Jenna Woodul
Jenna Woodul is the Chief Community Officer at LiveWorld and co-founder of the company. In her role as executive sponsor and consultant for our clients, Jenna oversees the LiveWorld definition of community culture, strategic planning through community development, and the ongoing evolution of the LiveWorld model as it is propelled by technical innovation and customized to specific client needs. Jenna also tweets from @JennaWoodul. Jenna is based in San Jose, CA.
With the excitement of the LiveBar ™ launch and Web 2.0 now behind us, I’m thinking about the responses we got from clients and prosective clients. One of the big requests we get from current customers is an integration with the downtown community they already have. By downtown, they’re referring to their implementations of our Community Center platform (the same platform we’re using here for SocialVoice). Because LiveBar focuses on specific content, it’s not quite the same as the regular forums and blogs of the Community Center, which are collected into topics, but not centered on particular pages. Our planned integration involves collecting all a person’s LiveBar contributions to the Profile, as well as collecting all the LiveBar Conversations, Soapboxes, and Shouts in a separate area of the Community Center. That way, people who’re already downtown aficionados can browse and join gatherings happening around pages.
Some people are talking about staffing LiveBar. By that, they mean checking posts during specific hours to provide answers and/or elaboration on the product, service, or other information outlined on the page where people are engaged. As we go forward, we’ll want to have support-oriented versions of LiveBar, especially for those occasions where the objective is much less conversation, than resolution. And we had several requests for a review version, with ratings.
We’re already also working on adding friending, ability to publish from and post to LiveBar from Facebook (via our LiveEngage widget, currently available with Community Center), resizable overlay screens, scrolling messages, and lots of other widgets. So more is on the way there.
Perhaps the most interesting discussion is how programming the community will differ with LiveBar. Most existing customers I’ve talked with about this, at least those who put a lot of commitment into their communities, expect their regularly updated page content to engage people more immediately via LiveBar; then they hope to interest participants in ongoing interaction downtown. It may work that way on some sites, or it may turn out that a different set of people congregate on pages. I also spoke with people who consider LiveBar quite enough as a standalone—because of the compelling nature of individual page content. Some examples: publishers (community under each book/publication), class descriptions, recruitment, promotional campaigns, and of course news, politics, and entertainment. In either configuration, people expect LiveBar engagement to draw participants farther into site content, while providing a venue for programming, with staff (bloggers, hosts, community managers, customer service) and featured community input spurring a live cultural/conversational component to individual pages. A few widgets spotlighting activity (number of posts, recent posts, Who’s Online, featured posts/members, etc.) should draw a crowd. It’s diffferent, yes; but also the same that way. Let us know if you think of something we should be considering as we continue to develop the product.
Here at LiveWorld, we have a new application we call LiveBar ™. Although we’re primarily interested in the cultural strategy for communities, we’ve been involved in community applications for a long time. We know and use chat, discussion boards, blogs, wikis, and all the features that go along with them. We work with clients around which of these applications to use when, what to expect from them, how to manage and moderate the activity that happens on them. So now we’re releasing a social bar at the bottom of the page. What’s so great about it?
Well, it’s easy (and quick) to put on a site, it lives with the existing design, and it knows the page it’s on. But what most excites me about LiveBar is this: I think it brings in a whole new population of Web users who don’t typically click Community. We’ve always urged people to place invitations to interact as closely as they can to their most engaging content. We recommend they show user voice next to the content. The idea being, when you hear people talking about particular topics, you get a sense of presence: People are here… and they’ve got something to say about the topic. But let’s face it: A big gap yawns between reading or viewing compelling content, and then clicking to Community to discuss it.
With LiveBar, people see conversations in progress, and get a choice about format for their comments—hash it out with a group, sound off in detail on their own own, or just toss off quick shout. I think a lot more people are going to chime in. Shouts, especially, bring in those who don’t invest a lot of words in their views. For people who don’t typically participate in discussions or blogs, I’m guessing they start with shouts and then get interested in what the more verbose have to say.
I look forward to working with clients on the programming strategy here. As with all community, seeding and social engagement frame the developing culture, no matter what the format. With context evident from the start, focus is on the page with the crowds gathered around it…and who can resist looking to see what’s going on?
Working with one of our clients this week, I’m thinking about how to engage women in their 50s in online community. Despite that fact that online community was invented by Boomers (many of us cut our online teeth on newsgroups, BBS discussions, and IRC), the Groundswell profile tool shows that 44% of the Boomer population are not active in online community or social networking. Only 19% are creators of it. As the massive Boomer population ages, marketers expect to see these folks increasingly interested in financial management, health, travelling, leisure and recreation, and staying in close touch with dispersed family structures. Everyone’s got a digital camera now, but how do you really chat with the rest of the family about all those photos? What’s the best way to stay in real-time touch with grandkids? How do you connect with other people who are starting small businesses to supplement their retirement income?
Many Boomers have been using computers most of their work lives. However, they’ve been working—not chatting, friending, IM’ing, blogging. Their focus has been on face to face, using the telephone, and an online orientation toward e-mail. They notice no one under 30 uses voicemail (or even the phone, other than for texting), they know they’ll find their kids and grandkids on Facebook, yet they still primarily check e-mail for virtual communication.
If an organization wants to get closer to the huge Boomer population, you have to look at where they are with technology. Because of the e-mail orientation, newsletters may be a good way to bring them to the site. To involve them in dialogue, make it easy: expert blogs with a minimal barrier to comment, places to chime in quickly (without necessarily investing in an ongoing conversation), invitations to review products or services (especially with easy templated forms to fill out). Subscriptions to community content bring people back in; explain how they work, noting the convenience of receiving alerts in email.
On the social side, frame up the community purpose so it’s clear what people exchange here: Is it advice? reviews? recipes? expertise? Welcome people. If possible have designated hosts living in the community to talk to them, recognizing their arrival and offering to show them around. Break down and prominently publish steps for getting involved in each type of interactive application. Explain community etiquette; sometimes people hold back on contributing, for fear of interrupting. Make it easy to find kindred spirits. Show faces and feature content that personifies the expression and exchange you’re looking for. Make sure all newcomers get a friendly reception (the lurkers are watching, and they’ll never take the leap if the newbie contributions are ignored).
With retirement age approaching, increasing numbers of Boomers have more time. Because they’re not afraid of computers, a cultural approach that takes technographic profile into account has the best chance of getting their attention. What else helps to ease people into online interactions?
Working on the cultural aspects of a community, it’s helpful to interview people who work closely with a company’s customers.
People who spend hours with folks on the phone and in person (or even in e-mail exchanges)have great insight to offer for an online cultural framework. They know what most customers ask about, what they express as needing from the company, and even how it’s possible to turn around a skeptical attitude. Because they represent the company to customers in every interaction, they have a sense of the demeanor with which people approach the brand, and they are in many ways the culture bearers for the company in real time. Their assessment of where the customer is coming from reveals clues toward a successful conversational framework online — the who, what, and when of a company’s participation.
