From Zero to Community: Practical Advice for Growing and Nurturing an Online Community

I will be on a webcast tomorrow, September 17, 2009 at 3PM Eastern with Aaron Strout, CMO at Powered, and Rachel Happe, Principal and Founder, The Community Roundtable (@theCR). We will be presenting: From Zero To Community: Practical Advice for Growing and Nurturing an Online Community.

Rachel will be presenting her Community Maturity Model and community management best practices. I will be discussing our Sharpie - Uncap Your Creativity, Graco Baby - From The Heart and Rubbermaid - Adventures in Organizaton communities and social networking efforts.

Hope you can attend.

The Smartest Big Brands In Social Media

We are honored that our Graco Baby Products brand was called out as one of the 10 Smartest Big Brands in Social Media on Mashable - February 6, 2009 - by the author: Samir Balwani. Our Graco social media efforts specifically related to Flickr community building around our products was called out. We are very proud of our Graco Baby Products social media efforts. These efforts are being led by Kim Lefko, VP of Global Marketing, and Lindsay Lebresco, Public Relations and Social Media Manager. There are also several other Graco team members actively involved with the program including Karen Hartzell.

In addition to our Flickr program, we also have a Graco Baby branded blog, car seat microsite titled "Ready For The Road Ahead," and several Twitter accounts: GracoBaby, LindsayLebresco, and KarenHartzell. Recently (December 19, 2008) we launched a new, redesigned Graco Baby branded website.

It takes several dedicated and passionate people to bring these programs to life and drive them to success. It also takes the support and guidance of agencies that work with us as partners. I want to call out two of the agencies that have actively supported these efforts: Converseon and the LBi Atlanta office.

I also want to call out another organization that has helped educate us on Social Media Marketing and Interactive Marketing: Forrester Research. They have some of the best analysts and researchers in the business and are wonderfully knowledgeable. They are also well connected throughout the industry and are great at networking you with peers and high quality agencies, consulting services and technology partners.

Finally, if you are looking for a place to start with social media marketing, get the book Groundswell by Josh Bernoff of Forrester and Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group.