PR Communications

Turning Active Community Leaders Into Dormant Leaders

I've been thinking more about this model of the life cycle of online communities, especially the progression through each of the roles within the community visitor, novice, regular to leader etc. I'd made the point in my previous post, "Creating Elders In A Counter-Community Of Bloggers," that Jeff Jarvis was a leader in the Dell customer community.

Jarvis actively evangelized and shined a light on poor Dell customer experiences. The community responded, and it became the wider perception that Dell customer service could be better.

Dell responded to the wider customer community, dealing with customer service structural issues and also using social media to communicate and find instances of customer service issues. By a process of focusing on the leaders, regulars and novices who discussed their customer service issues within the Dell customer community. Dell was able to solve problems, and even turn leaders into elders, people who were likely to leave the community on that issue because they no longer saw the reason to actively participate, the reasons for participation has lessoned or disappeared.

Do I think Jeff Jarvis is an elder in the Dell customer community, no, I think Jeff is still active, it is just that the customer service issue is not such a prominent concern for the Dell customer community. Jeff is still a leader in the community, and people will return to him for his opinions regarding customer service at Dell. Currently he is positive.

Could he become active again yes, that all depends upon the Dell customer community demands and Dell’s strategies for handling those concerns.

Feedburner Buys Blogbeat

Online Media Daily reports on Feedburner buying blogbeat.

Technorati.com Image

This image from David Sifry at Technorati.com is interesting; it compares the Mainstream media against a number of blogs. David would it be possible to throw in slashdot.org in the chart? Especially in light of the discussion from Jason Calacanis about the new report from Comscore.

London Wins, but the French have more bloggers

On this day that London won the 2012 Olympic bid, I can commiserate with the French, and say that they have more bloggers than the United States. According to Business week an estimated 5% of French people have set up blogs, this compares to 3% in the US.

AMA Boston Blogging Event

I will be at the AMA Boston Blogging event all day tomorrow.  I am moderating a panel discussion, looking forward to meeting everyone.

Question for Weber Shandwick

I seem to be getting some traffic from Weber Shandwick’s internal blog, any Weber employees know why?

My Blog Keeps On Growing

Well this blog idea appears to be self perpetuating, I write more and get more traffic, almost additive. The additive part comes in attempting to determine if I can get more traffic if I write more articles during the week, or write longer articles. The one big goal I have not achieved is to build more of an online conversation with people. Forums appear to be a better medium. Blogs I think are actually great learning tools for the blogger. I recently started a new corporate blog for my company Quotium Technologies at http://webloadtesting.typepad.com, and my knowledge about the testing market is already expanding at a faster rate.

Also, if you found my site via IABC, let me know by a comment why that web site has a link to my site. I've been getting lots of traffic from their site and I can not figure out why!