The Virtual Gardener

Legal do's and don'ts of running an online community

OK, so the law in the US is not the same as in Europe, but the principles are similar, with the caveat that you should assume it’s tougher in Europe! Kevin O’Keefe from Lexblog provided a few tips:

• 99% of legal stuff to do with communities is commonsense - precedents are few
• Never send a response (public or private) that could precipitate further response in the heat of the moment - wait til tomorrow
• The provider cannot be sued (except for issues concerning intellectual property rights, pornography and gambling) - if you join a conversation you become a ‘user’ (publisher) and open yourself up to the same legal challenges as anyone else
• For this reason, it is more safe to delete a post than amend it - although the action can appear heavy-handed and inflammatory if handled badly
• Concerning copyright - you can always buy them off or demonstrate ‘fair use’
• A challenge does require an action - but not necessarily taking something down
• Always obtain affirmative consent
• Retain data in a secure environment as long as is necessary for legitimate business purposes

Measuring naked conversations - are we engaged yet?

Katie Delahaye Paine is the doyenne of measurement. Her 6 step approach to getting it right is:

1. Define your mission and goals
2. Understand your audience and what motivates them
3. Define the metrics
4. Determine what you are benchmarking against
5. Pick a tool and undertake research
6. Analyse results, glean insight, take action and measure again

Measurements can be characterised into three types:

1. Outputs (e.g. time on site)
2. Out-takes (e.g. relationships, tone, reputation)
3. Outcomes (e.g. did they buy)

Tip: To find your context and your competitive landscape search in Technorati for blogs “with some authority” in your space - and search for your business - to see what the blogosphere is thinking.

Tip: Blog benchmark average metrics:
Engaged = 13 comments per post
Hyper-engaged = 35 comments per post
After 3 days most comments are done - 14 days max
Good social bookmarking momentum = 1 submitted item every other day

Tip: Computers are 60-70% right when it comes to understanding comments (e.g. “cool”). Good measurements/analysis need human quality assurance. Checkout the international newsletter of public relations management.

We are smarter than me: How to unleash the power of crowds in your business

Barry Libert is the Billy Graham of the online social network space. No chance to doze, or even check emails. He started by asking us to stand and introduce ourselves to the person next to us as if we weren’t interested in him/her - and ended by asking us to stand and greet the same person as if they were a long lost, very close buddy. Being one of only two Brits at the conference it appeared that there were very few of us whose toes curled with sensations of happy clappyness.

His premise is straightforward - traditional corporate culture is inherently artificial, restricting productivity - the ‘Me’ company. It’s covered by the three maxims:

1. Take no risks
2. Keep your head down
3. All good deeds go fully punished

The ‘We’ company, on the other hand, is a network-brand business that leverages community pervasively to improve its performance. 

The characteristics of the ‘We’ company are (S C O R E):

1. S ocial
2. C o-operate (e.g. snap-on, twitter, Dell’s Idea Storm)
3. O pen (e.g. personal stories, I trust people I know)
4. R eward (e.g. customers, NfPs are good at it)
5. E valuate (e.g. by customers themselves)

We were then invited to score our own business using S C O R E from 1-5 where 1 is no and 5 is yes against the 5 characteristics. Anything under 15 is a ‘Me’ company.

The four steps to a ‘We’ business are:

1. Start with a well defined process/strategy
2. People - get the right people engaged - activists not objectors
3. Technology - how do you moderate/encourage facilitator interactions
4. Measurement - use executive language - e.g. $, loyalty, improve pricing, frequency