too easy to get distracted. Focus is critical if you want to be successful.

NOTE: I interviewed both Mark this year in my Experts in the Industry series. If you want to learn more about him, head on over and have a look see.

Experts in the Industry: Tim McAlpine (55 of 45)

March 22, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

So Tim McAlpine, is the first person in this series that I don’t actually know. But he came highly recommended from mutual friend, Morris Partee, which was good enough for me. By way of background, Tim, is a self-proclaimed credit union fanboy. He is from Canada and his company, Currency Marketing, works exclusively with credit unions throughout North America. Tim and Currency are best known for Young & Free, a fully managed Generation Y marketing program licensed to one credit union in each US state and Canadian province. It combines a product launch with a spokesperson search wrapped in an integrated traditional and social media marketing strategy.

The original program for Servus Credit Union in Alberta, Canada (www.youngfreealberta.com) launched in 2007 and won the 2008 Forrester Groundswell Award in the Talking Category besting the likes of American Express, GM, Intel, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Rubbermaid to name a few. The Young & Free program has since spread to Texas (www.youngfreetexas.com) and South Carolina (www.youngfreesc.com) and is helping to make credit unions relevant to a new generation of potential members. Tim has just launched a central social network at www.livingyoungandfree.com to better connect this growing group of youth-centered credit unions. You are welcome to join and become part of your region’s group.

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I am hell-bent on helping credit unions spread their cooperative, good-news message to the next generation of members and I am good at it because I believe in helping people who are helping people—in this age of government bank bail-outs, it’s good to know there is a legitimate and thriving alternative.

How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I am a reformed push marketer who was turned onto social media after starting my own professional blog in 2006. Although that’s pretty late to the game, I quickly realized what I had been missing and turned our agency’s focus from traditional marketing and branding to helping credit unions get involved with social media. I was amazed at how quickly I connected with other like-minded people and I have been hooked ever since.

If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
Facebook. It seems to be just hitting its stride. The development team continues to push new features and refine the experience. Plus, the membership continues to grow at an alarming rate. I also like that Facebook is willing to try new revenue and advertising schemes and are able to admit when they are wrong and react quickly. And unlike Twitter, Facebook is a business and readily admits that it is looking to turn a profit.

Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
Barack Obama. To us Canadians, US politics is a spectator sport! Our federal election campaigns last about two months and have very little fanfare. The character that Barack showed over the past two grueling years is phenomenal. His campaign showcased the power of social media and community activation in a way that the world had never seen before. His desire to change the status quo and revolutionize the way that the public interacts with government is an unbelievably lofty goal and one that I believe will change the world for the better.

Would you join a toothpaste community? Why?
Only if there were coupons to get free toothpaste. I’m not real passionate about my toothpaste choices or toothpaste’s impact on the world. If I did join, it would probably end up being just one more password that I would forget.

Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
I am excited to see where all of this is leading. Although RSS, social networking and blogging are about a decade old, it all still feels really fresh and new. Now that the business world has finally woken up to the fact that something is going on, it will be interesting to watch how the social web changes and matures over the next decade. In some regards, it feels like the innocense and initial excitement is gone, but I suspose that happens with everything as it goes mainstream and corporations get involved. Let’s just hope that the future is not just one big sponsored conversation!

Tim can be found at @currencytim on Twitter.

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