HOW TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS THROUGH MORE COMMUNITY

ENGAGEMENT

Ivo Lukač - @ilukac

www.netgen.hr

@ eZ Partner Conference 2012, Lisbon

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.

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

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

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

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

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

2 – 16 hours adhoc

“Best buy”

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

Days, weeks or moreNot for everyone

WHY TO DO IT?

For the community?For your self or your company?

What is the ROI?

WHAT IS THE ROI OF YOUR MOTHER?

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)

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

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)

PART 2: WE HAVE AN IDEA

Netgen is going black belt!

And we need your feedback to have the best possible outcome

NETGEN eZ Summer Camp 2012

Sep 2012, CroatiaWednesday-Saturday2 tracks

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

Ivo Lukač - @ilukac - ivo@netgen.hr