Category: Marketing

  • The Secret Ingredient for Customer Lifecycle Marketing? Community Management.

    Clearly Customer Lifecycle Marketing is incredibly valuable when all stages of the lifecycle are addressed. So what is the problem? Based on my direct experience and years of studying the intersection of marketing and online community, I would assert that building meaningful relationships at scale is still an undeveloped function in the majority of most…

  • My First Year as a Consultant and what 2016 Holds for Online Communities (I hope)

    Honestly, I wasn’t going to do this. I’m already rolling eyes at all the “prediction” posts. And there are way too many 2015 retrospectives to look back on… but I’m feeling optimistic and inspired! You are taking the time to read this – THANK YOU! I have had an incredible amount of support for my…

  • The Role of Brands in Online Communities

    There seems to be a wave of bad advice and misguided thinking regarding where and how brands should engage with their communities. Examples include pundits advising brands to prioritize social efforts “off domain”, being passive observers in their communities instead of active hosts, and a general sentiment that hosting a brand-based online community is high…

  • Using Unconference in the Enterprise – Manifesting Social Business

    My theory on Unconferences (and other participant-driven events) is pretty simple: put smart and passionate people in a room to talk about a common cause with some light facilitation and good things generally happen. Along with all the great knowledge-sharing and network-building that typically happens, an Unconference can be one of the key catalysts for the…

  • Slides: Building Sustained Community Engagement: from eMarketing Summit Portland

    Building Sustained Community Engagement View more presentations from Bill Johnston

  • Online Community Summit 2009

    We’re just about 2 weeks away from our 8th annual Online Community Summit in Sonoma, CA, on October 8-9. We have a fantastic speaker and session line-up that I’ve detailed out below. If you’d like to attend the Summit and you’re a senior online community or social media practitioner, please go here to request an…

  • Webinar – Online Communities: Surviving & Thriving in the Economic Downturn

    Online Communities: Thriving in the Economic Downturn Webinar A FREE webinar sponsored by Forum One Networks May 7, 2009 @ 11:00 am PDT Register here: http://thrivesurvive-rpm.eventbrite.com The economy is in a state of flux, but interest in and use of online communities and social media has never been higher. Hear from a panel of experienced…

  • Online Community Unconference East – 2009

    Our first event of 2009, the Online Community Unconference East is going to be held on February 11 in New York City. We expect 150 online community and social media professionals to attend, and we expect there to be between 30-40 collaborative sessions. Current attendees include: Google, Edelman, Ebay, Consumer Reports, Deutsche Telekom, iVillage, and…

  • Most Communities Don’t Stick?

    Steve Rubel had an interesting post this morning, titled “Historically, Most Online Communities Haven’t Stuck” Only a handful of community sites over the last dozen years have had staying power. If you study them you’ll find moats to protect them from competitors and fickle users. These barriers to entry include peer-to-peer commerce (in the case…

  • Marketing & Online Communities Research Report Released

    Our Online Community Research Network (http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com) initiated the The Marketing & Online Community research study in June of 2007. The study explored the current state of marketing to online communities, from the perspective of both the online community host, as well as from the perspective of the marketer. The research participants included large software companies,…