Previously, I mentioned a poorly supported community of practice behind the firewall which was showing steady decreases in traffic over time. Fortunately, a small group of early adopters from the business unit approached me about rebooting the community and making it happen. We’ve decided to implement a very basic content strategy.

Ask why
The first thing we did was spend 30 minutes brainstorming why people would ultimately use the community. Once we had a good understanding why people would want to participate, we shifted gears.

How could we present our value proposition in such a way as to make trial of our community easy? We decided we would take turns posting “conversation starters,” discussion threads on timely topics, in the forum.

Schedule
As only three of us were able to attend this first meeting, we decided to come up with three conversation starters; one apiece. For the next three Mondays in a row, we would take turns posting to the forum. Then, each of us would make a point of responding to the discussion, as well as sharing the conversations with other, potentially interested parties across the organization via hyperlink.

Evaluate
We set our “threshold of success” at 9 total forum posts – 1 conversation starter and 2 replies each.  At the end of three weeks (3 February 2012), we will evaluate our progress based on a very loose adaptation of ROI (return on investment).

Did we deliver what we set out to deliver? How many people outside our small group participated? Did our actions inspire anyone to pose their own topic? How did this strategy play out?

In our first week, we made our three posts each (the initial conversation starter plus one reply from the other two of us), but we ended up with 15 total posts, six of which were by people other than us. So, at the risk of inciting the wrath of Olivier Blanchard, we calculated our “ROI” as follows.

(15 posts – 3 posts)/3 posts = 400% “ROI”
(6 posts by others – 3 posts by us)/3 posts by us = 100% “ROI”

*ROI is in quotes here because, as we’re not yet tying this social activity to revenue, this is not actual ROI.

Next steps
We’re very excited at how well this is playing out. So far, for every post one of us makes, someone else in the company replies. Will this trend persist?

Before the end of this week, we’ll be meeting again to come up with our conversation starters for the month of February. We’re also reaching out to various members of management whose staff would be part of this community to get their feedback on potential performance indicators we can keep in mind when brainstorming our new conversation starters.

What do you think?
Have you ever tried anything like this with your community development efforts? What did you do differently? How did things play out for you and your team?

In the glovebox:

• Wyld Stallyns on Community Development
• Social Networking: Is 1 Hour a Day All It Takes?
• Building Communities for Multi-Generational Sustainability

I'd appreciate hearing what you think about Community Development: A Simple Content Strategy

A visceral hankering for adventure and exploration.
Chris Barba brings his own spin to the world. It’s evident from reading his blog that he appreciates the finite measure of time each of us have been given on this planet. Life is truly too short to not live it to the fullest, exploring the potential within ourselves. I remember coming across his site one day and reading a post akin to Nike’s tagline, Just do it, only moreso.

And speaking of Nike, he had a friend challenge him to run a marathon, he accepted said challenge, prepared to the best of his ability, and did it. Personally, I figure I’m only capable of running to escape large predators in the animal kingdom or catch my car if I’ve neglected to set the parking brake, but Chris shared his experiences with the world and the world is better for it.

Additionally, Chris would like to dedicate this post to a good friend of his, James Dowling, who intentionally lives a life of continuous, fresh perspective to uncover the best possible version of himself.

If you could distill everything you’ve learned so far into a single word of advice to yourself, what would that one word be?

Perspective

Why does this one word mean so much to you?

Perspective is the way we look at the world, and ourselves.  It is a constant reminder of what is possible.  More so, a reminder of the amount of possibilities that really exist.  Whenever we look at stories from our past, moments of our present, or potentials for our future, it is through the lens of one perspective.  That’s just the way we operate as human begins.  But, if we remind ourselves that there are multiple perspectives to be seen, that our reality is malleable, then restrictions become unhinged as we discover new potentials.

How does this one word impact what you do (or want to do) with your life?

Perspective has had a profound impact on my life. It has aided in the transformation of a naive outlook on the world to one of accountability.  I mean this in a couple of ways.  One is that the world we see and know is not the only world that exists.  This may seem rudimentary, but at least for myself, whenever I get caught up in my current reality I begin to lose sight of the fact that other ones exist.  We are the ones who can choose complacency or action.  We can transform our current realities, inspire action in other peoples realities, and take forward steps to creating a world full of growth and positive potential.

These may seem like grand steps, but that’s just one perspective (catch my drift).  The biggest impact this word has had on me was to let go and think outside all my predisposing biases and ideas I have already constructed and have a visceral look at the world.  Like a child seeing everything for the first time, everything is fun, intriguing, and serves a purpose.

What has this word done for you so far?

The idea of perspective has done multiple things on multiple levels of my life.  When rough times begin to pile up, I take a step back and look at these issues in the context of the larger scale of my life.  Like a helicopter propelling up off the ground, once you get high enough, those tiny problems begin to just fade away into the big picture.  Perspective.

Whenever I am having a conversation with another person I attempt to suspend my prejudices and truly see the story from the other person’s standpoint.  Instead of just pulling out bit and pieces of information to confirm what I already believe, I try and use every interaction I have as a tool for growth.  Perspective.

And when I tell myself a story from my past or wonder about a possibility of the future I continually remind myself that the information I am calling on is just one interpretation.  Perspective gives us the ability to think outside that interpretation. This mindset shift has helped me to tell a more empowering story of my past and embrace the unknown potential of what is possible in the future.

You can connect with Danny on thinkchooselive.org, or on Twitter.

(I would encourage you to do so.)

You can browse all published Distillery posts here. 

Distilled Thoughts:

• How do our perspectives impact our potential?
• Can you have any tricks for keeping an open mind?

In the glovebox:

• Danny Brown on Integrity
• Kristian Hahn on Don’t
• Kamil Kaluski on Focus

I'd appreciate hearing what you think about Chris Barba on Perspective

I was thinking about a reboot strategy for a poorly performing community behind the firewall the other day.

We need people to get people participating. We need management to support these initiatives beyond lipservice. And we absolutely need something better than SharePoint 2007 to power all of this. Of course, nobody is going to try out our community if there’s no clear value in doing so, which means management isn’t going to see much value either, which means no budget for even a free forum program.

Chicken-and-the-egg territory, for sure, but it got me thinking – if Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted, Theodore Logan had been in community development and Wyld Stallyns was going to be their super community…

Ted, while I agree, in time our community will be most triumphant, the truth is, Wyld Stallyns will never be a super community until we have Eddie Van Halen in the house.
One of the best ways to demonstrate value to would-be community members is to get big names to join the community. From a social media standpoint, having an a-lister like Chris Brogan or Scott Monty join a community is all but a shoe-in for overnight success. Behind the firewall, leadership can play this role; from team managers to the CLO. People like to feel they have a connection with authority.

Yes Bill, but I do not believe we will get Eddie Van Halen until we have a triumphant community.
So how do we attract those big names to participate in our communities if our communities aren’t triumphant? No doubt the big names – on either side of the firewall – have limited time to invest. They need to see immediate value in participation. The CLO might be willing to participate in forums and do a little blogging, but he needs to see these as efficient and effective communication tools.

Ted, its pointless to have a triumphant community before we even have decent tools.
Which brings me to tool selection (or lack thereof). How many tools are available to those of us looking to build a community these days? A lot. I’ve personally built communities on phpBB and Simple Machines forums and used numerous others like DCforums and the now-a-household-name vBulletin. Behind the firewall, there’s Chatter, Yammer, Jing and Jive, and SharePoint.

Ah, SharePoint. There’s no way we can build a triumphant community using SharePoint 2007. Right?

Well how can we have decent tools when we don’t really even know how to use them?
Technically, we don’t need any special tools to build community. We’ve got phones and email and conference rooms, don’t we? We need vision more than we need tools. If we know why we’re investing in community development and how said community will benefit our people, what we can do with our current tools is multiplied.

Community development is all about connecting people and ideas – neither of which is dependent on platform. Get people together. Get them talking about something relevant.

That is why we need Eddie Van Halen.
So we’re back to getting people to participate; not just celebrity A-listers and/or C-suite executives, but exceptional people at every level. But where do we find exceptional people? Simple. Treat everyone as if they were exceptional. People who feel important tend to act the part. Ask them for their feedback and act on it. Give them status, access, power, and stuff. Give them a sense of ownership in their community.

And that is why we need a triumphant community.
Which brings us back to thinking about why anyone would want to participate in the first place and how to make sure our community has a clear value proposition. We need to make it (painfully) obvious that joining this community delivers the goods. Our members enjoy the time they spend within our digital borders, their lives are better for it – whether for business or pleasure. This is the place where stuff gets done.

EXCELLENT!!!
Now that we know why people are going to want to be part of our community and how the community is going to support them, what we need to do is gather our early adopters, develop a strategy, and get to implementing. (And I’ll share that story very soon.)

And, if none of the above made any sense at all, I hope considering the source material at least brightens your day.

In the glovebox:

• Community Development: A Simple Content Strategy
• Social Networking: Is 1 Hour a Day All It Takes?
• Building Communities for Multi-Generational Sustainability

I'd appreciate hearing what you think about Wyld Stallyns on Community Development

“The human side of media and the social side of marketing.”
That’s the tagline on Danny Brown’s blog. And he delivers on it every single day. Not only is he Director of Retention for Jugnoo, a Social CMS platform (in beta at press time), he also started the 12for12k Challenge, which harnesses the power of people in social media to help those in need, and founded For Bloggers By Bloggers, a high quality – free – resource for aspiring bloggers.

And Danny was right there with me when it became clear klout had little respect for the basic rights of people to retain control over how their names and likenesses are used by businesses. I was furious. He was outraged. For a time, it seemed our complaints would be moot compared to the bleating of the uninformed and/or careless sheep. (Which only goes to show…) In the end, klout finally took a step in the right direction, allowing anyone to opt-out.

Danny’s a good guy. He treats people with respect and dignity, and he’s not afraid to tell it like it is (which means using swear words from time to time).

If you could distill everything you’ve learned so far into a single word of advice to yourself, what would that one word be?

Integrity

Why does this one word mean so much to you?

Because at the end of the day, it’s the only thing that truly separates us from those we don’t wish to be like. It’s the one word that defines you as a person, and how you’ll be remembered as a person.

How does this one word impact what you do (or want to do) with your life?

It makes me think about every single thing I do, and whether it would hurt the ones I love. While I respect the opinions of others, it’s only the opinions of those I love (and those that love me) that truly matter. If I can look my wife and son in the eye and know that I’ve done everything right, that’s worth more than all the money you could throw my way.

What has this word done for you so far?

Made me the person I want to be, and be the person my family needs me to be. I’ve dropped negative influences from my life; ended friendships because their integrity has lacked; never backed away from an argument if I felt the opponent was clearly wrong and pushing an agenda; and realized that integrity doesn’t have to come from the high ground. Just the sensible one, where doing the right thing is second nature.

You can connect with Danny on his site, For Bloggers By Bloggers, or on Twitter.

(I would encourage you to do so.)

You can browse all published Distillery posts here. 

Distilled Thoughts:

• How do you want to be remembered?
• Integrity comes from sensible ground. What does that mean to you?

In the glovebox:

• Derek Kreindler on Integrity
• Chris Barba on Perspective
• Kristian Hahn on Don’t

I'd appreciate hearing what you think about Danny Brown on Integrity

Just over a month ago, I posed the question “Is 1 Hour a Day All it Takes?” I setup a simple experiment. I would commit to spending 1 hour per day socially networking with my business Twitter account (@GBXMNET) and then report the findings before the end of the year. It didn’t work – because I didn’t work – because my heart just wasn’t in it.

Oh, the humanity.
I did not stick with this plan, mostly because I failed to fully explore why I wanted to use social media in the first place. This is not to say I didn’t spend an hour on social media channels each day during this time, but that I didn’t do so with my business account.

I gave it a shot on-and-off for a couple weeks. I ended up following people who looked promising initially, but either did not tweet, tweeted banal, ignorant garbage, or re-tweeted same. It was terrible. Every time I opened the app, I felt a little more of my faith in humanity ebb away.

In defense of the status quo.
The status quo should always be subject to challenge. We should always be open to new ways of doing things and willing to let go of the way we’ve “always” done them. In this case, however, I realized the way I had been using social media (read: Twitter) worked better for me.

Did I spend just 1 hour a day on Twitter in the last month? I can’t say for sure, but I’d be surprised if I averaged much more than that.

Social Media Connects PEOPLE
NOT brands. @DR1665 is a person. It’s me. So is @GBXMNET, but at the same time, it’s just another brand taking up space on Twitter and Facebook (and Google Plus). When I set out to conduct this experiment, I was thinking about how to engage enthusiasts through Twitter. I want to see more PEOPLE get to know each other, step up and participate.

Brands are not people. Is my goal to encourage gearheads to seek out and interact with brands? Oh hell no. I want gearheads to interact with other gearheads. Considering I’m a gearhead, shouldn’t I want these folks to connect and interact with me, personally?

Here’s an idea…
What if, instead of splitting my time between business and professional accounts, we just made sure our personal accounts reflected our business connections? Instead of having one GBXM Twitter account, there could be dozens of personal accounts following GBXM who genuinely felt our stuff was worth sharing?

I’m tempted to close the GBXM Twitter account (or lock it down), but I wonder if this isn’t the business owner’s dilemma – Get that social media real estate before someone else does? Is someone really likely to setup a bootleg GBXM account?

In the glovebox:

• Update: Evolution of a Blog
• AutoJournos, Meet Auto-Journo
• The Future of Work

I'd appreciate hearing what you think about Social Networking: It’s About People