Tech Marketing Professional Development: InnoTech
This morning, McBru CEO Kerry McClenahan and I participated in an InnoTech panel called Strategies for Planning and Building an Online Community as part of the conference’s eMarketing Summit. I really got a lot out of not only the insights from fellow panelists Dawn Foster and Barry Tallis of Jive Software, but also the audience questions. They ranged from how do you integrate print advertising with an online community and how do you measure the success to how do you find the time and how do you light light a fire under your staff.
Ruby Gates of MarketShift Strategies asked a question around how the panel thinks online communities will impact the business community in the future, which I’d like to expand on.
Five years out, I believe one of the main shifts in the business community will be attitudinal: There will be less fear.
Today, one of the main objections I hear from companies considering creating an online community is that they fear the two-way conversation: criticism on other sites, criticism in their comments sections and other feedback features and even criticism from their own company.
More times than not, once a company notices that the sky doesn’t fall when they’re criticized online, and they actually learn something from the experience or turn around a detractor, the company gets a little more comfortable with the two-way conversation inherent in online communications. And as other companies watch their peers go through the process — sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly — they too will learn to discern what’s a communications crisis and what’s not. They’ll learn what kind of community participant to take with a grain of salt and who to trust. They’ll begin to view these communities as, sure, risky — at least more than producing another piece of collateral — but with a lot of potential upside, if you can brave the rapids.
For those in the Portland area, there is still about another hour left in today’s eMarketing Summit. And tomorrow has a full day of talks, too. Go check out the agenda; I’ll sure you’ll find something worth the trip to the Oregon Convention Center.
Tags: blogs, eMarketing Summit, InnoTech, online communities, Portland