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Maria Sipka's blog

Calling London based Social Networks & Online Community leaders to gather: 22nd September @ HubCulture

Fri, 04/09/2009 - 18:08 — Maria Sipka
We've been promising all the social networks we've been speaking with from London that we'll be hosting another round table 'soon'... We're very excited to announce that we have set a date and a fabulous venue for the special gathering of social network and community leaders where we explore the topic of monetization, engagement and member acquisition. In addition, over the past 3 months we have interviewed over 150 social networks and will be sharing key learnings and insights amongst the participants. The gathering will take place on Tuesday, 22nd September from 1-3pm at the ultra cool, central Hub Culture board room. United Kingdom: Hub Culture Pavilions UK Ltd. 16 Great Marlborough Street London W1F7HS United Kingdom +44 207 693 1106 There's space for 14 and places are filling fast. You'll be able to meet some awesome local communities from the UK. Our theme will focus on conversations making 'cents' exploring the link between businesses/brands who have the dollars to spend and how they successfully into your member's conversations and experience. I'll also be introducing our new VP Business Development & Strategy Piero Poli - having worked at agency.com on various social media campaigns and then Warner Music. Prior to his London stint he established a Digital Marketing Team and Service offering in Melbourne and Sydney for Deloitte’s digital arm (Eclipse). Please message me if you'd like to attend or reply to my twitter post @mariasipka.

3 Social Media Case Studies for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Wed, 15/04/2009 - 15:24 — Maria Sipka

It's seems the pharmaceutical industry has encountered a BIG wake up call to join the social media bandwagon or risk being left behind. There are critical issues they face as they desire to join the conversation around regulation. Pharma companies we've spoken to - to put it simply - are scared. They want to participate, they have the money to invest and the partners to create compelling content - but are the barriers to high to dip their toe in the shallow end of the pool?

In researching pharmaceutical companies who have entered the social media arena, we stumbled across some valuable resources and prepared a case study presentation you can view below.


Firstly, allow me to share the most valuable resources I found.  Mark Senak - is an expert in law and has blogged about the regulatory issues extensively in his blog Eye on FDA . Mark's blog led me to TNS Cymfony - a resource rich site full of white papers, reports and content around social media and a special report around Connecting with Patients, Overcoming Uncertainty.

We've featured 3 prominent pharmaceutical brands and case studies around their social media efforts:

1.  GlaxoSmithKline: Alli Drug

2.  Bayer Schering Pharma: World Contraception Day

3.  Johnson & Johnson: JNJ BTW blog

Click here to view the presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Profiling Tool for your Community Members

Sat, 11/04/2009 - 19:17 — Maria Sipka

One size doesn't fit all especially within online communities and groups. You'll attract lurkers, spectators, contributors, critics, collectors, super spreaders (or sneezers, inactives and other categories of participants or non-participants. In addition, depending on the age, gender and location of your targets these variables will impact your activity.

 

It's imperative you get it right. And not after you've launched your online community or group. I urge you to profile your target members in the planning stage. If you profile your members correctly, you'll be able to determine what type of features and tools you offer (forums, blogs, surveys, polls, ratings, videos, photos, etc) and how prominently you position them.

 

I'd like to share an extremely useful tool I found whilst reading Groundswell written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research. Forrester's Social Technographics® tool classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation:

 

Forrester's Social Technographics Tool

 

By entering the age of your target, the country they live in and their gender using this free tool, you'll gain a fairly accurate insight into how your members will engage in your community.

 

Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

Connect: Marketing in The Social Media era

Sat, 28/03/2009 - 16:14 — Maria Sipka

100 Authors. 400 Words. 1 Topic 1 Great Cause. 100 marketers share their thinking on Marketing in the Social Media Era. All profits go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

 

 

Connect: 100 Project

 

 

The book is $19.95 plus shipping and handling, with all profits will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. You can buy your early copy by clicking here

 

After nearly 6 months, the 100 authors, including myself, who make up The Project 100 have succeeded in creating a not for profit, collaborative book on Marketing in the Social Media Era.

 

Along with all the amazing context, the author Jeff Caswell believes that this is the first book to publish Tweets…and one of the first to create a collaborative not for profit book.

 

The official launch date is April 6th…but we've been offered the chance to inform our reading early.

 

The Target is to raise $5000 for Susan G. Komen…

Should Group Leaders Access the Email Addresses of their Members?

Tue, 24/03/2009 - 16:19 — Maria Sipka

A hot debate has unfolded in LinkedIN about the option for group leaders to access the email addresses of the members of their groups. LinkedIN pulled the plug on this option this week due to 'some' group leaders abusing this privilidge and sending innapropiate messages to the members of their groups. Obviously the level of complaints from group members reached a tipping point which had LinkedIN disable this feature.

 

In 90% of community platforms such as XING, Facebook, Ning and others, the group leader does not have access to the entire list of contact details for their members including email addresses. You could say that the members belong to the community platform and as a group leader you're 'leasing' a space where you can faciliate discussions amongst like minded people who are passionate or interested in a topic. The upside is that you instantly attract highly targeted members into your group at a much quicker pace than building your own community or group using an open source or white label technology. The downside is that it's not so easy to access the contact details of your members.

 

Michael Crosson who leads the 15,500 member+ The Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIN slammed LinkedIN for their latest decision to disable this feature and wrote the following:

 

 

LinkedIn pulls the rug out from group owners - eliminating the ability to download the email list from the group

 

If you run a group on LinkedIn, you should know that they changed their policy today and have completely eliminated the group managers ability to download their own group's email list.

 

In the case of Social Media Marketing, that means a number of critical and detrimental changes, including:
- I can no longer respond to and welcome individuals joining
- I can't send you periodic email newsletters as I have in the past
- I have no reporting or feedback mechanism other than trying to cull through the thousands of postings & responses to see what is working or not in the group

 

Especially in a group like Social Media Marketing, this completely de-personalizes the whole community experience... exactly what we are here to learn and share! If we can't do this on LinkedIn, itself a social community site (theoretically) then what is the purpose here?

 

They have done this in response to disreputable managers in other groups 'harvesting' emails. This is like cutting down the forest because a few squirrels are stealing the nuts. The correct response would have been to trap the offending squirrels, but nnnnooooooo, LinkedIn takes the worst possible tactic.

 

If you are a group owner, check out Super Groups or any other LinkedIn Group Managers group and see the overwhelmingly NEGATIVE response from other managers. It is important that we get them to reconsider their perjorative and unjustified policy change.

 

Thanks for standing up for group managers' rights!

 

Mike Crosson
Moderator

 

Whilst LinkedIN has disabled this feature, there are other features available to communicate with all members including the 'Send an Announcement' tool.

 

My stance - it should be up to the members to choose whether they want the group leader to have access to their email or not. Turning the feature off entirely irritates the people you don't want to irritate who are highly influential and valuable to the overall community platform.

7 Key Insights into Creating an Effective Group on LinkedIN

Mon, 23/03/2009 - 17:36 — Maria Sipka

Early this year, LinkedIN relaunched their group product and in short - I'm very impressed. Having used multiple group products across various social networks, LinkedIN has got it right. It's a powerful tool and if setup correctly can yield valuable results both for the member and the group leader.

 


After having subscribed to a number of special interest groups on LinkedIN over the past 6 months and intentionally not filtering the weekly notification 'to be read later (like never)', I started to invest the time to scroll through the various discussion topics and click on the interesting ones. In most cases I found extremely valuable links to blogs, insights and most importantly - connections to relevant people. Key insight #1 people's desire to belong to a topic interesting to them ultimately leads them to grow and create/ deepen relationships.

 


The time was ripe. It was 8am Wednesday morning. I stumbled out of bed and straight onto the laptop. I felt an urge to create my own group around the topic most pressing - influencer marketing. Key insight #2. It's not rocket science to create a group. One hour later, I had set up the group, found a logo (an image from flick.com), wrote the short and long descriptions, added a healthy amount of useful and relevant news posts and discussion topics. Key insight #3 Have an existing tight network. The final step was to invite people from me 400+ LinkedIN network. Unfortuantely the only way to effectively invite people from your network is by scrolling through the letters of the alphabet. For some reason names either dissappeared or didn't show. A bug. Key insight #4 Be clear on your purpose and what value you're offering. This is about them - the member. I invited 50 people with the following message:

 


Hello there,

 


The fact is - traditional advertising and marketing is 'almost' dead. To reach the masses + niche groups of people you need to seek out the influencers. They exist in many places and few channels are emerging to help you reach them. But a greater challenge is 'how do you engage' them and incentivize them to influence their followings?


These are questions we address.


Regards Maria


P.S... We recently launched www.themoderatorcommunity.com Would be great to see you there!

 

Key insight #5 Your registration process needs to be easy, painless and quick! Within minutes, people started to join. By the end of the day there were 27 members in the group. By the following day 50. Two people responded to posts.  Ialso announced the group to my twitter following which inspired 8 people to join.

 

What was the motivation to create the influencer marketing group? Simple. Credibility. Key insight #6 Be very clear on what your purpose is and why you will invest the time into fostering and nurtuing your group. Rather than setting up a LinkedIN group around our company or one of our products, the choice was to focus on a topic interesting to many. I didn't want people to join the group simply as a sign of support to me or our company. I wanted them to join because of their thirst to learn about this topic. The purpose was to catalyze conversations around this topic and get people excited about what they could learn and who they could meet. By placing the interests of the people first - and proving the group could continue to add value to them would by default establish a strong sense of credibility and trust.

 

Key insight #7 If you execute on the first 6 insights you'll feel over the moon! So what happened over the next few days? This is the interesting part. Within hours I received an email from one of the largest pharmaceutical companies wanting to explore ways we could help them to reach influencers. I reconnected with people who I hadn't been in touch with for some time and scheduled meetings. The group prompted a member to reach out and express his frustration with his community and request my assistance in creating standards around his challenge.

 

What gave me the greatest joy and sense of satisfaction was seeing the group grow. Every day I visit the group. See how many new members have joined. Who has responded to posts. And continuing to add resources and discussions knowing the effect this content will have on other members.

 

If you're interesting in joining this group here is the link to influencer marketing on LinkedIN.

 

I'd be curious to read your comments, insights and questions if you've created a LinkedIN group or contemplating doing so.

Women by their very nature are generally better NetWeavers than men

Mon, 09/03/2009 - 17:11 — Maria Sipka

That’s why it’s especially appropriate that the first community on Xing to formally embrace the NetWeaving philosophy, principles, skill sets and strategies, is Global Business Women.

 


And not surprisingly, the number one group attracted to the concept within women’s organizations are women’s leadership groups who recognize that because they are more natural at NetWeaving than men, learning how to become an even more accomplished NetWeaver provides a significant advantage over their male counterparts.

 


But learning how to be a better NetWeaver both as a connector of others and a no-strings-attached resource for them is only part of the ‘heart’ of NetWeaving.

 


Becoming an advocate and ambassador of the concept and learning how to spread the word to others not only elevates your image in other’s eyes since it’s all based on Golden Rule principles, but if you genuinely enjoy helping others, your NetWeaving activities will energize you and make you better at everything you do.

 


NetWeaving started with a focus on sales and marketing, both in developing more meaningful relationships with existing clients and customers as well as developing new relationships with prospective ones. And as for ‘referrals’, NetWeaving makes raving fans out of existing clients and centers of influence, and even prospective clients.

 

But NetWeaving hasn’t only been appealing to those in sales and marketing. It has since morphed in several new directions:

 

  • Professionals for the Human Resource sector began to recognize NetWeaving as a theme around which they could build a more collaborative spirit and culture internally and help tear down, or at least reduce, some of the walls and silos that exist within most companies
  • Then persons from the non-profit sector started requested programs for Board Retreats in order to build deeper and more meaningful relationships among their board members and we discovered that it also helps them become more proactive in fund-raising among their key contacts
  • Then recruiting and search firms, as well as persons in a job search mode, began to see how the ‘hosting’ aspect of NetWeaving provides not only a creative avenue to help land a job, but they recognized how spending a portion of their job-search time NetWeaving can be an important way to energize someone and help them maintain a positive mental attitude during what is usually a very lonely and depressing period.
  • Finally, some of those involved in economic development of all varieties, recognized that the NetWeaving helps creative a more collaborative environment where differing factions can come together to find common grounds for agreement and cooperation.

 

Within Global Business Women, there are literally thousands of applications where NetWeaving can be encouraged and nurtured. But NetWeaving has gone one big step beyond merely connecting people; helping provide them with the resources and information they need, and showing people how to build a ‘Trusted Resource Network’ made up of persons who are exceptional what they do.

 


NetWeaving is not just about helping others because you genuinely believe in the law of reciprocity and that what goes around, does come back around. When you are helped, especially when someone introduces you to a person who ends up being able to help you in any number of ways, rather than paying her or him back, the NetWeav-ing approach trains people to ask the person or persons you have helped, to simply Pay It Forward, and to help connect two other people, or to provide someone else with the resources you, or someone in your Trusted Resource Network can provide – no-strings-attached.

 


That’s also why Catherine Ryan Hyde, the author of the book, “Pay It Forward”, on which the popular movie of the same name is based, has given Bob Littell, Chief NetWeaver, permission to refer to NetWeaving as “The BUSINESS version of Pay It Forward”.

 


And that’s what our real goal is within Global Business Women. . .to help others within our community and then challenge them to Pay It Forward and then do the same for someone or someones else.

 

If you lead an online women's community or group, we invite you to join a support and collaboration group we initiated in this community 'Women Who Lead'.

Free Community Consulting

Mon, 09/03/2009 - 12:36 — Maria Sipka

The scarcest resource when it comes to community building today is quality advice. And I'm about to give it away - for free.

 

It's amusing to think that it was only 5-10 years ago companies barely jumped on the internet band wagon after spending years in denial convinced the internet was just a fad. Shortly after, every company realized they also needed a blog. The reality is, when the hoards start running, and in the fear of being left behind, you have no choice but to run also - fast. As everybody is sprinting to a destination that's often unknown they glimpse at each other and remark 'I have no idea where I am going, what I need to do or even how to start...but I'm running and I just need to get it done - now!'.

 

Well that's the reality of community building today. Very, very few people actually know how to build communities,where to start and what's even their purpose. The other sad reality is that there's few experts out there that can help the masses along their journey. The expertise is fragmented and 'slapped together'. The good people and companies are booked solid and can't keep up with the demand. This drives the cost sky high. And in many cases, companies resort to doing it themselves and it becomes a case of trial and error - the same mistakes being made over and over again.

 

Last week I spent a morning consulting one of the world's largest brands on community building in Switzerland. I was alarmed to hear that their first major venture into community building started with a renown PR firm out of New York who presented a shiny, attractive community plan with all the bells and whistles... at a significant fee too. When it came time to execute, my client gasped and said 'they resorted to traditional PR tactics... and now that the world and our board of directors are closely observing how this social media strategy unfolds, I fear it's going to be a disaster'.

 

So here's our little bit to help this dilemma the world faces when it comes to community building.

 

As a community consultant, my time is limited and it's expensive. It's nothing to brag about. It's the reality of the situation. I dedicate 1 week per month to consulting clients at a rate London lawyers wouldn't even charge. Whilst we're not in the business of selling time we've set up our ecosystem where we can leverage this time and also share our knowledge for free. I've committed to investing 1 week of my time every month into this community along with a fabulous bunch of passionate, talented people. It's completely free and in return all that we seek from you to make this system go round is - just ask a question, make a comment or contribute something you've stumbled across.

 

Jump right into any one of these groups we've set up to help you along your journey:

Careers in Communities

Find out about ways to expand your knowledge on communities, how to find a community job and what challenges a professional community manager faces.

Community Development

This group is dedicated to everything about strategic development of an online community - from the idea to the finished product.

Community Management and Moderation

Welcome to Community Management, THE group for community managers, group administrators, moderators, group leaders and officers

Monetization

How can you generate revenue from your online community or group? Share your experience and learn from others.

The Community Lounge

The Community Lounge is a casual place to discuss & share all other topics which aren't relevant to any other groups here.

Women Who Lead

This is a special interest group for managers of communities and groups targeting women.

Community Guru Colin McKay's top 18 resources for community builders

Sun, 22/02/2009 - 19:38 — Maria Sipka

Having just finished reading Colin's McKay's insightful and entertaining 'The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations' I was compelled to share his resource list for those looking to read the best of the best:

  1. Community Guy by Jake McKee – http://communityguy.com
  2. Designing for Civil Society by David Wilcoxhttp: - http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/
  3. DavePress by Dave Briggs - http://davepress.net/
  4. How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media by Beth Kanterhttp: - http://beth.typepad.com/
  5. etoolkit wiki - http://etoolkit.wikispaces.com/
  6. The D-Ring by Steve Field - http://dring.wordpress.com/
  7. Whitehall Webby by Jeremy Gould - http://whitehallwebby.wordpress.com/
  8. So this is mass communication by Kaye Sweetser - http://kayesweetser.com/
  9. Social Customer Manifesto by Christopher Carfi - http://www.socialcustomer.com/
  10. PR 2.0 by Brian Solis - http://www.briansolis.com/
  11. Diva Marketing by Toby Bloomberg - http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/
  12. New Zealand Public Sector Blog by Jason Ryan - http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/blog/index.php
  13. Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang - http://www.webstrategist.com/blog/
  14. Connected Republic by the folks at Cisco - http://www.theconnectedrepublic.org/
  15. Ideal Government by William Heath - http://www.idealgovernment.com/
  16. My Conversations by Connie Bensen - http://www.conniebensen.com/
  17. Charles Leadbeater - http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/
  18. Wikinomics Blog - http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/

Highly recommend you read his report too.

It's The Way it Shatters That Matters

Thu, 12/02/2009 - 11:29 — Maria Sipka

A few weeks ago I twittered:

"If u'r Aussie & visiting Barcelona I'll swap u a meal at THE best Tapas place in town in exchange for a jumbo bag of violet crumbles. Deal?"

And surprise, surprise, this morning I walked into work and found a package on my desk with three giant violet crumble (chocolate bars from Australia) and a book 'It Takes Teamwork to Tango' a business novel about networking.

One of my followers Boris Pfeiffer noticed the message and was adventurous enough to find an international food store from a small town of Germany to buy the chocolate bars.

These are the moment which make your day and have you feeling in awe at the pure power of social networking. BTW The tagline of violet crumbles is 'It's the way it shatters that matters'.

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