Last week, Egg Japan, an organization known for assisting major Silicon Valley firms as they enter Japan, held a talk on how to gain users and fans. On hand to discuss how to build – and keep – user communities in Japan were community and public relations managers from Pinterest, Cookpad, Moi (creator of Twitcast), LinkedIn Japan, Zendesk, Evernote, TEDxTokyo, Uber Japan, and Airbnb Japan.
Take a look below for the five best lessons the panel imparted to the audience.
1. Create opportunities for peer recognition
Love of a product or service is enough to bring a community together, but not necessarily enough to sustain it. Peer recognition creates leaders and admired individuals within a community. The pursuit of peer recognition can enable a virtuous cycle where regular users become power users who then become known in the public sphere for their stature in the community. Think YouTubers, Ashton Kutcher (first Twitter user to one million followers), or must-follow Quora accounts.
Yuka Oishi (Pinterest) notes that her users love the repin function. Getting repins is an indication of peer recognition but Pinterest sweetens the deal by making sure anyone who clicks on a repinned image will be sent to the original user’s page, thereby increasing the likelihood that the individual can gain more fans.
Over at Cookpad, Ako Nakayama explains that they use weekly recipe contests to get their users more invested in the service. Coming up with 52 themes is no easy task though. Holidays are always reliable for generating good ideas but users can expect to see general themes like “best five minute recipe.”
2. Localize communication style
You might expect that it is ok to talk to early adopters and super fans in the breezy, casual style that typifies Silicon Valley conversations. Nakayama cautions against doing that. Cookpad believes that companies need to talk with local fans in the culturally appropriate manner. It expanded overseas from Japan via acquisitions so communication style is just left to the local teams.
Oishi agrees with that sentiment. “We are the overseas branch since the HQ is in America,” she says, explaining that her communication style had to change. While her colleagues in Silicon Valley can start emails with “Hey,” that style is hard to carry out in Japan where politeness is heavily emphasized. She consciously tries to walk a middle line. One compromise is introducing herself as “Yuka” in emails instead of “Oishi” as is standard for Japanese correspondence.
3. Your end-users are not the only priority
Rei Hasegawa (LinkedIn) and Shoko Yanagisawa (Zendesk) strongly believe that companies entering Japan must pay special attention to their own employee community as well. “You need employees to think of themselves as representatives of the company,” Hasegawa advises.
Each employee, especially in the early days of setting up a local office, is going to have an outsized public presence. Potential rivals and allies and users are going to see a lot of them so headquarters should keep those employees engaged as much as possible.
Yanagisawa finds talking honestly is a major component to that. “Whether it is internal or external communication, we value transparency,” she says. LinkedIn has the same straight-talk policy. It also facilitates opportunities for employees from a variety of teams to meet and learn from each other. “Connect people and make them succeed,” Hasegawa recommends.
Hiro Maeda (Beenos, left) moderates a discussion between Rei Hasegawa (LinkedIn, center) and Shoko Yanagisawa (Zendesk, right)
4. Facilitate organic growth through careful selection of early users
A company’s early users are the lifeblood of the organization. Their support and their money keep the ship afloat during turbulent times. Because of that it is important to grow your community from the right sources and to look after it closely.
Airbnb is still small in Japan but feels confident about its future. Why? “Guests who use Airbnb in Japan, give some of the highest ratings in the world regarding their desire to use it again. That is because of the quality of the Japanese hosts,” explains Yoshiaki Tatewaki.
Mika Ueno (Evernote) has had similar experiences in growing communities from scratch. She pulls double-duty as the community organizer for TEDxTokyo. The event has become one of the most successful TEDx events worldwide. Ueno credits it to her team’s careful selection of attendees from the first event. “A lot of people in the audience could just as easily become speakers,” she says.
5. Find the hidden value of your product
Growing the user community from early adopters is a major undertaking. Organic growth can have an enormous impact, but how do you stretch organically in multiple directions at once? Understand that the value of your product differs from person to person.
Keiko Kitao (Uber) notes that is why Uber engages in campaigns to deliver kittens or ice cream. It provides another way of viewing the usefulness of the service. In Japan, one campaign idea is to order an Uber to take you around Tokyo’s popular Christmas light displays.
Tatewaki at Airbnb has a similar approach. “I want to create a way for elderly Japanese to host people,” he says. He cited the story of a grandmother living in Tokyo who has extra rooms in her house since her kids have all moved out. Japan’s countryside has a wealth of natural beauty as well as an aging population. He sees potential for Airbnb to assist in revitalizing some economically depressed areas of the country through hosting and tourism.
This post 5 ways companies like Pinterest, LinkedIn, TED, and AirBnb build fan communities in Japan appeared first on Tech in Asia.
5 ways companies like Pinterest, LinkedIn, TED, and AirBnb build fan communities in Japan
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