Reaching the tipping point - when should a brand build their own social community? The concept of online community -- brands engaging directly with customers, prospects, stakeholders and even critics -- is still relatively new. Many brands understand the importance of online communities, but are nervous about relinquishing control of their customers to third party networks such as Twitter and Facebook. This presentation will examine the tipping point for brands who are understanding the importance of social media engagement, but who want more control over their communities. It will present case studies of brands that built their own online communities to address business needs such as customer service, or branded social networks for consumers.

1. Reaching the tipping point, when should a brand build their own social community? Graeme Harvey Managing Director HuzuTech

2. The next 30 minutes? Quick orientation on the big social network trends Case study 1 TUI TrekAmericaLive.com Case study 2 eircom soccerrepublic.ie Checklist - when a brand should consider its own social community site or not Questions and Answers

3. Ups of Social Networking – July 2010 Facebook reaches 500 million users – July 2010 World's biggest social network in just six years July 2010 Guardian

4. Ups of Social Networking – June 2010 Twitter is seeing 6 billion API calls per day, or 70,000 per second. That’s 90 million Tweets per day! September 2010 TechCrunch

5. Ups of Social Networking Facebook now the mainstream social network and platform Brands use Facebook as a quick and easy way to reach millions of people Twitter is the new dimension in messaging Technology constantly developing and improving

6. Facebook Top 5 Fan Pages

7. Downs of Social Networking Hype cycle and fads Friends, connections, moving to another platform – peer pressure Social network operators not listening their audience needs Overuse of or ‘in your face’ advertising Spam (false friends request etc) and profile hacking

8. Key learning's Facebook is a great channel with a wide / deep user reach Twitter is essential to send quick notifications to your customers / followers Social media is here to stay, it’s now mainstream Essential to feed fan’s, followers with new and exciting content and ideas frequently Listen to your audience and act upon it! Warning! Third party networks come and go – future proof your strategies

9. Reaching the tipping point, own social community - case studies

10. TrekAmericaLive.com Social Hub that brings past, present and potential trekkers together to share their experiences. Not in competition with Facebook, must be linked.

11. TrekAmericaLive.com Already have more than 15,000 trekkers on Official Facebook Page Integration with Facebook essential – must be easy to share content between networks Fan’s are interacting and connecting via Facebook More later ....

13. Video

14. Comment

16. Facebook is important Improve registrations via FBConnect Content population upload and download FB FB Share button to user wall Reaching potential new trekkers Inviting friends to join with FB friends importer Migrate users to a more fulfilling experience

17. Twitter is important too Retweet button linking back to community site content Followers (trekkers) engage present, past, and during the trip Great to get announcements to trekkers quickly and simply – ash cloud

19. Better customer experience

20. Control content and messages

21. Trek branding not third party

22. Discover the good and bad -communicate back to customers officially

23. Understand the customer better (social analytics)

24. Build a solid CRM

26. Tipping point .... No official community site for Republic of Ireland national team 100’s of fans online already and using eircom broadband services eircom has access to content (news, pics and match videos) Customers moving to other broadband service providers!

27. Soccerrepublic.ie rationale Increase customer retention Increase customer acquisition Better customer experience Deliver content eircom branding not third party Discover the good and bad -communicate back to customers officially Deliver in-house advertising Build CRM database of potential new customers Integrate into eircom central portal – using SSO Monetise rights further – Setanta sports

28. Match day results ... Over 5m unique visits (by IP) from standing start in first 12 months 30,000 registered users with profiles 50,000 unique visits per week around qualifying matches

29. Checklist of when a brand should consider their own social community site

31. Do you want to control the look n feel, data and advertising slots?

32. Would a community site fit with my brand?

33. Do you want to engage your customers directly online / listen to them?

34. Can I afford to fund the running costs of a community site?* Not for you? then consider using the large networks, be mindful of MySpace, Bebo etc.

35. graeme.harvey@huzutech.com www.huzutech.com