Archive for August, 2011
Communities – Consider Employee Perks For Your Users
There was an interesting article on Mashable today about 6 companies with fantastic employee perks but I was a little disappointed it stopped at just describing them. What about the extended potential of these perks and what about the potential impact on the customer base if they were rolled out wider?
I’m sure Burton fans would love to know when all the people from the office are heading onto the slopes because there’s been 2 foot of snow. Everyone loves a reward and bobble-head so why aren’t RockYou extending that “perk” to their users?
Ok yes, I admit that not every employee perk is suitable for a community audience given the potential size of the audience and the cost implications but as part of a community strategy it’s worth thinking about. Keeping those special rewards and bonuses for key influencers and power users is definitely worthwhile but what about everyone else? If you’ve got a store and provide employee discounts why not extend this to your community? If you are throwing an end of year party why not extend the invitation and connect face-to-face with your users?
Take the time to look at what’s being offered inside your business and then see how it could be tweaked for all those loyal users sitting on the fence looking in.
Communities – Reach Out And Make A Difference
As a Community Manager it’s always nice to get a positive response from users, especially if they didn’t expect your input. This was something I tweeted the other day and thought it warranted a blog post.
Whilst trawling the internet for bits and pieces related to the project I’m working on at the moment I stumbled across the first pieces of UGC that I’d seen for it. I dug a little deeper, had a look at the profile of the person that created it and the site it was hosted on. I managed to find an email address for them so sent a personal email thanking them for taking the time to create the UGC.
After a bit of back and forth and general conversation they provided permission for me to post the UGC they had created into the project channels, namely facebook. Now this isn’t really a big deal in itself but it was the message they posted back on the site that was originally hosting the images (DeviantArt) that got my attention.
last night while i was doing the colours on my sully fan work for Disneys new game Disney universe i got a fantastic email thanking me for the fan work on the new game and have a feature on there face book page.
I hadn’t prompted them to write this but it just goes to show that it isn’t always about the users you have in your existing communities. Every now and again it’s good to reach out and make a difference to someone that isn’t part of your community.