Though their participation and assistance was appreciated, there was a clear need for an official presence in the community. However, we knew that this would not be a simple undertaking. We acknowledged the threat of backlash and carefully crafted our entry strategy to minimize turmoil. As we put our plan into action, five highly effective practices shone through:

1. Start the day on a positive—and influential—note

Without an official morning greeting each day, the tone and attitude of the community can be completely unpredictable. In the case of our project, it was almost assured that the tone would be negative without subtle intervention. Opening each day with a lighthearted greeting and a fun call to action enabled us to announce our presence, engage advocates, align conversation, and put community members in a positive mindset—all in one fell swoop.

2. Set rules and manage expectations

Clear and consistent communication of community guidelines is an absolute must. If a post is removed because it is in violation of guidelines, follow up and explain why the action was taken. Also, if the community does not have 24-hour management, it is important to communicate the parameters for working hours and response times. This prevents community members from feeling ignored if they post after hours. Eventually the community members will learn how to operate within a structured environment.

3. Establish credibility

A sudden brand presence within a community that has long been dominated by members can be jarring. Don’t be alarmed if a user’s first instinct is to disregard your opinion and look to others for affirmation. Building trust and credibility takes time, but with consistent participation and genuine interactions, it will surely happen.

4. Distinguish community opinion from official/brand response

Highly engaged community members often beat even the best community managers to respond. While this level of engagement is great, it often breeds incorrect information. Consistent brand messaging and presence teaches community members the community manager is the official word, even if it is contrary to responses from other members.

5. Nurture advocates

Lastly, pay tribute to the highly engaged community members who established themselves as experts prior to your arrival. Though there’s a new boss in town, their legacy is not forgotten! By acknowledging their efforts, the advocates know that their assistance is appreciated. If they agree to play nicely and provide respectful assistance to community members, there is no reason for them to stop doing what they’ve always done.

When the time comes to establish an official presence in your community, don’t take it lightly. This undertaking necessitates professional guidance and a wrong move can quickly turn the community against you. These five tips will help pave the way, but take time to make them your own based upon your community observations. Make special note of who your customers are, how they use social technologies, and what they expect from the brand and your overall community participation. Your level of consideration directly affects your success. Now get out there and claim your conch!

1. Be real

The premise is simple: don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. A community manager should be selected because they’re a good fit for the community. Don’t select a community manager simply because they have community management or social media experience; make sure they also have a background that is relevant to the community or your brand. The community can tell if you’re insincere or clueless, and you run the threat of losing their trust.

Additionally, give your personality a chance to shine through. Community managers who are overly dry or technical might as well be robots. Community members appreciate the presence of a genuine personality with whom they feel a connection.

2. Listen

A good community manager makes time to check in on the community at least once a day. Depending upon the amount of activity on each community hub, you may want to check in three to five times a day. Reply to any questions people have asked, and let them know that you’re there for them.

Genuine interaction is a must. Take time to really read and understand what your community members need. Don’t try to make their questions fit into a formulaic category that can easily be answered with a stock response. This will frustrate them and make you lose credibility.

3. Share

When checking in, a community manager should post interesting material and encourage conversation in the community. Don’t feel like your posts have to strictly adhere to the theme of your community; feel free to post a funny video or cute picture when you see fit.

Encourage your community to share, too. When you post, always include a call to action to encourage responses. If you post a video of a puppy stuck on its back, ask your community members to share their favorite puppy videos in the comments. This creates a dynamic of mutual respect and open sharing, and keeps your community members interested.

4. Watch out for your friends

Every good community manager wears the hat of a moderator at some point in time. When a community member comes to you with an issue, do your best to respond and resolve it within one day. If a flame war erupts within your community, step in and take the necessary steps to restore peace. Moderation is an important part of community management, and your community will thank you for the support.

5. Pitch in during times of crisis

When there is unplanned downtime or unexpected technical difficulties, a community manager should do all they can to guide the community through the rough patch. It’s always a good idea to have a crisis response plan in place before it is needed so you can promptly escalate the issue up the proper chain of command and provide a swift resolution.

Radio silence from a community manager during times of uncertainty can lead to panic and frustration from community members. If possible, contact your community members via alternate methods such as email or other unaffected social outlets. If there is planned downtime on the horizon, make sure your community is aware of it at least two weeks in advance.

6. Give your friends space

There’s such a thing as oversharing in a community. Good community managers make sure to avoid posting too often or dominating conversations. Doing so will lead your community members to ignore you or even leave the community.

A good rule of thumb is to not post more than three times a day. Additionally, allow your community members to interact with one another and create organic conversations around a central topic. Quite often, community members’ questions are answered by other members before you get a chance to respond. This builds a strong community based on mutual respect, and makes the community manager’s job a lot more pleasant.

Fast forward to 2011. Facebook has over 500 million active users with a speculated public valuation of $100 billion. More than 250 million active users use mobile and 2011 advertising revenue may hit $3.5 billion.

Strategy happens at many levels: corporate, business unit, department. Yes, you need brand and customer relationship strategies. But it’s dangerous to assume your potential opportunity on Facebook can be fully realized by tactics alone. Where do you start – with which of the six types of ads? How about pages, tabs, and applications? Should you use games, sweepstakes, customer service? What about Open Graph integration and Like buttons, Connect, and APIs? How about insights and analytics?

Brands need a plan to tie Facebook into plans within digital marketing, brand management, and social business strategy. You need a Facebook strategy to create and capture value from a community of over 500 million active users. Failing fast or leaving it up to your summer intern won’t cut it.

After building 300+ brand experiences on Facebook, our team consisting of three original Preferred Developer Consultancies has seen what works and what doesn’t with strategy and tactics. And new opportunities emerge regularly. You can see our work here, here, and here.

In essence, sCRM theory stands synonymous with consumer engagement in supporting the larger concept of social business. (The other keys are workforce engagement and business partner optimization.)

I’ve adapted the slides above from my colleague Dion Hinchcliffe, who has a gift for making complex enterprise architecture simple. You can read his explanation of social CRM in these two articles:

• Using social software to reinvent the customer relationship
• Social CRM: Ground zero for Enterprise 2.0 in 2010

Over 9,000 flights were cancelled two weeks ago, my 2/1 1:45pm to New York was one of them.  Here’s the communication timeline with my airline to get rescheduled on a new flight:

2/1/2011

• 10:23 am: I receive flight cancellation email.
• 10:26 am: I call Frequent Flyer customer support desk.  I’m not allowed to speak with an agent.  In fact, the automated system notifies me that heavy call volume dictates they have to hang up, which they promptly do.
• 10:31 am: I tweet my airline letting them know I have a problem.
• 10:36 am: Airline replies, requests I direct message (DM) my flight info.
• 10:42 am: I DM the airline my flight info.
• 10:45 am: Airline replies, confirming receipt of my tweet and flight info.
• 10:50 am: I receive email confirmation of a re-booked flight.
• 12:46 pm: I call Frequent Flyer customer support desk (just to see if they’re still congested).  Still the same heavy traffic message and hang-up.

The consumer in me was thrilled with this unexpected expediency, but the Social Business Designer was concerned.  I had a hunch that:

• the person on the other end of this company’s Twitter account works in a communications department, not customer support
• as such, the person on the other end of this company’s Twitter account has no formal training in customer support nor the company’s reservation system
• as such, to help me reschedule my flight, this untrained person had to reach across organizational lines and tie up multiple resources which increased costs
• no metrics were captured on my experience

Curious, I DM’d the folks at the company’s Twitter account to request an interview. They kindly accepted and took twenty minutes from their busy day to address and confirm my suspicions.  The Communications department, in conjunction with their ad agency, runs their Twitter account.  Staffed by one employee on a normal day, with ad hoc ramp-up to as many as six when circumstances (such as heavy cancellations) require, the company’s Twitter account exists to listen, engage and help customers when they can.

How is this going to scale?

This company has proudly converted customers into brand advocates that race to the company’s defense when curmudgeons hijack the company’s Facebook page.  Their approach to social media is unbelievably progressive compared to companies even 24 months ago and they should be lauded for it. But as Social Business matures to business as usual, social media strategies and tactics must move beyond listening and unstructured engagement.

Pew Research reports that only eight percent of online Americans use Twitter, and yet this company increased (read: repurposed) staff six-fold to handle last week’s rush.  If Twitter’s impressive 2010 growth continues and more people realize the customer support arbitrage opportunities that exist in social channels, something has to give.  Ad hoc staffing and engagement models, like the one this company successfully employed to develop brand advocates, will break and the advocates will undoubtedly turn.

What Can Companies Do?

Becoming a Social Business requires (re)design.  Companies wishing to use Twitter and Facebook for social servicing need to integrate new channels into their already existing customer support structure; examination through a people, process & technology framework should highlight focus areas.

People

While many social business initiatives, like social media monitoring of Twitter and Facebook channels, live in the Communications department, social servicing isn’t a good fit.  Communication department employees need to be trained in a company’s customer support process as well as the tools used to support that process.  Conversely, customer support employees need to be brought up to speed on the new ways their company engages customers.

Process

Fortune 500 Companies spend large amounts of time and money optimizing customer support workflows.  Any type of customer support that happens outside these workflows is inefficient and costly.  Reduction of these costs requires a reworking of current processes to include new customer support channels, the workflows and decision rights they entail.

Technology

To enable customer support people and process, companies also invest heavily in technology.  Technology helps with customer support triage, scalability and reporting.  Issues originating from social channels need to flow through the same systems all others do.  Good-bye social servicing arbitrage.

Remember

More people use social media everyday and the number of customer support issues originating through those channels will only increase.  Unprepared organizations risk creating shadow customer support, increased costs and brand advocates turned brand detractors.  If your company’s Communications and Operations departments don’t already talk, now would be a good time to pick up the phone.

Attached is Jackie’s slide deck from the presentation, allowing you to get a brief glimpse into the content of her talk, in case you were unable to attend. Our entire slide library can be found on Slideshare.

Jackie Huba, a Principal at Ant’s Eye View, and author of Citizen Marketers: When People Are The Message, will be speaking at the Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 in Austin, Texas. She will be speaking on Engaging The One Percenters: Twitterers, Bloggers and Facebookers Who Influence Opinions About You. We had the opportunity to ask Jackie a few questions about her upcoming talk.

You are going to be talking about ways to engage the One Percenters. Is there a profile or demographic that these influencers fit into?

One Percenters are the very small amount people who create online content about your brand, product, service or company. They can be very influential as that content is found through searches online. Anyone can be a One Percenter as now there are so many sites that allow people to participate, such as reviewing a product on Amazon or rating a restaurant 5 stars on Yelp.com. We see One Percenters in every age group, demographic and psychographic. Especially now that cell phones can take pictures, videos and browse the web, we all have content creating machines in our pockets.

What importance do these One Percenters have in the enterprise?

One Percenters inside the enterprise are just as important as One Percenters outside the enterprise. These are the employees who are probably opinion leaders, change agents and ambassadors for the company. The key for companies is to create more ways for these folks to participate in the business. One example is Dell who launched EmployeeStorm, an internal idea exchange site where employees could suggest improvements to the company and other employees could rate and comment on the ideas. Dell then followed this up with IdeaStorm, which was an external site for their customer One Percenters to do the same.

Was there a lightbulb moment for you when you realized that you had to write a book on this topic?

The lightbulb moment was back in November 2004 when George Masters, a teacher from California, created an animated iPod ad that looked as good or better than any ad agency could create. His animation went viral around the web and was featured in Wired Magazine, CNBC and other mainstream media outlets. This was the start of the trend that amateurs — everyday people — now had the tools and creativity to create content that could become marketing, for or against, any brand. That content is uploaded to web and could become a global marketing campaign, without the consent or knowledge of the brand being featured. That was very scary for a lot of companies. And still is.

Is there an example or case study for these “Citizen Marketers” that came to light after your book was published that is inspiring or unique?

A case study in progress is from Lady Gaga. Yes, the singer and musician. She is brilliant at cultivating an army of citizen marketers. She doesn’t allow professional photographers into her concerts but is ok with her fans taking videos and posting them on YouTube. She understands how those videos will spread online. She also uses Twitter to talk directly to her fans, who she affectionately calls her “little monsters,” named after her album “The Fame Monster.” She tweeted them right before she performed at the Grammy’s to let them know she was thinking of them. She tweeted a picture of a “Little Monsters” tattoo that she just got in honor of them. She even tweeted that she was having pizza delivered to a very long line of fans who were waiting overnight for an album signing. Who knows if she has the staying power of Madonna, but for leveraging her One Percenters, she is well on her way.

The recent stories about actor/director Kevin Smith being taken off an airplane due to his size have created a lot of buzz. Could Southwest Airlines have done a better job, or was this a no-win scenario?

Southwest could have handled it a bit better. Their blog post about the incident entitled Not So Silent Bob was a bit snarky. They finally did the right thing by having a senior communications person track Kevin down and have a civil chat about it and blog the results. However, almost any brand would be challenged by the relentless profanity and bullying of the director over Twitter and on his podcast. The main lesson for us all is that pays to build an army of evangelistic fans. While some comments to Southwest’s blog and Facebook page were negative, there were many, many customers who applauded Southwest for taking a stand for their comfort and were very vocal about it.