I was fortunate enough to attend a Product Development Management Association (PDMA) meeting regarding online communities last week hosted by Iron Mountain in Southborough, Mass.

The speakers were Eric Schurr of Awareness Networks and Debi Kleiman of Communispace.

It’s too bad it wasn’t a bigger crowd because it was a terrific presentation with lots and lots of questions from attendees (rain and bad traffic were probably a big factor here). How some very large brands are using both private and public online communities to gather information to learn about their customers, and to disseminate information to their customers — and ultimately help get products to market faster — is fascinating.

Communispace’s private communities are created for Fortune 1,000 companies for insight about and innovative ideas by their customers. A major toy brand, for example, had already set up one with about 500 moms – already determined by them to be passionate about toys and thus frequent contributors/visitors to the community — prior to the news about shoddy Chinese manufacturing, which led to massive recalls.

This was fortunatate for the company, because when the news broke, the site was extremely useful to the toy manufacturer, which actually fed the PR machine for press releases and case studies (music to my ears.) Some of the comments made by the community members even made their way to the CEO, underscoring just how valuable the insight gained from these communities really is. Ultimately the toy manufacturer received kudos for the way it handled this crisis, and it believes the community site played a major role in that success.

Public community sites can have a tremendous impact for a company, even down to the bottom line. Take the site created by Awareness for one of the world’s largest hotel chains. It’s said to be responsible for generating millions of dollars in revenue for the chain. In addition, a public site created for a large pharmacy chain included contests for site visitors, generating invaluable customer insights.

Kleiman and Schurr also tied the two different technologies together, explaining how private and public communities can and should work together. One can feed off the other for truly successful online communities – for example, a private community can seed a public community to have a broad impact on the marketplace.

As our clients’ social media activities continue to grow, I’ll be sure to promote the value of online communities, both public and private. While large corporations still dominate in this space, some community-building techniques can be applied to smaller and midsized companies as well. It will be interesting to see how the increasing influence of online communities plays out.

Technorati Tags: Awareness Networks, Communispace, online communities, PDMA

Here’s a news flash from The State of the Obvious Daily: people are using their office computers for personal reasons. That’s according to a new survey commissioned by Facetime, the enterprise instant messaging provider.

Dean Takahashi of Venturebeat reports that the survey found that 79 percent of workers use Facebook, LinkIn or YouTube for business reasons, while 82 percent say they use these and other social networks and social media sites for personal reasons. (I digress, but that means 3 percent of workers claim they are surfing the web solely to benefit their employer, i.e. they are lying).

Predictably, one of the reasons that companies are reluctant to implement social media programs is because CEOs see through the corners of their eyes their employees goofing off on – er, researching – social networking platforms all day. This concern is backed up by a survey commissioned by global IT consulting firm Avanade that was picked up by ZDNet’s Sam Diaz:

“More than half of the respondents to the survey said senior executives and IT staff resist adoption out of fear it will sap worker productivity.”

This, I think, is a valid concern. But it stems from a misinterpretation of what a strategic social media program is all about and a misunderstanding of the significant impact it can have toward meeting a company’s business objectives.

A well-executed social media program is a strategic initiative that’s implemented by a defined group of people at the company who are accountable to the process and its consequences. A social media program does not consist of random Tweeting, for example. But that seems to be the perception out there.

Remember how your elementary school teacher told you not to pass notes in class, but you snuck a few anyway? There’s a little bit of “bad boy” (or girl) in all of us. We like the idea that we’re getting away with riffing random Tweets or Facebook updates while we’re on the clock. Heck, we’re even building our “personal brands” while we’re doing it. The only problem is that if your boss isn’t already tracking you on Twitter or Facebook, he or she will be soon. And they’re going to be asking: where’s the beef with that Tweet?

According to the Avanade survey, they already are. Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Technorati Tags: Avanade, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

I have had all these great ideas swirling around in my head for this blog but it seem as though they have already been covered. Instead, I’ll refrain and post an observation about Twitter, reporters, PR people and the number one rule that I see getting violated.

Ever since I started using Twitter a few months ago I’ve found it to be extremely valuable on a personal and professional level. I do follow many reporters to see what types of things they are covering and basically what is bugging them about PR people. Some of my favorites include @phonescooper, @bmorrissey and @mitchwagner. They have all complained about some of the things that bother them about us. Yesterday took the cake, @mitchwagner actually got a direct message that was a pitch. When I saw the post, I actually wanted to scream but then thought my cube-mates wouldn’t appreciate it. First of all it’s insanely intrusive and secondly, it’s bad form.

To all PR people out there: PLEASE, stop pitching reporters on Twitter (unless you know for sure that they want to be pitched)! PLEASE, stop pitching on Facebook and other social networking sites (again, unless you know for sure that they want to be pitched). PLEASE, stop giving us all a bad rap.

Use regular email, and if you can’t keep your pitches short and to the point, then maybe your pitch isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Please note: This is just my opinion, not the opinion of others at Topaz or of my employer Topaz Partners. It might offend and for that, I apologize.

Technorati Tags: bad pitch, editors, email, Facebook, pitch, pitching, PR, reporters, Social Media, socialmedia, Twitter