Community Integration on Corporate Home Pages

To build on my previous thoughts about integrating community into corporate sites, I did a quick analysis of the home pages for eleven large hi-tech companies.  (Cisco, Dell, SAP, Microsoft, Intel, HP, IBM, Oracle, Sun, VMware, and NetApp.)   On each company’s home page I looked for:

1. Links to community-related pages/sites (forums, blogs, wikis, etc.)
2. Community-generated content (from forums, blogs, etc.)
3. Social tools (such as RSS subscriptions or Share functionality)

I put together a slide deck with screenshots and notes.  (Viewing full-screen recommended.)

Some Observations

• All the home pages I looked at had at least one link to a community-related page or site.
• Community-related links most commonly displayed on home pages included:  (Numbers indicate number of sites displaying that link out of total.)
  • “Community/Communities” (9/11)
  • “Forums/Discussions” (6/11)
  • “Blogs” (6/11)
  • “RSS” icon/link (6/11)
  • “Wikis” (2/11)
• “Community/Communities” links went to either a routing page (listing links to various community-related sites) or to a community space (an integrated platform including discussions, docs, profiles, groups, etc.).
  • Routing page (6/9)
  • Space/platform (3/9)
  • Notable unique ideas:
  • “Manage Your Profile” link in footer on microsoft.com
  • “Social Media Guidelines” link in footer on intel.com
  • Using “Connect With Others” instead of “Community” in main nav of hp.com
  • Icons to share a specific page via multiple social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc. in standard footer on ibm.com
  • Display title of a specific blog post on netapp.com
• Level of community visibility:
  • Most visibility: NetApp
  • Least visibility: SAP
• Lots of variation in terminology, placement, and display of community-related links, content, and tools.  No apparent standards, patterns, or best-practices yet.  (Not surprising.)

This is obviously just a snapshot in time of a handfull of sites but I find insights (and more questions) can be generated through an exercise like this.  As the integration of community spaces, content, and tools into corporate sites continues to evolve it will be interesting to see what types of patterns and best-practices emerge – or if any will emerge.

Are there patterns you’re beginning to see take shape in certain industries or types of sites?  Are there any examples you believe are effective and think should become a pattern?  Other thoughts?

Integrating Community Into Corporate Websites

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been interested in, working on, and researching how a company’s social tools (blogs, wikis, forums, polls, profiles, reviews, etc.) and community spaces do and should integrate with each other and with the rest of a corporation’s site.  To get an idea of what different companies are currently doing I did a semi-quick walk-through of six hi-tech sites.  (Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, and SAP.)  Note: I’m focused on the corporate web sites of companies that are not themselves social media companies.

I thought I’d share some of my observations and thoughts in hopes that someone else might find it helpful and maybe initiate some conversation.  Disclaimer: Based on my experience with Sun’s site it’s possible I missed some community spaces and tools on some of these sites.  If you know of any, please mention.

Findings and Observations

• There is no consistent model for communities on corporate sites.  Every company I looked at was different.
• Most community implementations seem to have grown organically over time and from different departments resulting in multiple disconnected (functionality, navigation, look-n-feel) community spaces and social tools.  (Starting to see some more integrated out-of-the-box community platforms (often on Jive) showing up.)
• Most sites display a “Communities” or “Community” link in the top global nav and/or global footer.
• Some sort of “Share” button or link(s) is consistently displayed across most pages on many sites.
• The most common social tools seem to be forums, blogs, wikis, profiles, and “share”.  Other tools seen less consistently include product ratings and reviews, groups, podcasts, videos.

Social Integration Models

Being a visual thinker I had to try to describe the different models with some sort of diagram.  My initial intent was to distill the integration models of the corporate sites I reviewed into a couple of themes but there were so many variations I think it’s worthwhile to show them all.  Below are illustrations of the social integration models for each of the companies I reviewed.

Clearly, at least among the sites I looked at, no standard or pattern has emerged.  And really, I’m not sure there should or will be.  Is there a perfect pattern for community integration?  Some thoughts and questions below.

Ideal State Thoughts and Questions

Just as there is no recipe for the ideal web site, I don’t think there is or will be one ideal model for integrating community spaces and social tools and content into a corporate web site.  As with so many things, “it depends”.

Defining how community spaces and social tools/content integrate into a corporate site should start with defining objectives and strategies.  To the extent that objectives and strategies differ, I think social integration models will differ.  However, I do think there are some principles that will apply in most cases.  Here’s a first stab at some of those principles.

Principles:

1. Consistency
   Connect community spaces and social tools with the main site and each other through common navigation and look-n-feel.  Throwing the user off onto a community island can be confusing and frustrating.
2. Single Login
   Make sure users can access all areas of your site including community spaces and social tools using a single login.  Also, if I’m logged in in one area I shouldn’t have to log in again to access a different area.
3. One User Profile
   Related to #2, provide a single user profile and one location users can go to manage it.
4. Centralize and Distribute
   Have a master source but distribute social content where appropriate.  Ex. all interaction within forums should take place in a centralized forum environment but forum content can/should be inserted into appropriate locations throughout the corporate site.
5. Multiple Entry Points
   Enable users to access social content from multiple starting points.  A user should be able to go to Forums > Developers > IDEs  or  Developers > Forums > IDEs  or  IDEs > Forums > Developers.
6. Connect with External Community Sites
   Link out to and pull content in from external community spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, Slashdot, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

So what would the diagram look like for something like this?  Here’s a shot at it:

I know I repeat “where beneficial” a lot in the description above but I think it’s important to emphasize it.  If adding content or a tool to a page delivers no benefit to you or the user, don’t put it there.

So again, this is just an effort to start thinking through this topic and hopefully generate some discussion.  My site review focused on a handful of large tech companies.  What do you see going on in other industries?

What principles have I missed or need to be changed?

Where do you think the integration of community spaces and social tools into corporate sites is headed?

Case Study: The Power of Social Media

Ree Drummond grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, moved to LA and did the “valley girl” thing, fell in love with a cattle rancher back in Oklahoma, married him, and now lives on a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere.  Twenty years ago this would mean a life of anonymity.  Not so today.

Ree started “The Pioneer Woman” blog a few years ago sharing stories and photos of ranch life, cooking, and homeschooling.  Well it turns out she’s an engaging writer, a great photographer, and, I gather, a really good cook.  According to compete.com as of 10/2/2009 she now has almost 450,000 unique visitors and over 2 million visits per month.  Comments per post are usually in the 200-500 range.  She has fans, an audience, tribe, following, or whatever you want to call it.  And she lives miles from the nearest small town.

So she has a lot of people reading and commenting on her blog.  Nice but not necessarily amazing.  Well, I don’t know the backstory but a cookbook publisher somewhere somehow took notice and she has recently released a cookbook.  And appeared on the Bonnie Hunt show (to talk about the cookbook).  And the cookbook is now #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list for hardcover advice books (ahead of Suzanne Somers).  And at the time of this post is #23 on Amazon’s bestselling books list.

Did I mention she lives in the middle of nowhere?

Social Integration

Last week I listened to a presentation summarizing a report released by a company called Site IQ evaluating the state of online communities and community tools on the sites of 10 large IT companies, including Sun.  While I don’t fully buy into their analysis and methodology, they do always leave you with something to think about.  A couple of takeaways:

• There really aren’t many (any?)  time-tested best-practices at this point.
• SAP and Intel tied for first place and Sun was second (or third) place.
• Fully integrated community platform or multiple separate community tools/silos?  Both can be made to work effectively.

Their report raised the issue of integration -  which is something I’ve been researching and thinking about over the past few months.  Integration between the tools themselves (forums, wikis, blogs, etc.) but especially integration of community tools and content into the corporate site.

I’m in the process of evaluating several sites to get an idea of current state.  I’ll post my findings when I have something worthwhile.

The Community Has Spoken

A few weeks ago I posted about a project where we let the community vote on two different designs for Sun’s OSUM social network site on Ning. Well the community has spoken and the winning design has been implemented at http://osum.sun.com.

We had over 650 votes and the results ended up being pretty close (347 to 308). (Surprisingly we had 9 people vote to keep the old design.) We were comfortable with both of the designs so it didn’t matter to us which design won. Community members left a lot of enthusiastic comments and were generally very positive about the redesign.

Here is a comparison of the old…

…and new version…

So what do I think about putting the decision to a community vote? In this case I think it worked quite well. Judging by the enthusiastic comments, the redesign and opportunity to vote seemed to be well-received. But I can also see potential pitfalls. Some benefits and risks that come to mind:

Benefits

1. Give and make the community feel as though they have a voice in the design of the environment they use every day.
2. Generate conversation and interaction within the community.
3. Help communicate to the community that changes are coming.

Risks

1. They may not like any of the options you give them. You need to be willing to go back to the drawing board. Don’t ask if you’re not going to listen.
2. Could create division within the community. (Those who like Option A vs those who like Option B.)
3. Could become design by committee. Define and clearly communicate the process, options, and outcomes to set expectations appropriately.

At this point we don’t have any plans for another community vote but we’ll see what opportunities come along in the future.

Full disclosure: I was responsible for the Information Architecture duties on this project. Credit for visual design goes to Sara Shuman and Sarah Lamping.

Social Media Posers

A poser is someone who tries to come across as something they’re really not. Like the guy with all the latest golf equipment who hasn’t made par in his life. Or the people we see at our local rodeo who wear the “authentic” cowboy hat, boots, spurs, shirt, vest, and Wranglers but have never even sat on a horse. They have all the tools, but in reality they’re fakes.

Yesterday I was listening to Seth Godin’s “Tribes” and it hit me that there are a lot of posers in social media as well.

We’re constantly bombarded with the message that social media is changing everything and Marketers had better start using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc. to engage their target audiences in two-way conversations. So they run off and start using these tools.

But, just like wearing a cowboy hat doesn’t make you a cowboy, adopting social media tools doesn’t mean you’re engaging in conversations. To accomplish the end-goal (building fanatical customers through authentic conversations) the culture of your organization has to change accordingly. If you don’t really care what your audience has to say, being on Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to help. Your new followers and friends will soon see through the facade and recognize they you really (still) aren’t interested in what they have to say.

If your organization genuinely wants to engage with your audiences, you probably already use a variety of tools to do so. Social media tools can be a powerful addition to the toolbox you already have. But the tools are still just tools. It’s the people and organizations using them that make the difference.