Richard Millington is a true friend of The Social Conference. He’s been with us in 2011 to talk about community building and this year Richard will explain how organizations can use proven principles of social sciences to increase the level of activity in your community.

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee, an Online Community Consultancy and the Pillar Summit, a community management training course. He has helped clients including Oracle, Novartis, The United Nations, Amazon, Lego, GreenPeace, EMC apply social science principles to develop thriving online communities. Richard is also the author of Buzzing Communities: How To Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities.

To better get to know Richard we have asked him five questions about social business.

 

What do you think are the biggest challenges companies are facing today in the field of social business?

I think we need a dose of healthy skepticism. Few organizations have achieved real benefits from social business. Overwhelming it’s the fundamentals (usually the quality of products/services being sold) which has the biggest impact. The biggest challenge facing social business is simply proving that it merits all the attention it gets. For some organizations, it can be a huge distraction.

 

Our visitors are professionals and managers with responsibility for social strategy, communication, PR, HR and marketing. What would be the biggest key take away for them after attending your presentation?

People that attend my webinar will learn how to apply proven social science  tactics to increase activity in online communities. They will know what has worked for centuries to get people more involved in groups. They will learn to stop worrying so much about technology and embrace the proven psychology that gets people more engaged in communities.

 

What other presentations at the conference are you looking forward to and why?

I’m really looking forward to Peter Kim’s presentation. I’ve been a fan of his for years. His work on the ‘ego-trap’ many years ago really got a lot of attention. I’m also looking forward to Nathalie’s presentation on influence and psychology. I expect she’ll do a deep dive into the theory behind what works.

 

What is your biggest social media success and what was your biggest #fail (what did you learn)

I’m not a big fan of social media. My biggest community success was probably with an organization which made gun holsters. By connecting the community to the people that develop the holsters, we were able to create and sell the best-selling holsters this organization ever made. It generated millions in profit.

My biggest failure was when I agreed to manage a golf community. I have no interest in golf, I was just getting started in the business. I simply couldn’t connect with members and my lack of passion showed. I learnt that you have to have a community manager that’s very passionate about the topic. I also learnt that I shouldn’t be managing communities on behalf of clients, but teaching clients how to manage their communities.

 

Is there anything that you would like to ask our visitors?

I’d love to ask how many of them are building genuine communities? How many know the ROI of their community efforts? How many apply social sciences to their community efforts?

We want to thank Richard for his openness. You can leave your remarks and answers to his question in the comment section below.