Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

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

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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.

  2. How did you come to work at EDR?

    3. 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.

  3. Talk about how the commonground community came about?

    4. 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.

  4. What role do you play in the EDR commonground community (strategic and day-to-day)?

    5. 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.

  5. So you just found out that you won Forrester’s prestigious Groundswell Award for best B2B support community. Who was your competition?

    6. 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.

  6. Why do you think that Forrester picked you?

    7. 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.

  7. What are 2-3 lessons that you’ve learned that you might share with other companies thinking about community?

    8. 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.

  8. 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?

    9. 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.

  9. 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.

    10. 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.

Can you judge a book by its cover?

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The title of this post asks, “can you judge a book by its cover?” You can when the “cover” is the front page of someone’s Twitter account and you’re judging whether to follow them. That page contains an avatar image (usually the person’s photo), a short biography (no more than 160 characters long), a link to the person’s home page (or company, blog, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and — crucially — the most recent 20 tweets that the person has sent. You can click through to see more tweets in batches of 20, but if you follow many people on Twitter, doing that often takes more time than it’s worth.

And there’s the rub: if you want more people to follow you on Twitter, you have very little time to make a good first impression on them . . . but many ways that you could string landmines of the “Don’t Follow Me” variety across their path.

Recently four heavy Twitter users — Meg Fowler, Jim Storer, Aaron Strout, and Tim Walker — got to talking (on Twitter, of course) about the poisoned words, phrases, and other cues that automatically signal “Don’t Follow” for them. The end result was that the four decided to bang out a joint blog post that talked about best practices in not following based on not liking the proverbial “cover” put forth by fellow tweeters. Here’s what we came up with:

Tim Walker’s “not follow” strategy

  • “MLM” (multi-level marketing). I’m sure that somewhere, some nice person who does MLM could explain to me how it’s not a veiled Ponzi scheme. Until then . . . you’ll pardon me if I continue to think of it as “a veiled Ponzi scheme.” No thanks.
  • Tweets that include “buy followers” or “hundreds of followers” or anything else in the “get lotsa followers!” genre. I try hard to earn new followers by being relevant, interesting, funny, and personable. The idea that you would buy yours in bulk — much less promote that process — disgusts me.
  • Political ig’nance. I follow people of all political stripes, from all over the world. But if you have to wear your politics on your sleeve, and if your politics are of the knee-jerk type (again, regardless of your leanings), I just can’t stand to follow you.
  • Calling yourself a “visionary” or “expert” or (shudder) “guru.” It’s much better to say you’re a “marketing veteran” or “experienced sales leader” or whatever. Let *others* call you a visionary.
Meg Fowler’s “not follow” strategy (cross-posted on “friend” Gradon Tripp’s blog)

Love it, Tim.

  • For me, it’s more about “who do I need to block around here?” Because no one likes to be spammed. So if I see any of this in your bio and/or first 20 tweets…
  • Requests to “follow me back!”
  • Promotion of affiliate programs
  • Actual affiliate links as the link in your bio
  • Any mention of followers (“I can get you followers!” “Get thousands of followers!” “5,000 followers and growing!” “This program will get you followers overnight!”)
  • “Make money online (from home, easily, doing practically nothing, overnight, with my system, etc.)”
  • Promises to “generate” anything: money, cash, followers, success, creeping rashes…
  • Promotion of tooth whitening programs (Seriously?)
  • A mention of your Twitter Grader Rank
  • Mention of “Sponsored Tweets”
  • Mention of your “Twitter eBook FREE JUST CLICK HERE”
  • Presence of “69” in name (or “Shelly Ryan” as your name… poor, poor real @ShellyRyan)
  • Rockstar/Maven/diva/coach/thought leader/guru/expert/pro/maverick
  • Porn-star-like attributes in avatar or links (Nudity, actual sexual acts, clear intent to seduce me with something other than words)
  • Requests to click through to “see your profile”
  • Googly-eyed “Twitter Basic” avatar (upload a photo, PLEASE)
  • @ing people the same link OVER AND OVER

Jim Storer’s“not follow” strategy
I’ve never auto-followed anyone, which at this point means I’ve vetted (to varying degrees) nearly 3,500 people. Until recently you had to click through to a person’s/bots profile page to get the skinny on who they are. Now some of that info is available in the new follower email, but what I look for is the same.

  • Following to Follower % (you’re following dramatically more people than follow you) – If this is too imbalanced there’s something fishy and I’m not biting.
  • # of Updates to Followers/Following #’s – In the last six months I’ve started to see a lot of people with 5k+ followers/following and less than 100 updates. That suggests you’re just using a program to rack up followers and that just wrong (IMHO). I’m not interested in being another notch on your bedpost.
  • If your bio includes any of the following I’m not interested: “more followers”, “make money”, “expert” (at anything), “MLM” and everything else Tim, Meg and Aaron came up with. I trust them.
  • If the words you chose to describe your pursuits in your biography are overly loquacious I will not be inclined to follow you back. Get real… use real words and tell me who you are.
  • If you haven’t written anything in your bio and/or you haven’t added a photo, I’m not following you.
  • If you have zero updates how am I supposed to know what you’re going to talk about? I’m not listening until you start talking.
  • If your last few updates are repetitive and too self-promoting, I’m not interested in seeing that day to day. I already saw what you have to say when I was checking out your profile.

Aaron Strout’s “not follow” strategy

The upside and downside of going last is that 1) all the good stuff has been said but 2) it leaves less stuff for me to say. Out of the list above, I’m probably the most lenient of the four. Like Jim, I’ve never auto-followed (but have considered it) so that means that I’ve hand followed back nearly 9,000 people (yup, that’s a lot). However, I have a few basic rules that I follow:
  • In most cases (not all), I like seeing a picture. If someone is obviously a n00b who looks to be figuring things out, I’ll cut ’em some slack. Otherwise, they don’t make the cut.
  • I need a bio. Is it too much to tell me what you do?
  • I also need a tweet or two (unless they are a friend of mine and then of course they get the free hall pass)
  • No “get rich fast, affiliate or “let me sell you some shit” in the bio or last few tweets.”
  • One I get stuck on a lot is the news feed/blog title posts. These really depend on follow ratio and quality of the tweets. It also is up to my mood. If I’m hand following 40-50 people, these folks usually make it in. If it’s 4-5, not so much.
  • I will follow ANYONE from Austin (pornos excepted)
  • Oh yeah, I don’t follow webcam girls or known pornos.
So what’s your strategy? Who do you or don’t you follow? Share your tips in the comments below.
photo credit: library.cornell.edu

Experts in the Industry: Jim Storer (29 of 45)

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Ahhhh, Jim Storer. So many things I could say — all are good but some are not fit for print. The reason I know this is that Jim — someone I worked with for three years at Shared Insights/Mzinga — is one of my closest friends in the socialsphere, and in life in general. While at Mzinga, Jim (Twitter handle) was the sr. director of social media. He is now one of the most valuable free agents on the street (think Manny Ramirez but without the attitude or the $25 million/year salary). Did you hear that potential employers?

There are three things I will tell you about Jim (he’ll appreciate the irony of my making it “three”):
  • He is one of the most savvy community people out there having spent several years managing numerous communities both big and small.
  • Jim is every bit the sports nut that I am — and in fact is one of the most regular commenters and contributors on our group sports blog, Big Papelbon.
  • Up until four months ago, Jim was the guy that I turned to to vett most of my big ideas. Oh yeah, he also was a GREAT partner in our podcasting efforts. Two particular instances stand out — one at SXSW last year where we did 15 or 16 podcasts in one night (part 1, part 2, part 3) AND a tour de force at last years Community 2.0 event where we interviewed the likes of Charlene Li (in a limo), Tony Hsieh of Zappos and David Weinberger, co-author of Clue Train Manifesto.
I could go on forever but I won’t. Here’s how Jim answered the five questions from the Experts in the Industry series:
In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I help companies build better relationships with their customer and employees, often through the use of social technologies. I’ve been at it for a while (see below), have tried almost everything and have a pretty good sense of what does and doesn’t work. 
 
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
In the 1990’s I worked for a trade show company and we found some of best customer relationships were started/developed by participating in newsgroups. Around the turn of the century (I just love saying that), we decided to launch a series of communities to support the technology topics we covered with our events. We didn’t always know what we were doing, but we learned a lot and developed some very strong 
customer relationships that helped the company weather the tough times in the early 2000’s. 
 

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?
I thought about this for a while and really can’t justify giving it to anyone but Zappos. There are a lot of companies that talk social media and some walk social media in certain segments of their business, but very few companies live it to the core. Zappos is one of them. Tony Hsieh is both a 
very smart businessman and social leader rolled into one. He and the Zappos team are building something special and I’d love to support their vision. 
 
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
Ok, I’ll spread the wealth and won’t pick Tony again. I’ll go with Jack Welch. He may be seen as an old school businessman, but he always been pushing the envelope of business practices. Just the other night I caught a video of him discussing how businesses need re-invent how they think about human resources. He’s simply an amazing man… and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a UMass/Amherst alum. 😉
Community? Probably not, but it really depends on what the sponsoring company decides to do with it. I’m not sure there’s enough in it for me to join a toothpaste community. If they wrote a blog with tips on getting kids to brush and floss every night and gave me coupons to save money on brushes and toothpaste I *might* subscribe. If they started following me on Twitter, I *might* follow them back. I’d love to see them humanize the company, but I probably won’t engage around a product. Check out Rachel Happe’s excellent post on the difference between community and social media for more on this topic. 
 
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
I get the sense that companies spend a lot of time thinking about getting into social media, often over-evaluate the options (and there are a LOT of them). It’s not expensive (often free) to dip your toe in the water and start listening to what’s being said about you and your brands. Most social media “gurus” would advocate this approach. My advice? Just get started.

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