Yesterday I posted Part 1 of my interview with Michael Chin and Matt Bijur of KickApps, a community building platform that helps clients grow their audiences and create new revenue opportunities. They gave some great answers about why sports and entertainment brands should get involved with social networking and why they should build their own sites. They also covered some of the basics about what KickApps does for its clients. Check out Part 1 of the KickApps interview in case you missed it.
Like I said before, these guys had such great answers that I had to split the interview into two posts. See below for some questions and answers from Part 2 of the KickApps interview.
Q) How does a brand measure whether its social networking presence/online community is successful or not?
A) The place to start thinking about this is why the brand wants to have an online community in the first place? If it’s a publisher where advertising and sponsorship revenue drives the business, this can be measured by the number of pageviews, increased CPM rates, audience engagement, etc. A more engaged community leads to more pageviews which leads to higher CPMs. Another reason might be a brand awareness and brand affinity exercise. Here, the number of active members of the community and the level in which they’re engaged becomes important. For engagement you look at things like the number of videos posted and viewed, number of comments and conversations. For a sports entity, it might simply be the increase in ticket sales, merchandise sales, linear viewership, etc. that has come as a result of the community experience.
Q) Say a team wants to create a site or implement community elements into its existing site and comes to KickApps for help. What are the first steps you take in assisting them?
A) The KickApps platform is designed to be largely self service. It’s designed to remove barriers to entry for our customers who want to add community functionality, video and content syndication using Widgets. If our customers have design and development resources it’s very easy for our customers to be up and running quickly. Our developer site has a lot of content in the form of tutorials and best practices that help our customers with the most common questions. There’s also a very active message board that is monitored by our support staff and developer community.
Having said all of that, teams or other sports properties who are seeking a very tightly customized, integrated solution but don’t necessarily have the design and development resources in house should work with us directly. While there are many steps in the process, at a high level, the first thing we would do is to really understand their existing community (b/c sports properties already have them!) and work together with them to determine what are the features and functionality that will be most relevant to that community. Second, we would scope out the project in depth (how it will look, feel, operate, etc.) so that the team was comfortable with the integration into their site. Finally, we would stand up the community in a matter of a few weeks utilizing our extensive ecosystem of partners capable of delivering slick, customizable community enabled sites.
Q) What are the biggest risks involved when a property decides to get involved in social networking?
A) The biggest risk may be to assume that just because you’ve built it ‘they’ will come. We advise our clients to start thinking early not just about the technical aspects of their community but also the programming and marketing dimensions as well. What will be featured on the site? How will they promote it?
Q) Are more of your clients in the sports or entertainment space? Or what type of client/industry do you think social networking works best for?
A) Our clients run the gamut of industries, however our highest profile and most successful clients to date have come from the sports and entertainment industries. These two industries are our main focus since the fan avidity and passion around sports and entertainment is extraordinary and fans are demanding the ability to interact online. Most of our clients already have a website and an audience. They add KickApps and social media to grow and increase engagement with that audience.
Q) What has been the response of advertisers to KickApps enabling web video on iPhones?
A) Clients have been very interested in the capability. As we’ve seen with the iPod, the iPhone looks to be a major game changer in that industry. Apple just announced that they’ve sold 1M iPhones. This is just the beginning. There isn’t a device out there that enables such a positive web experience. It’s very easy for our customers to support those users.
Q) Can you talk about how you are seeing widgets being used in sites powered by KickApps and what you think the biggest opportunity with widgets is?
A) Our Widgets are used in multiple ways. They can be used to syndicate content by embedding the Widget on any other site. Widgets are also the delivery vehicle for content, i.e. our video players are delivered as Widgets (which are embeddable). Finally, as a monetizable ad unit. As the Web 2.0 world evolves (both technology and business models) I think you’re going to see Widgets taking on a life of their own.
Q) What do you think the future holds for online communities? Is there room for another massive network like Facebook or will we see more smaller, niche networks begin to take users from the more general sites.
A) There’ll probably be a combination of the two. People have multiple interests but only have so much time in their day to really dedicate their attention. Think of it like a magazine subscription. Most people have a few based on their interests. You may subscribe to your local newspaper, but you’re not going to get all your information there. You’ll probably have a few different topically focused magazines you subscribe to. Facebook and the general interest networks will be a catchall for people. In Facebook’s case, a central place to socialize and meet up with friends. The niche sites will be an opportunity for people to drill deeper into topics of interest. For example, if you’re a car enthusiast, you may go to a site like Autobytel’s MyRide where you’ll find other enthusiasts and a lot of content about cars. At the end of day, people will likely end up with a handful in which they’ll invest their time.