More brains the better? Sorry this is sorta disgusting. But the point is about getting more people involved via online communities. (French brains, not human btw).

It is of course ideal to have community members enrich content–but is UGC to hard to deal with online? Is it too random and too much spam? How to get to the next level = Community-Inspired-Content (CIC).

What is Online Community Content Co-Creation?

There are 3 main participant groups need for a co-creation program: 1) Brand 2) Community Manager 3) Community Members.  The Community Manager (which is how we see our role at Heritage Key) needs to create the focus and deliver the program.

The Brand and the Community Manager should frame the focus of the content and outline the mix (video, articles, interviews, virtual, real world events). The real new area is to get the right balance between commissioned work and user generate content (UGC).  UGC needs to be on-point with the focus, but more importantly needs to allow the Community Members their own space to participate.  I think the real world events are an important part of this.

The Co-Creation program should run over a period of time like 3-6 months. We think of it as a sort of series. People can then catch if from start or  catch-up through referrals or web buzz around the activity.  You can also have an endpoint where you can convert content into a final package.

Benefits to Brands

• New Relevant Web Content – Content is unique and will fit major interests of the community members. It should also be branded and embeddable off the main microsite (via widgets or YouTube players).
• No Other Brand Interference — it would be exclusive to the sponsoring Brand. No noise, no unexpected placement. And the microsite area would be much more engaging than an Brand controlled site.
• Community Interaction — program should offer people chance to contribute (for free or payment), share opinions, contests, join real w0rld events.  Ideally there should be some time-based momentum designed into the program.
• Leverage Existing Brand Assets – Brands can repurpose or simple use existing assets and place them in proper context/linking to new content.
• Fresh Ammo for PR — Program should give PR/Marketing teams new materials to work for customer and media outreach.
• Destination to Drive Promotions — Brands can use their existing email lists to drive customers/prospects to microsite for targeted promotions. Surveys can also be very useful to learn more about customer needs.
• Speed to Market – Community Manager should be able to deliver program rapidly and across 3-6 months time period to build momentum.
• Innovation – Brands should seek Community Managers that offer web site, websphere, and interactive applications that when combined with new content will be very exciting.
• Lower total costs — Co-Creation should not be massively expensive. It will have potentially high CPM metrics, but you would expect reasonable total costs and good CPA downstream.  It is key to understand that co-creation right now is a way to access the early adopters and thought leaders within the communities, so it should also be considered as a strategic play.

We are working on Content Co-Creation programs for Heritage Key that will be focused on visting/experience history of ancient world sites. These programs  will mix video, virtual and article content.  More info will be shared soon!  Get RSS or follow us on twitter @xlent1 or @heritagekey or for virtual content @rezzable .

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Trust Me, Only the First Bite Hurts. Many Brands have lost trust with consumers, so entering a Community is not a positive move as perceived by the members. In fact some Brands almost seem to hate or be at war with their customers. So what can a Brand do to get back to Trust? Drive CIC.

Probably every Brand manager is looking at some online social media project right now–thinkin’ omg I gotta do something.  For the ones that haven’t already made a mistake plan for social media — they should get into bed with Cali Lewis, well at least watch this interesting video interview (in a bed)  with Chris Brogan.

Brogan makes the xlent point that many Brands are not trusted these days — some for obvious reasons, like banks, car companies, fast food etc. Others have a more subtle, but perhaps more strained relationship with their customers/prospects like Ryanair or mortgage lenders like Halifax where the consumer is actually an adversary.

There seem to be a lot of issues around all of this, but the fundamental point is that if you don’t trust a brand — it won’t be a positive part of an online Community. It just annoys everyone or is a blocker to getting Community Inspired Content (CIC) rolling. Brogan seems to make a living working with corporates to use social media tools in a positive way to make the personal connection between company and individual–seems like he should have an un-ended need for his services (pls get over to EasyJet Chris!).

So, back to the challenge of the Brand manager trying to figure out how best to play in the social web.  The two obvious moves have significant issues:

• Traditional online advertising noise/interference : Buying ad programs may not get the brand above the noise–or the brand could find ads actually sitting in areas where it being attacked. Online programs also have big costs and are they really delivering the bang for the buck?
• Building A New Community is Hard: This is a bold, most likely pointless activity for a Brand with a battered reputation.  First of all it is an expensive enough risk, and most likely the Brand does not have any skill/experience in doing this type of thing. Worst though, the Brand is exposed directly to the Community members which is in fact an off-balance situation between individuals and an impersonal corporate entity. We saw a lot all the Brands that stepped into Second Life beat a retreat when they understood that their risk/costs for engaging with individuals in a fast-moving, unpredictable community was high and in fact their reach/value was trivial.

So in the face of a bad choice and a worse choice, what should Brand managers be considering? Basically they need to navigate a course back to Trust by finding their role in driving CIC.  Short answer = Co-Content Creation programs.

Why is Co-Content Creation the Way to Go?

Co-Content Creation is new content that is produced by an online Community in concert with the community members on some level. It is of course funded by a Brand or the Community itself. I think largely it should be a mix of commissioned, curated and UGC. Importantly, co-creation should frame a useful activity where  Community members see value. Most of the new online communities (like of course our Heritage Key or Demand Media’s Livestrong.com) are further multi-channel — allowing a concept to be packaged and delivered across site as well as media/social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and of course iPhone.

The Brand can Benefit  a lot in a Co-Creation Program:

• Unique, relevant content that the Community will appreciate and engage with. Content should also be media rich, diverse and web-dynamic.
• Perhaps not banner level reach, but deep community penetration across web, mobile and even real-world (as most Communities have physical reach).
• Speed to live — usually new content is already in a the community content pipeline, so it can be tuned to fit quickly. Certainly setting-up a micro-site is a few days work, no more.
• Association with innovation if there is a relevant app to combine with.
• Co-creation should run over a 3-6 month timeline minimum, year is better. So there is also the momentum as the content becomes richer, it will gain exposure.
• Brand can fully leverage their own promotion, email muscle to drive their customers/prospects/stakeholders directly at an online area that will be on message, without other brand interference.  There should be some PR lift as well.
• Zero risk — (ok a little risk) the Brand does not need to do much to make this happen — ok, pay is a good thing. But there is no management of the Community or issues with production. The Brand just needs to do what Brands should already be good at — promotion and promotion.
• Brand can choose how to engage with Community members and use the Community as an appropriate focus, rather than have the direct exposure.

Basic Framework for Co-Creation Programs

The Program should run for minimum 3 months but 6 months or longer is best. The main idea is to get a consistent flow moving onto the site and that there are some time-definite events to catch live. Content should also be sourced from the Community as much as possible.

Basic formula (but expect many variants):

• Frame a video series, with mix of community members and respected figures. Video is key as it will drive traffic and generate links to a lot of site content. Video should hit site 4/week or so.
• A bulk of new, inter-linked content — so feature articles, blogs, image galleries, maps, listings. Something new on site everyday to pump the flow across web — use RSS as well
• Interactive features — good be something simple like a quiz/game or more complex applications that engage/add value to Community. We have a virtual experience on Heritage Key as an example.
• Contests — but these should involve content that will hit site, ie photos, blogs, group activities
• Real-world events — again a good chance for the Brand to actually meet people and make personal connections (which also can be in virtual experiences).

Probably in the first wave of serious Co-Creation it will be fairly expensive proposition, but not expensive for a major Brand.  I can already see how this could be rolled-out on a micro-level (probably so does Google somehow ;0 ).

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Ben Edwards, the publisher, further tells me in this email (and really I didn’t even know I was registered on their site even) “We will also enhance the experience we offer our most loyal readers by expanding our subscribers-only features.” So, the Economist is trying to link loyalty with paying–seems like a terrible idea. Loyalty comes at price? In fact they are the ones “taking something away” from their audience without really offering some new value. So where is the loyalty on their side of the relationship? Wouldn’t it be more compelling to offer a subscription that added more than the free offer? Or maybe just state the truth–we need more money and less noise from too many users? But let’s see how it goes.

The Financial Times has been charging for content for some time already at £3.99/week = $640/year! The Guardian ferreted out of them that they have about 110,000 payers = more than $7mm in annual revenue.  Guardian quotes Lionel Barber from FT:  ” He said the new digital world “poses a threat but also an enormous opportunity to established news organisations”, and warned that the “mediocre middle” was most at risk.”

Looks like the Economist is going cheaper and after larger base of payers.  They missed the opportunity for the 110,000 and more people that are paying for FT. I guess they will need to market this pay-to-access a lot harder. Right now there isn’t much info on the site to inspire “the loyal” to reach for their cc or pp.

We think the “Freemium” model makes a lot of sense, but how it is introduced, marketed and supported is going to separate the winners from the panicers.  The example of Flickr charging for a “pro” acccount at $25/year seems to work.  There is in fact a massive amount of loyalty for Flickr as the hardcore use it as a key online tool/resource/social area. I would even say that Flickr could reasonably charge more.  Yahoo doesn’t release details on the value of the pro accounts, but we might guess they are worth $5mm–$10mm? But no mattter how you look at it they need other revenue sources–like ads shown to the non-pro accounts.

Freemium needs the revenue mix. The risk of course is that in going to a paywall like Economist is doing, you alienate your overall audience and lose more revenue in the process than you gain.  But maybe downsizing the audience and finding the true core is the way to go anyway. If there is a lot activity on the site, but no monetization from ads/sponsorship, then what is the point of having a .com anyway?

Components to the Freemium Mix:

* Subscribers — trick is to get the offer right and add something to free that is useful, but doesn’t cripple the free access = traffic volume

* Ad revenue — via ad networks, adsense / hard to get this productive without traffic and it can clutter up the site

* Sponsored Content — also good  for co-creation on new content that could deliver big lift for both parties

* eShop — exclusive products/web only — but what to make, offer and can you fulfil orders? and what about returns?

* Affiliate Deals — like Amazon, Commission Junction –which can deliver high cpc values, but maybe not high total revenue

One way to think about Freemium is to consider the marketing costs to attract people to a premium only site. So the Freemium has a built-in flow from SEO if you do it right.  if your content is behind the paywall is won’t get crawled = it doesn’t exist online. Also if you have a community site–well, you need enough people to have  comments, discussions etc. Premium only will never have the same immediacy, scale, rawness, openness as Freemium. So in fact, Premium vs Freemium vs Free sites will be very different experiences.

I think also there is an interesting aspect about the value of the community contributions. Shouldn’t people that make comments, add content get some recognition? We have a points system and can imagine reward activity on our sites. But of course we a fresh view on this aspect, where “old media” is looking to penalize the freeloaders (who in many ways created value for them).

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