how to make money from online communities

A bunch of Kiwis have set up a growing online community (based to start with in England) around cycling for charity and have pulled some impressive sponsors on board who recognise the value of the community.

To build a self-supporting community, they recommend:

• Understanding the profile you’re helping your community members build – make it something they’re proud of.
• That every action in your community, is an opportunity to promote, add life and currency to your community.
• Knowing the goals of your community and the numbers or metrics that define your community’s success.

web-working for businesses

An informative story here on how two businesses are using the web and online tools for internal communications, project and product management, HR and marketing.

how to find valuable social media conversations

Frustrated trying to join social media conversations relevant to your industry but not sure where or how to look for them — here’s some mighty tips from the guys at ReadWriteWeb.

It shows how to identify the top blogs on any topic; how to find their most popular recent posts and their best blog archives; and how to find where else they are having conversations online.

A little bit techie but easy enough to follow and worth its weight in gold.

organic vs inorganic website growth – go green!

Organic website growth basically means your growth in visitor numbers has been achieved largely for free, and largely through word-of-mouth (one of the key aims of social media marketing). Inorganic growth refers mainly to advertising to pull customers to your website.

It’s not hard to see which one might be preferable.

Having people come to your site because they feel compelled to rather than because they have been persuaded to by (often expensive) advertising can only be a good thing.

Not knocking advertising, though, and it should be considered at least, especially when you are starting a business and looking to alert people to your presence. It’s just that if people tell other people who tell other people that your website is a goodie and worthwhile visiting, the brand value is immense.

Here’s a good real life comparison of two New Zealand online businesses – one of which (online bike store Torpedo7) has become hugely successful largely through organic means and one (Ferrit – owned by Telecom) which puts heavy resources into inorganic growth.

UPDATE: Telecom announced today (12/01/09) that the three-year-old Ferrit site is to close. I hope it was not this post that caused its demise!

it’s not about the products, it’s about the lifestyle

Some good blog thoughts here on building successful online communities (read the comments, too).  A focused community theme and a passion for it from community members  seem to be key take-outs of the discussions:

Would you join a toothpaste community?

How to “bring the unique”.

social media case studies by the truckload!

Looking for social media ideas and inspiration — here’s a super-useful superlist  of 18 other lists containing  tons of examples of social media initiatives.

NZ tourism’s online marketing push

A marketing drive from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) will see personal messages from visitors to New Zealand recorded for them and then posted to social media sites to be played by the tourists’ friends and family back home.

It’s a plan to capture global attention for the country using social media strategies.

TNZ has a fully-equipped mobile recording studio inside a van to enable tourists to “rave” on camera about their New Zealand experience, add their own photos and video footage  and then post the messages online to influential social media sites such as Facebook.

TNZ plans to capture around 3000 video diary clips over the next four months in a tour around New Zealand.

The clips will be published immediately into unpaid media channels, including a YouTube ‘Have Your Say’ channel which is then fed on to Tourism New Zealand’s consumer website – www.newzealand.com. Visitors will also be able to post video directly onto their Facebook profile pages. The clips will also be used in future advertising campaigns.

“If every clip is viewed by 10 friends and family back home, and if 3000 clips are filmed that’s 30,000 messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets  a very cost-effective form of marketing,” says TNZ boss George Hickton.

I reckon that if the messages can be kept authentic, the videos do not reek of corporate marketing or shine too much with ad-man polish and the advertising use of the messages does not overwhelm the ‘real’ nature of the messages, this plan could get good results.

It’s something we’ll follow with interest as a real-life case study. There’s more information about the initiative here.

auckland job ad becomes online viral success

A staff-wanted advert in an Auckland burger bar window has become an online marketing hit due to some dry Kiwi humour (and the occasional four-letter word) and the power of online social networking.

Back in September, new burger bar Murder Burger put up an ad for staff in their shop window and then posted a photo of the advert on photo sharing website Flickr (and some other social media sites). The Flickr photo has got nearly 140,000 hits and the shop has been inundated with job offers.

They do the social marketing thing well, also running a blog focused on nothing but dollops of crazy humour (but with the meaty menu easy to find) targeted at their intended audience — I think that’s probably people who like crazy humour.

Snappy marketing plus the power of social media. Go figure! Their burgers aren’t half bad, either apparently.

job ad becomes online viral success

online communities – it’s a ning thing

In case you haven’t seen it, there is a blimmin’ great free tool for building your own social network. It’s called Ning. It lets you have forums, user groups, personal profiles, online messaging, blogs, videos and more, for as many people as you want. Hundreds of thousands of people all round the world are building communities. If you pay fees, you can customise its look to fit your brand and get some extra services. What a powerful and easy-to-access way to start building a community behind your brand.

Focus though on relationships, not campaigns; don’t use your community to advertise. Use it to be helpful. We have tips here on how to woo your customers with a successful social marketing strategy.

build successful online customer communities

How to do Web 2.0 and have your customers want to join in is the topic of this piece from Dion Hinchcliffe, a Web 2.0 consultant.