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I have been a member of some awesome networking groups and meetups over the years -Tuttle, Cambridge Geek Night, SXSW kebab, Chinwag, London VRM, Dunedin Skeptics in the Pub.  But finding and choosing a good group is a skill.  Today we discuss how to get the right group for you.

First let me digress – indulge me

Becoming aware of new web services and tools is now part of my job. One of the best ways to find new tools is to have them find you first.

I’m lucky – my longstanding Twitter / Facebook / Blog means that Creative Agency Secrets or my personal Twitter account gets found for business development and B2B marketing searches.  Now it’s payback time – my energies invested over  the years are now sending good content, relevant tools back to me.

These people follow me and I check over every profile that is emailed over to me.  some get filed into specific client or project folders for particular follow up, a direct message or a later decision about whether to follow them back.

Others are deleted – usually because I can’t see the relevance.

Which brings me back to a new tool which is a meet up group that followed me on Twitter.

Trizz.

Even the name makes my teeth grate.  That’ll date, it’s too silly and it doesn’t sound like a business networking group [to be fair neither does Tuttle....].  I took a quick browse round their well-designed site and couldn’t find anything to endear it to me.

Why this group won’t work for me

1. Members can exclude other businesses – that speaks volumes – it prevents the group growing in the long term and finding the ‘best’ member for each  category.  What if the lousiest realtor was the first to join – does that help everyone else?
2. No quality control – if you are going to pay and exclude others I’d want tip top quality of members attending.  People who are that good and worth meeting, don’t pay to go to groups like this.  Period.
3. It’s a paid for gig – I only pay for coffee when I network.
4. Nobody is THAT motivated to promote other businesses all the time – the energy wanes
5. Why would I want to troll my way around a heap of strangers in the hope that I’m the only representative in my ‘category’? Trizz Members may visit other Trizz Clubs as a guest as often as they like provided that club does not have a member in the same category.
6. What value of new business will you get from other (desperate?) people who go to these groups just to get new business….. the world just isn’t like that any more.

If you are a local business and your clients are other locals – fine.  Go for it.

For the rest of us – stay away and focus your energies on re-writing your twitter profile – it’ll win you more new business.

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Many conferences ask for feedback after the event and the Interactive SXSW one arrived today.

As a research survey it was flawed in three ways.

First error – question structure

Take this example of a question on the first page

Overall, how satisfied were you with the information distributed in our print publications? 5= Very satisfied, 1=Very unsatisfied

Looks all good  But then two questions later they ask

Please respond to questions on a 1-5 scale, 1 being very unsatisfied, 5 being very satisfied. If questions do not apply to you, leave them blank.

Did you notice the inversion of the 1 to 5 scale?

Why change the scale? This is going to test the respondents. Many will skim read and the outcome is they’ll get inverted results as respondents assume the scale was the same.

Second flaw – Giving the feedback I wanted

I always think that any survey that enables me to give exactly the feedback I want by asking the right questions is both well-constructed and the survey designer has a deep understanding of the event in order to ask the right things.  This fulfilled neither.

Having ‘catch-all’ comments is not ideal for survey analysis – especially of large response events.  I reproduce below all the free-text answers I gave.  This shows that there should have been space for qeustions about

• excellence or poor performance in panels / sessions
• overcrowding
• travel arrangements to venues outside the convention center
• wifi / AV / power sockets in venues outside the convention center
• value for money perception
• learnings / business opportunities or transactions

Third flaw

The over-high reliance on free text answers.  A question on the trade show didn’t have pick lists of exhibiting companies; a question about audio visual only focused on the convention center not on other venues just seems to raise the likelihood of added analysis workload.  Plus insertion of seemingly erratic questions about sponsors and perception awareness of contributing brands some of which had such a low profile I never noticed and others seemed to be ‘trick’ questions e.g. listing both Pepsi and Pepsi Max… were both there?

There also seems to be a green agenda going on…. which wasn’t in evidence at the event at all.

Does your company pursue green/sustainability initiatives?
Does your employer or organization require proof of sustainable choices in housing or transportation during your time at SXSW?

My detailed answers

Interactive Panels, Conference Events and Party Comments:
One of the branding / marketing panels was not prepared [client knows best #sellideas] and Day Stage session by Colin Shaw #beyphil promised 7 tips for customer experience and didn’t give out any - he was AWFUL.

I went to 5 talks at non-convention center venues and 2 were full when I got there.  None had adequate power points and AV was less good. Very disappointed that many talks were repeating old material and only two advanced sessions #rdbdeath and #healthapps were “leading edge”.   The quality is lower and the overcrowding of venues spoilt my enjoyment. In value for money terms SXSW is now 50% lower than my previous visit. I may not come back.

I wish I could read more blog posts on SXSW.com about?
Liveblogging each session. I did this on my site (creativeagencysecrets.com). I think you should leave a permanent record of each session online like TED does. A written liveblog plus audio would be a valuable addition to online knowledge.

I missed 2 sessions because of overcrowding – there was no way to hear what was said in the hallway and no record after of what was discussed = VALUELESS.

Trade Show/Exhibition comments:
Wish it had started on Sunday as I had to leave Monday after lunch.

Which sponsor(s) enhanced your SXSW experience and how?
Samsung in Bloggers lounge – good food and drink, great interaction with other bloggers, OK book signing by Guy Kawasaki and other interviews.  The not for profit lounge had the BEST people inside using it. Verizon in the Hyatt – their lounge had nothing in it but fancy white sofas – not of any value at all.

Any other comments?
The overcrowding this year was noticeably greater than in 2009 when I last attended.

Fewer sessions had ‘leading edge’ thinking. Many sessions were too populist and frequently speakers were “content-free”.

Mediocre to awful panel chairing skills e.g. Gigi Peterkin of Edelman, Alessandra Lariu at McCann Ericson and Allison Mooney of Google meant we got less from these sessions.

The committee needs more influence over panel selection to weed out the time-wasters.

Also suggest you cut number of ticket sales and adjust room allocation based on attendees’ likely topics of interest so popular tracks like Marketing / Branding get larger venues.

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I am heading over to Austin Texas for South by Southwest Interactive Festival next week.

1. SX Social website – the insiders registration site where you can create a profile, connect with friends and see what’s inside their freebie “Swag” bag.  Also SXSW Go which is a mobile app including a handy scheduling service.
2. Mobile Tweetdeck – you’ve gotta be able to track the conversation so set up a search on #sxsw now [better than in past years where you had to un-follow people who weren't at the congress in order to filter tweets].
3. Instagram – the photo sharing app that allows you to filter a ‘vintage’ look onto them.  Combine with Impression to watermark them with your URL and it’s a winner.

I am going to cheat and add another

1. Feedblitz allows your RSS feed to be sent by email – but also integrates Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and enables multiple feeds to be curated using the tags.  I’m going to create a #SXSW tag which will allow my followers who only want the updates from the interactive event to go to their emails.  Neat.

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We had a ball at the South by Southwest conference in 2009 when the Brits got bored with the samey-ness of the panels packed full of Yanks all spouting the same old stuff.

So we hijacked an empty room and started our own non-panel with the help of the AV guys. It turned into the usual "UK vs the rest of the world" moan interspersed with in-jokes and some fine role-play ably led by Andy Gibson .  His masterstroke was to introduce voting for panel members so the audience could vote them off.

Rapid changes in front of house faces followed.

And the local twitter stream got flooded with an unexpected hashtag, #kebab, chosen to confuse and delight

..apparently Brits just took over a room and met up, this panel is like a hug from Jesus. #kebab

Anyway, Andy took the idea forward and had #kebab2 the following day.  A different crowd and a slightly different discussion ethic followed but none-theless interesting as a more euro-centric view of developments online and in world economics and politics – all nicely reported on TechCrunch .

He then got invited to Birmingham to run #kebab3 during September which enabled him to refine the concept with a new audience, many of whom hadn't been at hte first and second events.

When I read his tweet about kebab3 I got in touch and asked him if he wanted to put forward a panel suggestion for SXSW next year…. so we met and thrashed out a proposal.

#kebab Presents… Whose Panel Is It Anyway?

Questions the panel will answer:

       1. What should SXSW2010 really be talking about?
       2. Which is better: London or California?
       3. Is a widget for mobile actually a 'midget'?
       4. Who should we bomb next?
       5. Why have a fifth question

      6. Hang on, isn't there a recession on?      

7. Where is Europe?
       8. Can anyone ask a question without plugging their dumb website first?
       9. What the hell is this #kebab business anyway?

Description:
    The conference-hackers behind 2009's #kebab unpanel are back with another Pythonesque assault on SXSW. A UGC panel of non-experts will address the topics other panels cannot reach – from monetising waterboarding, to how Twitter could have stopped Hitler. You pick the topics, you pick the panel. Democracy is coming to SXSW…

Today we heard that the kind folks in Austin think is is good enough to be put forward for public voting and assessment  by the team of Advisors.

I am organising the campaign to promote it through public voting.

Here's what I am going to do – treat this as a live case study of my business development methology.

Ready?

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Image by Imran… via Flickr

The UK Digital Missions are becoming an established feature of digital conferences in US and Europe.  A highly successful package that gets UK digital brands exposure to key audiences at trade shows you couldn't afford to go to on your own.

i saw the SXSW one in person and have successfully got my clients onto Digital Missions in the past.  

Can't recommend it enough.

If you are located near Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle or London do go along the see what Chinwag and the UK Trade & Investment team can do for you. [aside it's definitely worth joining the Chinwag Linked In group too].

Anyone wanting to speak to someone who's been on the mission before to find out the specific benefits, please ask me and I can put you in touch.

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The Designing Change in America panel will discuss the Obama "brand", it's birth, it's evolution, and it's rise to power. We will discuss the challenges of being in-house designers in a fast-paced political environment and how though challenges informed our process for designing and developing.

John Slabyk – Obama for America – art director
Scott Thomas – Obama – SimpleScott – design director
Alissa Walker – Gelatobaby – design writer and blogger

The logo – a symbol for the people to hold proudly. They started in September 07 on the campaign.  early graphics were 'normal' and concerned for print rather than strong design

  The banners made early mistakes – website used 12 different typefaces and different shaeds of blue and fold mentality.  Logo mistakes.  When we were briefed there were two worlds print and web and we overlapped them both.  Key issue was timing – everything was immedaite.  No time for user research or site architecture thinking.  We dealt with a large number of departments within the Obama for America campaign. We convinced many people that design was important and the clear messaging focused on 'we' rather than 'he'. 

The events team would create a gig with really awful names like "trying to turn the page in Iraq".  So we ended up copy writing as well to create headers that would fit – words are visuals too…Keeping the message of hope while dismantling the notion of being aloof.  Communicate the message of hope in images as well as words.

They also pulled images from the past (declaration of independence) enabled us to say things without saying them verbally.  Pulling feelings and emotions into the design.  They reproduced speeches in olde-worlde formats that could be printed out a posters to go on classroom walls in the same was as Martin Luther Kings speeches are.  

We knew the achilles heel would be lack of experience in Barak and so we tried to establish a consistency and balance to exemplify stability adn experience.  Use consistent colours and typography – colour palette always a consistent blue.

The symbol of the logo was solid and whole but the typeface didn't match.  So we changed it to an all-caps version which was more subtle – rounded up the terminals.  The O is a perfect circle.

Participation was important and so we encouraged downloading to get people involved – we used the idea from sports teams who enable downloads for t shirt printing / posters.

The election cycle as the Olympics of technology. My.Barakobama.com was a tool developed with Chris Hughes from Facebook.

The above-the-fold mentality was ever-present.  Everyone wanted to be on the home page and was really imporant.  Every event was streamed live and they used a full width banner across the top.

Voter registration process is hard and a lot of work to help people find out if they were registered or not. The process map was really complex.

Part of the reason the new media operation was so successful was we were a hive connected all the time.  We were never away from talking and working.  Even at midnight asking for something for the next day "we're all screwed and we have decided to be here so get on with it".

When we rolled out the Change you can Believe in banner – the typeface designer mentioned it on his blog and so I said "We should probably pay for that now!"

No time for proofing – we didn't know how the blue was going to come out as we had different printeres in every city.  We saw the output when it was on CNN.  This showed us that loads of preparation isn't always needed… you can work organically and it is OK if it's not perfect.  [nice anecdote about getting his browser and IM mixed up and typing "on it" into the wrong one and it went live onto the home page!]

Three words Respect, Empower and Include.  Came from the field office in Iowa.  

In the last minute rush we had lots of jobs and we figured that if a request got through to us we'd try and do it for them and do it quickly.  We had a Michael Slaby as a bulldog who made sure we weren't bothered, he summarised things himself so we got projects that were a good use of our time.  In future we'd set up a 'how to design' things for supporters to do it themselves.

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Karly Hand – Karly Hand @identitycrisis

Erin Portman – Erin Portman PR @erinportman

Brian Solis – PR 2.0@briansolis

Peter Shankman – HARO @skydiver

In a world riddled with ADD are PR agencies still relevant?

Solis – Twitter is changing everything – an opportunity as communicators / brand managers.  Real-time flow.  Is it distracting? Where do people go from Twitter – they click out and go to a load of new and different places – discovering information.  building a network around context.  Engage with people who are inteersted in you curating interesting. As a PR person you have to not share what you're having for lunch…..
you should curate information – you are the brand that you represent. information. 

Shankman – as  PR your job is no longer to do your own PR and is now to get others to do it for you.  Twitter is the ultimate example of how to do it. Send thank yous and freebies to people who write about your brands….. Hannibal Lecter – you covet what you know. 

Say something that's worth re-tweeting. 'informational yoghurt' not just plain yoghurt. 

Solis – FB is going after twitter aggressively – how you communicate with your social graph.  A new homepage on FB a timeline for conversations and updates "the statusphere".  Contextual followers.  don't forget Facebook.  The API is now open.

How are PR agencies redefining themselves for SM?

Shankman – Press releases will be dead within 24 months.  The smart agencies are realising that they have to play in this world tha anyone can now play in it….. 70k people are doing their own PR using these tools.   Dedicated people to read the blogosphere just like you used to read magazines.  The beauty if that young PRs have been doing it already search.twitter.com Find ways to get involved – not own the conversation, engage and listen.

 Is it worth putting something out on PR newswire?

If every releaee you put out becomes an irrelevance – some people want to get information on different ways. Journalists are doing searches.  Are you SEOing your releases?Write a release as a formality – social media release written not like a release (use keyword density at the start of the text) write it well – tell the story.  Channels of distributing informaiton.  Changing what you share.  You now have the ability to connect directly with your market don't market at them but find places they hang out.  I use releases on the wire as googlejuice and you can get this for free.  The Press Release is dying.  But this does not mean you don't know how to write.  You still need this key skill!  Writing the story that you want to read about is how you should look at your releases.  Give the background in this way. Putting it out on the wire and hoping for pick-up is just lucky.

What are the most influential digital trends / tools that are reshaping the PR industry?

Erin – the stonrgest are social networks like FB, Myspace and Twitter.  More people use these than use emaiil.  Anecdote about the Girl Scots organisation shutting down a girls cookie selling website because itwas illegal for their terms of service.  She was doing it to raise money to send her troupe to camp.

Start by listening to work out where you need to be. Just joining up won't do it – you create nothingness.  It all has to start by listening before talking.  What are they saying, how and about what? 

How can a PR firm engage a skeptical audience?

A firm should have familiarity with the tools and should work hand in hand with their clients.  Be upfront if you are writing a blog for your clients and you are an agency.  Be transparent.  If you are teaching the client how to use this stuff it 'damn well better be the CEO' because if you get caught you are sunk.

Twitter doesn't make sense for all brands to tweet – but you should use it as a search tool.  A focus group for free.  If you are a brand report back on jounalist work and the news out on the social mediasphere.  Ask your agency to report back on it.  Peoplbrowser tracks a range of conversations on different platforms – a dashboard that's free on the web. Each one has a different culture.  This will tell you how to engage in each one and the language they use.  Be a genuine participant in the communities.

The me-too syndrome is huge.  Everyone tracks useful information.  Agencies are not dying – but some will close.  YOu have to be traditional and also adapt these tools.  Mass-spamming emails of press releases is the wrong way to use these tools.  If you claim you are a SM expert I'll check how many twitter followers you have to see if you are saying interesting stuff that others want to read.  If you are an expert in your industry people should find your talk engaging.  Before we didn't have the ability to track.

Will firms move to managing a message rather than putting it out?

Businesses are constantly reacting – people use agencies because they don't have the in-house resources to deal with them.  Be proactive get the message out there.  

How to measure success of a SM campaign?

This is the wrong question.  Applying today's metrics to new ways of communicating doesn't work. Drive what you want to measure by your activities.  Design the campaign around what you learn by listening and measuring.  Use micro-sites and measure the hits and linkbacks – design around a destination which enabled us to measure by isolating it from the client's main site.  Listening will tell you everything.

Examples of companies that succeed and fail.

 McDonalds have a search base on their brand name.  They traced his tweet back to him and gave him a Arch Card with cash credited to it.  They were listening on aFriday afternoon and got a solution out by the next day.  Hardy's send gift cards and focus on what people say.  Florida Aquarium – tweets one interesting fact a day and get loads of followers because of it.  Embracing an audience who use the search feature to find this.  Fan pages – these may not be worth developing.  Some make the fan page on FB into a profile instead…. create a personality around the brand.  The Skittles campaign rather went about messaging in the wrong way.  Motrin magazine's Moms row blew up because they didn't listen first. 

Richard@dell is engaging on Twitter and the social web.  He doesn't only help celebrities.  

At what point does it make sense to outsource your PR?

 When you don't have the talent or resources to do it.  You need help.  Remember corp com teams need tocover HR, Finance as well as marketing.

Recommendations for companies not yet in SM

Start listening.  Own your name on every platform.Even if you don't use it straight away.  Listen.  Turn to an intern who knows the space and ask them what they think.  Let them teach you.  There's always more to learn.  Don't try to learn everything at once.  Just because college students play doesn't mean they can translate it into business. You need to continue to use your own business acumen. Curate your content carefully because it's all indexable from the social web.  Use"usernamecheck" to find what's available and to find squatters on your brand name.  You teach the intern what to say, they teach you how to use it.

Rules of engagement to follow for SM?

  the communities dictate the rules.  Pay attention to that.  Transparency and honesty is critical.

PR agencies thinking that they were the gatekeepers has died.  What's the business model that will thrive in future?

 
We thought we had control – what we really had was the ability to steer and shape perception.  We now have a greater ability to do this in the communities.  The business model – note competition from new places digital agencies, community management, blogger relations, and freelancers.  We need to adapt to bring in all these things.  Brian Solis has hired librarians to index the data so we can use it.  community managers to listen and tell the cleint to respond to situations.  We don't charge for email blasts any more.

 Agencies can add value through 'adult supervision' adding message and strategy for external publics. Metrics matter – agencies showing monthly reports on metrics not mentions.  Skillsets beyond Google Analytics – tools that can add value.  Work with blogger.  Trad industry analyst relations still work.  The trad method of engaging with journalists may take 6 months to get results.  You can get results within hours with this new media.  Know who you are trying to reach and where they consume media.  Not everyone is like you.

Part of the model is dead – from the ashes rises the phoenix of the future.  What will die? 

press releases, not engaging in conversation, broadcasting messages at audiences, the blast fax.

What's a proper reply to a tweet that is relevant?

 what's appropriate?  Advertising is when you're doing it and PR is when someone is doing it for you.  Your goal is to create raving fans who will tell the person posting on your behalf.  Yelp is a useful service for when someone mentions your company. Offer a great free service to the complainer convert them to your way.  Approach directly.  But there is a creepiness factor that people have to just work through. The individual conversation dictates the response.  Every conversation requires a unique response you can't cut and paste the same replies.  An age of customisation. 

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I have great hopes for this…. the industry needs some serious insight and motivation for change.

Clients say their advertising isn't working any more.  

I am trying to get to a different outcome – if we think about it as interruptive it will continue to be crap.

the volumes of advertising is what killed its effectiveness.  If it gives you value it's good.  If it doesn't it's spam.  The power of choice (and the technologies like TiVo to enable you to choose not to see it). 

Foundational issues – it's supposed to be about informing people but really it's about selling you crap you don't need.  I need something useful….. interruption is rude.

We want to shift people to helping them buy rather than selling something.  Matching customers with products / services that are of real value to them.  

The economics of advertising have changed.

What still works – Lovemarksm engaging people, digital all work…

(God he is so wrong here it is NOT a wonderful book it's self=indulgent not insights)

Bottom line – stop advertising and start adding value with communications in order to get more value.  Think of advertising as a content distribution method.  Educate, tell the story.  Me helping others.  Media and meetings like barcamps.  Participation is what really works – supporting the community.  Giving them the chance to engage and help each other.

How to measure engagement? – depends on the situation. eg. how often they reshare things.  Simple metric is Net Promoter Score.  [I agree]the 1/9/90 rule of community activity.  Can you get more of the 1 in 9 to give you ideas and can you create intimicy with them?Doing this effectively is more successful than advertising.

Advertising will continue to work. 

How will Agencies change?  As a beacon to create awareness – can agencies create better content to engage us rather than interrupt us.  They are great a showing use cases and telling great stories and they should evolve and get smarter at it – but it will take time.  Agencies won't die.

The brand with teh best storyteller wins…there are ways of doing this without being interruptive and in your face.  

If advertising doesn't die there are a lot of other problems that will follow. Know the difference between creating a desire and creating a need.  We need to reimagine advertising.

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Where extraordinary customer service is the norm.

75% of customers are repeat customers.

Put marketing spend into improved customer experience and encouraging repeat custom and word of mouth advocates.

Customer service – what customers first see.  0800 number is easy to find.  On every page of website 24/7.  Call us even if it's not about a sale.  the telephone is a great branding device – the customer's undivided attention for 5 minutes and they tell their friends.  Most customers call at least once during their lifetime relationship with us.

Free shipping both ways – buy what you like and return it FOC if it doesn't fit.

365 day return policy.  This is just a policy and companies can copy these.  It's about what you experience after you place an order.  Most customers are surprised if upgraded to overnight shipping – offered to repeat loyalty customers.  Expensive but worth marketing spend.  They only show product that is definitely in stock.  when they started they used to show items which weren't in stock – great in theory (was 25% of sales) but as they grew up it was not good enough to align with customer service ethic. 

Call centre – each rep is trained to look on at least 3 competitior websites and direct cuatomer to buy it there instead.  We lose the transacatio but we are trying to build a lifelong relationship and so it doesn't matter in the long term. No scripts, no call times, no upselling. Invest in 5 weeks of culture training for new employees.  If they are bad for culture they get fired.  50% of performance review is based on culture and core values.  During the mandatory 5 week training they are offered money to leave ($2000) to weed out employees who don't want to commit to the firm. 

Culture book – employees writing about what they think Zappos means to them.  They give it to prospective employees to read.  Each department writes and it's not edited. They use Twitter too -classes as part of new hire orientation.

Culture and Brand are the same thing.  They're converging.

"Zappos is about delilvering happiness" to customers, vendors and suppliers.  What holy CR**.  Sometimes I think the US has taken a reality bypass.  How can you possibly claim to deliver something as complex as happiness from a shop.  So shallow.  Now core values #10 is be Humble….. does not compute…. 

Interview question On a scale of 1-10 is how wierd are you?  Look at how people react to the question – we celebrate individuality and staff true personalities.  So blooming American and superficial.  At what level of employee does this cease to be a really important factor in the hiring process?  Wonder how the chief legal counsel did in her interview?  Does she customise her cubicle.  

How lucky are you in life?  Good golden question – can you see beyond the task presented to the wider picture.  Love it.  Great question to have in hiring process.

7 steps to building a long term sustainable brand.

1. decide to do it – it takes patience with revenues and profits
2. figure out your values and culture.  It is not just a big company thing.  This has been key. 
3. commit to transparency – an ask anything email address for employees, extranet for vendors.
4. vision – whatever you're thinking, think bigger. Chase vision not money. 
5. build relationships not networking.  When you meet people and if you are interested in them as a person 2/3 years later they can support your business without you trying.  A lot of these things has a 2/3 year payoff and that is a key element of success.
6. build your team.  Hire slowly – fire quickly. 
7. think long term – repeat customers, customer service there is no get rich quick forumula.  An overnight success normally takes years (add your previous experience to what you're working on now). 

I like the transparency thing – certainly remember feeling aggrieved that financial information was kept secret to junior staff when I was employed.

number 5 is certainly interesting.  It aligns with my view about "there are no coincidences".  Listen to what's happening to you and find that commonality.  Follow it, listen carefully.Meeting @vero at lunch just now adds to my shopping centres theme that's developing….

And I totally agree with the 7. overnight successes do take a long time.  You just didn't notice them for a long while.  Applies to sport too.  

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Thsi was a wide-ranging discussion around a range of different situations from the audience.

Here is a list of the top 25 things you can do including the first 2 steps you MUST take before setting up a community group.

1. I want it to be easy and my self-interest is fulfilled without having to do all the work!  
2. If you can ID the target user who would be most interested in your thing and say that you're looking for people who have a passion and an interest for your thing.  Tell people they are going to have an input into what you do (incentives possibly).  But first you have to find the person who is connected to the audience.  Set them up as a steering committee.
3. Find those with the broadest social network (connectors) and they are foten the most "impacted by ego".  They may not be the leading edge but have a motivation to get their voices heard.
4. there is a tension between a closed community of like-minded folk and large open communities.  Most prefer the closed and small one (clean, well-lit and moderated) because it is very focused, structured and tightly managed. 
5. Using Jive platform. and adding group features made participation skyrocket.  Connections are made and niches established – both open and private.
6. Trust – anonymity encourages whiners and crappy posts.  Creating trust makes candour and investment in real information exchange.  "Tell us about yourself".  Even in very technical communities people do answer them….Asking open questions "what was your first job in this space" or "what challenge do you face".  You create opportunities for people to connect.  Key to ask the right questions.
7. Collaboration tools – wikis, uploading photos, whiteboards, clearspace (a collaboration document sharing / discussions)
8. You need a moderator.  There's no way of taking the human beings out of it.  The "best" tools are improved by good facilitation by a real person wiht the right skills e.g. coaching / programming / engineer depending on your industry.  Not just a marketing person.
9. Trust people – they are smart.  Communities self-police and people point out the bad stuff usually quite quickly. 
10. Be clear about the difference between company "official" news and user-generated content. 
11. It is often less risky to talk about the problem to the community than not talking about it.
12. Think carefully about your T&Cs – a lot of people do community stuff but there are risks and legal has a role.  Terms of Use.
13. 5 step methodology "community college" how to set up communities – we make clients give a roster of people to do it because it takes a lot of time to get these things started i.e. several quarters of work.
14. Sustaining the energy is important – at the start if it's boring or bad content people won't come back.  Key inflexion points you have to hit.
15. Be very transparent in your 'voice' set the ground rules.  e.g. The marketing guys want to use this video and would you take a look at it and tell us what you think…. it's jujitzu don't pretend you are actually marketing to them. Credit the members with the decisions that are made based on their input.
16. Going into the community with new stuff too soon can be unproductive.  You have to already have thecontent and a person knowledgeable to manage it after having privately started the discussion with the 'connectors' first.
17. Tweet button to enable people to 'tweet an event' or 'add to facebook'.  It's not forced onto people and they choose whether to click it or not.
18. Provide a way to promote other members – giving "real estate" to the members.  Highlighted members, video uploads, partners pictures, so members can make themselves better known.
19. Make it clear how members can participate.  List of things you can do for yourself.  Make the calls to action very clear.
20. Tech forums are good at solving problems communities are about co-solving and co-creating rather than problem solving.
21. Sometimes people just want to be heard. [the man who automated his home-sprinker system from his laptop!]
22. You need a cross-functional team to make a community successful.
23. Having a common currency – why people want to participate.  If they reach a certain level they get 'sneak peak' at products; others just want good code.
24. For B2B there's a need to provide direction and a focus which is different from B2C.  Partnerships between external communities and those hosted on your site are a sign of success. 
25. If you can't answer a user's question within 2 minutes – point them to a resource on the site…. Great Rule of Thumb.

step 1 Have a very difiinite specification of who the member is….. niche not broad
step 2 – write the value proposition for the member-centric view.

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