[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]

I often advise my clients to keep blogs human, conversational, and in context for customers --it's the opposite of what marketing has been in the past.

Yet team blogs are a unique beast, it's a great way to show a lot of different types of ideas from different analysts, but at the same time, it's difficult to hear or see individual personalities. 

A reader recently mentioned to me that it was hard to tell who was publishing specific posts on our blog, so we're getting nice and friendly on each of our posts by showing our picture, and also spelling out who the author was, and a link to our related research.

Profile pics and links are great and all, but we're not done trying to write a great blog.  In the near future, we're going to find out more about what you want from this blog (as researchers, we love to get feedback) so we can continue to improve, so stay tuned for that.

[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]

Left: One of the 5 diagrams from the report: Successful online communities experience the following stages.

This is my debut, my first report published with my name as the lead is now published.  I've been getting a few emails from clients asking me for when this report will be live, so I'm happy to report this first of two reports is now live.

I spent a few months researching and preparing for this two-piece report series. I interviewed over 17 people to find out the commonalities between successful communities.

Here's the executive summary :

Online Community Best Practices

Communities Are A Powerful Tool, As Long As You Put Members' Needs First

[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]

A Widget Case Study

Yesterday, I gave a Forrester teleconference on Facebook as a ready-made marketing program.  I gave a few examples of success, and the audience was hungry for success metrics and numbers.  One of the case examples was about rebranding an application/widget in this case, Rock You's vampire application. 

Click To Play

Thinking of deploying a widget in Facebook or other online community? First, you'll need to know the three different types that can be deployed. Rodney Rumford shares with us the difference between widgets, applications, and canvas pages. 

What should Interactive Marketers do before deploying widgets? He shares his strategic viewpoint that aligns very well with the Forrester POST methodology.  Find out how widgets can be used for interactive social games resulting in an engaging communities around a brand.

I was speaking at a conference regarding web communities, and while in the audience, I listened very carefully to the speakers, some of which I follow up with for research interviews.  These videos are turning into a supplement that glean the highlights I learn from the research interviews. I'd love your feedback on these mini-interviews, are they helpful? 

[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]