The NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ) is an American stock exchange. It is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities trading market in the United States, with approximately 3,700 companies and corporations listed (Wikipedia as revised by company).
If you've been to Times Square in New York city, you've probably seen the studio and watched interviews and events from behind the glass. [image Wikicommons]
Starting today, you can become a more integral part of the conversation on the NASDAQ Community. John Jacobs, CMO, NASDAQ OMX, answered a few questions about the project.
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What's the strategy behind creating a NASDAQ Community? What are your goals? Education? Interaction?
John: The strategy behind the creation of the Community is to increase our audience’s engagement with NASDAQ.com, NASDAQ OMX the company, and other audience members to further establish our brand as a technology leader and information authority.
By syndicating compelling content from a variety of industry experts and empowering our audience to interact with that content through ratings, discussions, and personalization, we hope to educate Community members and solidify NASDAQ.com’s position as an unbiased and authoritative financial information hub.
How will you measure success?
John: We are measuring success on three metrics: 1) number of community members, 2) growth of page views, and 3) growth of advertising sales in the community area.
We’ve always prioritized new features and enhancements by listening to feedback from our audience, so that will continue to be a valuable way for us to determine what we’re doing right and what we need to improve.
The interface is uncannily like the one of the regular site. The top and bottom navigation is almost identical. Was it user-tested for the community? Will people confuse the two or is the plan to transition to the community eventually?
John: The NASDAQ Community is an integral part of the existing NASDAQ.com site, which is why we chose to create a seamless interface. The standalone Community area is accessible through the navigation on every page of the NASDAQ.com site.
Over the next few weeks we will surface stock rating & content modules from the Community on key pages throughout the existing NASDAQ.com website.
How are you going to seed the conversation about it? Have you invited specific groups to participate? What are you relying on to spread the word? PR, word of mouth?
John: We are spreading he world by reaching out to our existing audience through in-house promotion, Twitter, Facebook, PR and email newsletters. We will implement Facebook Connect to make registration simple for people who already have a Facebook account.
To promote interest outside our current audience, we will conduct display advertising campaigns on select websites, pay-per-click ad campaigns, and direct outreach to key influencers on Twitter and other communities. There will also be press releases and joint conference engagements with Ektron, our social CMS platform, and Ironworks, the consulting firm who helped us build the NASDAQ Community.
Is community going to bring about the further democratization of financial information and investments?
John: The question implies that to a large extent democratization of financial information has already happened and I think our efforts to engage our audience and provide them with the tools to interact and express their opinions is an acknowledgment of that.
However, people will continue to look to high quality, trusted information sources like NASDAQ.com to filter the high volume of financial information on the web.
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Wearing the promotional hat, I like the planned integration of tactics in service of getting the word out. From a marketing as creation standpoint, I'm thinking about the balance between engagement, on demand, and call to action. A good step in the right direction.
Further, I do wonder if NASDAQ OMX the company will eventually open the site to members of the community to become contributors vs. empowered audience. Brand communities don't exist - each member and his/her online presence and needs are at the center of this conversation.
What are your thoughts about this move?
Valeria - Thank you for highlighting this example. Two things really excite me about what they are doing:
1. Investors are largely an "underserved" audience when it comes to social media. The conversations around social media, and the solid case studies that we have to learn from are almost exclusively marketing focused. This presents a cool way that companies can interact with investors.
2. Along the same lines, we don't have many B2B and social media case studies to learn from. NASDAQ presents another good learning opporunity in that regard.
Since some of my job is directly related to investor relations, I can't wait to see how this community site unfolds. Thanks for highlighting again!
Posted by: Chuck Hemann | October 25, 2009 at 08:57 AM
Chuck,
Indeed, B2B and social media, although they go very well together, are still either not documented or just in the case of a couple of very large organizations, in some areas. It will be interesting to see what develops. I used to be more involved with financial services and markets and will be keeping an eye on the NASDAQ Community.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | October 26, 2009 at 07:19 PM