Successful Social Software Launches: Marketing vs. IT

I sat in on a good webinar sponsored by social software vendor Jive, maker of Clearspace in December. One of their users, a member of the Business Sales Team at T-Mobile who has been instrumental in setting up and managing a departmental implementation of Clearspace, presented. As I listened to Jenny Moran, Channel Manager, talk about the community they created, MagentaNation, it occurred to me: If marketing people launch and drive adoption of social software, is it on the whole likely to be more successful than if IT people deploy it?

I thought about this because this is what Jenny talked about:

• “Pull not push: “We did not push the site on people or force trainings”

• “Building excitement:” such as a very brief launch call, involving managers, and launching “exclusive” content here first

• “Maintaining excitement” by engaging users, for example, by posting videos and allowing anyone to post videos, by showing users how to make their own customized dashboard…

• “For the people, by the people:” a phrase she used more than once meaning that users helped design MagentaNation, seed it with content, and will continue to be actively consulted about usage.

All of this was marketing language, and more importantly was indicative of thinking about people’s behavior.

And driving adoption is all about thinking about behavior.

When I talked to Jenny in person and suggested that a marketing social software deployment might be more successful than an IT one, she seemed to agree but articulated it a bit differently. She felt that because Business Sales Support approached it from the user perspective, not the IT perspective, they were more flexible and they "let the community create itself." This is, I suppose, the number one marketing principle: “Give the customer what they want.”

It turns out that there is some data about user satisfaction with implementations by business (referred to below as LoB-Line of Business) users vs. IT implementations. Ross Mayfield of Socialtext recently posted this:

“According to this year's McKinsey survey on Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise, IT-driven implementations had 60% user dissatisfaction, whereas LoB-driven had 74% satisfaction."

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About MagentaNation

Business issues that gave rise to creation of MagentaNation:

• Dissatisfaction in Business Sales with non-relevant content being pushed at them
• Lack of connection with other Business Sales members
• Need for vehicle for continuous learning and sharing of best practices

How the community created itself:

1. T-Mobile had a one month pilot in January ‘08, before they signed a contract, consisting of 15-20 people from different groups and levels in Business Sales Support, using the site and creating content.
   
2. Expanded outwards to 50 people, for a second month-long pilot.
   
3. Then each of those people invited one or two people, so 150-200 people were using the site and creating content.
   
4. In May, they launched to the Business Sales population of 700.
   

Usage statistics (from mid-May launch to beginning of December)

• 46,790 visits
• 275,243 pageviews
• 6+ minutes average time spent on site
• @6 page views per visit
• 97% of the Business Sales group is registered
• Now, over 90% of Business Sales members log on at least once a month
• Stats for 2 random days: Friday: 10 posts, Monday (by 11:30 a.m.): 7 posts

Customizations

• Leadership widget showing picture of leader and latest activity
• Video widget for latest videos posted
• Scrolling ticker with important news

What do the two people who manage the community do?

• Help drive engagement within the community
• Review site content, moderate (rarely have needed to "moderate," occasionally coach users, Jenny repeatedly stressed that the community was for users so moderation with the lightest touch possible was key)
• Help answer questions
• Administrate

How many hours do the managers work on MagentaNation?

• Channel Manager: Approximately 20 hours per week
• Q&A counterpart: Approximately 10-15 hours per week

Looking forward to...

• Live chat, which Jive should release next year
  

For two screenshots of the site, see slides 10 and 11 of the presentation.