Ahh yes, Community. One of the most important areas of SEOmoz. We've come to realize that growing and nurturing our community isn't just great for business, but it's great for our members and for the greater marketing community. Think of it this way: the more you can get a community member to participate, the more they learn and share their knowledge, the richer the whole community becomes. I could go on for days about the importance of Community, but perhaps another time :).
Keeping your community happy (or at least showing them you care) is one of those aspects that is uber important, but doesn't get discussed nearly enough. Today, I'll be talking about just that! I'm excited to share some tips on ways to make your community *happy dance* their way into becoming lifelong fans. So sit back, relax, and learn how to delight and surprise your community - one cupcake at a time!
Video Transcription
"Hey, SEOmoz fans. I'm Jen Lopez. I'm the Director of Community here at SEOmoz. So of course today I'm going to talk about eight different ways that you can delight the pants right off of your community members, and by pants I mean not pants, but anyway, we'll get into that a little bit more.
So, the first thing, something that we do here at SEOmoz is we give them points. Now, that could be brownie points. It could be actual money. It could be whatever you want to give them, stars, but something that lets them know that the activity that they're doing, the stuff that they're doing that they're doing a good job, and where people can actually tell them "You're doing great," whether it's like on Instagram, you can "heart" something. I actually always love that. I like it better than a Like because a heart has a little more power than a Like, and on Instagram, when I post something and I get a ton of people hearting my stuff, I get really excited. My pants don't come off, but I do get very excited.
Number two, you have to be sure to actually thank them. So, if somebody does something really nice, you should thank them. You're going to notice that all these really boil down to the last point, but I'm not quite there yet, so I'm not going to go there. But thanking them, taking that step, whether it is on the site in a comment, whether it's via Twitter, it's on Facebook, it's in an app, it's in a forum, whatever the case may be, if you thank someone, thank them for giving you feedback, thank them for their comment, whatever the case may be, the little, tiny step of saying thank you actually makes a huge difference to somebody. I know that, for me personally, I've been absolutely delighted in other communities when I've been participating and someone has said, "Thank you so much for your help with this, we really appreciate it." It absolutely makes a world of a difference.
The third one is be human. This is in your messaging across the site. If your site is down or you're having issues, rather than just saying, "Oh, hello, I am a bot and my site is down, and you must come back later," if you had a little bit of personality and actually show that you give a crap about your community and the people who are using your site, they're really going to appreciate that. If you say, "I'm really sorry, we're having issues right now, we'll be back as soon as possible, check us out on Twitter," whatever the case may be, we all know the fail whale. That's because Twitter, although we hate to see the fail whale, we all know about it and we actually kind of like it. Twitter has even spruced it up over the years, and it shows that they're human, that they care, that they found a design, and people really latched on to it. There are T-shirts out there with the fail whale on it and all of this.
So, actually be human. In everything that you do, make it known that there's a human behind it. If you're running your Twitter account, you're running your Facebook account, don't make it be like, "Well, we're a big organization and you're talking to a big bean." You're talking to a human and make sure that they know that.
The next one is show some personality. For us, it's sort of fun when we are engaging with the community on Twitter or Facebook, we get to be Roger. We get to be a robot. It's a lot more fun to be like, "beep, I love candy apples," or whatever the case may be that Roger seems to like that day. It's easy for us to put some personality into it. But that's another thing. It goes with "your site's down." We actually recently had somebody write a blog post about how much he enjoyed our "site down" message, and then he tweeted to us and we sent him back a response with a picture of Roger and he really enjoyed it. He wrote a blog post about it, which he then linked to us. So just by showing some personality and being human and doing all these things, we actually got a link out of it, not specifically on purpose, but because we're building this community and we actually care and we're working hard to do that.
The other thing is you have to make it easy. Nothing frustrates a user more than getting to a website and not being able to do what you want to do, whether it is to simply leave a comment, whether it is to sign up for a paid account, whatever it is, even if it's Twitter or if it's Facebook, make sure it's easy for the end user.
I like to really talk about Lady Gaga's community. This sounds really silly, but if you go to LittleMonsters.com and walk through the sign-up process, you will see what an excellent community is and how easy it is to sign up. They walk you through step by step, telling you everything that you're doing along the way. They pull in your information from Facebook or Twitter, wherever you want it to come from. You can change it. Then, as soon as you're in, they walk you through how to use the community. I'm actually quite a fan of Lady Gaga, and I don't participate in the forums or anything. But we have actually used their sign-in process and on boarding process quite a bit here at SEOmoz when we've been working to build our community even more.
So make it something that, whether it is sharing content, whatever it is, if you want somebody to write a YouMoz post, we don't make that super easy. That's one of the things that we actually need to work on. But make it really, really easy for your community to do things, and they will be happy as pie. Although hopefully, they'll still have their pants.
The next one is take it to e-mail. I've had this personally happen to me several times, and from that I have then starting using that within our own community. One time I was in New York City, and I had paid for the WiFi and it was about 11 o'clock at night and I tweeted from my phone because I couldn't get on WiFi. I tweeted about the WiFi problem at this hotel. Well, the next afternoon, I received an e-mail from somebody saying, "We saw your tweet. We've actually gone to your room. We fixed the problem. Your WiFi issue has now been solved and you don't have to pay for WiFi the rest of your three night stay."
My pants almost fell off, because I was so excited about that, and I've actually talked about it in almost every one of my presentations since, because I was absolutely floored that they went above and beyond. I sent a tweet. They read my tweet, and they found out who I was. Okay, it's maybe a little stalkerish, but I'm okay with it cause I signed up with my e-mail address. Anyway they were able to find me and help me out.
More recently Sprout Social, we've been testing them out. We're testing out various social management software. We're trying out Sprout Social, and I got a tweet from someone who works there that says, "Oh, we really love you guys. I'm glad you're trying it out." The next thing I know, we get a bunch of cupcakes in the mail. That has nothing to do with the e-mail. That was actually number seven, that rolls right into that one. I am so ahead of myself here.
Number seven is take it offline, and some of that goes with the e-mail, if you can reach out to the person. Sometimes we'll have someone in the comments who's having issues or wants to ask more questions or whatever. We reach out to them and say, "Hey, I'm here. I'm a human. I'm here to answer your questions and figure out how we can help." So, whether you're doing that in e-mail, on the site or on Twitter, whatever the case may be.
Then the next step is to really take it offline, like I said. Send them something nice. So we received cupcakes, which if you follow me on Twitter or you've ever seen me speak like at MozCon or something, you probably know that I really like cupcakes. I actually think it might be in my Twitter bio. So all they had to do was look at my Twitter bio that said, "I love cupcakes," and they sent me cupcakes.
Now, are we going to use Sprout Social? I'm not 100% sure, but I guarantee that every time we talk about it, I'm like, well let's not forget about Sprout Social because they remembered I liked cupcakes. So take that when you're trying to woo a community member.
The last thing, and it's something I've actually talked about through the whole thing, is just to make it personal. They're a human on their end. If you make it personal for you, that you care about what they're saying, you care about what they're asking about, again we're talking whether it's on social, whether it's within your app, it's on a forum, it's on your blog, whatever the case may be, just remember that they are human and you are human and they're having a bad day. I can do a whole Whiteboard Friday someday on how to deal with trolls, and one of the biggest things will always be to remember that they are human also. They may not act like it, but when it comes down to it, if you treat them like a human being, they're going to respect that a whole lot more.
So that is today's Whiteboard Friday, and I believe I went through everything, and hopefully you still have your pants on. I'm hoping. Everybody got your pants? Checking? Okay.
Everybody have a really great week, and we'll see you next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Thank you."
I'd also add "be authentic" to the list. It can be easy to fall into the trap of putting a little spin on things... only to get caught out later and undermine any trust that might have been created.
Yes, yes, yes, YES! I can't agree more. I should have definitely added authenticity. If you're just pretending to care, what's the point?
Love it Jen... great WBF :) From an SEO perspective besides making a community happy and improving engagement these tips will also let you build links #RCS style! PS: What´s the name of the unicorn? I thought you were going to ride it :D
TGIF!
Everyone should give a crap. We are responsible for making the internet a better place. Good job, great tips on how to be a better member of the community :-)
Hi Jen, Rick and Virgy are right, you're spot on with thanking people. A thank you is not always asked for, but it's always appreciated! And it really doesn't take any effort to do it so it's a really easy win when you make the time for it.
Thanks for a great WBF!
Thanks Jen,
Be sincere, be courteous, be happy, be yourself;-)
Very true Jon
Great WBF, easy to listen to and I managed to not get too distracted by the pink Unicorn!
I think the best one of those is the 'take it offline' - there's nothing more personal than a parcel arriving (we've had one from Moz) or a phone call as a result of something - and that shows fantastic care and personality. :-)
Have a great weekend!
Doh! I thought it was so funny how the unicorn was just there, and she never acknowledged it. I thought it would have been equally as funny if none of us mentioned it either. haha
Hehehe I can't believe I made it through the whole thing without laughing, especially the time I hit him. I wondered if people would mention him, or just go along with it. ;) Btw, he's a balloonicorn. ;)
"balloonicorn" !!!
Thank you. That was and will be the only time I actually laugh out loud on this slow-moving Friday at the office.
Additional Tips :)
1) Gamification (Give them points/stars/thumbs)
The thought process behind this seemed a little soft for me. Gamification should help encourage behaviour that's beneficial for your website. My suggestion would be to understand how users behave on your site and design a system that compliments desired behaviours. The tricky bit is designing the system to be attractive for the user but at the same time ensuring it doesn't get in the way.
2) Participation (Thanks them, be human, show personality, make it personal)
Participate in the community and design activities that empower your users. Let them feel like they are a true part of the community. Showcase prime examples of great community users through activities that engage the type of audience you want to grow.
3) Simplicity (Make it easy)
Try to make tasks simple and not complicated. Some of the best sites allow user to do what they're trying to do, when they want, in the easiest possible way. It sounds stupid but you would be amazed at the kind of hoops some sites make users jump through to perform a task.
4) Consistency
Consistency is key! My old rugby coach once told me that you can make 100 good passes but one bad pass is what everyone will remember.
The reason why I love Jen is because she really knows what being human is all about… you see how ends the presentation… isn’t this how REAL humans do?
I really love the part when you get off from your computers, emails, twitter and do something that really bring people closer… like the cupcake thingi… like the Diet Coke thingi with Ian!
If you do something lovable offline to build strong relationship this will give you lot of branding, media hype, word of mouth, links and may be some real business that you was looking for!
Great stuff!
Nice jen, i am happy to see you in WBF, as usual you come with great topic. it is one of the important aspects organization to keeping happy their community. Thanks jen for this wonderful tips about the good community leader and build a strong community. I like number two feed back is very important for the building community.
Thank you Jen :-)
Seriously, I feel like you are the floor mom in the SEOMoz community. I like the take it offline part. It's amazing the lasting impact a simple action, llke even sending a Thank You note can have. Funny, not many people do thank you notes any more...It's too bad. You guys just sent me some SEOMoz merch and there was a new Roger sticker in the box and a pretty cool refrigerator magnet, both of which my 9-year-old claimed as his own.
I always enjoy WBF :-)
Thank yous and appreciative words really go far these days. With so many of us looking to remain connected, getting just something as basic as a kind word can do alot for an individual's psyche.
Great WBF Jen! You're so right, something as simple as a thank you from a site owner can be the difference in remembering that site and loosing out to a competitor!
That's how I feel anyway :) I guess I'm easily swayed! haha
It's not just you! A simple "thank you" really goes a long way with folks. :)
A thank you goes a very long way. SeoMOZ sent us some swag once for a contest, and we loved it . Our office took pictures and every tweeted about it and put them on instagram. This gave me the inspiration to do the same for my guest bloggers, including sending them a letter on company stationary (with some swag of course). Emails are great, but when was the last time you received a letter from someone.
So true magiclogix1!
I'm looking at a postcard I received from the adorable Roger Mozbot and the Moz team right now!
It's been a very long time since I giggled my way through the day when it arrived, and believe me, it's not coming down off the shelf any time soon!
...and by the way Jen, a big thank you to you and everyone at Moz for all the smiles that postcard has given me :)
Sha
Aww really glad to hear this!! :) Thank YOU!
Thanks for this WBF, Jen. Although in our industry there isn't a lot of social interaction, I agree that showing that we give a crap really does make a difference.
I'm sure we all have a bunch of example, both good and bad - the good ones really leave a positive impression of an organization and it isn't hard to do anyway.
Don't think I'll join littlemonsters.com just yet though! ;)
Haha well you should sign up so you can see how awesome the process is. :D
Hey Jen, thanking people is the BEST thing you can do, whether it be on the web or not. I have personally referred people to small business's, who have then obtained them as a client. But even.. with many hints, not even a thank you. I will never refer again to someone who does not say thank you. Good community post as usual. V
Happy Friday! Awesome WBF Jen. You make 8 great points, especially wrt to Thank You, which is still one of the most underutilized currencies in business, translates into all languages and works great with employees, partners and most of all, customers.
Totally! We have a paid account with Hallmark cards and send online cards all the time. It's a great way to easily say thanks. We also use to send "get well" cards or "congrats" cards to folks as well. It's so simple, yet leaves such an impression!
Happy Friday!
I'm a fan of this post. A lot of websites and companies forget the most important part of their organization: Their end users and customers.
G+ sharing button is missing :(
Jennifer, thank you for a unicorn there - it helped your message a lot I think :)
Hehe I wondered how many people would comment about him. :) I see the G+ button, are you seeing it now?
Thanks for the WBF Jen - really enjoyed it! I have a friend who has a successful blog in terms of traffic, exposure and monetization, but who doesn't engage with her community at all (she admitted to me that she doesn't even read the comments). As a result, she gets very few comments - people know that there isn't much point in commenting, so they don't bother. This means she has an extremely popular blog with interesting daily content, yet absolutely no sense of community. I can't help but feel it's a terrible waste, particularly given the nature of her niche (weddings)!
Oh wow! Yes, I think you're correct there. It seems like she could be growing her blog even more by focusing a bit on the community. It's all about training your community what you want them to do. For example, here on the SEOmoz blog, over the years we've obviously trained people that if you leave a comment, you'll get a reply (or at least a thumb up/down). Same with Twitter, we've trained our followers that if they tweet to us, they're more than likely going to get a reply.
By not responding, she's definitely training folks that she won't respond. I'd love to see what would happen if she focused one month on simply responding to comments!
I know! It's so sad, because most of her readers are brides-to-be, so they're excited about planning their big day. It could be a really fun community!
Super job Jen. I like seeing you up on the Whiteboard.
yay! Thanks Carlos :)
Oh, Jen, what a lovely WBF! It's nice to see you here. Listen to such good advice from a community leader like you is something all of us are expecting everytime.Thanks for your dedication and for that wonderful smile.See you.
Thanks Sergio!
good job! and loved the unicorn!
This is such a great WBF. Of the companies I've done some work for, they all seem to have forgotten that being human is really important to their users. It's one thing to BE a stereotypical large corporation, it's another to ACT like one.
"Thank You," Jen. You did a great job on covering the importance of personality on a website!
Great info and a really sweet presentation, Jen. I guess most people who manage communities know this stuff deep down, but it gets forgotten in the daily rut, so it is great to be reminded of it.
And now I am of to tweet about some chocolate companies in the hopes they send me free stuff ;-)
Interacting with your fans is definitely important. The biggest problem I've found in doing this is keeping track of all of them, since there's so many social channels these days: Twitter, Google+, Facebook Pages, regular email, your own forums, and even their own blogs. I haven't tried Sprout Social but I would definitely try a tool that aggregates all of these channels for me, and gave me metrics on what my fans were liking/sharing. If I knew 90% of my fans loved to share infographics or videos, that's very powerful actionable information I can give to my content marketing team.
Definitely recommend you try Sprout Social, Radian6(pricey), UberVue, etc.. All of these can monitor your twitter/facebook. In the long run if you're monitoring multiple clients (agency), pay for the service.
Henley have you heard of Social Inbox? It was originally an offshoot of MarketMeSuite. There is also a CRM solution called Jugnoo out there roaming around too.
I'm echoing everybody else here of course, but I really enjoyed this WBF... I always used to be passionate about social but have let other things get in the way recently. Thanks for reminding me how awesome it is to interact with your audience!
If anyone has the right to speak about commnity management, it's SEOmoz - and specifically Rand, Jen, Aaron and others from the team.
One thing that became blindingly obvious when I was lucky enough to visit the Mozplex and spend some time at a borrowed desk before Mozcon this year was what I think is the secret to the success of the SEOmoz community...
The team inside the Mozplex is a community in itself, loved and nurtured by everyone who's a part of it in their own way...we are just lucky enough to be a part of the extension of that community outside the building.
As with everything, Mozzers lead by example :)
Sha
Jen, this WBF was a great reminder. I swear I almost smacked my forehead and said DUH!
We've all learned these niceties over time but get busy and forget to use them regularly. Well after today I won't be forgetting anymore, in fact I think I'll print them so I don't.
And your co-host was super cute, thanks for sharing him with us today.
Giving points to respect their work gives them joy and thanking them with reward, well a tribute. Must things to do in building a friendly community.
Thx Jen. These are some great tips. Mine is just a small blog site and I do respond to comments and emails (as well as phone calls). I never thought about taking the blog comments one step further, and I do hope people are coming back to see the comments...but I'm guessing most don't. so, now I may supplement this with an email to them so make sure they saw my response. thx for the tip.
Great WBF! Really enjoyed hearing your 8 tips!
Yes this WBF around the jen because she make seomoz community on top in social world, feel human and look like human and treat as human this is a main point for social world and community. some how i am agree 80% with this WBF.
Jennita, that was delightful. Thanks you for this whiteboard Friday.
I love this post, Jen - such an easy topic to overlook, but so critical! Thank you!
Great post. Being human is something that I've been striving for my company to do more often. You know, knowing that we drink the occasional beer or have a glass of wine, isn't a bad thing, it's being honest and genuine.Plus if there's a mistake fess up to it, more than likely if you admit it there will be less damage than if a client finds it.
One thing that wasn't mentioned though is how you administrate. At the end of the day, we all want to be nice to the members in our community, and the hope is that they will be nice. However, when there appears a voice of dissent, how do we deal with that. Do we shut it down, or do we say, "hey that's your opinion". They way we handle situations like this can seriously damage or enhance reputation.
If you end up squashing dissent, you simply get a group of backslappers who don't really ad any real education because all the group ends up doing is reinforcing an entrenched position.
This is great - it's always been more of an art to build a community and grow it - it takes a lot of work - but every little bit of effort helps, never know what tips the scale into growth!
Nice presentation Jennita. Having personal touch with community members is must. Sending birthday and anniversary E-Mail wishes makes community members happy and having homely feel. After few days we ask them how was the birthday with a special birthday offer. I don't know SEOmoz doing that, if they do it would be good. Just my 2 cents :-)
Along the first point, one great way to keep things lively on your board is to maintain a ranking system for your users. Yelp does this well, with their mayor / duchess / duke thing. I've also seen this well implemented in most forums. The more you post, the higher your rank, and the bigger clout you wield within the community.
Along these lines, a lot of communities offer the option to access special content after you've posted X amount of relevant comments. For instance, you can get behind the scenes footage of exciting things the team is doing, or you can access "hidden" forums for elite posters after you've A) been a member for over a month or B) have posted, say, 25 or so thoughtful posts. Give your users something to strive for, and they'll stay motivated to be active.
Yup, gamifiying some elements of your community works very well. You just need to make sure it provides something of value to people as they participate more. For SEOMoz for example, you gain name recognition.
jennita and team, i think you guys are doing a great job here. congrats.
Simple but effective strategy. My favorite part is the points or the heart type reward. It shows others that you are a company of humans. Great WBF Jen
Superb article and best of all you can see right away how it's done here in the comments and what a nurtured community looks like. Thanks!
Nice job, Jen! #3 and #4 are so important. I have always loved the Roger voice/persona - definitely doesn't go unnoticed!
Aww man where's my pants?
Jen nice to see you on WBF and for the Sprout Social reference. I really like your community building posts. Maybe one day you can have a workshop or something. I watched your Mozinar back in Feb 2012 and that was good too.
Hi Jen,
Incredible WBF on Social Community. I would really wan ask you one question in concern of Brand Reputation that if we something post negative on social platforms like tweeter or face book about third party then u don't think so we gone hurt their Brand Reputation using social crowd?
According to my point of view that if we post something negative or crap on our social wall's then it's really doesn't make sense cause ultimately we gone hurt Brand Reputation of third party resource. However I m agree with your illustration where you have stated that In whatever case if our official website on under maintain then we can derive traffic on our social walls like tweeter or fan page where we can instantly solve the queries of customers in concern of interaction.
Anyways we really enjoyed your WBF, Thanks for it!
Hi! Thanks for the kind words. Are you asking about like if you have issues on the site if you should post that on social? It's definitely up to you how to manage the brand, but for us we're quite open about it. When we have an issue, we post it on Twitter.
We recently had someone mention that we talk about our down-time a lot on Twitter, and I responded that it was because we're open with our customers and community. We'd rather people know what's going on, rather than keep them in the dark.
Hope this helps!
I have doubt about this video. Should we give a "crap" for real or should we act like we are giving "crap"? ;-)
If you don't give a crap for real I would politely suggest you are either in the wrong industry or working on the wrong project.
It is painfully obvious when people are pretending to give a crap rather than those who are genuinely passionate about a business or a niche / industry.
I think the many successful PR firms out there would tell you otherwise. Some people are simply passionate about success no matter their level of emotional investment in the cause.
Hah! Well as I was saying the word, I realized I made it sound more important than I should have. But that's what happens with one take! And you most definitely want to actually give a crap. :)
I would love: 1. cupcakes 2. Whiteboard Friday on how to deal with trolls. Great job Jen.
Hmmm...here we go again with the faking it nonsense.
I don't recall hearing Jen say the word "pretend" at any point in this Whiteboard Friday.
I really wish people would just STOP trying to convert every genuine gesture of fun and generosity into a sales technique.
I'm sure the intent of this Whiteboard Friday was to make us aware of the things that come naturally at SEOmoz because of the company's TAGFEE culture. As Jen mentioned, there are other communities out there where this is also true.
The benefit if you choose to see it, is that some of us become more acutely aware of the flaws we may have inadvertently developed in the way we treat our own community members, NOT an opportunity to find another way to treat them badly!
*sigh*
Sha