by Josh Bernoff

In Groundswell we promised to invite you to join the discussion.

Our discussion forum is now up and running. We'd love your participation. We're kicking this off as a place where businesspeople can help solve each others' problems in creating, implementing, managing, and promoting social applications.

We've added some topics to start things off -- if you'd like to see more, comment there or on this post.

by Josh Bernoff

The community folks at Mzinga/Prospero have hired me to do a Webinar. It's free to attendees, and will cover community best practices.

If you're interested, sign up here. I'm looking forward to speaking with you.

It's Wednesday, 16 April, at 2:00 PM eastern time (11am pacific).

By Josh Bernoff

It’s a truism in the marketing world that you don’t, in general, talk about your competitors. The apotheosis of this was reached in those silly old soap commercials that compared the company’s product to “Brand X” which it beat hands down. As a consumer, your reaction was “who is this brand X? Of course you’re better than them – that could be anybody. Show me you’re better than the brand I actually use!”

In the social world, and especially among social technology Purists, the wisdom is the opposite. You’re supposed to stop pretending you have no competitors and talk about them whenever they do something interesting. My colleague Jeremiah Owyang (though he’s hardly a Purist) calls this one of the “impossible conversations” in the groundswell and explains that not talking about competitors is "welded deeply into nearly every corporate culture." 

Here’s my problem. One of the other sacred tenets we’re supposed to uphold in the groundswell is to “be authentic.” I strongly agree with this – pretending to be something that you’re not is a big mistake, because you will be found out, and there will be a backlash. But what if you authentically believe your company’s products are the best? Shouldn’t you say so? Why give props to the other guys?

This is real dilemma, especially as more corporations start building social strategies. It’s an archetypal example of the Purist/Corporatist spectrum, with the Purists holding up their competitors and the Corporatists saying “we’re not gonna give those other guys free publicity.”

As usual in these debates, I try to find an appropriate middle ground. And the principle here is “Don’t try to prohibit conversation about your competitors – you’ll lose out. But when speaking yourself, you don’t need to bring up the competition. Just don’t always behave as if they don’t exist."

For example: you run a community of your customers and similar people. People in your community insist on talking about your competitor’s product. What should you do? Certainly, don’t shut them off – they’ll just bug out and talk about the competition somewhere else. Instead, join the conversation, and respectfully offer your perspective.

You write a blog. Should you blog about the competitor’s products or announcements? You don’t have to, but if everyone is talking about it, you might be better off. That’s what HP blogger Eric Kintz did in response to Jonathan Schwartz’ blog post about HP.

Should you twitter about the other guy? Again, only if you’re trying to make a point of your own. 

I agree with Jeremiah (I asked him about this in an email) that talking about the competition shows confidence. People will respect that. But if you really think their announcement isn’t worth commenting on – and nobody else is talking about it either, then don’t bring it up. But if they are talking about it, you'll look silly if you don't give them credit for what they do well, then articulate your own position/

And I think that’s a position people in real companies can live with.

by Josh Bernoff

Join me for a talk about Groundswell and how to build and run a successful community, sponsored by Lithium. Sign up here. The Webinar is at 1:00 eastern, 10:00 pacific.

Many companies use Lithium communities for Supporting their customers, one of the five key objectives we cite for groundswell strategy.

Lithium is featured in our book including the incredible story of the support forum that saved Christmas when an earthquake in Asia cut many of the support phone lines for router-maker Linksys. We also quote Lithium CEO Lyle Fong on how recognition systems are crucial in making communities successful.

Should be an interesting online event.

by Josh Bernoff

Have a good look at Barack Obama's website. Forget whether you agree with his politics or if you agree he ought to be the Democratic nominee for president. Just ask yourself -- what can I learn from this?

(For the record, I'm not a supporter of any candidate right now -- I'm just observing community strategy.)