An article about start-up’s leaped at me today. Chris Keene offers some straightforward advice about not getting caught up in the technology.

Over the course of three software startups and 10 years of teaching entrepreneurship, I have seen one flaw kill more software startups than all the other flaws combined. That flaw is caring more about your technology than your customers - failed software startups are smart about technology and stupid about who is going to use that technology.

He offer two suggestions:

1. Don’t put in all the features possible.

2. Marketing that trashes the competitors.

He suggests the answer is to recruit a business partner that is externally focused.

My suggestion is that a community manager can help out with so many of these things. They offer that external focus that examines the UI from the customer’s perspective. They are connected to the customers & can give feedback that makes the product clean & useful. And in terms of marketing - there is no reason to trash the competition. If a community manager is evangelizing it then they will offer up all choices & explain why their product is unique & meets the needs of the community. Really the customers decide, don’t they?

Last week I had a dawning while I was thinking about my editorial calendar for the Network Solutions blog. Small business owners are for all practical purposes Community Managers! 

Small Business Owners do it all!

A community manager wears many hats & is a voice for the customers & the company. Small business owners do it all too. Marketing, PR, customer relations, product development, etc are all important. And if you’d like to put your business online then the basics in the yellow middle circle are important.

But take a look at the outside ring. Those are all topics that I cover in terms of networking & building brand. (Hat tip to Web 2.0 for SmallBiz for the graphic. They have started a great new series that you should check out on Marketing 2.0).

More aspects

There are many more aspects to consider (things that a community manager does that I view are necessities for a business online - no matter it’s size!).

• Listening - Brand monitoring tools
• Marketing utilizing social media tools
• Adding a community to your site

The great thing is that so many of the social media tools are free & word of mouth efforts can be done with little or no investment. The key is to choose the ones that will be the most effective for your niche.

What would you add to the diagram?

There have been many references to ROI in terms of social media. A couple of my favorites are:

• Return on Influence
• Return on Interaction

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the Community Manager position.And the article in the WSJ about the Deloitte study brought out many from the industry in defense of communities. My take was that it underlines the importance of the community manager role. Brian Solis recently had an article on the new MarComm. He highlights why companies need to start considering marketing in relational terms.

A friend that’s a VP of Marketing of an Open Source solution says it provides 12x the valuation at his company.

Here are a list of returns:

• Humanize the company by providing a voice
• Nurture the community & encourage growth
• Communicate directly with the customers
• Connect customers to appropriate internal departments
• Ensure that messaging will connect
• Build brand awareness through word of mouth
• Lower market research costs
• Add more points in the purchase cycle
• Provide support to customers that have fallen thru the cracks
• More satisfied customers because they’ve been involved with product development
• Shorten length of product development cycle
• Build public relations for brand with influentials in the industry
• Identify strengths & weaknesses of competitors
• Collaborate & partner with related organizations
• Provide industry trends to the executive level

Your first comment will be - there aren’t any numbers there! You know your organization best so I’ll let you decide what value each of those offers. There are other factors to consider before deciding if you need a community manager, but I hope that that list starts you thinking about the value of the position.

Have I forgotten any?

… that is the question. I’ve seen many discussions listing the pro’s & con’s as to whether a company should build a community or not? But I think they’re missing the most important question that should come first.

Where are our customers? And have they created their own communities?

Tom O’Brien calls it social media madness when clients want to immediately build a community.

He makes the point that communities are not about increasing the value of your brand. They’re about the common interests of the members. And if you respect that you’re welcome to join them, but those that practice traditional marketing & push their messages won’t be welcome long.

So before you say, ‘Let’s build a community’, please take a minute to step back. Here are some steps:

Use brand monitoring

• remember that discussions in password protected forums won’t be caught

Identify where people are talking about your products at?

• this may surprise you

Have they built communities already?

• if they have, they will prefer to stay there amongst others with their interests

If there are a number of micro communities, here are some ideas:

• offer a central place to aggregate them so that people can interconnect
• encourage user generated content & provide a place for it
• connect with your advocates & reward them
• invite influencers to participate in a group blog
• provide places for gathering product development information

And most importantly interact with the customers throughout.

So what may have started off as a question, "Should we build a community?" turns into these types of questions:

• What is best for our customers? What would they prefer?
• How can we as a company facilitate them in their interaction?

What are your thoughts on this?

Here are 15 suggestions that take advantage of the innovative opportunities that Web 2.0 offers for marketing.

1. Attitude is everything! Being positive makes positive things happen (I work with people).

2. Good is ok (I’m a recovering perfectionist!).

3. Don’t let too much time pass between steps in a project. (it’s deadly).

4. Action is better than study. Marketing 2.0 is about experimentation!

5. Brainstorm, Do, Evaluate, Redo (oh! that’s #4 again :)  )

6. Get out of your box & try new things. Ask your customers for ideas. (they will surprise you!)

7. Feature vs Benefit - just because it’s pretty & shiny do your customers want it?

8. Don’t assume - ask your customers (get to know them - they’ll tell you everything want to hear plus maybe some things you didn’t want to)

9. Observe & listen to your customers (they are begging to be heard)

10. Have a vision & dream big (and because I don’t set limits I’m pleasantly surprised with the results!)

11. Bring management on board first (mention the idea, then build over time)

12. Consider feedback as a gift (negative is the most valuable)

13. Measure, don’t just count - it’s far more valuable

14. Build for the future

15. There’s no mistake that can’t be fixed (if you never try how will you know? see #6)

Bonus - have fun! Marketing in the Web 2.0 world is about the customers. Let them show you their joy in pleasing them.

What are your favorite reasons for marketing in Web 2.0?