Given the meltdown on Wall Street, there are probably more eyeballs trained on the Wall Street Journal's web site this week than usual. How fortuitous, since it unveiled its new design on Tuesday. Its rival, New York Times did a fair and balanced review of it and focused a lot on the design itself.
It also did a nice analysis of its new community component. I won't summarize it here, but rather offer my impressions and opinions how it is unique and how companies should think about it from a social media/marketing perspective. First off, what is unique about WSJ's social network is the fact that it is limited to paid subscribers. As the Times points out, this could have the effect of boosting paid subscribers in order to get access to the networking that takes place.
At the core of the community are two dimensions -- discussion forums and an "answers" section. The forums allow anyone to create a group, join a group and then interact with peers on topics related to that group. For example, there is an "Information Security" group within the Technology category and IT sub-category that is for discussion of topics related to "Information Security, Information Technology Governance and Technology Regulatory Compliance." Right now there is one discussion topic with zero replies (although it is the first day). So while there is an opportunity for an executive of a company in the information security space to join this group and interact with potential buyers, the fact that it is so open-ended may limit the size of the audience for many groups.
The "answers" section is nearly identical to LinkedIn Answers, where community members pose questions to their peers for advice and information. Looking again at the Technology category and IT sub-category, one the first questions posed asks for feedback on a new HP notebook. There are no responses as of now, but someone from HP could monitor the answers that come in and then offer information that may help that person with his decision.
There also is a section to make connections with other members of the community. From my perspective, WSJ's new community site doesn't stand out from what's already available to business people. Group discussion forums are the oldest form of social media, and nearly every publication offers them for their readers. LinkedIn's Answers is fairly well-established. Many publications, from Fast Company to BusinessWeek to CIO offer community sites, so the potential here is for another form of social network fatigue to hinder the success of these efforts. One advantage Wall Street Journal has, however, is a large and very well-established readership that only could grow because of this.
That said, as with most social media and marketing opportunities, the best advice is to monitor and listen to this new community. Determine if there is conversation taking place related to your market space. If so, spend time determining what is being discussed, who is involved in the discussion and what gives that particular community the most value. At that point, it would be time to engage that community, but in a way that is going to be welcoming to them, ie. helpful and informative.
