Presentation was given at the eZ Partner Conference 2012 in Lisbon.

1. HOW TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
THROUGH MORE COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT
Ivo Lukač - @ilukac
www.netgen.hr
@ eZ Partner Conference 2012, Lisbon

2. ABOUT
 eZ Business partner with more than 8 years of
experience in the niche
 currently 11 employees
 60% income grow in 2011
 Without new hires (2 new hires only in last 3 month)
 No classic sales, PR nor marketing
 No changes from 2010 except in level of engagement
 In mid 2010 we started to do more engagement:
extensions sharing, blogging, etc.

3. PART1: ENGAGEMENT
 eZ as community driven business needs more engagement to
grow
 That growth depends highly on us - eZ Systems and eZ partners:
 to create more buzz
 to attract new developers
 to increase knowledge and experience transfer
 to flatten the steep learning curve
 to accelerate innovation
 Creating value for the future
 The upcoming reputation system on share.ez.no will measure
some of the community engagement
 IMO we need 6 levels (“belts”) to rank engagements

4. YELLOW BELT
PASSIVE
 Reading occasionally:
 ez.no
 share.ez.no
 doc.ez.no
 projects.ez.no
 RSS (maybe)
 Following few twitter or google+
accounts
 Subscribed to ez newsletter
3 min a day

5. ORANGE BELT
REACTIVE
Huston, we have a problem?!
 asking on share.ez.no forum
 commenting on blogs
 commenting on doc.ez.no (?!) and
projects.ez.no
 nag on twitter or google+
10 min adhoc

6. GREEN BELT
PROACTIVE - SMALL CONTENT
 give answers on forums and blogs
 regular tweeting, google+, quora, etc.
 bug reporting
 small pull requests on github
10 min a day
We want most users
on this level at least

7. BLUE BELT
COMMITMENT - MEDIUM CONTENT
 blogging
 small extension development
 newsletter
 bigger pull requests on github
Requires encircling interesting topics or
features in your work, extracting it from
the context, adopting it for publishing
“Best buy” 
2 – 16 hours adhoc

8. BROWN BELT
THOUGHT LEADER - BIG CONTENT
 writing tutorials
 building medium an complex
extensions (eZ Market maybe)
 doing screencasts, podcasts, video
materials, books, etc
Due to amount of effort consider a way to
get revenue for this effort
Not for everyone 
Days, weeks or more

9. WHY TO DO IT?
 For the community?
 For your self or your company?
What is the ROI?

10. WHAT IS THE ROI OF YOUR MOTHER?

11. WHY TO DO IT?
truth is that engagement ROI is
really hard to measure as any
other marketing or PR ROI
(except direct lead conversion)

12. WHY TO DO IT?
BUT WAIT: there are still 2 big reasons to do it:
1. you can be your best PR, marketing,
sales, CRM - build reputation and
credibility in the community and online in
general, be honest
2. less obvious - do it for your own team: no
more intranet!
combination of both reasons is the best,
just one could not be enough

13. HOW TO DO IT?
 use the available tools to save your time (community, social
media)
 use RSS, twitter search to be up to date
 give answer to questions where you can do it quickly
 encircle useful knowhow while doing working, put it in the
“sharing queue”
 RISK to get overwhelmed with engagement? Solution: reduce it
to one time a day
 reward employees who do it, pair them if needed ( depending on
preferences)
 use the language of your market (e.g. we use English)
 be regular and consistent (be prepared for the long run)

14. PART 2: WE HAVE AN IDEA
Netgen is going black belt!
And we need your feedback
to have the best possible
outcome

15. NETGEN eZ Summer Camp 2012
Sep 2012, Croatia
Wednesday-Saturday
2 tracks

16. NETGEN eZ Publish Summer Camp 2012
We need your feedback: a very short survey
will be sent out next week
 Subscribe to our newsletter on
www.netgen.hr
 or drop me your business card

17. Ivo Lukač - @ilukac - ivo@netgen.hr