Nina Card of Scottrade joined the Strategy track this afternoon to share insight about Scotttrade's Online Community (as well as some of the challenges of faced by social media practitioners in the Financial Services sector).

Launched in 2008, Scotttrade's Online Community (or STOC) now has 49000+ members and fetaures group discussions, blogs, video, file sharing, education activities and more. A customer who is in the community is statistically 28% more valuable then peers who are not community members.

The challenge was, how to engage within the community. The STOC approach to engagement has five steps. Despite the specificity of the industry, STOC's solution is applicable to many business sectors as a guide to engagement.

Steps to Engagement:
1. Welcome
- A welcome email
- A quick start guide
- Personal welcome message
- Invites to specific discussions

2. Watch
- For uploaded content (photo, etc.)
- For blog posts, interaction

3. Engage
- Learn more about users
- Start a conversation that appeals to them
- Lead them to hot or controversial topics
- Make introductions to like-minded members
- Look for VIPs, give them homework, special tasks

4. Encourage
- Validate and encourage new comers

5. Celebrate
- Celebrate the 1st post, and the 1,000th post
- Have a recognition program
- Let them know they're an important part of the community
- Tangible rewards

SocialC20 Attendees can download Nina's slides from crowdvine here.