Past Lithys (old format)
Check out Lithy entries from previous years.
Company: Vodafone Turkey Entry submitted by:  Fahrünnisa Bilgin (FahrunnisaB)  Online Product Specialist - CMS & Social Media     Community:  Vodafone Forum (forum.vodafone.com.tr) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone revolutio... See more...
Company: Vodafone Turkey Entry submitted by:  Fahrünnisa Bilgin (FahrunnisaB)  Online Product Specialist - CMS & Social Media     Community:  Vodafone Forum (forum.vodafone.com.tr) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone revolutionized digital transformation in the Turkish telecommunication market. With a market share of %33,9 (Feb'15) Vodafone Turkey is in use of innovative online technologies and social media to service the special needs of Turkish mobile customers. Vodafone Forum launched in March 2012, as Turkey's first open discussion platform among competition is representing Vodafone Turkey with customer care on social media. Today Vodafone Forum is used as a marketing and support platform, increasing engagement of users through super user cultivation and brand advocacy.      Vodafone's super users speak up to the customer   Vodafone Turkey's  marketing strategy in social media is to increase the engagement rate and use a humanized tone of voice in customer care. Lithium is playing a decisive role in adapting a super user program for brand advocacy. We have started super user cultivation in Vodafone Forum as of 2012 and gained our first super users through several strategies alligned with brand & marketing teams within the company. We have several super users creating thousands of comments and spending many days online. They provide valuable content and share their expertise on Vodafone products and high-tech devices. Most importantly they are representing Vodafone brand and answering questions of Vodafone customers and non-customers. Super users are referring Vodafone products to non-customers, convince people of Vodafone's innovative products and convert them to Vodafone customers.        Our marketing campaign   Super Users meet CEO   We have organized a program called “Kings of the Vodafone Forum” with our internal stakeholders brand advocates in Vodafone headquarters. All of the members joined have met with each other, presented their ideas and tested the brand new version of Vodafone Forum, as well as the initial launch of mobile Vodafone Forum. In the afternoon super users had a chance to meet and greet with our high level managers (Including CEO of Vodafone Turkey!). At the end of the day they enjoyed a dinner on the rooftop with a great view of Istanbul Bosporus.         Vodafone Forum Super User activation   As Vodafone Turkey we have divided our super user cultivation activities with segmented communication strategies. Last year we  measured active employees on Forum and checked the awareness of the community, it was only 6% of the company.   Firstly an internal e-mail bulletin has been designed for raising awareness, themed as "What's going on in Vodafone Forum". It is highlighting 2 major issues about customer experience and appreciating active employees of the week sent to C-level directors perıodically. The sense of being appreciated and of competition is quickly spread with WOM in the company and started to gain organic user growth. Another recruitment is held on company orientation program, one the greatest moments for fresh minds and open ideas. Almost all newcomers are becoming a member, they are very active about products and services.   In April 14' we have celebrated the 2 nd anniversary of Vodafone Forum with a promotion campaign. In order to take benefit of the promotion, you had to be a member of  Vodafone Forum  already or  quickly subscribed at the Forum desk using Vodafone branded tablets in our headquarter.   Campaign results   This campaign had very positive effects and we have gained more than 300 employees just in 2 days!      Heroes of Vodafone Forum   Following Super user activation in Vodafone Forum, the average time spent and number of comments posted by super users has doubled. With the employee activation program, Vodafone Turkey has gained more than 300 employees and 15 of them are candidated to become a hero member on Forum. Later on we have cultivated these users with e-mails and instructions, in order to keep them active and let them a Vodafone hero in the community.        
Company: Magento Commerce Entry submitted by: Sherrie Rohde (Community Manager) Community: Magento Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Trusted by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide, Magento Commerce is the leading prov... See more...
Company: Magento Commerce Entry submitted by: Sherrie Rohde (Community Manager) Community: Magento Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Trusted by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide, Magento Commerce is the leading provider of open omnichannel innovation to retailers, brands and branded manufacturers across retail B2C and B2B industries. In addition to its flagship open source digital commerce platform, Magento Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based omnichannel solutions empowering merchants to successfully integrate digital and physical shopping experiences. With over $50B in gross merchandise volume transacted on the platform annually, Magento Commerce is the foremost provider to the Internet Retailer Top 1000 and the Internet Retailer B2B 300, counting more than double the clients to the next closest competitor. Magento Commerce is supported by a vast global network of solution and technology partners, a highly active global developer community and the largest eCommerce marketplace for extensions available for download on the Magento Marketplace. More information can be found at www.magento.com.   Our unique promotion     While we can’t fully quantify the size of the Magento community, we know the Magento ecosystem comprises of 250,000 merchants, 300 partners, over 1,000 solution implementers, 130,000 developers with 5,900 of them being Magento certified.      In 2015, the Magento community created over 2,500 pull requests and issues for Magento 2.0 on Github, presented over 500 talks on Magento or at Magento-centric events, produced over 100 podcast episodes centered around Magento, organized conferences and meetups in over 24 different countries, wrote three books about Magento, contributed to official product documentation, wrote countless blog posts to raise awareness and education and answered thousands of questions on both StackExchange and the Magento Forums (Lithium Community).     As you can see, we have an amazing and highly active community who are constantly contributing to our product and advocating for our brand. However, until now, we have never had a formal recognition program in place. The absence of this program sometimes created confusion when looking to stakeholders for beta invites, feedback, event invites, etc.   This year, we created the Magento Masters (super user) program, the culmination of over six months of research and strategic planning to develop an initiative that elevates our most active community members, recognizes them for their contributions, and empowers them to help others learn more about the Magento platform and to succeed in our ecosystem.   Creating this program was no small feat as we really wanted to make sure that we had a full picture of our community contributions. We went through several revisions of a scoring algorithm asking various stakeholders if we were missing any aspect that helped those in our community move forward. For every type of contribution, we took the time to think through how we felt it should weight in relation to other contribution types based on the impact that contribution likely had on the community. After pulling data from multiple sources we had access to including Lithium Social Intelligence, we were able to start surfacing names. As we added to the data we were able to qualify the algorithm was what it should be. While some names were not a surprise, and shouldn’t be, it also gave us more insight to other members in the community who were less vocal contributors. Being able to connect with these contributors allowed us to really grow these relationships with key community leaders.   In addition to surfacing key community leaders that may not have been top of radar, this algorithm and data collection also allowed us to begin to share numbers like those above with our community. Our company was proud and our community was proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together in just one year. In reality, that year barely scratches the surface. This data also gives us quick insights into community leaders by region, role and company type which is often needed when identifying who to connect with for initiatives and opportunities.   As we thought through the program, we tried to keep a “What’s in it for me?” mindset for our community leaders, not just for us. Magento Masters members benefit from recognition both online and offline. This means a special badge and rank created for them and applied to their account on our Lithium Community platform as well as access to a private Magento Masters Lounge there. We also recognized them on our blog and at our annual conference, where we presented them with a physical award, which we’ll expand on more while discussing the campaign. Magento Masters will have increased access to things like beta programs, roadmaps and feedback opportunities as they arise. Some of this will be facilitate via a quarterly call with our product team and other key team members. We were also able to host them for a VIP lunch event at our conference and offer discounts on both certification and events.     Our goal in creating the Magento Masters program was to create clarity within our organization on who to look to as community leaders at the same time as being able to recognize them in a way they truly deserve – valued in front of their peers. We strongly believe we accomplished this.   Our strategy and tactics   Before beginning promotion of the Magento Master program, we worked with our brand and design teams to create a unique visual identity. After many whiteboard sessions, we landed on Magento Masters with three types: Movers, Mentors and Makers: Movers are Magento’s top advocates and ecosystem thought leaders who have demonstrated their expertise in driving innovation through Magento solutions. They are influencers in the industry in delivering best-of-class Magento implementations and advocate for Magento at industry events. Mentors are top contributors to the Magento Community who are highly active educating others and developing resources for them. They have proven expertise on building successful Magento implementations. Makers are frequent contributors valued by Magento and other community members. They actively engage with others in the Magento Community, sharing ideas, insights, and constructive feedback.   By creating these types, we were able to share clarity around why each Magento Master was selected with individual reasons supplied for each one when announcing them on our blog.   We first announced this program during our MagentoLive France event in Paris: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/introducing-new-magento-community-initiative-magento-masters https://twitter.com/magento/status/694477995839463424 https://twitter.com/ProductPaul/status/694477546386161664         Later that week, we echoed the announcement a presentation at a community-organized conference in Milan focused around how to get involved in the community and key people who were contributing in various areas of our community: http://www.slideshare.net/SherrieRohde/how-do-i-get-involved-in-the-magento-community-57914070.   Our 2016 Magento Masters were then selected and invited to the program based on their contributions to the community in 2015. Because our community is truly a “Total Community,” we created an algorithm that calculated their community contributions from key areas where we believe they truly help to move the community forward as a whole. These areas include our Lithium Community platform, StackExchange, Github code contributions, official documentation contributions, speaking engagements, blogging, published books and organizing both meetups and conferences.   We announced the Magento Masters via our social media channels, in our weekly community digests on the Lithium platform and on our blog: https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-movers https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-mentors https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/meet-2016-magento-masters-makers https://twitter.com/magento/status/703257126282461184 https://twitter.com/magento/status/704375271286132736 https://twitter.com/magento/status/704740099456536577 https://twitter.com/magento/status/705546325354536960 https://community.magento.com/t5/News-Announcements/MagentoMonday-Community-Digest-2016-02-29/m-p/30701 https://community.magento.com/t5/News-Announcements/MagentoMonday-Community-Digest-2016-03-07/td-p/31406   During our opening keynote at our 2016 6 th annual Imagine conference in Las Vegas, our CEO, Magento Evangelist and Community Manager were able to bring 16 of the 20 Magento Masters on stage to recognize and award them in front of 2,500 attendees.     Our results   The results of this program exceeded our expectations, to say the least. Our Magento Masters are so humble and talented, which really added to the experience in the best way. It’s hard to even know where to start with the impact Magento Masters has already had for both our community and our company. Our community organized podcast brought our Magento Evangelist and Community Manager on for an exclusive interview: http://magetalk.com/magetalk-episode-79-magento-masters/ One of our Magento Masters has added this to his LinkedIn https://pl.linkedin.com/in/snowdog, was celebrated by his company with both a party https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153675678633192.1073741837.71921053191&type=3 and a blog post: https://snow.dog/blog/kuba-zwolinski-announced-magento-master/ . Other Magento Masters were also announced on their companies’ blogs: http://creatuity.com/2016/03/25/creatuity-ceo-joins-magento-masters/ http://store.fooman.co.nz/blog/magento-masters-kudos-to-an-awesome-community-initiative.html https://blog.limesoda.com/2016/03/anna-voelkl-zum-magento-master-ausgezeichnet/ http://www.somethingdigital.com/Blog/Meet%20the%20Team/Magento%20Masters.aspx Several others mentioned Magento Masters in their Imagine recaps: https://blog.limesoda.com/2016/04/magento-imagine-2016-we-are-magento/ http://www.somethingdigital.com/Blog/Events/Imagine%202016%20Recap.aspx http://divante.co/blog/imagine-magento-general-session-magentos-future-day-2/ https://www.iweb.co.uk/2016/04/magento-imagine-conference-day-two-recap/   We of course gave them some love in our event recap as well: https://magento.com/blog/events/we-are-magento-imagine-2016-highlights   Creating this program has inspired ideas across our organization about how to better implement councils, or involve the Magento Masters, in various decisions going forwards. It has also given us massive insight into actually being able to quantify what it is our community brings to the table (e.g. the stats I provided at the beginning) which has astounded and impressed both the community and those across our team.   Even before we officially announced the program, we had various departments coming to our community team in search of community members for various things (e.g. EMEA developers) and we were able to provide them with this information quickly and efficiently from the scoring algorithm created for the Magento Masters program. We are finally equipped with a way to connect key community members with key opportunities. Since announcing the community, several who were once engaged in our old forums are now inspired to be more active on our new forums and the community team, comprising of four Magento Masters, that organizes a Q&A hackathon for the Magento StackExchange has discussed including the forums in their “MageStackDay” events.   Also, one of our Magento Masters has been repeatedly approached on how to get involved in the community and especially how to get started speaking about Magento and our female Magento Master (fingers crossed for more next year) is truly being looked to as a mentor for other women in our community, encouraging them to contribute more to qualify themselves for 2017.   Digging Into the Numbers The Magento Masters program launch received over 250 individual posts across Twitter in support from our team, including our executive team, as well as from the community.   Our initial tweet announcing Magento Masters remains one of our top 10 posts in the past 90 days with 443 total engagements and 15,061 impressions: https://twitter.com/magento/status/694477995839463424   In addition, our tweet announcing the Movers also logged in as a top tweet with 425 total engagements and 16,656 impressions while our top tweet announcing the Mentors received 574 total engagements with 25,487 impressions and the Makers top tweet received 415 total engagements and 16,114 total impressions. A final wrap up announcing all 20 Magento Masters logged in at 340 total engagements and 14,655 impressions and our tweet congratulating them during Imagine logged in at 355 total engagements and 8,422 impressions: https://twitter.com/magento/status/719935530427756544, while several in the audience created their own renditions and our Magento Masters and their companies celebrated on social media throughout the conference. Our blog post announcing the program is our 4th most popular blog post, excluding product announcements, in Q1 of 2016 while our announcement posts spotlighting the Movers, Mentors and Makers weigh in at 17th, 14th and 12th, respectively.   On our Lithium Community platform, Magento Masters visit 92% more than other members. In the first month of implementing the initiative, Magento Master participation increased by 56% while other members increased participation by 6%.   Overall we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reception and heard from our community that this was greatly needed. The next step? Individual in-depth profiles on our blog for each of the Magento Masters as well as launching into our quarterly calls to learn more.  
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the mo... See more...
Company:  Orange Espagne SAU Entry submitted by: Daniel López Nieto (SocialMedia/Customer Care) Community: Orange Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   Spain is the second market in importance for Orange Group, one of the most prominent telecom companies in the world, with more than 263 million clients during 2015.   Through different brands – Orange itself, newly acquired Jazztel, amena and Simyo, we have the trust of more than 19 million clients in Spain making daily use of our fixed and mobile services as well as TV.   Our unique promotion and goal    Organization of the offline “Event for superusers”, a meeting in the Orange Spain offices. The goals were:   Personally meet the most active users of the Orange Community. Show them the way we work daily on the Community. Get feedback and ideas to improve.   The event, that lasted a whole day, included talks of agents and community managers of the Orange Community, talks of directors of different areas of the company, an award ceremony for superusers and a focus group session to gather feedback for improvement.   The event also included an informal lunch in a restaurant in Madrid, as a way of bonding with the users, where everyone expressed their love for the event and encouraged us to repeat it on a frequent basis.   Our strategy and tactics for our community    The marketing campaign began with a gamification strategy to encourage participation of the Community users. We also encouraged them to register and participate in the Community through the different social media profiles of Orange. The gamification program was based on the challenge to obtain different medals for those with active participation. Four types of superusers were established: Solucionadores (or Solvers): They resolve doubts and problems of the community users. Friendly: Constant participation, always positive, in the different categories of the community. Master Tekkies: Expert users in different áreas (smartphone tricks, gadget and mobile reviews, etc.). Shopping Assistant: They recommend the most adequate tariff, Smartphone or offer to those clients in need of a certain product.     Users under these roles were recognized with customized medals that appeared in their profiles. Also, their participation was shown publicly in the community rankings.     Once they were identified, we created a private fórum only for superusers, where they receive the latest news about the Company and we offer them to be beta testers of some of our products.     After several months of constant activity in the private fórum, the superusers were contacted individually to invite them to the “Orange Superusers” event in Madrid. During the event, they received an award for their hard work on the community, a pack containing different Orange products, including a Smartphone.   They also had the opportunity to give a little thank you speech where everybody attended: superusers, directors of the company and the team in charge of the communities.     After the event, both External and Internal Communications created press notes and other communication published in several media and social networks.       Since then, the activity of the superusers increased, and it is actually themselves who promote other users to be a future superuser of the community. They have asked us to repeat the event in the near future.   Our results   The event was a total success, almost all of the superusers came to Madrid from different cities in Spain, some from as far as the isle of Ibiza. Engagement has improved (posts, problem solving, kudos…) and some of the ideas and suggestions from the event are now in practice.   Everyone that attended (superusers and company employees) published afterwards positive messages in their Twitter and Facebook profiles. And Orange sent an internal note to all employees detailing the marketing action that took place.    
Company: Fido (Rogers Communications) Contact: Caroline Lalonde (Social Media Support and Community Manager) Community: Fido Community Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Fido connects Canadians to the things they love through its ul... See more...
Company: Fido (Rogers Communications) Contact: Caroline Lalonde (Social Media Support and Community Manager) Community: Fido Community Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Fido connects Canadians to the things they love through its ultrafast LTE network, as well as services such as Fido Pulse Plans and Fido Home Internet (Fido Home Internet currently only available in parts of Ontario).   Fido was originally launched by Microcell Solutions Inc. in 1996 and went on to revolutionize the wireless industry in Canada with a unique approach to pricing, a money-back satisfaction guarantee and more. Today, we continue to move ahead with new voice and data technologies as well as the latest in wireless Internet services to keep you connected to what matters most in your life.   The Fido network consists of three network technologies GSM, 4G HSPA+ and now LTE – the new global gold standard of wireless technology. Fido wireless compatible devices fall back onto each network, assuring you have a network to fall back onto. Fido also offers its customers access to the Fido TM  wireless network coast-to-coast and with over 300 roaming partners in over 200 countries your device will be compatible wherever you travel.   The Fido Community turns 5   To celebrate the Fido Community’s 5 th year anniversary, we held a month-long contest throughout September 2015. In order to enter the draw for a chance to win one of 10 prizes (total of $4000 in prizes), participants were invited to post their best cellular tip and/or trick into the Tips & Tricks board. This new board was created for the contest.   The goals were to: Increase Community registrations; Increase overall Community traffic and liveliness (posts, likes, page views, unique visitors); Raise Community awareness, both externally and internally; Increase useful content in the Community; And, of course, to celebrate the Community’s 5 th   We received a total of 371 entries, and some of the best Tips & Tricks were shared on our Social Media properties to promote the Community and give our Community members some exposure and recognition.   Our promotional tactic consisted of a Community blog post to announce and describe the contest, along with the rules & regulations. We then promoted this blog post using the following methods: Our social media properties (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram post)Banner on the homepage of our website Special blurb in emails to customers Text message (to targeted customers)   Facebook Post     On Twitter     Banner on Fido.ca     On September 15 th , the actual anniversary date of the Community, we wrote a second Community blog post to remind everyone of the contest and to keep the hype going. We took this opportunity to thank our Community members who have been with us since the start. This blog post was also shared on our Social Media properties, but this time with curiosity sparking infographics to recap the 5 years:     Community Tip Shared on Social Media     Our Results   The results were outstanding! We met each and every one of our goals. The contest increased the Community liveliness, traffic, and overall interaction to a level we hadn’t seen before. Multiple records were broken during the month of September 2015 (percentages are in comparison to the previous month):     The contest was also very well received by the Community, who took joy in sharing their feedback. Our first blog post generated many comments, which mostly consisted of happy birthday wishes and expressions of excitement towards the prizes. Many members voiced their happiness, including top contributors:     The birthday contest not only served as a means to break traffic and registration records, but also as a means of promotion. Even after the contest ended, our traffic continued to increase, justifying our promotional efforts.            
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Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian (VF_Sebastian) Social Media Project Coordinator Community: Vodafone Community (https://forum.vodafone.de/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Germany is a telecommunica... See more...
Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian (VF_Sebastian) Social Media Project Coordinator Community: Vodafone Community (https://forum.vodafone.de/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Germany is a telecommunication company based in Germany, with more than 10,000 employees and its headquarters in Dusseldorf. It is a part of the Vodafone Group, amongst the largest telecommunication companies in the world. Currently more than 34 million people are making use of Vodafone services in Germany.   Regarding our service promise, we are providing an individual service support, anytime and anywhere, to our customers. In case of concerns the customer is able to get in touch with Vodafone channels 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Due to different, individual customer requirements Vodafone pursues a multichannel strategy. Customers have the choice between different service channels such as email, chat etc. With the increasing relevance of Internet-based communication new channels are gaining a growing importance. Besides the other well-known social media networks, communities offer significant opportunities in terms of service quality, brand reputation and cost reduction. Customers have the opportunity to reveal and exchange experiences and often find an answer to their question in the community. Accordingly the portion of self-service is increased.   Since 2012 the community is an established Vodafone service channel. Vodafone Group awarded all Community Agents with our global internal employee “Hero Award” for effective work performance. The award was ceremonially passed in London.     Marketing campaign   An important factor for a community is an active user base. To encourage our users we developed a community model allowing active users to jump to various new user levels depending on the number of posts submitted, Kudos collected and their solution comments. After the registration users climb up to a Super-User role in six steps. This strategy creates an intensive relationship between community and users. In addition Super-Users appreciate a special reputation within the community. In consequence of performance Super-Users stand out from the community. Currently our Vodafone community has more than 30 active Super-Users. Above all, Users consider their nomination as a pleasant experience. A Super-User profile reflects Vodafone’s goals of customer satisfaction.   To also bring this appreciation to the real world we invite our Super-Users to a yearly event to celebrate the cooperation between agents and Super-Users, where they get to know each other. A Super-User event is a solid part of the community loyalty strategy. For this purpose, Vodafone implemented an extra wild card, which allows one user to participate without a Super-User status. Within 6 months one of the Wild-Card-Participant has achieved Super-User status, because the person was so excited of this elaborate event.     Super-Users are also involved in internal events and represent the customer's perspective beyond the community.  Super-Users are often product experts with deeply knowledge. Vodafone Product Managers value neutral customer feedback.  In terms of strategic development we can improve our service continuously.   Users appreciate posts from Super-Users as it is considered as authentic customer feedback. This year one of the Super-User wrote his 20.000 posts. A lot of users congratulate  this Super-User for his impressive performance.   Furthermore Super-Users support Vodafone Social Media Team to administrate the eforum (e.g. close/move threads, mark answers as accepted). It is also common that they support us maintaining the e forum rules beyond moderator’s (VF employees) online presence.   As a part of the Kabel Deutschland merger, Vodafone also invited Kabel Deutschland agents to get to know the new team as well as Vodafone Super-Users. Each individual is essential and is part of the whole.    To sum up Vodafone Super-Users are helping us to keep our service promise “Your personal service. We are only happy if you are.“   
Company: SFR   Entry submitted by: Laurence Barlet (LaurenceBarlet) Digital Product Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (http://forum.sfr.fr/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   With a market share of 21% for internet service and 25% for... See more...
Company: SFR   Entry submitted by: Laurence Barlet (LaurenceBarlet) Digital Product Manager Community: Le Forum SFR (http://forum.sfr.fr/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   With a market share of 21% for internet service and 25% for mobile (based on end of 2014 stats), SFR is one of the largest and most important telecommunications provider in France.   SFR was recently acquired by Numericable, the leading fiber optic provider in France. As such SFR-Numericable is today looking to lead the market in products, services and high-speed internet services connecting customers across France. It has 23 million customers, and provides 8,2 million households with high-speed internet access.   As a key differentiator SFR-Numericable is looking to firmly position itself as a leader in digital business and has been looking to Community with its Influencers and Super fans to achieve this.   This initiative described herein is but one of many ways SFR is doing this today.   The Forum SFR is a 2 years old support community counting more than 600,000 members and over 50 Super users. This community started as a cost saving initiative project to reap call deflection for Customer Care each month. The number of phone calls avoided rose by nearly 50% since 2012.   Our community development strategy is based on Superusers. Their contribution represent a quarter of close to 20,000 posts a month. Therefore, we are very focused on the Superusers commitment and do our best to engage them on and off the community: we often organize videoconferences with guests such as relevant SFR team members for product launches or market event, we consult them on the platform evolution to get their feedbacks, …We also invite them twice a year for a real-life event, to our Campus in Paris. Those attentions have built a very strong and special relationship between us and our Superusers !   Also, with a strong belief that this community must be part of the whole customer experience with SFR, we’ve recently focused on recruiting new members that We now need to re-activate.   Our marketing campaign   On January 16 th , the Forum SFR celebrated its second anniversary. This was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate not just the community but also those that make it all possible: the Superusers and their outstanding commitment. With that in mind, a big event was planned during the month of the anniversary for an initiative we branded: Saying Thank You Counts!     On Stage One of this initiative, we invited 3 of the leading Superusers to our office in Paris, under cover of an interview to surprise them. The purpose for this first step was to showcase our Superusers and, most importantly, show them our gratitude for the countless number of hours they invest with the community and highlight their commitment to others.   The community managers thus welcomed : “Kendokanne” who counts 24,000 posts, 3,000 approved answers and 10,000 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/172) “Alain911” with 5,800 posts, 486 approved answers and 2,400 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/182) “Zardrilokis” with 2,300 posts, 217 approved answers and 1,000 thank you (http://forum.sfr.fr/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/456) During the interview, special SFR representatives from different departments were waiting for the right moment to show up and entered into the interview room with a very special and unique birthday gift: a live “Merci!” (community kudos) counter!   This ended up being a very emotional moment with most users close to tears as they embraced the SFR representatives and received the “Merci!” Counter. This device captures each individual Superusers full kudos count on the community and updates live which brings to life not only their value but also their commitment to the wider community. One of them sent us a short film to say thank you.    For the really first time an object was connected to a Lithium platform. This technical performance was possible thanks to our creative digital agency The Social Client. The developers team worked hard to make it possible, and finally found a way to connect personalized endpoints from the Forum and a hidden page in the object interface.   We shared the videos of this special moment for all to see on the community landing page, highlighting each individual Super User individually.   Here are videos showing the interviews with 3 Super users and SFR team members and the gift handover:           While we didn’t film  all the giveaways, we made sure that every Superuser received a birthday gift: 7 other super-users received the live counter at home and the others got a personalized thank you cushion.     A short version of the film was posted on our social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter) and the film spotlights also served as a spring board to the second part of the campaign: the birthday competition.   In this contest, players needed to match customer questions with the right solution (chosen among three). The goal was to show inactive members how the Community can be useful, and the many reasons to say thank you.    The winner of this competition was very happy, as showcased in the post below: The global event was promoted by two mailing campaign, two Facebook posts and 3 Tweets, targeting all community members.   Campaign results   The anniversary events were a roaring success as we saw traffic increase by 9% and registrations increase by 33%. Most importantly however, the increased satisfaction of the Superusers and the reactivation of dormant members who had lapsed in participation. In addition to the above we saw a clear reactivation of our inactive member base with + 340% of  visits for this population !   The last result but not the least, the “uncountable” emotional and grateful reactions from our amazing super users !          
Company: FOX SPORTS Australia Contact: Shae Marlow (Manager, Customer Experience & Community) Community:  The Crowd Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   FOX SPORTS is Australia’s leading producer of sports television coverage and is hom... See more...
Company: FOX SPORTS Australia Contact: Shae Marlow (Manager, Customer Experience & Community) Community:  The Crowd Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   FOX SPORTS is Australia’s leading producer of sports television coverage and is home to Australia's favourite subscription television sports channels as well as Australia's number one general sports website. FOX SPORTS operates the website www.foxsports.com.au which contains a wide range of video content and articles, including a citizen journalism community called, The Crowd. FOX SPORTS broadcasts over 10,000 hours of LIVE sports programming per year into 2.5 million homes around Australia.     Our unique promotion and the goal   In 2014, FOX SPORTS Australia launched The Crowd – a community forum created to be the home of sports conversations. Two years in, The Crowd has provided us with a strong foundation to expand our Community Strategy and launch a unique marketing content strategy, Citizen Journalism. In short, Citizen Journalism is the ultimate community engagement opportunity whereby community members submit articles to FOX SPORTS to be published on The Crowd. It has been marketed as ‘the training ground for aspiring journalists’. The initiative has allowed us to grow our community and promote our members, particularly superusers.   The goal has been to innovate the current marketing strategy for the community whilst supporting FOX SPORTS digital strategy, including: to increase digital viewership and audience lift the emotional connection to fans reach more Australians and a younger audience     Our strategy and tactics for  community   We identified the lack of opportunities for aspiring sports journalists and so developed our Citizen Journalism initiative, a place for journalists to sharpen their skills while gaining real life experience.   We introduced an integrated content marketing approach in three key phases.   PHASE ONE: TEST   The first phase was to test the initiative in a controlled environment, engaging just two universities and inviting their journalism students to participate as ‘Crowd Correspondents’.   Students utilised The Crowd forum, where articles were submitted for approval and moderation then published to a public board. The FOX SPORTS Editorial team would then review each article and select the best for publication on foxsports.com.au. Published Crowd Correspondent articles featured all the hallmarks of a professional journalist’s piece – including their very own byline plus a link back to their Crowd profile. Lastly, two of the contributing students were selected and offered a two week paid internship with the FOX SPORTS editorial team.     PHASE TWO: LEVERAGE & INTEGRATE   Our second phase involved formalising a program that built the credentials and profiles of our Crowd Correspondents. We updated their Profile Pages, creating a portfolio of each student’s contributions to FOX SPORTS. We then discovered they were adding their Crowd profile credentials to their LinkedIn pages and CVs. This established their profiles as writers within the community and also established their Crowd experience as a worthy qualification externally.     PHASE THREE: SCALE   The final stage was to scale and extend the program to 20+ universities across Australia. In order to market to these students, we interviewed our original Crowd Correspondent intern and created a promotional video, where we highlighted the benefits to other aspiring journalism students in becoming Crowd Correspondents themselves.   As the program matured, we ramped up promotion by integrating Crowd Correspondent articles into the FOX Sports App and established The Crowd’s Twitter account.   Our results   Within four months, phase one of The Crowd Correspondent marketing initiative nearly tripled its trial KPIs, with 14 Crowd Correspondents signing up (KPI was 5).   Now, in just over 7 months, the initiative has continued to exceed expectations, both from a business and community point of view, including: 14 active universities More than 80 Crowd Correspondents Articles/Content submitted to the community has doubled, with a total of 300 articles submitted to the community and 200 published onto foxsports.com.au Two internships successfully placed, with both interns now officially working for FOX SPORTS Australia Dramatic increase from 2.3 page views per unique visitor to 4.6 page views New community registrations have more than doubled from 120 to 300 per month In our most recent promotional phase, we’ve had the highest page views since launching in 2014.   The Crowd began as a small idea with big aspirations and it has since grown into a viable content engine. It’s surpassed all KPIs set yet most importantly, it has given university students a chance to experience the thrill of sports journalism and in doing so, give fans a unique perspective of sport through the lens of a younger pundit.        
Company: PayPal Entry submitted by: Carolynn Bae  (Head of APAC Customer Early Life) Community: PayPal Headstart Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   PayPal is a leading technology platform company that enables digital and mobile pay... See more...
Company: PayPal Entry submitted by: Carolynn Bae  (Head of APAC Customer Early Life) Community: PayPal Headstart Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   PayPal is a leading technology platform company that enables digital and mobile payments on behalf of consumers and merchants worldwide. We put our customers at the center of everything we do. We strive to increase our relevance for consumers, merchants, friends and family to access and move their money anywhere in the world, anytime, on any platform and through any device.   We provide safer and simpler ways for businesses of all sizes to accept payments from merchant websites, mobile devices and applications, and at offline retail locations through a wide range of payment solutions.   Our unique promotion   We launched the PayPal Headstart Community to increase engagement with small business owners in 6 countries to help them through to their first transaction after signing up for PayPal and for existing businesses to increase our share of checkout through PayPal. Rather than launch the new community in the usual way we gave business owners the opportunity to connect with experts through the community and ask a question that really mattered to them and their business simultaneously helping the community gain traction and also help the business owners. We called the campaign Ask an Expert and had 3x ecommerce experts and a $100 Google AdWords incentive to kickstart the conversation.     Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   We provided a small incentive to encourage businesses to open the invitation and to submit high quality questions. We leveraged the experts bio’s as an email and social media campaign utilizing Facebook custom audiences to capture the attention of our existing business and funnel them to the community. Our hypothesis was that business owners who are more engaged with us as they set up their business are more likely to successfully integrate PayPal into their businesses and receive their first transaction.     Our results   Within 3 months we had a 2.5% lift in number of businesses making their first successful PayPal transaction across all 6 markets. And unexpectedly we also had a significant 1.84x increase in number of transactions for business segment that had activated PayPal in the last 3 months. During the 2 week campaign period we had over 500 new posts and 100k views.   Value Analytics YTD Results as of 3/31/16: n = 266 75% of respondents indicated they were able to find the information they were looking for. 66% of those respondents indicated they would have phoned or emailed had they not found their answer.
  Company:  Alteryx  Entry submitted by: Julie Hamel (Senior Community Manager) Community: Alteryx Community Lithy Category:  Marketing Champion   Alteryx is the leader in self-service data analytics. Alteryx Analytics provides analysts w... See more...
  Company:  Alteryx  Entry submitted by: Julie Hamel (Senior Community Manager) Community: Alteryx Community Lithy Category:  Marketing Champion   Alteryx is the leader in self-service data analytics. Alteryx Analytics provides analysts with the unique ability to easily prep, blend and analyze all of their data using a repeatable workflow, then deploy and share analytics at scale for deeper insights in hours, not weeks.   Our unique promotion    When we began conceptualizing the future of community at Alteryx in early 2015, we made bold investments to begin a transformation of the way that our customers and employees connect with each other, discover new solutions to complex analytical challenges, and contribute fresh ideas to the broad industry discussion. If we were going to successfully launch our new community and scale alongside our rapidly-growing business, creating an equally-bold awareness and adoption campaign was critical.   The Alteryx Community team dedicated significant resources in a short timeframe to design an aesthetic that translates well across the boundaries of digital and physical promotional efforts. The team did a fantastic job of creating a natural feel to long-time users of our products and appealing to the forthcoming generation of business analysts. This led to three major themes that define the core our campaigns: - Be part of something bigger than yourself - Take pride in sharing your knowledge - Keep exploring Below are examples of how we’ve applied that strategy to execute tactically in a number of areas. The resulting lifts in awareness, engagement, and satisfaction around community have been amazing.    Our strategy and tactics   Video - To introduce the Alteryx Community and pique interest around launch, the team employed little Dot with the blue hair in a fun and light welcome video, which later made 2015’s Top Videos from Video Brewery. It was an instant hit with Alteryx Associates, who previewed the video at a pre-launch Community 101 All-Hands meeting. Externally, the video was shared via social channels a few days prior to the launch to tease our followers and promote our launch date.     Swag – People love free stuff. To raise awareness internally, all employees were provided with community superhero mugs and notebooks, where they were encouraged to help spread the words with our partners and customers. We continue to hand these out during the new hire boot camp alongside a Community 101 session to help employees get familiarized with the community and their roles in it. We occasionally send these out to customers to thank them for their participation as well.     Gamification – We’ve made great use of Gamification through an extensive collection of badges used to welcome members on their first visit, introduce them to new features, and to recognize their affiliations & status within the global community. Community Members who were migrated from the original community received the community founders badge at launch, which triggered email notifications to let them know the new community was live and thank them for their support. The competition to collect them all is fierce!   Contests - To help generate user content and create a fun & positive atmosphere we launched the 10 Things I love About Alteryx contest where we encouraged users to share reasons they enjoy the product and share tips with other community members. The 10 best quotes were gathered to create the first ever Alteryx Community t-shirt and the winner took away a GoPro!   Hangouts - Our community launch coincided with the release of version 10.0 of Alteryx Designer, so we hosted a live event using Google Hangouts allowing the community to get up close and personal with Product Management, executives, and our Alteryx ACEs (our superusers who beta’d the product) to hear about new features.  Hangouts have become a regular part of our repertoire. Our customers love tuning in to hear the latest and interact directly with Alteryx staff and each other!     Our results   After our re-launch in September 2015, post count increased by 2000%, going from an average of 30 posts a month to 1,000+! The community received 10,000+ unique visitors who generated nearly 100,000 pageviews. Active members increased by 2,300%. Metrics continued to trend up in October, with traffic peaking on the day of our first live event as 4,000+ unique visitors stopped by the community. Since then, we have hosted live Alteryx | Hangouts on a monthly basis, which have provided a great way for us to preview what we are working on, share tips & tricks, and connect with our members to recognize them for their efforts.   All of our efforts have had a major impact internally as well. Employees have embraced the community to support customers and collaborate internally. Having hundreds of champions to support our cause is a big key to our success. Employees make up only 1.5% of our visitors, but generate nearly 44% of posts and 38% of solutions (much of that in the internal employee-only area of the site). The community as a whole has generated 14,000+ posts and 1,000+ solutions in just 6 short months. Its passion and rapid growth continue to amaze us.
Company: Google AdWords Entry submitted by: Akshay Nair (Akshay) Global Project Manager, AdWords Communities Community: Google AdWords Community https://www.ru.adwords-community.com (Russian Community) https://www.pt.adwords-community.c... See more...
Company: Google AdWords Entry submitted by: Akshay Nair (Akshay) Global Project Manager, AdWords Communities Community: Google AdWords Community https://www.ru.adwords-community.com (Russian Community) https://www.pt.adwords-community.com (Portuguese Community) https://www.es.adwords-community.com (Spanish Community) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   AdWords, a flagship product of Google, accounts for the majority of the company’s revenue. Utilized by millions of businesses in over 40 languages around the world, AdWords penetration is accelerating while its features become increasingly sophisticated.    Google recognizes the opportunity to help SMBs improve their businesses through adding features that improve their advertising campaigns. AdWords customers range from multi-million dollar companies to tiny mom-and-pop businesses. Our aim is to provides a feature-rich advertising platform suited to all types of advertisers and advertiser needs.   Google AdWords has leveraged the power of the Lithium platform to drive our customer education efforts on some of our fastest growing AdWords communities - Spanish (ES), Portuguese (PT) and Russian (RU). To educate our customers on AdWords and all it’s features, we use webinars (executed through the Hangouts On Air technology) and various video formats that we host on the Lithium platform. We’ve built in functionality that allows us to track the impact of our video content. This includes actions performed by our customers on their AdWords accounts after they have watched our webinars and engaged with our video content on these communities.   Our marketing program   We care immensely for our influencers and understand the value they bring to our 1:many efforts. The Google Partners Academy in the PT/ES markets and the “Boost IT” program in RU allowed us to reach and engage online marketing professionals, advance their product knowledge, educate them and share advice on how to improve their online marketing efforts.     Google Partners Academy - is a customer education program targeting Google Partners (certified AdWords agencies and certified marketing professionals). The program consists of a series of Hangouts On Air, where Google specialists (AdWords support team, account managers) guide users through a range of product-related and online marketing-related topics.   “Boost IT” - is an educational program targeting Ukrainian large advertisers from the IT sector. This program consists of a series of Hangouts On Air where account managers answer advertisers’ questions online, give presentations on product-related topics and share best practices that are relevant to our IT clients.   All discussions, questions and user conversations during and after the webinar happen on the respective communities where the Hangout On Air is hosted.   To scale our efforts further, these customer education models and initiatives were later launched in other market communities. We’ve partnered across Google with Large Client Services, Small & Medium Business Account Managers and Marketing teams based in Dublin, Wroclaw, Sao Paulo, Kiev, Buenos Aires and Mexico City to ensure we touch as many advertisers as possible. Also, we feature our Top Contributors and Rising Stars in our webinars who share their experience and insights in a live environment by answering questions in real-time.   Our results   Community growth: All three communities (ES/PT/RU) doubled their size from 320k to 630k annual visits on average. User impact: We had a 232% increase in certified individuals in our Spanish speaking markets in 2014 29% of all actions taken by our customers who visited our 10 Communities around the world were driven by these three communities alone Cost savings: Our training efforts with the Google Partners Academy program recorded a cost saving of 91% per attendee
Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian Schärtl (Project Coordinator Digital Services ) Community:  Vodafone Forum  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Vodafone Germany is a telecommunication company based in Ger... See more...
Company: Vodafone Germany Entry submitted by: Sebastian Schärtl (Project Coordinator Digital Services ) Community:  Vodafone Forum  Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     Vodafone Germany is a telecommunication company based in Germany, with more than 14,000 employees and it's headquarters in Duesseldorf. It is part of the Vodafone Group, one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world. Currently, more than 45 million people are making use of Vodafone services in Germany.   Since 2015, Vodafone Germany and Vodafone Kabel Deutschland have become one company. Vodafone Germany provides mobile service, fixed network, internet and TV from a single source. Thereby, Vodafone Germany offers the customer a unique converged service experience. Converged service has an impact on the service strategy as well.   A merger brand strategy   Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland decided to implement a common brand strategy. Following this approach we decided to merge our communities as well. Each community was based on different providers.   However, both communities had their own identities, topics, rules and working principles. For this reason – and to make them part of the story - service agents were deeply involved in the project to represent the agent’s perspective of the community.   Based on their platform expertise and operational experience, they provided the basis for a common community management and harmonized principles wherever necessary. Workshops revealed the key differences in moderation approaches between the Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland communities.   In addition, agents visited each other to understand their daily business. This encouraged agents to work together more closely and intensively. Community coffee cups and a team poster were created to promote the team spirit. Above all, agents appreciated the team building measures:     Vodafone Community used the header to update the users. A changing visualization highlighted the upcoming merger. Additionally, more details were communicated within the community itself. Both user groups should feel as one new common community.   Our Super-User Event   Of course the user involvement is crucial as an active user base is core to any community. Vodafone Germany and Kabel Deutschland communities together accumulate more than 40 active Super-Users. Users appreciate posts from Super-Users, as they are considered authentic customer feedback. This year, one of the Super-users wrote his 23,000 th post. To continue the good cooperation, the Vodafone Community invited all Super-Users to a merger event in Düsseldorf. All participants received detailed merger information. During a brainstorming session, we, the core project team, agents and Super-Users, developed the major components of our Vodafone Community slogan “Know. Share. Help.”     Some users were skeptical, but Super-Users supported the community, to convince them of the advantages of the new converged community. In cooperation with the Super-Users, the Community also tidied up and moved posts. After having cleaned up, all content was migrated to the merged community, not to lose valuable user input. All users were migrated automatically as well, to make the move as simple as possible for the customers.   At the beginning of the common community, each Super-User got a personalized Community coffee cup and received welcome flyers.     Other events and contests   Related to the upcoming Christmas 2015, the Vodafone Community defined a strategy to get users engaged with the new community. During a competition, users learned more about the new community design structure and had the opportunity to win prizes. Users engaged with the Vodafone and Vodafone Kabel Deutschland product portfolio:     After the merger, all agents got an invitation to celebrate at the headquarters in Düsseldorf. Besides networking, the team analyzed the current collaboration, identified open issues and defined measures to get rid of them. Also the formerly separate Super-User events will be one common central happening in the future.   Now more than 200,000 users are on the platform to exchange, discuss and answer questions. The Vodafone Community is comprised of almost 1 Million posts. Wherever the community is not able to support, Vodafone service agents provide expert know-how.
Company: Indosat  Entry submitted by: Ghina Aliya (GhinaAliya) Community Manager, Forum ICITY Community: Forum ICITY (http://icity.indosat.com)  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Indosat Tbk is a leading telecommunication and informa... See more...
Company: Indosat  Entry submitted by: Ghina Aliya (GhinaAliya) Community Manager, Forum ICITY Community: Forum ICITY (http://icity.indosat.com)  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Indosat Tbk is a leading telecommunication and information service provider in Indonesia that provides cellular of prepaid services (Mentari and IM3) and postpaid services (Matrix), 3G services using HSDPA-technology, fixed data services including Multimedia, Internet & Data Communication Services (MIDI) and fixed voice (fixed telecommunication) services including IDD services and fixed wireless services. PT Indosat Tbk was established by the Indonesian Government on November 20, 1967 and now part of Ooreedoo Group (Formerly Qtel Group).   Forum ICITY (formerly Ngobrol Bareng) launched 3 years ago and known as “Indonesian 1 st Crowdsolution Forum”. We utilizes Lithium platform to take Indosat customer experience to the next level. We empower our Community members to be powerful advocates for us. More than just awareness and advocacy, we were bond in the same passion, the joy of being part of Indosat Community.   On March 2015 ICITY has gained more than 20.000 members, more than 115.000 postings, over than 9 million pageviews and 2.500 questions that have received a resolution or answer in the community. These valuable answers have received 2. 431.002 views resulting in direct deflections and support cost savings.   Duta IM3 and Indosat Blackberry Community are former community members whom presence trigger others to join and participate on the forum discussion. Potential influencers that reach diverse segmentation, from youth to more mature audience.   Our marketing campaign   Welcoming Ramadan-holy fasting month for moslems worldwide- in Indonesia, on June 2014 Indosat launch “IM3 Play 24 Jam” Campaign which gave more benefits to customers such as free Calls and SMS for 24 Hours. To leverage community word of mouth toward this new service, we initiate Takjil24 program in 10 areas (smaller version of Indosat region).   The objectives are to empower Duta IM3-Indosat youth brand ambassador-on becoming powerful advocates also utilize Forum ICITY and social media to spread the stories. Beside online buzz, we gave more advantage to the surrounding communities through this program.   Date: July 19 2014 (simultaneously across Indonesia) Time: 5-5.24 PM (local time) Participant: Maximum 5 groups/Area (5 Duta IM3 per group)   To make it more fun, we launch missions for DUTA IM3 with Takjil24 as the 1 st assignment. Advocacy “IM3 Play 24 Campaign” is the main focus while distributing takjil (snacks for Muslims to break their fast) to the surrounding communities in their own creative ways. 5 best groups will get top up on their balance also shopping vouchers.   The participants needed to upload: Posts on ICITY, Sub Category Sahabat IM3 Tweets Youtube Videos (max 4 minutes) All using #IM3Play24Jam #Takjil24 #DutaIM3 #GroupName hashtags   Results of our campaign   The stories about our new “IM3 Play 24 Jam” product spread out widely 37 groups (185 DUTA IM3) all across Indonesia were joined 11,000 views on ICITY posts related to this mission 1,600,000 impressions on Twitter, 700.000 accounts reached 33,000 views on Youtube More coverage on local electronic and online media Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=DdAWRYNIJhA https://youtu.be/dIKI567PwhE https://youtu.be/r8NBon8HdlY
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switz... See more...
Company: upc cablecom GmbH Entry submitted by: Oliver Lutz (Project Manager Social) Community: upc cablecom Community Lithy category:  Marketing Champion   upc cablecom is a leading provider of communication and entertainment in Switzerland. Almost 1.4 million customers place their trust in the company’s various products for television, Internet, telephony and mobile.   The regional organisation for Austria/Switzerland generated revenue of CHF 1.7 billion in 2015 with more than 2,500 employees. upc cablecom has a strong parent company behind it in Liberty Global, which is headquartered in the UK.   Our unique promotion   upc cablecom had been running a community on an outdated platform for about 4 years. This platform was extremely limited in terms of moderation capabilities, gamification and features. Community moderators were faced with highly negative sentiment which could not be dealt with properly.   Lithium community was launched in June 2015 for upc. Target was to provide a scalable technology layer which could be used to further develop social activities. Expected benefit for the business was to provide an integrated state-of-the-art social and community technology for ease of use and effectiveness.   Specific goals we wanted to achieve (business case):   Quantitative: Increase NPS Decrease support cost   Qualitative: Improve sentiment drastically Go personal, human connection, adapt tonality, show the faces behind the company. Solidify the connections with our customers Increase internal awareness for social / community   Our strategy and tactics for community promotion   Based on our overall social strategy we defined tactics to gain the objectives listed above.   Tactics: Go personal and become truly social Surprise your customer – build human connections for the brand. Show presence onsite and offsite Try as much as you can, take up what works, abandon what does not work!   Since launch in June 2015 we worked on the following areas: Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Super Hero Programme Newsletters, personal letters   1) SWEEPSTAKES:    Push registration sweepstake   Target: Push registrations   Newsletter campaign for our customers in order to increase registration rate of the support community. Customer activity: Register and tell us why you deserve the new iphone 6s. Prize: iphone 6s     Halloween sweepstake   Target: Increase awareness and usage, create fun-factors   For Halloween we organized a sweepstake on tickets for the most exclusive Halloween party in Switzerland.   Customer activity: Tell us what your favorite horror movie is….   Sweepstake article in the blog       We produced a self-ironic YouTube Video (see chapter “Videos”) where we created a context between Halloween and a buggy product feature.   New avatars created for Halloween Especially for the occasion of Halloween we extended the avatar offering with a range of “spooky avatars”.     2) VIDEOS   We produced a number of homemade low-budget videos on different topics.   Examples:   Community promotional video Promoting the community. Video was used as TrueView campaign during 3 weeks and was published on YouTube. Main actor of the video clip is a community moderator. One of our community super users acted within this clip as well.     The „making-of” this video was published in one of our blog articles.   Halloween Video Self-ironic spooky Halloween video with reference to a buggy feature of one of our products.    Connect Box unboxing Video Production of an unboxing video for a newly launched modem. The product manager presented the new product. Users could ask questions online.     3) BLOG   Target: Content Marketing; drive traffic! We kicked off a blog in parallel with the community launch. Blog articles are produced on a regular basis and drive traffic to the community and to our website.     4) LIVE TALKS   Target: Increase engagement, drive traffic   To become even more personal we introduced a Community Live Talk on a bi-monthly basis. We are discussing specific topics with internal or external experts live. We got engaged on senior management level and brought senior management into our live talks. Users can ask questions upfront or during the live-session.   WLAN Live Talk       5) LIVE EVENTS   Target: Increase engagement For this year’s big company event we raffled tickets within the community. This generated a lot of interest and we had many community members on-site during the event. They got special treatment before, during and after the event and were really enthusiastic about it.   Live Ticker In parallel, community guys organized a live ticker during the event which was broadcasted via our community blog.     6) SUPERUSER PROGRAMME   Target: Strengthen peer-to-peer support We launched a new superuser programme this spring. Superusers are the fuel of our community and we rely highly on them in terms of peer to peer support. The relationship has been intensified over the past months. Our superusers love the programme and the appreciation which comes with it.     7) NEWSLETTERS/ PERSONAL LETTERS   Newsletters Target: Drive engagement A community newsletter is being sent out on a monthly basis to all registered users. We promote relevant topics and make sure that customers perceive us as number 1 source for relevant support information.     Personal letters Towards the end of the year we sent personal letters to the most active users of the community and said „Thank you“ for their engagement and their contributions..   Moreover, we produced a small video explaining with what we had been busy with during 2015.       Our results   Sweepstakes Videos Blog Community Live Talks Live Events Superuser Programme Newsletters, personal letters     1. Sweepstakes Push registration sweepstake 290 new registrations over 350 participants   Halloween avatars & sweepstake More than 100 users changed their avatar to one out of the Halloween range. Very positive feedback on the self-ironic video    2. Videos Community Promoclip Over 36’000 views on YouTube. Very positive feedback on YouTube & within the Community The YouTube Trueview-campaign performed clearly over the Google Benchmarks.     Connect Box unboxing: Top position in the (Google) SERPs for the product name 70 comments/questions on the new modem within the blog 8000 views on YouTube (without further promotion) 230 participants in the competition Very positive feedback on the personal style of the announcement     3. Blog 130 articles, 760 comments, 80’000 page views, 430 kudos since launch   4. Community Live Talks Over 40 questions raised by Community members upfront and during the talk High senior management attention Based on the results of our community live talks senior management decided to use the live talk format for internal communications as well.   5. Live Event & Liveticker High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the event Very positive feedback (external & internal) High interest in the 20 seats Over 3000 page views blog visits (LiveTicker) during the Event Very positive feedback (external & internal) 6. Superuser programme - Programme was kicked off with 4 superheroes - Continuous exchange via Superhero board and Skype - Personal meetings on a regular basis   7.Newsletters and personal letters   Newsletters Open Rate ca. 35%, Click Rate ca. 20%, Resulting in a regular increase of contributions (Boards & Blogs)    Personal letters Intensified relationship with the top users
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading enter... See more...
Company:  AT & T Entry submitted by: Becky Woodworth (Social Media Sr. Strategy Mgr) Community: AT&T Community Forums Lithy category:  Marketing Champion     AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet and voice services. We’re the world’s largest provider of pay TV. We have TV customers in the U.S. and 11 Latin American countries. We offer the best global coverage of any U.S. wireless provider*. And we help businesses worldwide serve their customers better with our mobility and highly secure cloud solutions.   *Global coverage claim based on offering discounted voice and data roaming; LTE roaming; voice roaming; and world-capable smartphone and tablets in more countries than any other U.S. based carrier.    Tune into the AT&T/DIRECTV Merger!   Our unique promotion and goal    Following AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of DIRECTV, we began plans to merge our two communities. We collaborated with our skilled Lithium success team to outline the migration mechanics potentially affecting 1.65M users (AT&T – 1.5M members with Lithium; DIRECTV – 150k members with Jive.) We wanted not only to incorporate 200k DIRECTV posts and 150k users into the AT&T Community, but also to establish trust in, and build enthusiasm for, the combined community experience.   Our strategy for community promotion   After the merger, we began with a soft launch of a new DIRECTV community within the AT&T community, seeding content and creating a one-stop community experience for our customers. We also reached out to DIRECTV community super-users at this time, months before the content migration, to introduce ourselves, let them know we valued their participation and to invite them to check out the DIRECTV forum on the AT&T Community.   When the time came to migrate the legacy DIRECTV community’s membership and content, we knew we had to create an effortless customer experience for DIRECTV and AT&T customers, and just as importantly, we wanted to present the migration in a way that would help the migrated community members feel at home.   To this end, we invited DIRECTV’s most well-known super user – Litzdog911 – to be the “voice of the merger” within the DIRECTV community. Rather than having our team of AT&T employees try to communicate the benefits of the migration to DIRECTV customers, we encouraged Litzdog911 to share what he thought was important to fellow DIRECTV community members. On the DIRECTV home page – and in his own voice - Litzdog911 bubbled over with excitement and explained why he felt the change was so positive, i.e., the advantage of the AT&T/Lithium user experience.     With an eye toward an effortless customer experience, every communication (including Litzdog911’s personal message) pointed to “one source of truth” – an AT&T Community Blog outlining the timetable, sharing illustrative “how to” examples, covering FAQ’s, etc.     To increase awareness, we used our #1 featured home page tile to point users to the blog.     Additional communication elements included Private Messages to AT&T super users as well as an announcement in their lounge; a system notification to DIRECTV users and regularly-updated home page messaging in both communities.   Post-migration in January, 2016: Communication continued with home page recognition for LItzdog911, our January ACE (super user) of the Month…..     ….plus we contextually-placed authentication reminders:     Our results   Partnering with our Lithium success team – and with only 12 hours of “read only” down time -               We migrated 200k DIRECTV posts 100% successfully into their assigned boards and categories.               We migrated 150k DIRECTV users – including their user stats and avatars - with only three users experiencing minor, easily corrected issues.   In the first 30 days post-migration, 309k unique visitors benefited from DIRECTV content – a 27% increase as compared to prior months on its previous platform.   From January 1, 2016 to March 23, 2016 in DIRECTV, we have enjoyed:             1.36M page views             766k visits             588k unique visitors             12k posts             800 Accepted Solutions created   We will continue to adjust the volume, and we might even give the remote control a shake – but we are sure not changing the channel on our great DIRECTV forum community. It’s where it needs to be – on our Lithium platform, with our combined 1.65M members fully understanding what we did, and why we did it. Like Litzdog911 said, “It’s more fun over here!”  
Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   StarHub is Singapore's fully-integrated info-communications ... See more...
Company: StarHub  Entry submitted by: Darren Choo (darren) AVP of Social CRM Community: StarHub Community (http://community.starhub.com/) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   StarHub is Singapore's fully-integrated info-communications company, offering a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services. It also manages an islandwide HFC network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services (including HDTV, Internet TV and on-demand services) as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services. StarHub operates an extensive fixed business network that provides a wide range of data, voice and wholesale services. Over Singapore’s fibre-based Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, StarHub offers a broad range of home and business broadband plans along with a host of advanced media-rich value-added services, such as IPTV for commercial entities.   StarHub Community activates its superfans to support its marketing strategies. Six in every 10 visitors come for its contests and user-generated marketing content instead of customer support. http://community.starhub.com/t5/Commendations-Testimonials/StarHub-Community-is-growing-and-we-have-YOU-to-thank-for-it/m-p/27176#M10     1) Beating the ZMOT Challenge The Social Customer believes more in actual user reviews than a brand’s marketing messages. This phenomenon—commonly known as Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)—can easily nullify the work of traditional marketing. To address this shift in consumer behaviour, StarHub Community generates user reviews. Lithium’s excellent SEO often surprises us with excellent search results. In fact more than half of the Community’s traffic comes from Searches. This allows StarHub to better manage ZMOT, instead of losing control to third party forums or showing no reviews at all  For example, here are some HomeHub reviews: http://community.starhub.com/t5/HomeHub-Reviews/idb-p/HomeHubSurvey     2) Influencer and Content Marketing Strategy Traditional influencer strategy pays influential bloggers to share content with their followers.  However, these blogs are off-domain and their credibility may also/often be questioned. Utilising Lithium’s blog function, an ordinary community blogger’s post can be promoted via the Community (using Outbrain native advertising and social syndication) and can have significant reach and effect, e.g: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Mobile-Handset-Reviews/Samsung-Galaxy-Note-Edge-Review-Changes-To-My-Smartphone/ba-p/112652. It is noteworthy that even a few ordinary commentators can greatly boost credibility, as people generally believe in actual users’ experience and reviews.    Lithium’s Group and Ask the Expert functions allow interests groups to be formed thus creating threads for common interests and within which there is greater perceived credibility for posted user reviews, e.g http://community.starhub.com/t5/Windows-Community-Group/Welcome-to-the-Windows-Community/gpm-p/75901#M88   3) Contest Engagement Strategy Traditional engagement utilises expensive microsites and Facebook applications with no consolidation of the relationships/connections with the customer. Often, contestants also do not get to see other contestants’ entries as well. The above issues are solved using Lithium’s Contest module for photo contests, for example: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Latest-Contests-and-What-s-New/Contest-Closed-Win-a-Trip-To-Glasgow-to-watch-the-MTV-EMAs-2014/m-p/99559#M516) and Idea Exchange module for free flow user generated content contest with an added voting mechanism (see example http://community.starhub.com/t5/Past-Hackathons/CONTEST-CLOSED-Win-passes-to-meet-Kim-Soo-Hyun-in-person/m-p/73605#M16)   Our marketing campaign    Lady First SG is a StarHub-produced, localised version of the immensely popular Taiwanese beauty variety show, Lady First (女人我最大).  Each season lasted for about three months. To date, StarHub has produced two seasons in the past two years.   Female viewers in Taiwan, after watching the beauty programme, would go to the forums to discuss the beauty tips and products featured.  Tapping into this insight, social TV executions were executed on StarHub Community to bring these discussions online via StarHub Community.      The first mission was to source for beauty influencers to be the experts running the forums.  In the first season, we set up beauty forums by topics http://community.starhub.com/t5/Lady-First-SG/ct-p/ladyfirst and ran a contest for the top six beauty influencers to surface.    Eventually through intense competition, the top six contestants arose.  Please visit http://community.starhub.com/t5/Latest-Contests-and-What-s-New/StarHub-Community-s-first-offline-event-Meeting-up-with-the/m-p/26076#M218 to view the offline event. Together with partnering beauty brands’ influencers, they not only generated tonnes of beauty tips, but also became beauty experts from which others could seek advice: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Ask-The-Beauty-Expert/Learn-beauty-secrets-from-the-StarHub-Community-Beauty-Brand/m-p/44331#M2   Partnering brands also ran some contests: In the 2014 season of Lady First SG, we activated two of the original six beauty influencers.  Grace Tan was commissioned to blog about each episode in English while Yuki Ng did so in Chinese. The blog entries from both ladies were not mere translations but their own interpretations of the tips after watching each episode. We ran a contest asking members to post a comment on their blog entries or ask them questions. At the same time, we ran another contest to curate beauty tips from users with a chance to win a beauty workshop: http://community.starhub.com/t5/Past-Hackathons/Contest-Closed-Beauty-Workshop-by-Xiao-Kai/m-p/79381#M1  The contests were publicized on the TV trailers as well as online media.     Campaign results   Between Grace and Yuki, there were over 64,000 views and almost 600 comments on their blog entries alone. There are over 611,000 views on the Beauty section of the community where members get to discuss beauty and fashion related matters, such as finding out where to purchase the products featured in the show and share personal tips. Users can search by episodes or beauty topics to record their comments. In fact, the search term “Lady First” on Google yields StarHub Community as a prominent result.   With combined views of 675,000 across the blogs and forums on Lady First SG and Beauty and Fashion discussions, the execution has been a great success and has greatly enriched the content consumption experience with useful online content and engaging contests. The timeless tips shared on StarHub Community also continue to bring in traffic for the Community.      
Company: Barclaycard  Entry submitted by: Jennifer Hitchens (JenH) Community Manager Community: Barclaycard Travel Community (BarclaycardTravel.com)  Lithy category: Marketing Champion     Barclaycard US is the 9 th  largest credit ca... See more...
Company: Barclaycard  Entry submitted by: Jennifer Hitchens (JenH) Community Manager Community: Barclaycard Travel Community (BarclaycardTravel.com)  Lithy category: Marketing Champion     Barclaycard US is the 9 th  largest credit card issuer in the US. We believe that building community environments helps to support our credit card products creates a differentiated customer experience through enhanced support and innovative engagement.   The Barclaycard Travel Community: A portion of Barclaycard cardmembers are invited to join a community, share their travel experience, look to other members for travel inspiration and earn miles for engaging in community activities.   BarclaycardTravel.com is a one of a kind travel community where Barclaycard cardmembers and non-cardmembers can share travel experiences and earn miles that can be redeemed for travel rewards or e-certificates.  Lithium’s community platform is the driving force behind out latest marketing initiative for the Barclaycard Travel Community.   The Barclaycard Travel Community Great Getaway Giveaway Campaign This campaign utilized the Lithium platform capabilities in 5 different ways to launch an online sweepstakes promotion in November of 2014 called the Great Getaway Giveaway.     The primary focus of the marketing campaign was to increase community registrations to BarclaycardTravel.com and helped in exceeding the 2014 goal of 100,000 total community member registrations.   Using the Lithium platform, we were able to develop a campaign that would:    Represent the premium quality of the Barclaycard US brand in design and experience Increase awareness of the Barclaycard Travel Community Include meaningful interactions with contest participants - without creating obstacles to entry Allow users to stay within a single, mobile-friendly environment     Our marketing campaign   We incorporated a variety of the Lithium platform functionality to build a successful marketing campaign:  1) The Great Getaway Giveaway featured a two-tier prize structure which not only promoted Community registrations through a sweepstakes, but highlighted the storytelling aspects of the Community that utilizes the blogging platform on Lithium.   2) Our customized home page on the Lithium platform enabled us to feature the Great Getaway Giveaway prominently in the rotating image “Hero” area:   3) The Lithium registration and login path was modified to enable existing Barclaycard Travel Community members to sign in, share their dream trip on the dedicated Lithium ‘Great Getaway Giveaway’ Discussion Board for a chance to win the Grand Prize. The registration flow also enabled a new registration flow where new users were seamlessly taken (after registration) to the dedicated Lithium ‘Great Getaway Giveaway’ Discussion Board for the second step of the sweepstakes.   4) We created a responsive registration page that enabled for a seamless mobile experience.   Step 1: (New registration path that is mobile optimized)     Step 2: Submitting a dream trip as an ‘entry’ in the dedicated discussion thread (also mobile optimized). Discussion board was customized for optimal viewing on multiple browsers and devices and Lithium out of box board settings were implemented so that a registered community member could only submit one dream trip.   5) To encourage our active (and newly registered) users to socially share the marketing campaign, we implemented a customized Lithium social sharing component with pre-populated text for a quick and easy method of spreading the word.   We also launched a #TravelSkills Twitter Chat with one of our key influencers, Johnny Jet and reinforced the #GreatGetawayGiveaway hashtag.     #TravelSkills Twitter Chat with Johnny Jet featuring #GreatGetawayGiveaway images in all questions 1,300 tweets with 339 contributors 3.3M reach 3M timeline deliveries Key Participants: Travel and Leisure, Marriott International, SmarterTravel, JDAndrews, Brett Snyder   Our campaign results   Great Getaway Giveaway Campaign Results: Exceeded 100K Goal 31,824 new registrants: Exceeding our total campaign goal by 59% 26,510 “Dream Trip” submissions by community members; averaged 1 submission every 2 ½ minutes 430K Page Views during Sweepstakes; normal Page View average is 237K per month. Increased engagement with existing Arrival cardmembers During the sweepstakes promotion, increased Arrival cardmembers registering in the community by 20%. Increase Social Media Mentions  1,123 Social Media Mentions (sentiment was 100% positive): 5% of mentions on Twitter #GreatGetawayGiveaway 27% of mentions on Facebook Promoted posts = 252 shares   In addition to promoting the campaign via email, we also incorporated a paid media campaign on Facebook: 14% of all registrations originated from Facebook Utilized 11% of budget for FB ads     Email Campaigns provided high impact with very low cost: 61% of all registrations attributed from newsletter Utilized 2% of budget to deploy 3 emails   Key Learnings: Mobile capability integral Integration of social sharing essential Email targeting highest performing results Creative assets: build in house Repurpose existing assets & terms for potential future campaigns utilizing Lithium platform  
Company: Orange Spain   Entry submitted by: Santiago Martín Martín (tiako) Social Support Manager Community: Comunidad Orange (https://comunidad.orange.es) and La Comunidad amena.com (https://comunidad.amena.com) Lithy category: Marketing C... See more...
Company: Orange Spain   Entry submitted by: Santiago Martín Martín (tiako) Social Support Manager Community: Comunidad Orange (https://comunidad.orange.es) and La Comunidad amena.com (https://comunidad.amena.com) Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Orange Espagne SAU is one of the biggest telecom companies in Spain with almost 15 million of customers. It is part of Orange Group and operates with three brands in the Spanish market: Orange, amena.com and Simyo.   Lithium platform is a key enabler for engaging our community members and achieving our key objective: develop and motivate superusers to 1) help other customers, 2) develop quality content. We rely on Lithium´s ranking configuration to create in the Orange Community a hierarchy of users based on participation and offer specific incentives, allowing us to increase the value of the contributions and improving brand perception. Different user roles (solucionadores –solvers-, master tekkies, friendly) help to perceive the user as a “superusuario” (superuser) with special privileges granted to those considered experts in different matters such as Smartphones tips and  tricks, Model recommendation or Trouble-shooting.   In the same way, thanks to gamification programs, those not yet “superusers” increase their participation and stickiness to the Community in order to achieve “superuser” status. Superusers amplify both brand advocacy and belonging to the Community.   During the last ten months (From May to February) we extracted data about users from “Metrics” section (post, visits, response, threads, most  active users, most  engage users, etc…). We needed to identify our most valuable users. Regarding these KPIs  we designed different sections within the community structure in order to redirect their “know how” (solutions, reviews, etc..) to specific categories,  and empower them within our Community. We reached out to them and they accepted to increase their participation in the community. Then,  we designed a public ranking with the best users (solvers, Kudos, etc..) and the users tried to achieve the top rank. The ranking shows number of post, visits to community, logins and when they achieve a high level the users win a medal/badge that identify the user as a “superuser”.   We identified and promoted different types of users that added value to the Community. Based on the pattern of their participation, we designed a strategy of monitoring and encouraging trough incentives to increase the value of their contribution, both for the company (reduction of service calls, increased brand perception, commercial communication increase, etc…) and the Community users. We can now distinguish different types of “superusers”, each identified with their own medal.   Solvers: users who give support and help with solutions to user`s incidences without intervention even of official moderators. They reduce the number of calls to call-centers, improve the post/solution ratio and become a model to follow in the Community. They have their own medal. 30% of traffic in the Community is related to solved problems posts. Master Tekkies: Users with an active role and faithful to the Community. They participate, help others and give kudos. They are advocates of the Brand as they rise online positivity. Friendly: Newly arrived users that encourage help and collaboration. Results of the SuperUsers program   Since launch of the Superusers program in May 2014, traffic in the community has doubled, reaching 300k monthly visits. Since launch of Solvers program in November 2014, the solution ratio increased from 20% to 60% by March 2015 due to two main reasons: LSW optimization by agents (flux, labels, priorities) and participation of “Solvers” in the Community.  Ten months ago, we did not have any superuser , and currently there are 12 “superusers” solving doubts and writing reviews.  
Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies... See more...
Company: Vodafone Spain     Contact: Alejandro Moreno ( Community Manager) Community:   Foro Vodafone  Lithy category: Marketing Champion   Vodafone Spain is part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 57 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2015, Vodafone had 461 million mobile customers and 13 million fixed broadband customers.   Vodafone Spain has 14.255.000 mobile customers and 2.960.000 fixed broadband customers. All of them get benefit of the experience and capacity of a world leader that helps its customers to be better connected. For more info: please visit: www.vodafone.es   Our unique promotion and goal   Vodafone Spain launched their Vodafone Heroes Programme in 2013 for super-users to help other customers in their enquiries. There are currenly 24 active super-users in the Programme contributing to help other customers. However, the total number of nominated Heroes throughout those 3 years surpass the 100.   Our  strategy and tactics for  community    These super-users participate in a contest, fighting to unlock new badges while earning rewards points. There are 4 main categories that help us to achieve our goals and SLA: Speed, Wisdom, Aim and Creativity. We have implemented new badges on their profiles and created a catalogue of rewards as well as small benefits and ad-hoc contests.   Our results   Super-users activity in 2015: Over 3,500 customer served. 1700 posts managed directly via Vodafones Heroes. Over 1600 attributed Kudos and 500 accepted Solutions.    
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (1 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, busine... See more...
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (1 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW ® .   Our Unique Promotion   We used the transition to Lithium as an opportunity to relaunch, reenergize and redesign SAS Support Communities. We aimed to make it easier for members to: Find correct information faster with intuitive searches Connect with peers Share what they know with others   We wanted members to recognize the immediate benefits of the new site, including: A quality mobile experience A new system of ranks and badges that rewards community contributions Better SPAM filters, keeping the noise level down so they can enjoy the good content   Our  Promotional Strategies and Tactics    The community management team deployed an integrated communication plan geared toward new and potential community members, employees and social media influencers to generate awareness of the relaunch.   After finalizing a launch-specific tagline for SAS Support Communities, “Your forum, transformed,” we came up with a succinct, evergreen tagline that invites community action: “Ask. Find. Share.”   Then we identified key pieces of “getting started” information for members, and produced six community articles and videos covering the points:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities How to get fast, helpful answers Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities How to add SAS syntax to your post 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile   We held a soft launch phase for “super” active employee and external community members to gather feedback and create a sense of ownership among this influential group from the outset.   Social proved to be a critical channel for all promotional efforts. Over several weeks, we promoted the following assets across SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities:   How-to videos SAS Users blog post Six social tiles with quotes from community super users. Examples:     Multiple SAS-owned websites promoted the news including the SAS homepage, support site, and appropriate support pages like SAS Training and Books. Three SAS user e-newsletters promoted it as well.   The relaunch received third-party validation through earned media placements including a Huffington Post interview and Social Business Engine podcast episode.   We internally promoted the launch through a video, article on the SAS intranet, post on social media blog, email blast to marketing and sales teams, posts on internal communities and email notices to other communications groups.   Our Results   SAS Support Communities have enjoyed healthy membership and web traffic since their inception in 2006. The relaunch built on this momentum resulting in bumps to online visits, membership and engagement.   Analysis* of SAS Communities traffic, post launch: Comparing Oct 1, 2015-March 27, 2016 to same time last year (Oct 1, 2014-March 27, 2015) 19% increase in sessions (visits) (1.53M vs 1.28M) 25% increase in page views (3M vs 2.4M) Higher rate of return visitors (80% returning vs. new, instead of 74.5% returning vs. new) 31% increase in new registered members rate (14,510 vs 11,067)   *Sources: Google Analytics and Lithium bulk data/history   Traffic to specific promotional tactics contributed to the online traffic boost. Here are a few sample metrics:   Cumulative views on how-to pieces: Articles with embedded videos: 4,407 Stand-alone YouTube videos: 1,061   Breakdown:   Welcome to the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,399; video: 325 3 ways to show off your skills on the SAS Support Communities: article: 1,064; video: 265 How to get fast, helpful answers: article: 560; video: 123 Community etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the SAS Support Communities: article: 738; video: 77 How to add SAS syntax to your post: article: 471; video: 200 5 features of an awesome SAS Communities profile: article: 175; video: 71     SAS-owned social channel engagement:   We sprinkled promotions from corporate and user-focused social channels for months following the community relaunch date of Sept. 8, 2015. From Sept. 8 through Dec. 31, 2015, here are a few promotion results.   137 posts 940 engagements (709 likes, 13 comments, 218 shares) 282,500 account followers   Sample comments:   1. A quoted active member retweeted and pointed to specific SAS product board:     2. Same member replied and cited tagline, Find. Ask. Share:     3. One update received a technical question from a SAS user:     4.  Supporting visuals: Please include any supporting visuals/graphics into your above answers. Insert them into your text copy, so we’re clear on desired positioning of the graphics. We will accept videos for this entry. All videos must be submitted as publicly viewable links on YouTube or Vimeo.   Answer #2 includes links to external promotions, such as community articles with embedded videos. In addition, here are direct YouTube links to the videos:   SAS Support Communities: YouTube playlist of all introduction videos Welcome! Boost your rep! How to get answers… Community guidelines Create an awesome profile New for SAS programmers    
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, busine... See more...
Company: SAS Entry submitted by: Shelley Sessoms (Online Community Manager) Community: SAS Support Communities Lithy category: Marketing Champion (2 of 2 entries)   SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW ® .   Our Unique Promotion   We launched external and internal Super User programs to give a recognition and commitment boost to super active community members. These programs publicly honored our strongest members for their outstanding contributions and gave them tools to expand their community leadership so they can get more out of their community experience – and help the community as a whole.   External SAS Super Users felt special because they: Received a badge and special rank icon that appears on their community avatar:  Had access to a private "Super Users" forum, where they can confer with their fellow "supers" and the SAS community managers. Were invited to "Super Users"-only meetings with SAS staff, where they get the inside scoop on SAS communities and other SAS goings-on. Received privileges like moving stray posts to the proper board and marking spam. Received periodic surprise community/SAS swag and personal gifts in the mail. They completed a “What are your favorites” Q/A so we knew what to send them. On their birthdays, we posted a “Happy Birthday” message on the community homepage banner that is visible only to the member with a birthday.       Internal SAS Super FREQs (FREQ is a name of a commonly used SAS procedure) received:   A special rank icon and badge:  Community management rights such as moving stray posts, featuring good ones and editing topics that need clarity. Note of appreciation and thanks to each of their managers. Choice of community swag: branded coffee cup or USB charger.     Our Promotional Strategy and Tactics   We identified our first pool of super members by analyzing community activity from Lithium bulk data. We decided to appoint a new group of Super Users/FREQS every six months and that “alumni” members will be awarded an Emeritus status and special badge. Example for Super Users:   We then defined program parameters like: Guidelines complete with “how-to” instructions for executing special tasks, posted on private board:   Promotions to serve two purposes: recognize super members and elevate awareness of communities in general.   Promotional tactics include:   Super Users Community Memo blog post and Getting Started TKB article. Feature on community home page: Social updates on SAS corporate, user-specific and personal channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook, and external SAS-related communities, using multiple text variations, headlines and this social tile:     Super FREQS: Intranet article that highlighted employee contributions and what it means to participate in the community, including quotes from the Super FREQs themselves on their activity. Intranet video about how being a community star is like being a super hero.   Be a Hero       Results   Expanded community management coverage Using bulk data from Lithium, we saw that Super Users acted on new privileges like topic moves. From Feb. 1 – March 27, Super Users moved 92 topics to appropriate boards while the community management team moved 35. What’s more, these moves occurred at all hours of the day/night due to the global scope of our Super Users. In effect, the Super User program allowed for 24/7 community moderation; our Super Users became an extension of the SAS communities team.   Our Super Users increased their participation in the communities, as well. Analyzing the 60 days prior to the inception of the Super User program with the 60 days post-program launch we saw:   Super Users increased their shared content/messages posted between 18-90%. The number of accepted solutions given to Super Users increased between 30%-300%. Yes, you read that right: 300% for one Super User in particular.   Super User social sharing of program perks In one instance, a Super User shared a piece of Super User swag through a creative social update. The swag installment sent to Super Users was a pen made out of reclaimed wood from an old SAS building on campus headquarters. The package included an article about the building’s history and a note from SAS Co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. One of the Super Users tweeted about the pen, thanking Dr. Goodnight publicly for the gift.