WeeKee Today

It has been a month since I last shifted from using the Ning platform and focus on using the Facebook Page. The Facebook Page currently has 350 plus members. Though it is still lesser than the number of members on the previous site, the results are pretty decent considering that the page has only existed for a month or so. Do note that using the number of members on a site alone isn't a really good matrix for measuring the performance of community sites but for the sake of simplicity, I am currently only striving to work on this matrix.

After trying to establish my own branded community site and subsequently use the Facebook platform, I have come out with a simple framework to share some of my learning points on how businesses can build a community site to engage with their customers.

I had used level of brand awareness as a variable on the y-axis and degree of customer engagement on the x-axis. Based on the 4 quadrants, I provide my personal thoughts on how businesses can use social networking sites (SNS) for their businesses.

Quad 1: Low level of brand awareness and high degree of customer engagement
Lets face it. Everyone has talk about engaging their customers but the truth is that it can be tough and businesses need to have resources to do it. Nevertheless, businesses can make use of existing platforms like Facebook, Friendster, etc to build up their brand awareness even though the degree of customers engagement could be low. Facebook Pages are fast and low cost to setup. Start off by getting existing customers to join the Facebook Page and business might be able to increase the level of brand awareness by taping on their customers network. Placing Facebook ads to promote the page does help as well. However without working on the customer engagement aspect, there is limitation on this approach. Nevertheless, considering the effort involved, this is pretty low hanging fruits that small businesses could easily grab.

Quad 2: Low level of brand awareness but high degree of customer engagement
For businesses with plans to actively engage the customer base, the choice between using existing SNS or creating your own branded community site is something worth thinking. There are pros and cons to either approach and it depends greatly on the business requirements for the community site. For example in the case of Clean & Clear (HongKong site), they have a few interesting applications for their user base and hence it might be worth doing their own branded community site. Hence for this case, a lot depends on how the business plans to engage its customers. Understand the requirement and evaluate existing SNS first before rushing to build a branded community site might be a more effective approach especially if businesses do not have adequate resources or the means to justify the ROI to build and market their own community site.

Quad 3: High level of brand awareness but low degree of customer engagement
If you already have a high level of brand awareness but currently have no plans to actively engaged your customers, the best approach might be to do nothing. Creating a community site is also creating a new touch point. Without the effort to actively engaged your customers and provide them with the right experience, a non engaging community site might be more harmful to your brand than having no community site at all. A better way would be to observe the trend, experiment and evaluate the various possiblities on how community sites could improve the business. Plan long term, establish measurement metrics and allocate adequate resources might be better than simply jumping on the social networking bandwagon.

Quad 4: High level of brand awareness and high degree of customer engagement
I think this is the ideal case for most businesses. In this situation, businesses should consider integrating its ability to engage its customers into other aspects of the organization such as CRM programs, product developement, etc. Some example sites are IdeaStorm by Dell and My Starbucks Idea where customers feedback are use to improve its products and operations. In this category, having a own branded community site would be better. There is more control over the branding and user experience, again refer to Clean & Clear (HongKong site). Having a own site also provides more flexiblity in terms of integrating customers infomation into other aspects such as marketing communication, offline purchases, etc.

Hope this entry from the perspective of a tiny business owner is useful in helping you plan your own community site. Do share with me your thoughts.

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