Tactics and opportunities for building mobile communities

Some practical insights and experiences

campaign

Garden-variety mobile campaign using the following mechanics:

competition entry, downloads, content

community

Much higher levels of initial activity, increased opportunities for 2nd and 3rd day interaction

building community

Define the common identityPlanning and preparationLaunch window tacticsCommon management problems and solutionsMaturity stage and the up-side

common identityThe common identity is a combination of attributes that all users can identify with

Common interestAge rangeLocationLanguage

common identity

Common interestAge range

LocationLanguage

Emo style13 – 20US, UKEnglish

ICP15 – 35USEnglish

Football18 – 35NigeriaEnglish

identity challengesDialects and languages, location can trigger prejudice and erode the sense of belonging

Large age variations and sexual predators

Teen age perception is much more granular (18 and 14 are very different)

Being inside a crowd of people with the chosen common interest must evoke a strong emotion (e.g. comfort, euphoria, inspiration)

No easy way to speak to your group via your channels

planning and preparation

- Does the community need content?- If so, who creates it? where does it come from? how often does

it get updated? - What is the identity of the administrator?- What are your marketing channels?- What time are your users online?

launch window tactics- The launch window is the first 30 days- Goal: establish enough alpha members (leaders)- What is enough? 100 – 200 (5% of the total)- Establish the rules, internalize them in the alpha members- Start generating organic and search traffic- Establish your best-case CPA

launch failIf your users vs. activity graph looks like this:

Instead of this:

launch window- Gender plays an important role in the way a community

functions- Communities struggle when there are less than 20% female

members and thrive when there are more than 35%- The typical African profile is 70 – 90% male and the same for

countries that have a strong Islamic tradition- Situations where women are significantly out-numbered may

become self-perpetuating- The counter-measure to this problem is to take a stronger hand

in protecting women’s interests while establishing the alpha users

launch window- It sucks being the first person on a community site- On launch, you need 20 – 40 people online at all times for the

first 24 hours- To achieve this you need to use a blind network that can quickly

adjust the rate of spend and make sure that you are pushing enough traffic onto the landing page

- Often an ad with a high CTR is an indication that your ad has too broad an appeal (on blind networks)

- If the common interest of the community is very niche then search advertising may be a good way to drive a slow stream of new users. Do not use this for launch as you can’t easily burst search traffic.

management fun- Users uploading bad content- Users harassing other users- Users posting spam messages and outbound links- Users impersonating other users

- The solution: - Empower the alpha users to suspend other users and their

content- Create the sense of constant surveillance by announcing

your presence at random times- Eradicate bad apples early

the up-side

External media spend gradually decreasesInternal media value grows over time

the up-side

The difference can be seen as a saving or added value on top of existing spendThis works for the site owners because they are building valueAgencies can redirect some of the savings to higher-margin activities like community management

other up-sides- Continued exposure for the brand- A new channel for identifying brand champions- Significantly better ROI on media campaigns- etc

Thank you and questions

vincent@motribe.com@vincent_maher