Capitalizing Knowledge, Connecting Communities (CK2C) Communities Manual Welcome! CK2C and FRAMEWeb.org have developed this online manual to support communities and collaboration. CK2C is a US Agency for International Development project to strengthen knowledge sharing and learning in natural resources management. We have compiled the resources on this site from the US Agency for International Development , building from the "Communties@USAID Technical Guide" and other sources, as a one-stop manual for starting, maintaining and closing down online communities. It is a work in progress and we are looking for feedback. For comments or to request permission to edit pages - please write to frame@dai.com

While IBM may not be the first to market, the least expensive nor the easiest to install/configure/manage, one thing they certainly do well is articulate the business value of social business. Every marketing message, product demo and customer case study is focused on why and how organizations need to transform themselves into a social business to remain competitive. My mantra for a while now has been to stop talking about "being social" and to instead focus on "getting work done" and IBM appears to be on that path.

The tactical way in which you locate or engage with your advocates may vary based upon the type of community (employee, customer, product support, etc.), but the principles I’ll describe below can apply to either type of community.



What are Community Advocates?
What Advocates Do and Why You Need Them?
First, advocates can share in Community Work.
Second, advocates can increase your community reach and word of mouth promotion.
Third, advocates can be a powerful front line source of end user and member support.
Fourth, advocates can help you prune and curate community content.
Finally (although the list could go on!), your community advocates can be a trusted source of user feedback.
What’s the Bottom Line?

by Claire Flanagan

all kinds of social media related charts, graphs and infographics

Customer Acquisition seriously needs a new name to affect any institutional change in how organizations consider the actions and investment behind customer engagement. Customers never gave us permission to acquire them and it’s a bloody expensive to acquire them at retail, anyway. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pretzellogic.org%2F2010%2F05%2F09%2Fwhy-customer-acquisition-stinks

there’s so much confusion about a topic that’s said being strategic that heading for disaster and throwing the baby with the bathwater is a really actual risk. But by dint of thinking about it again and again, it seems to me that some guidelines are slowly emerging.

• That’s not because there are social medias in the workplace and that employees use them to do their work that the person in charge of managing their use is a community manager.

• A group of people doing things and interacting through social is not necessarily a community or a social network.

• A corporate social media strategy has to be driven at several levels which are often embodied by different people who have specific roles, responsabilities and objectives. These individual works has to be coordinated and articulated.

It's clear that Catherine has a lot of experience working with intranet managers and her insights are both useful and inspiring.

Some key points:

* When dealing with the legacy of intranet initiatives that have failed, Catherine says: "You can't undo the past; you can influence the future."
* Establishing communication channels and setting expectation when everyone wants everything requires good negotiation skills.
* Unlike other managers in the organization, intranet managers deal with staff at all levels. They need to have an elevator pitch about the intranet.
* Intranet managers need to learn to "let go" of content. They need to empower others.

This post describes one of three key exercises you need to perform to improve your chances of having a vibrant (enterprise) community.

The key value gain for enterprises that engage with social platforms is that employees are enabled to solve more problems, improve their practice and test or enrich new ideas. All without raising the costs of doing so.

The knowledge and experience of thousands of colleagues can be easily accessed through a social platform. If you have an idea or a problem you can search the community for shared knowledge or discussions on that topic or find experienced colleagues by searching profiles or discussions they participated in.

Many enlightened enterprises have recognized these benefits, however most struggle to create and maintain vibrant communities on social platforms.

Dennis has a point here, and while I won't be too pessimistic (after all, benefits of social media engagement are real and will pull in people over time) I take this as a call for more resilience and care for the different groups of people in our organizations ...

"I also see examples of groups and sites that sit idle after an initial flurry of interest. What sometimes happens is that a group or community page is set up, a community of members is recruited, and then reality sets in.

Reality in this case means that an appreciation develops of the time, attention, thought, and other resources needed to keep the group going. Policies are required. Identities and permissions must be established. Most time consuming of all: content must be created, maintained, and discussed."

And while it’s geared to ethnic media publications, its lessons apply to traditional media outlets, news organizations and citizen media sites, too.

So, we talked a bit about the concept of communities... about voluntary membership and participation... about the self-selecting nature of the membership itself... about the need for leaders to self-select from within the membership and identify their own topics. This is a typical flow of discussion, which, when given enough time and insight, eventually changes a person's entire outlook... from manager to gardener. Communities form and emerge naturally. They can be encouraged and facilitated; But they can't be engineered and determined.

Want to know more about Enterprise 2.0 for the Enterprise? Not just the technology, not just the social stuff. Join the group innovating in their daily working. Share experiences, market news, relevant information, suggestions. It’s a multilanguage group, for European people working in all types of organisations in Europe.

"Community is the new Social." And "Social is just an attitude (leading to just lots of talk). Community is a mindset (leading to real action and real change & progress)." That last quote is the long version of one of my tweets. :-)

Many of our customers have already established the community mindset (both outwardly towards their customers, partners, and even competitors as well as inwardly towards their employees and local communities) and are leading the way for positive change within their respective industries.