Case Study: QCOA Community

[Jodie Davis]

Why wait until SoCon '09? Let's keep the discussion going!
The best way I can think of to do this is to wrap our minds around real life social media questions we real live people are dealing with. Much like those business school case studies, this will allow us to collaborate on thinking through the possibilites and also learn from other's ways of thinking.
Since quilting is what I do let me make an anaology. I've made the blocks of my quilt and now I want to put a border around it but am stuck. So I take it to me quilt bee (yup, they exist--there's proabbly one going on right under your nose!) and lay it out in front of my bee friends. One person has a suggestion; another, another. That gives someone else and idea. Someone seconds it. Another says, "And, if you do this... " The end result is a solution that everyone agrees is right on, and seems so simple in the end. "But of course!'
In that spirit I'd like to start this off by offering up something I'm grappling with with my social media business.
QCOA is an affinity club. Members get all sorts of benefits including membersip in my baby, QNNtv, plus lots of rebates and discounts at major quilting sites, Jo-Ann fabrics, etc. plus a subscription to our new magazine. It's a great deal and has done extremely well since its launch in October 2007.
Currently we are building a community site. It will have all the expected trappings: message boards, celebrity blogs (our brands include some of the biggest celebrities in quilting), quilter blogs, ratings, challenges, events, e-commerce (we just acquired one of the biggest mail order businesses in quilting) etc.
Here's my question: how do we decide levels of participation in the community?
Here are the scenarios:
1. Allow only paid club members to view or post.
2. Allow people to view (they'd have to register so they can log in--so we'd get their e-mail addys) without being paid members, but only post if they are members.
or
3. Let anyone view and post.
We're all inventing how social media works, so let's hear your thoughts.
Many thanks!

[Steve Miller]

Jodie,

I think each one of those options would work well in different organizations. Here are some of the questions I'd ask myself:

1) Do I have enough members to get plenty of response from people posting questions? Not sure what that magic number would be, but with discussion boards, I think the more quality people involved, the merrier.
2) But "merrier" only to the extent that you (or you and your volunteers) have time to monitor it. I noticed that one writer's forum had to close, due to people talking openly about bad experiences with publishers, bringing on lawsuits, etc. Someone may down some store that sells quilting materials and you would need to monitor it for potentially libelous content. Also, for people obnoxiously selling their own stuff. Having it as a "members only view and participate" would cut down on the ability of organizations to monitor you for what you're saying about them.
3) What is my main purpose? Is it to unite this group of people that already exists, or primarily to bring new people in. If the latter, you might want to keep some of this (like a forum) as open to everyone as possible, allowing people to find it on Google searches, ask questions over a period of time, and finally coming to see the value and expertise you offer. If the former, you might want to keep it for members only.

I'm sure there are many other questions to ask, but those are some of mine.

Thanks for giving me some great advice at SoCon!

Steve Miller, Legacy Educational Resources

[Leonard Witt]

Hi Jodie:

1. Here is what I see a lot on the Internet, especially with software packages like BaseCamp or even Flickr. You get plenty of free stuff open to anyone, but if you want the premium stuff, you have to pay for it.
2. I think charging works up to a point; however, if you get many, many eyeballs, there is a chance it will make sense for someone else to give away what you are charging for. They can survive just on advertising revenue. (Still wouldn't that be a wonderful problem, too many eyeballs.)
3. By having the part free, part payment model I think it makes it harder to get undercut, plus you will have a large base with whom to work.

My caveat: I have not done any research here to see if what I say is actually backed by empirical evidence. But those studies might be our there and ripe for the picking. I know from reading lots about social media, social networking and open content I can predict somethings that will work and some that are likely not to work.

[Jodie Davis]

Steve, my mission is to bring more people to quilting and therefore to make the conversation as accessible to Google searches ( for instamce) as possible. So requiring people to register with minimal info would work to that end and hopefully keep most of the creeps out.

Leonard, that's why we switched to a subscription model for QNNtv: We offer premium content in a very specialized interest area. And that decision has proven itself: people are willing to pay.

Of course, we also have the advertising side of the equation in our revenue mix, but that is in its infancy. What our sales people have found is that Internet ads are still seen as a gimme, a freebie to sweeten the pot. It's a holdover from the early days when web ads were an afterthought. We're about to get a star salesperson just for QNNtv. She has been selling the magazine, and found it difficult for these reasons to sell QNNtv at the same time. It'll be real interesting to see how she does. Knowing her-very well! Way early on when I first figured out we needed to go with a subscription model I thought at some point advertising would catch up and we could drop subscription. But think of a magazine. That's our model.

So now as we develop this new community I'm thinking we need to allow everyone who visits as much access as possible after they give us an e-mail address and then tout the benefits of belonging so much that they are compelled to join up.

Thanks for the very thoughtful responses!

[Leonard Witt]

Hi Jodie:

This is really great information. Do you know from experience or are there studies that show how many people who sign up for free, eventually are willing to convert to a paying model?

I'm trying to figure out how a big a pool of people are needed for a conversion-to-pay model to work. Are there industry standards that say for example, if you can convert 1 in a 100 that's amazing or would it be 1 in 10 or 1 in 1,000?

[Jodie Davis]

Leonard,

That's a very interesting question. is the expected response rate akin to that of an ad?

I don't know any stats for that, but I can tell you we have a QNNtv mailing list of 40,000 and 13,000 members. We just sent out an e-mail last week to turn those who subscribe to the newsletter but aren't members extolling the new benefits. 120 signed up within 24 hours. Of course, in our former incarnation, QNNtv was free, so who knows how that impacts our list of names--good or bad.

Jodie

[Steve Miller]

Caution: if you decide to make the forum public, make sure to find out from the software company that develops it (mine is a free forum program that my programmer installed in a couple of hours), how to best keep out the spammers. The way it was originally set up didn't keep them out. Bots (from porn and ruthless advertisers) were programmed to get through registration and even could read those graphic letters/numbers that subscribers had to type in. Now we're going to have subscribers answer a simple question, like "What's 2+3?" or asking "Are you human?" We'll also make the subscriber list private, so that human spammers won't have incentive to put their ads/links in the membership section.

I like your idea of viewing the site as a magazine, generating revenue with specific paid ads. I'm starting to experiment with this.

Also, in a specific niche like you've got, do you have a list of quilting books with descriptions that people can purchase from your site through Amazon, giving you a cut of the profit? I saw a home school site that claimed it making a lot of money that way. It's very easy to set this up with Amazon. You can see where I'm doing it on this page: http://character-education.info/Money/money-books.htm . Click on the first book to see how it sells.

steve

[Jodie Davis]

We're paying big bucks for the site, so I expect the spamming to be a minimum. We will be watching like hawks though. And forget Spam etc., we also have the issue of people bashing advetiseres. I have found though on other lists this is self-correcting.

Yes, selling things is a GOOD THING! And with our acquisition last month of one the largest mail order online and catalog busniesses in quilting we are poised to direct our video and new community to find products through us.

This raises another point. We want as many people watching the shows on QNNtv and visting our community as possible to turn into sales. That's the downside of having a membership model. We do though air some shows, including "sponsored" programming for free, which covers this issue.

Always lots to think about!

Jodie