A Quick Survey of Digital Marketing Strategy Communities

Recently, I conducted a web search for online digital marketing strategy communities.  I had a vision for what I was looking for, a free-form online outpost where marketing professionals could converge to discuss topics of their choosing.  Things like marketing ROI, digital strategy, performance measurement, search optimization, hiring and firing agencies, lead generation, you name it.  Disappointed in my initial search, I fired off a LinkedIN question and got a number of recommendations.  Next, I checked out the recommendations.  Here, I include a brief summary of each of the communities to help you decide which ones might be appropriate to you:

iMedia Connection:  a number of people recommended this site as a source of information on various aspects of digital marketing.  Industry experts write and submit articles that community members can then comment on.  I’ve written a couple of pieces for the community, which got me an automatic free pass.  Authors are automatically members once they publish, so after some scrambling around I found that I was already a member of this community.  Members can also invite other people (just let me know in comments below and I’ll send you an invite).  Members can also create a public profile page.

LinkedIN Groups: there are thousands of groups on LinkedIN on a wide range of topics, a reflection of the millions of users.  Joining many of them is a simple matter of sending a request to join to the moderator who decides whether to include you.  One of the challenges with the LinkedIN groups is that there are almost too many to choose from.  Searching across all group types with the term Marketing, for instance, yields 3,665 groups (at last count).  Once you are approved, you can view discussion topics in reverse chronological order.  The quality of the topics and the activity on the comments depends entirely on the group and its participants.  The hottest groups have over 10,000 members.  A few of them have a membership requirement that is external to LinkedIN, but the vast majorities are open to any LinkedIN member and are easy to join.

Facebook Groups: like LinkedIN, Facebook boasts hundreds and thousands of professional groups (and even more millions of users).  Groups that are open to the public can be joined in one click.  Also like LinkedIN, the topics aren’t really topics per se; they’re posts that people can comment on.  The result is a flat, rolling stream of reverse-chronological posts that drift from one subject to the next.  If you’re willing to spend some time parsing through random noise you can find some gems, including people with similar professional interests to connect with.  Unfortunately, many of the more popular groups can become victims of their own success and get overrun by spammers – a bigger problem on Facebook than on LinkedIN.  There seems to be less spam in LinkedIN groups than on Facebook groups, perhaps a reflection of the desire for LinkedIN users to manage their professional reputation.

MarketingProfs: this marketing knowledge service has good reach (they claim 324,000 members).  While some of their premium content requires a subscription, their Marketing Know-How Exchange is available to “freemium” registrants.  The exchange is organized into high-level marketing topics, the questions are well-moderated, and the people asking the questions can elect to accept or reject responses.  An interesting points system helps to automatically control and moderate the discussions.  You earn 5 points per day starting from the first day you post a question or an answer, and you are awarded points for answering questions.  You attract respondents by awarding points for answers to your question.  So the redemption value is tied to the speed, rigor and volume of answers you desire.  The system helps bond participants and participation to ensure that they are serious and committed, something totally lacking from Facebook groups.

Forrester Research Discussion Board:  Forrester has jumped into the community space with its own community for Interactive Marketing professionals.  The community is in its alpha version with only a few participants at the time of this post.  It’s open to anyone with a Forrester user ID and password.  If you are not a client, you can still register for free.  It’s just starting out so activity is limited.  It will be interesting to see how it grows.  Right now, it still shows the global navigation for the main Forrester site – which is a little confusing and a constant reminder that the community is, after all, a Forrester property.  Also, it is not yet included in the site global navigation.  Right now there is only one main discussion board, but hopefully it will grow and there will be separate discussion boards on different subjects organized by the moderator.  Forrester’s industry reach is promising for the community, should the company elect to back it in a significant way.

ThinkBalm: Transitioning from Forrester, the final community I’ll mention is the ThinkBalm Innovation Community, which by the way, was started by a former Forrester analyst.  The community is implemented on Spigit [insert link http://www.spigit.com/index.html].  ThinkBalm provides project workspaces that various people can contribute to.  It also has a type of community currency or fiat that is similar to the points system used in MarketingProfs and other communities that acknowledge “power members,” but it is far more elaborate.  Thinkbalm includes a points system where people can earn points by getting positive feedback on their ideas (thumbs-ups or “spigs”), or conversely, lose points when people “scrap” them.  The points are more than fiat.  You can actually redeem them for goodies (an interesting real-world virtual world tie-in).  Speaking of virtual worlds, that’s the focus of ThinkBalm. Although it’s not a pure interactive marketing community per se, I include it here because there are marketing aspects of virtual worlds and also, to point out a more robust community solution for creating new work collaboratively across organization boundaries.  Something I believe the interactive marketing community should do more of.

The community choices you make depend on your objectives: quick answers to thorny questions, showcasing your knowledge and expertise, networking, or just keeping up with trends.  My dream community would combine the participation of a Facebook group, participant bonding like MarketingProfs, a workspace innovation area like ThinkBalm and professional moderation like Forrester, oh, and having profiles like in LinkedIN and the ability to interconnect would be great too.  Mash-up anyone?

A big thank you to all those who answered my LinkedIN question and got me off to the races.  What a great use of a community!  Feel free to chime in below with your thoughts, comments, or favorite communities.