Finding your online communities ROI can be tricky for brands and “measuring it” brings a up a debate anytime. This post and links from Three Minds are so educational I thought I’d post it here.
“Is Corporate Social Media A Failure?
It started with a post last week on the WSJ entitled, Why Most Online Communities Fail, which stated that less than 25% of corporate online community have over 1000 members and that 60% of them cost over $1 million dollars. Follow-up posts exploded all over the blogosphere from ReadWriteWeb to Social Media Today, each with their own explanations why the sector is underperforming.
At the same time, many articles were published about how White-Label Social Networks are exploding and lists of the corporate social networks that are succeeding (on Social Media Today and Mashable). So is the sector really failing? What are the biggest mistakes being made? Does it have anything to do with a need for a community manager that possesses the essential skills to get consumers involved with the brand?
Later the Wall Street Journal came back and announced that the 60% figure was really 6% of communities over $1 million, a pretty big typo. But the discussion still rages on… is social media succeeding or failing for brands?…”
Does anyone know about companies in Australia who employ a community manager?
Hi Frank,
Thanks for linking to my list of responsibilities for a comm mgr.
I do know of one comm mgr in Australia for a parenting website.
Connie
by Connie Bensen on July 28th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I think the issue in corporate social media lies around brands who are pretenders to the throne (i.e. the ones who *think* they’re Nike, Apple etc. but are really No Frills and Homebrand). We basically don’t want to be friends with 99% of brands out there.
What people forget is social networks are helping propel things that have always been popular. That can be niche interests like cross-stitching, but they’re not inventing new ways to be entertained. Corporates whoa re looking for consumers to behave in a different way to the manner in which they always have are the ones who are losing the battle.
by David Gillespie on August 9th, 2008 at 8:11 pm