Paul Schneider

Socious, Inc.

Paul is a Co-Founder at Socious, an online community software company. Socious creates customer communities for companies, associations and user groups. To learn more about Socious, visit to www.socious.com.

6 Non-Tech Tips for Creating a Private Online Community for Customers

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Posted on 2012-10-23

With more and more companies looking to create a private online community, many executives are on the lookout for the best way to go about it.

Surprisingly, many organizations think that the success of their customer community is solely based on the technology they choose. The truth is that there are a lot of non-technical items that can make or break your online community.

In a recent interview on Socious’ web show, ProCommunity, social business consultant, Jeff Marmins discussed some of the important things that executives need to understand before they focus on the online community platform in order to create a...

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4 Must-Have Features for Every User Group Online Community

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Posted on 2012-08-28

A company’s user groups are an important part of their customer management strategy. The benefits can be profound - from enhancing support to building client and corporate relationships to differentiating a company in a competitive market.

One of the most important elements of a user group is their private online community. However, there are numerous social features in online community software and many companies don’t know which features they should include in their user group community to create value for customers and keep members engaged.

In a recent interview with veteran user group executive,...

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5 Hard Questions to Ask Before Ditching Your Private Online Community

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Posted on 2012-04-12

According to a multitude of reports, social business growth is only ramping up in 2012 and will continue to increase over the next several years. However, some organizations are debating whether or not to scrap their private online community. This trend is especially prevalent in the association industry where resource-strapped membership organizations set up basic private social networks expecting them to organically sprout into thriving online communities.

Are You Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater?

With participation in online communities being a strategic imperative in many industries, most organizations would be remiss to say...

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10 Elements of Leading B2B Social Business Software – Part 2

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Posted on 2011-11-22

Having recently returned from 4 days of meeting innovators and listening to great content about building community and the social enterprise at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, we wanted to share with you the 10 qualities most important to a leading B2B social business platform. Don’t miss part one of this article for characteristics 1-5.

Characteristic #6: Analysis is Key

Integrated analytics is a key component to a successful social platform since an online community is a constantly evolving entity. Having a good grasp on which information and parts of...

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10 Characteristics of Leading B2B Enterprise Social Platforms - Part 1

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Posted on 2011-11-17

At the end of the summer, Forrester released the Q3 Wave Report for Enterprise Social Platforms. Though the report highlighted the players you would expect, the lead author, Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz, said the report was not a straight ranking but rather a "measurement of breadth of capabilities." He went on to make the point that, “The catch is that features considered essential to one enterprise can be irrelevant to another.”

Therein lays the fallacy of “best of” lists. As social technology platforms try to become the defacto standard, the value companies need from a social platform continues to grow more vast and become more diverse.

As companies and social business experts work to determine what should be included in these packages, I thought it would be helpful to discuss the 10 qualities most important to a leading B2B...

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How to Set Online Community Goals & Metrics [Quick Concept]

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Posted on 2011-10-06

In business, there are times where you should focus on the end of the race before you think about the beginning. Planning an online customer or member community is one of those times. There are many different ‘flavors’ of online community software and social business platforms. Though the tools and methods you use are largely determined by what you want to accomplish with them, the role measurement and analytics play in the success of your private online community is always very important.

Online Community Metrics are Business Metrics

You hear a lot of comments by people who are looking at adding a private online community to their marketing mix asking, “What do I measure?” or “How do I know when I am successful?”

The answer is, what are you measuring now? Or what do you consider a marketing and operations success now? Online communities and social...

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Is the 90-9-1 Rule for Online Community Engagement Dead? [Data]

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Posted on 2011-08-31
There is a rule that has floated around in the social media world for quite some time called the Rule of Participation Inequality or the 90-9-1 Rule. This rule states:

User participation in an online community more or less follows the following 90-9-1 ratios:
- 90% of users are Lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
- 9% of users are Commenters. They edit or rate content but don’t create content of their own.
- 1% of users create content and are Creators.
This rule gives both hope and discouragement to organizations that are creating online communities. It gives hope to companies and associations who launched an online community and are not seeing any business-level benefits since they believe that 1% engagement is acceptable. It also discourages organizations from...
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Paul Schneider

Are You Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater?

Characteristic #6: Analysis is Key