How to manage online communities: Content creation (part 3 of 6)

In my previous blog posts on introduction to community management and community promotion, I had talked about the various roles of a community manager. Here is a picture to chart out the scope of the jobs that comes under community management:

In this blog I will talk about managing content for your community. It is important to understand that your online community has to be either content focussed or people (relationships / activities / profiles) focussed to be successful. (via @2020social slideshare channel) I have not seen communities surviving without a focus on any one of them. Content can be one big reason for people to return back to your community. If you see some popular social platforms like Wikipedia, digg, delicious or many blog blog based communities like mashable, techcrunch etc; they live and thrive on their content. 

Broadly your community will see two types of content: the internal content that your community management or online marketing team, guest writers and community manager writes and the external content that your community members add. However both content types trigger responses from each other. Your internal content might trigger response from your community members and vice versa. Many a times one form of content does not trigger response in form of more content but also actions.

What to write?

This is a big challenge in form of a community manager. What content should be added? Ideally your upcoming week’s or month’s content should be charted out in a content calendar so that you can ask your team members to start writing well in advance and get time to think of relevant topics. In fact @gauravonomics has a social web content strategy framework that I have often used for solving the ‘what to write’ problem:

What you write on your community, also depends on what type of community do you have. Supposedly if you have a very content focussed blog based community platform, maybe engaging people on #4 and #5 is not that important. However if your community is a young mommy’s community focussing on child care, you would like to focus on #2 to #5 and might not be interested in #1.

Where to write?

Depending on the type of your online community, you might like to divide your content among channels like blog posts, discussion forums, your outposts like Facebook, Twitter and your email campaigns (if you are planning to have one). Also it is a good idea to have an overall strategic objective for each channel depending upon the competencies of that channel.

For example, some time back, when I was managing an SMS based app developer’s community, we used their blogs as a channel for establishing market thought leadership, their Facebook page for engaging consumers of SMS based apps and promoting the apps and their discussion boards as support forum for the community to solve app related problems for each other.

When to write?

A typical answer is – ‘at a regular frequency’ but I think that like us, our community also has good and bad days. So in the good times of your community (like launch of a new contest / campaign, great PR coverage etc, you might like to show more activity to your new visitors.

However at rest of your working days, a regular frequency is always the best idea that you can plan from your content calendar.

Please do share your own content management tips and experiences for making this post better.

So much can be learnt from a brand's ad campaigns

We all remember Bajaj being a scooter company - the ones that our fathers relied upon and perhaps what must have been the first two - wheeler brand they must have purchased.
I have always been a big fan of Bajaj and the way they have marketed themselves in the two - wheeler segment.
If you remember their initial ads (when they clearly called themselves a scooter company), their ads presented a picture of patriotism - a brand for the average middle class Indian guy - who is hard working, loves his family and is brimming with the Indian cultural values. Also the vehicle represented more than just a means of transportation - it was a partner in the growth, a family member and moreover a friend that everybody loved. If you see the campaign below, it was the typical Bajaj ad in 90s - full of Indian culture, Indian middle class and patriotism.

Hamara Bajaj - Awesome video clips here

Now if we move forward, there we the times in the beginning of this century, when Bajaj realized that the average Indian middle class guy no longer needs a scooter. Scooters are old fashioned and bikes are in. It was a time for identity crisis for Bajaj. Whether they should stick to scooters, or promote their bikes or call themselves a two - wheeler company. Perhaps this identity crisis was reflected in their ad campaigns in beginning of this century - where they were trying to be everything - bikes, scooters, scootys- but the ad communicated that Bajaj is the carrier of the Indian youth, who is still rooted to his / her culture. Looks like they did not want to lose the 'patriotism' sentiments that the brand had acquired in consumers mind. But then you can see the confusion and identity crisis and the loss in impact.

Hamara Bajaj TV Advert - India - The most popular videos are here

Hamara Bajaj -2001 Version - The best free videos are right here

And finally the pulsar ad - clearing all confusions, Bajaj decides its bike focus and that it would like to be called a motorcycle company. You can notice the change in the jingle - trendier, zippier version of the very old Humara Bajaj ad.

Hamara Bajaj (pulsar Add) - Funny blooper videos are here

Surely, so much can be learnt from a brand's ad campaigns run over a period of time.

SMS based news networks: Citizen journalism through SMS

I have always been a big fan of citizen journalism. The whole idea of citizens becoming reporters of news and giving you the stories they have witnessed, not only adds credibility to the story but also empowers citizens to generate awareness and keep limited power in the hands of journalists, news editors and especially these days, news lobbyists.

If you have a look at some popular citizen journalism platforms like CNN ireport, Citizen Journalist (By IBN) and NDTV Social (the branded ones) and Rambhai.com, demotix, merinews (the independent ones),you will see that on one end such websites are giving citizens a platform to give out their frank opinions and insights into events while on the other end, there is a crowdsourcing element attached to the news pieces where citizen news articles are voted/ commented/ shared with others and you can see the most democratically sorted news pieces which can rarely be wrong.

What I feel is that with a mobile handset in almost every second hand in India and the power of social media and SMS based engines like txtWeb, the concept of citizen journalism can be made even stronger.  Platforms like Pakreport (built on Ushahidi) are using SMS in  an excellent way to get citizen report disasters and casualities via SMS. 

Another site called Votereport India used SMS reporting to report voting malpractices and incidents via SMS and online media. Similarly SMS Gupshup (if you follow the txtWeb blog you must have surely heard about it) allows users to form groups and send SMSes to members. This is another interesting way SMS based news networks can be architectured.

Given the popularity of news channels in India and the kind of semi cooked gossipi, manipulated material that is presented in news channels these days, I am sure citizen journalism and SMS based news networks have a long way to go. All that is lacking is appropriate tools to empower a citizen and an SMS can do that. 

I wrote this article as a guest post for txtWeb. txtWeb.com is a consumer generated SMS based app store.