The Telligent Blog

National Make a Friend Day: Something to Smile About

Jennifer Slaughter — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:50:00 GMT

Did you know that national “Make a Friend Day” is tomorrow? That’s right, every year on February 11^thwe have a national day dedicated to doing something just slightly out of the ordinary to make a new friend. Friends are one step beyond acquaintances; they are individuals we trust and think well of. Friendships last a lifetime, and most are built around a certain purpose or common interest.

In honor of this year’s national Make a Friend Day, I’d like to say “hello” and “thank you” to more than 200+ Telligent Friends that are system integrators, digital agencies, developers and strategists who share our passion around enterprise social community software and making sure our customers are successful.

I’d love to hear how your company creates success in this industry, and would like to personally invite you to become our friend in our Partner Network. You never know when you’ll need a friend; by connecting today, perhaps we can better prepare for tomorrow’s successes.

You are also welcome to participate in any of our conversations by joining our Community and hanging out in our Business Lounge.

Customer Care: It’s Not Just What You Do, But How You Do It

Randy Skinner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:45:00 GMT

When it comes to caring for our customers, Telligent has taken its commitment to the next level – creating a world-class standard for products and service.

Customer service. Customer support. Education. Partner support. In all facets of our customer care, we are always working to ensure that we are contributing to our customers’ goals and remain committed to our core values.

Telligent loves its customers and that’s a key element that initially attracted me to Telligent. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know our number one core value is, “Our customer comes first. Period.” In the social industry, I think this attitude is critically important. After all, social is all about building relationships and making connections that benefit everyone.

We know if we are meeting our customers’ needs by simply listening. It’s so easy to talk, talk, talk, but never actually stop to listen to your customers’ needs and wants. As a best practice, you need to stop and analyze what your customers are saying about your product, your brand and your service. By simply listening, you’ll find out what you can do better and even what you are doing right.

Recently, I saw a great tweet from one of our awesome customers, Brendan Cosgrove at Kaseya.

(By the way, you should know that Kaseya was a nominee in the 2011 Forrester Groundswell Awards and was recognized by Constellation Research for their community excellence)

How can you generate this kind of response from your customers? Consider these two definitions:

Courtesy: Using accepted and appropriate manners, as interpreted from the customer's perspective, to meet the expectations of the customer.
World-Class Courtesy: Using exceptional manners, as interpreted from the customer's perspective, to exceed the expectations of the customer.

Your goal, whether you are in customer service, product development or even marketing, should always be to anticipate your customers’ needs and wants. And it goes right back to what I was saying about listening to the customer. You can’t dictate to customers what they will accept from you. You have to provide them a solution to their problem and then anticipate their additional needs.

You might be familiar with the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is exactly how we approach the relationship we have with our customers. We don’t just sell a social software platform. We give them the resources and education to not only build a community, but build relationships, their brand and as a result their bottom line.

Recently, our Founder and CTO Rob Howard was speaking with customers and partners in Austin. Out of that conversation, I captured this tweet from Susan Scrupski of the Dachis Group.

You can't be shy about it. If you are going to raise the standards in your customer service and support, you have to be willing to shout it from the rooftops. This is not just for accountability; it’s to let your customers know you are thinking about them and that they come first.

Getting social is an important part of developing a world-class service approach to your customers. You can create an inviting environment for your customers in an online community you build and they own. You fill that community with great information and your ears; this is where you can gain the best insight into your customers’ needs. Now, are you ready to think about getting your own online community off the ground?

Boost Association Membership with a Social Community

Wendy Gibson — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:10:00 GMT

Associations are rapidly adapting to the social Web to understand its members’ needs and wants, build cause awareness, keep current members engaged, attract new recruits and ensure that they are creating mutually beneficial relationships with members. Check out this new case study for tips and best practices on launching a successful social campaign to attract new members.

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) is the social business trail blazer for how to build a world class community for professionals. Their current focus? College accounting majors.

AICPA created the go-to place and central hub for accounting majors to connect with peers and accountants. This Way to CPA is a targeted, online community and resource center where students talk about what it’s like to be an accountant, learn about different specialties, strategize about the CPA exam and divulge tips and tricks on landing the best internships and a job after graduation.

Kudos to Justin Couto and his team at Couto Solutions, an elite design development firm that designed and implemented AICPA’s online community, for creating a bold, imaginative design.

This Way to CPA is a one-stop shop for accounting students to discuss internships, scholarships, the CPA exam, future careers and more.

Social can get really complicated trying to figure out what channels to use, how to manage them all and how to measure the value you get from each. That’s where community AICPA comes in – it’s a model to membership organizations implementing social strategies and trying to improve recruitment initiatives.

AICPA created a unified social strategy that makes it easy to manage all of their social media tools and technologies. It has Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and drives users back to its on domain community, This Way to CPA, for more in depth, meaningful conversations and engagement, and to track member involvement.

Why does it work? It’s fun, creative and easy to use. The tone is casual, content is funny and it makes plenty of references to pop culture, which students find relatable and interesting.

The community also provides real value to students navigating their career path and to accountants who mentor new talent and share their hard-won wisdom. Plus, the AICPA helps strengthen the profession by preparing top college recruits for their professional lives. AICPA also fosters loyalty and improves its own member recruitment efforts by taking a stake in an accountant’s career.

Here are some great stats on AICPA’s community building initiative:

This Way to CPA had more than 18,000 registered users in the first year, which is significantly more than it expected.
Almost 23,000 people visit the community each month and over 57% of registered users return to the site to stay connected to the community and build relationships.
19% of visitors return five times or more each month, which shows that community members are actively searching for content and becoming highly engaged with AICPA’s messaging.
With 10% of its members located outside of the U.S., AICPA also reaches a global accounting audience.

Stay tuned; AICPA is going to continue building out its social strategy. It supports a community website for high school counselors and instructors (community.StartHereGoPlaces.com) to educate students about accounting and how to pursue advanced studies in college. And, AICPA is going to build out its partnerships with 10-15 additional accounting groups, which will help it attract new members and strengthen the profession.

10 Ways to +1 Your Community this Year

Cecilia Edwards — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:55:00 GMT

Long before there was Google+, the concept of +1 was used to address the topic of extraordinary customer service. In 1993, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles wrote Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service. In Raving Fans, Blanchard and Bowles cover three areas: Deciding what you as a business want; Discovering what the customer wants; and delivering plus one.

So what did they mean by delivering plus one. Here are some of the key points they articulate:

Being consistent in your performance to create credibility with your customers
Limiting the number of areas in which you want to make a difference so that you have a chance of doing them well
Promote more service and deliver more (as opposed to under-promise and over-deliver)
Meet expectations first, exceed them second
Be flexible

Since one of the primary reasons to have an externally facing online community is to deepen relationships with your customers, it seems that the +1 concept from Blanchard and Bowles fits well for online communities. Here are 10 suggestions for ways you could +1 your community this year.

Write +1 additional piece of content – we all know that quality content that is regularly refreshed is important to the continued health of a community. While the engagement of community members does create a valuable steady stream of new content, it is no substitute for the occasional piece of content originated by your company. Let your community members hear your voice and see your continued interest in the community by writing something new that is of value to them.
Highlight the accomplishments of +1 of your community members – in order to demonstrate to your members that your community is not just a marketing site where the only thing you promote are the products, services, and accomplishments of your company, make some of the content about them. Think about the purpose of your community, why your members are there in the first place, and identify someone who has benefited from the fulfillment of that purpose. How have they used your products or services in such a way to benefit them? Tell their story – or better yet – find a way to let them tell it.
Publically thank +1 community member for their activities in the community - if you have community members that are engaging in a way that you think is beneficial – they are answering questions of others, commenting, originating content, sharing valuable information, and demonstrating the culture you desire – then thank them. People love acknowledgement and it is sure to provide some level of motivation for them to continue. Others who see your public acknowledgement will also be encouraged to follow suite.
Take +1 poll on ways to improve the community – asking people their opinions is a great way to increase their level of connectedness to your community. It says that you care about what they think and the kind of experience you would like them to have. You benefit because it gives you a perspective into the thinking of your members and can help you prioritize your investments in the community in a more impactful manner.
Implement +1 idea in the community based upon poll results – it’s great that you asked people what they would like to see changed in the community. Now it’s time to act upon it. If your members feel they can have some level of influence over the community because they see visible evidence, their loyalty to the community will increase (and so should their opinion of you.) With that increased loyalty ought to come increased spending on your products and services over time.
Personally invite +1 additional person to join your community – while it is always great for people to find your community through search or advertisements, it is even better when someone personally invites them. The specific recommendation of the community from one of the members has a much greater impact on someone’s likelihood to visit, join and engage in your community. Don’t just leave the personal invitations up to your community members though. Jump in and call or email someone you know to join in.
Greet +1 new community member – designing your community so that it is easy for newcomers to engage and developing welcome guides are both great ways to make sure that your new members can easily jump in the conversation. It is even better is someone notices they are there and gives them a personal greeting. Many communities have automated tools to help enable this – things like a default welcome message and an automatic friend. The problem with relying solely on these things is that everyone knows they are automated and therefore no one feels that anything was done specifically to welcome them personally. Take the time to make a connection with a new member, comment on something they did, ensure they get an answer to their question, ask them something about themselves, or just generally connect in a way that is personal.
Share +1 thing off topic – you are an interesting person and your members might want to know something about your interest other than business. This is why companies have baseball teams and office parties. They want to increase the trust among their employees through non-business related sharing. Don’t tell them what you had for lunch – unless of course it was something unique enough to be of broad interest (like the time some of my colleagues and I went to dinner at an exotic food restaurant and the table was spread with zebra, wildebeest, wild boar, and a salad topped with locust and crickets – that was worth the pictures and a bit of the story due to the general weirdness of it all.) Instead, share something that lots of people might have some interest in and feel like commenting on or sharing.
Find +1 community member to give some administrative rights to – managing your community is a big job that can consume a lot of someone’s time. However, there is a good chance that you have at least one member that is passionate about an area of your community that you would trust to help you with moderation and topic leadership. Give that person the right to lead. This will make them stronger advocates for your community and give you additional resources – at no cost – to stay on top of all of the community management tasks.
Host +1 online event- while most of the engagement that takes place in an online community is asynchronous, community engagement can be energized with an occasional synchronous event in which members can plan to “meet” as specific times to discuss a topic. Online chats can increase the velocity of engagement. Video casts will allow people to both see and hear each other resulting in the formation of new and deeper relationships among members.

In the spirit of this post, I just couldn’t stop at 10 suggestions. Here’s a +1 suggestion:

Host +1 live off-line event – in the spirit of +1, here is an extra suggestion: while online events are good for deepening relationships, offline events can take those relationships to even greater levels. It is important to remember that the technology should not confine the engagement of your community. Humans are social beings and in one hour of face to face interaction can shave months of relationship building time off of online communications only.

As an added bonus – if you haven’t read Raving Fans or haven’t read it in a while, here is a mind map of the Raving Fans book.

What ideas do you have to +1 your community?

Telligent Educates Companies on the Foundation and Tools to Get Social in 2012 + How to Leverage Existing Microsoft Investments

Jon Allen — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:00 GMT

How many of you believe that social is the new norm? We do, and so do your customers, partners and prospects. That is why we have teamed up with Microsoft to deliver a one of a kind dynamic and social online presence.

Your customers and partners expect to interact with your brand online. That is why through the joint effort of Microsoft and Telligent, we are able to combine best-in-class web content management from Microsoft SharePoint for Internet Sites and FAST Search for SharePoint with Telligent’s leading social community platform. Because the Telligent Social Suite for SharePoint is packaged together, you are able to know your investment upfront. As far as packaging goes, we offer Social Support, Social Extranets and Social Marketing packages that will accelerate your social activities around areas that your company can benefit the most.

These packages are offered with Telligent Social Workshops that are designed to help get you started. Most likely you don’t have the appropriate social media resources inside your organization, therefore these workshops are intended to provide you with an introduction to social and community. These one, three or five day workshops will help you to understand the power and purpose of community, learn how to plan and launch a world class community and create a customized blueprint for your community. Sound like your type of event? If you are a current SharePoint customer, you can contact your Microsoft Account Representative or access the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) to see how many SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) days you have available to use towards Telligent Social Workshops. You can contact Telligent through the Microsoft VLSC or you can also schedule a workshop today by contacting Telligent directly.

As an added bonus to help accommodate the growing need to incorporate a social presence into your business, Telligent and Microsoft are kicking off the Get Social Tour. As part of this global six-city tour, you will get a grasp on why social being a component of your business is important. Specifically, you will learn:

How to enhance your existing SharePoint investments for better business results
How corporate owned social communities differ from and complement popular social networking sites
The value of creating a customer-centric social community
The steps to gather insight into what your customers are saying about your brand

At Telligent we understand that your social needs will continue to expand, so join us as we help prepare you to make your business more social in 2012 and moving forward.

Sign Up Today: Telligent University is Open for Enrollment

Randy Skinner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:15:00 GMT

In-depth training videos. Short 3-5 minute lesson plans. 24/7 on-demand access. These are all components of Telligent’s new e-learning community – Telligent University.

Telligent University is now open for enrollment to Telligent customers and partners. It provides comprehensive, yet cost-effective, education and training for Telligent Community, Telligent Enterprise and Telligent Evolution. Two learning tracks are currently available, one for site administrators and one for developers. Both tracks provide a pathway for partners to obtain certification on Telligent software.

Telligent University is just the beginning; in fact, it’s the first step towards a complete knowledge center that is being developed by Telligent. Consider the product education that Telligent University provides as your starting point and stay tuned for incredible learning opportunities to come. As we pave this path, I am very excited about what this means for the present and future of knowledge sharing at Telligent.

As we expand our Telligent University curriculum and advance our knowledge center, we will continue to keep our ears open to what customers and partners are saying will be most beneficial to them. Click here to learn about how Telligent University helps you get the most out of social. Contact a specialist to sign up for a course, get help or ask about custom training programs.

#CMAD: Kudos to all Community Managers Helping to Manage and Grow Communities

Wendy Gibson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:13:00 GMT

How would you define a community manager? The following phrases are a good starting point:

Lead social capital builder
Brand evangelist
Master listener
Rule enforcer
Spam controller

As many of you know, today is the third annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). According to Wikipedia, Altimeter Group Analyst Jeremiah Owyang first initiated this day in 2010. CMAD takes place every fourth Monday of January as a way to “recognize and celebrate the efforts of community managers around the world using social media to improve customer experiences.” Over the past three years, it has grown into a globally recognized day in the socialsphere where the simple words ‘thank you’ go a long way.

In my blog last year I gave an overview of the growing importance of community managers and why they are vital to managing and growing an online community. So I thought that it would only be appropriate for the blog this year to personally recognize and introduce you to Telligent’s community manager and point out why she is such a cherished asset to not only Telligent, but also to our growing community.

Meet our community manager: Jenn Emerson

Why is she so important to Telligent and our community, you ask?

She established the culture of the community through participation
She works hard on connecting members to the appropriate resources and supplying all members with valuable content that they would find informative
Recommends, and also implements, suggested changes to the community based on member feedback
Enables influencers in the community
Evangelizes the community within the organization
Is the voice of Telligent on the social media channels we are a part of

Our recent white paper, Strategies for Building World Class Communities can give you more insight into the general importance of community managers. Also our very own, Jenn Emerson, blogged about the essential role community manager’s play in helping to manage and grow an online community.

So how can you show your appreciation to your community manger? One suggestion is to join in the conversation on Twitter by using or following the #CMAD hashtag; I'm sure that a simple thank you tweet to your community manager would be very much appreciated.

Now it’s your turn to share – How are you celebrating CMAD or honoring your community manager? We’d love to hear from you; please share with us either in the comments section below or via Twitter!

Dip Your Toe Into Social With the All-New Social Starter Toolkit

Jenn Emerson — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:20:00 GMT

Do you spend countless hours researching social? Have you heard about online community, but are unsure if it will be beneficial to your organization? Do you wish that there was one resource out there for the best tips and information on social media? If this sounds like you, then look no further!

We asked our customers, “How can we help you get started on the right path with social media and online community?” Overwhelmingly, people responded by saying they first need help to understand social, then educate others in their organization. You spoke, we listened. Based on popular demand, here’s a toolkit that explains the basics of social:

What is social media?
How do brands and organizations use social media for business?
What is an online community?
Is there a difference between social networks and online communities?
What are the basic functions of an online community?
How can I benefit from an online community?

Our toolkit makes learning easy. Plus, it includes valuable resources like social media guidelines, real-world examples, and links to the websites of industry analysts and other thought leaders who we recommend you follow.

Seize the moment! View this complimentary toolkit now.

P.S. We’re constantly updating our social toolkits to help you stay in-the-know, so visit early and often.

Tech Talk: Synchronizing User Profiles

David Shaw — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:16:00 GMT

Because organizations manage multiple systems, inside and outside of the enterprise, maintaining user profiles can be a struggle. Our goal is to simplify profile management. Both Telligent Community and Telligent Enterprise feature social profiles that allow people to customize their profiles so that their peers in the community understand who they are, what they do and what interests them. Organizations can currently synchronize social profiles from Telligent with Microsoft Active Directory and other applications with profile stores using LDAP.

Now, Telligent is putting the finishing touches on a number of plug-ins for Telligent Enterprise and Telligent Community that will make profile management a breeze. These enhancements will make it easy for administrators to sync users’ community profiles with their profiles in other enterprise software. With the new plug-ins, as profile information is created/updated in a Telligent community it automatically updates the user’s profile in the corresponding system. The new enhancement not only synchronizes profile information, it also ensures that the chosen system of record maintains control.

In the coming months, Telligent will be rolling out the new profile sync plug-in starting with support for Microsoft SharePoint 2010. It’s just one of several enhancements that we’re adding to Telligent Connect for Microsoft SharePoint, so stay tuned for updates.

5 Steps to Ensure Your Members Don’t Run Away With Your Community

Cecilia Edwards — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:06:00 GMT

A Best Practice of World Class Communities is to Encourage Ownership of the Community by Members

One of the strategies Telligent encourages for building World Class Communities is to encourage a level of ownership of the community by its members. There are several benefits associated with this:

People tend to support the things they feel they have ownership of
The cost of managing the community can be lowered with community volunteers
Community members can often be more ardent supporters of the community rules and also more effective evangelists of your products than employees

This usually works well because the interest of the community members is in alignment with those of the company sponsoring the community. The following chart is an example of the typical types of things both a set of customers and a company would be focused on:

The key is ensuring that the community's interest stays aligned with the interest of the company that is funding the community, otherwise there is a problem.

Sometimes, Community Ownership can Turn into a Community Hijacking

Just after Christmas, Steve Pavlina closed down the forums on his site after five years. You can read his blog post about it here. These forums appear to have grown into a very successful community, with community user numbers that would be envied by most. He had over 48,000 registered users who posted about a million messages across 67,000 threads. About 400 of his users were very active on the site and several were part of his volunteer moderation team, and yet he still shut them down.

Pavlina shared that his original objective for the forums was to create a space where growth-oriented people could come together to help each other in a positive support environment, and for a while that is exactly what he had. However, over time, many of the community members started to develop what Pavlina labeled as ‘a sense of entitlement’ and they began breaking the rules. They routinely annoyed other members and promoted their own businesses and affiliate programs. The final straw was when some of the volunteer moderators – his trusted power users – joined in the dysfunction. In other words, the vision for the community was lost. As a result, he shut down the forums.

5 Steps You Can Take to Avoid This

There are a number of things that can be learned from Steve Pavlina’s experience that can help you avoid having the same thing happen to your community:

Work with a set of founding community members, or power users, if your community is already well established. Also create what Fever Bee’s Richard Millington calls a “Community Constitution”. This constitution should include a statement of the community’s purpose, beliefs, and governance approach (the consequences of violating the constitution). Having a set of members that assists with crafting the constitution helps to create ready defenders of it as well.
In addition to the constitution, the community manager should create a community guide that informs new members how to get started, describes the intended culture and explains a bit about the history of the community. This can set the stage for new member engagement and serve as a tool that moderators can point constitution violators to as a reminder of acceptable behavior.
There must be strict enforcement of the guidelines – no exceptions allowed. If a community member hasn’t already done it, moderators should publically provide feedback on inappropriate behavior so the entire community learns what will and will not be tolerated. Additionally, public thanks should be given to community members when they call other members out on violations of the community guidelines and culture.
The community manager has an opportunity to gently steer the direction of the community by initiating discussions and posting content that is of interest to the broader community and in alignment with the community's vision. Having an editorial calendar and executing on it will ensure a steady stream of relevant content that is aligned with your company’s objectives.
Establishing and maintaining good relationships with the influencers in the community is critical. As mentioned above, community members can be both better enforcers of your rules and champions of your cause than you can. Do what it takes to ensure you stay connected to those with the most influence in your community, and be sure to solicit both their input and help when needed.

Have You Heard? New Telligent Product Enhancements are Available

Rob Howard — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:18:00 GMT

Innovation. Industry Growth. Product Enhancements. These are all things that Telligent focused on in 2011 and will continue to focus on in 2012. In September, Telligent welcomed customers and partners from around the globe to The Big Social, our annual user conference in Dallas, Texas. The Big Social was a great venue to communicate Telligent’s recent accomplishments, such as our newest product releases, and to preview our roadmap. Here’s a brief update on some of the announcements we made during The Big Social:

Telligent Connect for Facebook

One of the announcements I made during my keynote was Telligent Connect for Facebook. It enables you to bridge conversations happening on your community with Facebook and vice versa. Specifically, Telligent Connect for Facebook allows you to plug a forum from your community directly into your company’s Facebook page. This comes at the ideal time since Facebook removed discussion forums in October.

Telligent Connect for Facebook will be available for download later this month from Telligent Marketplace. Please keep in mind that it requires Telligent Community 6.0 or later. Telligent Connect for Facebook adds to the Facebook Social Plugins that are currently available in Telligent Marketplace.

Telligent Enterprise User Experience

As part of August’s Telligent Enterprise 3.0 launch, we unveiled a new user experience. You can download this new theme directly from Telligent Marketplace today. Stay tuned; more enhancements to the Telligent Enterprise user experience are coming soon.

Document Preview

Telligent Document Preview allows you to view common document formats, such as Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF, within your browser. It’s great because you can now view documents in the community without having to download them first. Telligent Document Preview provides a viewing experience that is similar to SlideShare.

Telligent Document Preview supports both Telligent Community 6.0 and Telligent Enterprise 3.0, and you can download it now from Telligent Marketplace.

Support for Microsoft FAST

We are putting the finishing touches on our integration work for Microsoft FAST. Be on the lookout for updates.

More information about Telligent Analytics 4.0, Remote Widget Studio and our Telligent Social 100 challenge is coming soon. Plus, Telligent Community 6.5 and Telligent Enterprise 3.5 will be available Spring 2012, so check Telligent.com for updates.

Successfully Implementing an Online Community is a Team Effort

Cecilia Edwards — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:15:00 GMT

After you have done the necessary steps to build and deploy a successful online community, there’s still one thing left to do – make sure that your community team is in place.

It takes more than just one person to build and maintain a community; it takes a team effort to successfully implement an online community. Numerous people in your company will be involved in the process, but the number of people will greatly depend on factors such as the structure and objectives of the community and the unique element of your company.

Regardless of whether you are creating a community for a Fortune 500 company or a non-profit organization, there are four team positions that should always be filled.

Let’s take a more in-depth look at each of these positions:

Owner – Develops the strategy, cares for the community and is also measured on the success of the community. Your IT department may be involved in the deployment of your community; however, a more successful model for ownership comes from the business side.
Sponsor –A senior executive who is committed to using community to execute corporate strategy. Try to think of someone who is a strong leader, has a strategic eye and understands how to interweave community into the corporate strategy.
Champion – Who are those two or three people who consistently evangelize your online community in your organization? They should be your champions. Let them spread positivity about the community and get people involved.
Community Manager – Lead social capital builder. Evangelist. Responder. Rule enforcer. Spam controller. These are all characteristics of the community manager. Initially this individual’s role is to establish the culture of the community. However, over time, the community manager’s role will shift to engaging and enabling influencers in the community and serving as the champion of the community within the company. Speaking of community managers, let me introduce you ours – Jenn Emerson. She does a fantastic job running our community and understands what it takes to be a successful community manager.

As you study the definition of each position, who do you think would be the ideal individual(s) to carry the title for each role at your company? It may be challenging at first to identify someone for each position, but it is essential to assign a name to each of the roles.

Find out more specifics of what each role in the community team entails by downloading our whitepaper, Strategies for Building World Class Communities.

SharePoint, Facebook, Best Practices and More: A Look Back at Our Favorite Blogs from 2011

Megan Yunker — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:27:00 GMT

Before we break out the bubbly and black-eyed peas (people in the Southeast US will understand), I want to jump on the “Year in Review” bandwagon and take a look back at some of my favorite blogs from 2011. I picked these blogs based on very sophisticated criteria: your favorites are my favorites too. Without further ado, here are the top-five Telligent blogs from 2011:

#5 SharePoint 2010 Plus Telligent Capabilities and Benefits by Rob Howard

#4 Top 5 Warning Signs of a Social Media Expert by Rob Howard

#3 There was a tie for 3^rd place between the blogs announcing our Best Practices Toolkits for Associations and Customer Service by Jenn Emerson

#2 Facebook Says So Long to Discussion Forums by Rob Howard

#1 Exciting News: Telligent Acquires Leverage Software by Patrick Brandt

Enjoy…and Happy New Year from all of us at Telligent! See you in 2012!

Exciting News: Telligent Acquires Leverage Software

Patrick Brandt — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:10:00 GMT

We are passionate about social communities, which is why I’m pleased to announce that today Telligent acquired Leverage Software, a company that shares our passion. Leverage brings us:

Exceptionally talented employees who share our commitment to customers
Forward-thinking customers who can contribute great insight
Leadership in online community with roots that date back to 2003

For those of you who don’t know Leverage, its on-demand platform powers close-knit online communities with hundreds of people all the way to corporate communities that connect thousands of employees. Leverage customers include The Home Depot, Scotts Miracle-Gro and Stanford University plus a host of other brand leaders who use online communities to engage with their employees, partners and customers.

Why Leverage?

Leverage accelerates Telligent’s strategy and product offering with its pure, 100% cloud-based platform. This means that customers can configure and launch a community in minutes, without any IT involvement. Plus, you can take advantage of the latest advances in social technology with frequent software updates.
Leverage excels at people-centric design. Its people-centered features focus on building relationships and sparking communication paths that drive adoption and connect large organizations with employees out in the field.
Leverage provides mobile community experiences that make the most out of smartphone technology. Leverage’s on-demand platform supports an iPhone social app that taps into native mobile capabilities such as the camera, location-based GPS and push notifications.

Plus, Leverage and Telligent have complementary cultures and technologies. In terms of culture, our employees have an extreme focus on customer success. In fact, all of Leverage’s employees are joining Telligent including the company’s founder and CTO, Joe Kleinschmidt. Joe is joining the Telligent team as Vice President of Cloud Products where he will report to Rob Howard.

From the technology front, both Leverage and Telligent are built on the Microsoft stack. The Telligent Evolution platform APIs enable community functionality to be embedded into other applications. This will allow Leverage and Telligent customers to share functionality easily in the future.

This acquisition caps off a remarkable 2011 for Telligent. Our organization has been applauded by great new customers (which has contributed to impressive growth), recognized as a leader in a super competitive new market, and fortunate to enjoy incredible contributions by our dedicated team. The addition of Leverage Software to the Telligent family puts an exclamation point on the year.

I sincerely hope that you are as excited as I am about the acquisition. Expect great things from Telligent in 2012 as we integrate Leverage, its technology and its people, into the organization.

The press release of the announcement is available here.

Social Media & Associations: Moving Forward by Getting Back to the Basics

Cecilia Edwards — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:30:00 GMT

In the recent newsletter that Association Trends™ published, there was an article titled “Social media and how it’s changing associations.” This article focused on the theme of the recent ASAE 2012 Technology Conference, which was how to integrate a social media strategy into an association’s corporate culture. Social continues to be a growing trend, and it is starting to pick up in popularity among associations.

Chris Carfi, VP of Social Business Strategy at Ant’s Eye View, discussed what he felt were the five different levels of engagement:

Traditional phase of one-way communication
Experimental phase of dabbling without a connection to business operations
Operational phase that is embedded in business operations
Measurable stage that drives business results
Full engagement phase where social as part of the DNA

There is a nice parallel between these levels of engagement and the three layers in the Social Ecosystem. Telligent has classified three different layers of engagement in the social space, which includes not only social media, but company-owned communities as well.

Participating: The participating layer is where individuals and the company can participate on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Carfi’s first two levels of engagement take place here. Sometimes this manifests itself as “dabbling” in social media, but it does not connect to business objectives. However, companies in Cafri’s third stage could also use this as an effective means to draw people to their communities.
Managed: This layer includes organization pages and groups on consumer-facing social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. As described in Carfi’s operational level of engagement, social media is embedded into business operations; but interaction does not take place on a platform that is owned by the organization.
Owned: The third layer of the Social Ecosystem, classified as company-owned and managed, typically running on community and collaboration software. This is where the greatest value takes place from Carfi’s final two stages of engagement – measurable and full engagement. It is only in the context of a company-owned community, where an organization can fully own the data to both measure and drive business results. And, it is only in this context where there can be full integration with the company’s overall business processes, branding and control of the user experience.

Justin Couto of Couto Solutions summed this idea up nicely in our recent webinar with AICPA. Regarding how and where associations spend time and resources on social media, he says “The smartest investment you can make is in your organization.” It’s wise to capitalize on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; however, remember that the social media landscape is ever-changing. The social networks that are popular today may not be in six months, a year or five years. Use these as social channels to attract and drive your focus audience into a community that truly fulfills their needs.

For more information about how associations use online social communities, watch this webinar featuring Couto Solutions and AICPA.