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“It takes a village to raise a child,” the old saying goes. But for Jeff Nolan, VP of Product Marketing for Get Satisfaction, a better saying might be, “It takes a community to build a business.” In this interview, Brent Leary talked to Jeff about why online customer communities are especially important for small companies and how they can give you the competitive edge.

Small Business Trends: Can you fill us in on what Get Satisfaction does and your background?

Jeff Nolan: Get Satisfaction is a hosted platform for online customer communities. We provide a place where companies and their customers can share ideas, answer questions, resolve problems and provide positive feedback.

My personal background is quite diverse. I’ve had a variety of technical roles, marketing and some limited sales exposure but my formative experience is as a venture capitalist. I was one of the founding partners of SAP Ventures. At the end of my duration with SAP I moved into the global marketing organization, then ran NewsGator, a media and consumer app business.

Small Business Trends: Everybody is talking about online communities, but for years I’ve heard the saying, “Customer service is the new marketing.” Do you think in 2012 customer service really does become the new marketing, and where do online communities fit into that equation?

Jeff Nolan: Get Satisfaction was founded around the premise that by providing superior customer support, companies would not only achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, but would also see their business grow at a more efficient rate than if they just plowed money into marketing for the sake of marketing.

It’s no longer just about advertising or driving people to a website. There are two important things going on. One, you have to engage consumers where they are. And where they are is at the intersection of your brand and whatever social network or technology they’re using at that moment.

Two, it’s not just where you do this; it’s how you do it. Consumers are increasingly sophisticated about marketing and advertising, and they’re demanding a more human approach to how they interact with a company.

Small Business Trends: There’s the saying, “It takes a village…” and it seems like today, you could say, “It takes a community to raise a company.” How can small businesses take advantage of online communities?

Jeff Nolan: Customers exist in a context of a life cycle – acquisition, transaction, delivery, support and then advocacy. Your objective is to move your customers through each stage of that lifecycle and then repeat the process. Not just with a new customer, but also with the ones you already have.

Online communities are very important in realizing this goal because they provide an effective, repeatable technology solution for engaging your customers around questions and ideas—from the engagement they have with you before they buy to resolving inevitable issues they have when they do buy. Those interactions create advocates.

Small Business Trends: A lot of people, when they think about online communities, focus on B2C. Do you see a community strategy that will also help B2B?

Jeff Nolan: I think that B2B vs. B2C is somewhat of a red herring. It’s rooted in the old ways we used to sell stuff. There are many B2C products that exhibit the same dynamics of what we would normally consider B2B. They’re highly deliberative in nature. They have a longer sales cycle. They rely heavily on influence from third parties.

Small Business Trends: How does a small business determine the mix between having their own community and also engaging on general social networks?

Jeff Nolan: With Get Satisfaction, we’ve undertaken great efforts to bring those social networks into the fold. We’re providing your [brand] with a consistent community experience, not just on the Web, but also in Facebook, on Twitter, in your mobile applications, in different languages and so on.

One of the challenges businesses have when approaching community through several venues is ensuring the consistency and reusability of content. We see this in Facebook a lot. Companies that are trying to do customer support through the wall on Facebook face an unenviable challenge, because that is not scalable.

Small Business Trends: Talk a little about the importance of creating real-time good answers as opposed to just marketing content.

Jeff Nolan: When you have a question, you want an answer. If you are investing your time to share an idea with a company about how their product or service can be better, you care about them responding to you, rather than it going into a black hole. Get Satisfaction has a technology solution that humanizes the interaction between company and customer. [Users] get a very authentic behavior that reflects how people talk to each other.

Small Business Trends: How important is it for SMBs to have a strategy of engagement that fosters a community that helps each and creates answers that are important to individual customers.

Jeff Nolan: It’s incredibly important that companies of all sizes do this. But it’s more critical for small companies. Community, superior customer engagement, customer insight and knowing more about your customer levels the playing field.

Small Business Trends: How easy is it for a company to get started creating an online community?

Jeff Nolan: Well, it’s very easy with us because we are a freemium business–we have a free product that is fully functioning. From that you can upgrade into various plan levels that have increasing feature sets, capabilities or customization opportunities.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more about Gets Satisfaction?

Jeff Nolan: Go to our website at GetSatisfaction.com, and you can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and all the popular social channels.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

[To listen to audio, click this icon]

Jeff Nolan of Get Satisfaction: Level the Playing Field With a Customer Community

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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10 Ways To Grow Your Blog’s Community

Oct 12th

4 comments

As a small business owner, you love your blog. Your blog is where your community goes to hear your insight, it’s where they learn more about you, and it’s where they put a human face on your logo.

Or, it would be all of those things if anyone was actually reading your blog. Unfortunately, they’re not. And this is a problem.

Growing a small business blog can often be more difficult than we’d like. But you can conquer it and growing a thriving, engaged community to complement your business. Below are ten tactics to help generate more discussion and eye-balls on your blog. I suggest picking several and doing them in combination.

1. Let people know how to engage: It sounds silly, but not everyone knows how to leave a comment on a blog, or how to subscribe or what actions they’re supposed to take to become part of your community. It is your job to tell them. Have a tutorial for how to leave a comment. Let them know how they can respond directly to other users. Have a comment policy on your site. All of these things give readers the information they need to engage responsibly. No one wants to look dumb.

2. Promote your members: The folks who are active in your community aren’t just active there. They have blogs and Web sites and businesses of their very own – so promote them. Tell people about their cool business. Offer a LinkedIn recommendation. Pass their name to someone you think should know about them. By lifting up the people in your community, you show them how valued they are and that you see them.

3. Seed your blog conversation: In a perfect world people will differing opinions would come to your blog and have intelligent discussions on topics that are relevant to your industry. However, this isn’t a perfect world. This is the Internet. To help combat this, consider seeding your blog conversations to help them get started. Call in your blogging buddies and have them take different viewpoints in the comments section of your blog and have them debate your post passionately in the comments. Sure, maybe it will start out a little manipulated, but the real people will see the action and join in. Sometimes we all need someone to start the conversation for us and show it’s okay to hop in.

4. Go out and find new readers: Go to other blogs and discussion forums where people are talking about your industry, scout out the most active/respected commenters, and introduce yourself. Do not spam or market to them but say hello, let them know you’ve noticed their contributions, and thank them for making you a smarter individual. That is it. Without you ever asking them to, these people will do their homework to check you out and will stumble onto your blog. If they like what they’re seeing, they may join in.

5. Recruit new readers: Same as the above, but now offer an incentive for them to go check out your blog. Do not offer them money or a new television (this will change their motivation), but maybe invite them to be a beta tester for your new product or to act as a site moderator. Give them some non-monetary perks for getting involved.

6. Offer rewards for participation: You may have noticed that some blogs give users “points” for leaving comments or participating in the conversation. The goal of this is to provide an incentive for someone to get involved. If you’re going to do this, try not to reward people simply for quantity or you’ll wind up with people contributing nothing but low-quality content.

7. Create posts designed for community action: Sure, in blogging for your customers, you’ll want to create great resources on how to use your products and how to solve that common problem they’re facing, but also create content specifically geared toward getting interaction.

Maybe it means you posing a question and then asking your community to answer.
Perhaps it’s a Caption This Photo contest.
Maybe it’s a giveaway.
Maybe it’s asking users to create something and submit it.

These types of content pieces are written for your community and give them a reason to get involved.

8. Get people offline: I know it sounds weird, but one of the best ways to strengthen your online community is to encourage people to take it offline. Hold a meet up, have an in-store party, tweet you’ll be at X restaurant at 9pm and ask people to come join you. Get people away from their computers and talking in real life and they’ll from far stronger connections.

9. Eliminate bullying: As your community grows, you may find that some of your more established members don’t always react so kindly to new people. They may respond aggressively, question their knowledge or not allow them to enter insider discussions. It’s your job, as the blog owner, to nip this in the bud. Fostering an environment that has too much “insider baseball” and doesn’t do an adequate job making new people feel welcome will stifle your community’s growth. Don’t be afraid to reprimand members when necessary.

10. Have swag: What? People love *stuff* and they love showing off their stuff. Give people stickers and T-shirts with your blog URL when they make an in-store purchase or send out stickers to your most active on-site community members. Get swaggy with it.

Those are just ten ways you can work toward growing your blog’s community today. What other tactics have you used?

10 Ways To Grow Your Blog’s Community

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

Blog’s, community, Grow, Ways

Viral Review Bot – Creating a Real Community of Viral Money Makers

Oct 6th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in All Posts

Our CB Affiliates (and our actual members) are seeing great gains from being a Viral Review Bot Affiliate. Our tests show a conversion of 1 in 4. For more information visit our affiliate page… http://www.internetmoneyreport.com/affiliates
Viral Review Bot – Creating a Real Community of Viral Money Makers

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5 Metrics to Measure the Health of Your Community

Aug 24th

Sure, you’re active in social media, but as a responsible small business owner you know that it’s your site and your own community where you should be building your home base. This is where you direct people you meet in other outlets and it’s where you’re trying to form the real conversations and conversions, because this is the only site that you control. But how do you know that it’s working? What metrics should you measure to be confident that you’re growing a healthy community, while also pinpointing areas for improvement?

To help you get started, below are five areas I’d recommend keeping an eye on to help you benchmark and improve your on-site community.

1. Increase in Subscribers

I state this first because it’s the obvious benchmark that many of us will immediately look at. And while the actual number of people reading your blog or joining your community at any given moment doesn’t particularly account for much, what is important is the growth. It’s important that you’re able to chart the positive growth of your following over time as you put out content and engage more with your community. As long as this number is growing and doesn’t appear stagnant (or worse, dropping), it’s a good sign that people are invested in what you’re doing and that you’re on the right track.

2. Increase in Conversations

A healthy community will see an increase in not only the number of subscribers over time, but also the community’s conversational level. More specifically:

number of active threads
number of unique commenters
number of active commenters
number of people you’ve identified as brand evangelists

These numbers will give you a good understanding of the health of your community because they show engagement, rather than just warm bodies. You’ll start to see what percentage of your community is really tuned into what you’re doing, what they’re interested in talking about, and what people you can count on to help you start and field conversations.

3. Share of Buzz

Another metric to keep an eye on is your share of buzz in your niche and how that number is (or is not) growing over time. Basically, is your authority and perceived expertise growing as a result of what you’re building on site?

For example, how many people are talking about your community – either about the services that you offer or the content you’re putting out? How visible are you in your space and how does your visibility measure up against that of your competitors? Who is ’s talking about you? How often is your content being shared? In a world where share of buzz often means social authority, this is a pretty big health indicator for your community and something you’ll want to watch.

4. Sentiment

More important than simply knowing you’re being talked about is knowing the sentiment behind that conversation and how it’s evolving over time. What’s the ratio of positive/neutral/negative mentions? How many times are people recommending your product or service to others? Do people come to your defense when others say things that don’t put your company in the best light? Are you growing an army of evangelists or are people lukewarm about your brand? These are all things to monitor to help you understand how your community is evolving and whether what you’re doing on-site is helping you off-site.

5. Increase in Conversions

All of the above will help you determine the health of your community, but increase in conversions is what really tells you whether or not you’re adding dollars to your bank account. Look at referrals generated as a result of your blogging, the number of customers who are also community members, and customer loyalty from community conversions – how many times do they buy/refer? While conversations and engagement are nice, they don’t mean much unless they’re eventually turning into more money for your business.

Those are five metrics I recommend small business owners take a look at to understand the health of their community. What have I missed?

5 Metrics to Measure the Health of Your Community

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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The Community Is the Business

Aug 8th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

The Community Is the Business

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The idea of community in business has taken top billing in recent years due in large part to the obvious growth of social networks and the community aspect they foster.

Jeff Kubina via Flickr

Organizations fortunate enough to have forward thinking CEOs and marketing departments have even added the role of Community Manager to the org chart.

It’s time for every business, regardless of size, to take note and add this function to their organization. Not because it’s the hot trendy thing to do – because it will change the way your think about growing your business.

If you think about the role of community manager in the fullest sense, you’ll come to understand the potential that a focus on the community aspects of your business contains.

Some limit their thinking on the idea of community manager to mean the person that responds to complaints on Twitter. What I want to propose is a much more comprehensive way of viewing this vital role. This function doesn’t even start with thinking about social media, it’s about elevating the role your community or potential community can play in your business as a whole.

What if you thought of your community as anyone that came into contact with your business – meaning, prospects, customers, journalists, suppliers, advisors, partners and even competitors?

And what if you developed a place in your organization for a person that played the role of community host. That person’s job was to see to all the little things that made you community members feel appreciated, informed, special and looked after.

Sure, marketing would still craft the messages and touches to make this happen, sales would still create and nurture customer relationships, advertising would still generate leads and customer service would still provide key follow-up and troubleshooting.

But, running through it all would be the person that saw to it that the community as a whole was happy, healthy and growing. That’s the part many of us are missing and that’s the part that can transform a business from satisfactory to remarkable.

The Community Manager is the one person in the organization focused on moving people logically through the steps of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer, while also ensuring that all the members of your business ecosystem coevolve their capabilities and roles and align themselves with the direction of your organization.

The Community Manager would in effect by an advocate for the members of your community and act to hold every department in the organization accountable for creating a better community experience.

The thing is, there’s nothing trendy or touchy feely about this role, it’s one of the most highly practical things any business can do right now and it’s perhaps the only way to effectively merge the online and offline worlds in your business.

A Community Manager in today’s world of business would:

Look at what gets someone to sign up for your free ebook
Obsess over the follow-up touches with all prospects
Look for ways to help the organization know more about customers
Manage Google+, Facebook and Twitter communities
Design ways to bring customers together
Create and facilitate a formal strategic partner network
Nudge the CEO to write more handwritten thank you notes
Build relationships with key industry and community journalists
Participate in creating and curating the entire content grid
Create a database of customer and prospect inquiries
Look for ways to improve key customer touchpoints
Work with clients to review and document results

You could add many more items to this list, but hopefully your starting to see how this might make a difference. You could also argue that most of the items on this example list can and, perhaps, should be handled already by sales or marketing or customer service.

But the point is, they’re not being done by anyone or if they are, they are being done in silos and without collaboration. One of the fundamental differences a community manager would provide is an entirely different view of the total organization. A view that crosses all departments and questions every contact and touchpoint as a conscientious host might do.

But mostly, this function acknowledges the fact that in today’s world a thriving community is your greatest asset – it’s time to make its care a central focus of your business.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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Start Your Own Community Forum – Affiliates Earn 50% Commissions!

Jun 28th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Online Promotion

Start Your Own High Traffic, Self-Promoting Forum In Any Niche From Scratch Without Any Technical Knowledge
Start Your Own Community Forum – Affiliates Earn 50% Commissions!

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Small Business Community News

May 27th

1 comment

Like the communities we create around our brands, small business owners make up a community too. Sharing news and information to improve our businesses is a vital part of that community spirit. We hope this latest small business news roundup helps our small business community thrive and we hope you share it with yours as well. We all benefit from the information we share. Please pass it on.

Management

Tips for building an online community. It can be a critical part of boosting your brand, product or service online today, but done wrong it can be ignored at best or actually do harm to your online reputation at worst. Here are 10 tips you should consider while building a small business community online. BizSugar

The boss your business needs. A recent guest post also from our sister site BizSugar.com looks at another important discussion out there in the small business community, namely how to run your small business. Hope you enjoy and will share the post and thanks for the opportunity to share these thoughts with a broader audience. BNET

Accounting & Legal

Six accounting solutions. Nicole Fende, “The Numbers Whisperer” takes you on a video tour of the top accounting softwares for small business, and no, Quickbooks is not your only choice. Watch a demonstration of capabilities and have a look at the positive and negative of each along with an evaluation of the kinds of businesses each is best for and a price breakdown. Matt About Business

What business structure is right for you? There are Limited Liability Companies, S-Corporations and C-corporations, all with their own positives and negatives. But which one is right for your business? In this guest post by Nellie Akalp, we get a picture of the different formats and consider the choices, especially from the perspective of a solo or mompreneur. The Work at Home Mom

Marketing

Adding audio to your text-only marketing. Actually, Morgan Barnhart, in this guest post, is talking specifically about turning ebooks into audiobooks, but the principle can be applied broadly to many of your print marketing materials. Imagine increasing the accessibility of your message by adding a brand new dimension: sound! FamousBloggers

8 tips for the e-mail newsletter. Alan O’Rourke gives us a look at the best way to create newsletters these days: e-mail. The process is simple and inexpensive, but there are still some important tips to keep in mind. Here are eight of the big ones. Bloggertone

Startup

Don’t let these seven mistakes kill your startup. Believe it or not, they are more common then you’d think. The key takeaway? Being bummed out by the economy is NOT a promising beginning. It’s important to focus on what you want to do (you’ll be stuck with this business for a while.) Then figure out how to reach customers and create a plan. Yahoo! Small Business

10 steps to building a business. These are not the steps you necessarily take to create a successful business, but the steps taken to create your business, period. The list comes from David Ronick, co-founder of Upstart Bootcamp and is fairly self-explanatory, but important. Enjoy. Inc.com

Tech

How is your business using QR? If your small business’s idea of cell phone innovation is sending out a text to a preferred customers list, listen up. There’s a whole new game out there and it’s called “Quick Response.” If you’re not already using it, you may want to consider it fast, before rapid moving mobile marketing leaves you behind. WSJ

Policy

What policy changes do most small businesses need? Scott Shane insists one is a loosening up in regulations, but also says some of the policy being pushed for in Washington these days will mean little to many small businesses owners. If small business is the key to economic recovery, it’s time public policy start addressing these needs. Bloomberg BusinessWeek