LiveWorld Facebook LiveConnect: What were we thinking?
We’re excited to be introducing our newest application for brands to integrate deep conversational environments into Facebook — LiveWorld Facebook LiveConnect. It’s a product that comes directly out of listening to our customers talk about their experience as they go about taking their companies social. They’re looking at all the opportunities out there, and trying to reconcile the need to be everywhere with the time, budgets, and personnel resources available. LiveWorld Facebook LiveConnect lets them program one community experience that exists on both central community and Facebook brand Page. Here’s how we came up with it:
What we heard
We talked with people who’ve realized and acted on the importance of setting up social venues where they can talk with their customers, and their customers can connect with one another. Many have made large commitments — inviting their customers to interact with them on the brand’s websites, either directly around their products, or around other topics in the brand’s aura. Two-way communication is a big priority.
The job is a lot bigger now
Now that their customers are socializing all over the web, those same companies really want to get out there and meet their customers wherever they are. They want to join them on Facebook (and other large social networks), but still want customers and prospects to come to the central brand site for information, promotions, purchases, and support and conversation. The thing is, it’s a lot of ground to cover.
And can get complicated
Since it’s easy to start up Facebook Pages, it sometimes happens that numerous groups in one company take it upon themselves to get started. They begin to gain experience, find a voice, and gather fans around them. Often, the folks who start up the Facebook Page are not the same people running the community efforts on the brand central site. So now, where one group of people was involved, there may be two or several, all involved with programming and moderating content. Messaging and programming can start to get inconsistent; opportunities get missed because people aren’t combining their knowledge and synching up their timing. Customers may even start to notice that things sound different from one venue to the other. And the job to keep it all well moderated can be exhausting.
What would be great
Hearing all this, we were thinking how helpful it would be to present a consistent social experience for people in more than one place at a time. To get the advantages of Facebook’s viral effects, while connecting all the customers together around the same conversations — more people, more support resources, more ideas, more fun. Plus be able to do more with fewer people working on programming and moderating content. When we brought this idea up with customers and prospects, we saw light in their eyes. We’re betting other people will agree: LiveWorld Facebook LiveConnect hits the mark for a consistent social experience that lives simultaneously on Facebook and a brand’s central site — like two doors into the same great place.
