This paper deals with actual problem of investigation the usage of online communities in the company marketing activities. Based on a formal description of characteristics, data on online communities and discussions and their analysis results, an information model of a community for online marketing has been built, which serves as the basis for a database structure for accounting of information flows in online communities. The task of determination of indicators of relevance and importance of online communities marketing was proposed. The use of tproposed indicators in solving community selection tasks for representatives' participation of the company was considered. The usage of the database provisioning in the process of creating, verifying and distributing marketing messages in online communities was suggested. By formalizing and computerizing the online communication process proposed methods in this work helps defined threats in discussions and violations of online rules and traditions.
Modern companies and organizations often use online communities to share marketing information about a company and its products. In this case, the active involvement of the marketer in online communities involves work, which relates to the accounting and analysis of online communities and their content. By formalizing and computerizing the communication process, you can avoid undesirable risks for the company. Threats may arise from unqualified discussions or violations of online rules and traditions.
Among the typical tasks, the key ones with regard to the activities in online communities are the choice of the strategy for using communities in marketing; selection of online communities for certain activities; analysis of the effectiveness of marketing information flows in the virtual environment.
A significant aspect of effective online marketing in an information-intensive environment of the online communities is the use of the modern information technology solutions, user-orianted mathematical services and software. These services process the large volumes of data in real-time.
The main up-to-date investigations of marketing activities in online community are
divided into the following fields:
information retrieval and web content analysis [
Database for accounting for marketing communications For the full accounting of marketing communications in online communities, we use an expanded Information Flows Database. The database consists of the following components: Community Database is used for basic information about online communities; Discussion Database is used for information about discussions in online communities; Service Database is used for accounting of service information.
Depending on the functional duties and the area of responsibility, data bases are filled by specialists in different workplaces of the system complex. This process is gradual and continuous if the activities of business representatives in online communities are constant. Let us consider the structure of each component of the extended database. 2.1
Accounting for online communities The online Communities Database is used for accounting of the online communities covered by the company's marketing activities, their technical and statistical characteristics.
Database filling is performed in the process of performing tasks: search and account of relevant online communities based on the elected strategy; accounting and analyzing rules, statistics and semantic characteristics of relevant online communities, keeping them topicality; forming and accounting of standard for evaluating the importance of the online community in terms of specific marketing activities (advertising, public action, positioning of the site of the company, work with clients, etc.); selection of important online communities in accordance with defined standards for marketing activities.
Community Rules - User Profile Community Rules - Posting
Using real name, last name Using a nickname Using the Latin alphabet Using Cyrillic Using the site address Using a business or product name Validity of avatars in a user's signature Avatar size Admissibility in the signature of graphic images Admissibility in signature links Maximum number of lines in a signature Maximum number of characters in a signature Online Community PK
Community Description Website management system
Markup language FK1 Community type ID Admissibility of publication of advertising materials Affordability of attached Files Maximum size of attachments Allowed types of attachments Maximum size of image objects Allowed types of graphic objects Allowed links Admissibility of referrals
Language of communication
Comment Community Rules - Working languages
Types of online communities
Comment
Community statistics
Number of participants Number of discussions Number of posts Number of external links Number of views of posts Frequency of discussions Frequency of posts in discussions Approximate daily attendance
Recommendations for work - Style of discussion
Optimal message size Feasibility of using promotional graphic objects Advisability of using advanced formatting Optimum number of links in the message Admissibility of advanced site citation Optional UserName
Special linguistic characteristics (slang, etc.).
Database for accounting data and discussion characteristics In addition to the characteristics of online accounting communities, discussions that contain valuable marketing information and reflect the activities of business representatives in online communities are also a subject for discussion. Discussion database is used for accounting for discussion information. The result is: research and recording relevant discussions; accounting for technical and semantic characteristics of relevant discussions. On Fig. 2 is an ER diagram of the "Discussion" Database.
Technical description of Discussions PK,FK1 Discussion ID PK Characteristic Date
Number of posts in the discussion Number of views Date of the last post in the discussion Date of the last view Number of external links Average daily intake of posts
Average daily views intensity
Author
E-mail Autor's site Discussion PK
FK2 Author FK3 Discussion type ID Online Communities
Discussion type
Comment
Post PK
Discussion ID FK1 Post ID
Post content
Post Date FK2 Author
Date of the last view Semantic characteristics of the discussion
Rate of the discussion Reactions to marketing messages
Completeness of the discussion.
Database for accounting of business information Singly from the chosen strategy for using online communities, for the effective work of the marketer, all the results of the analysis of communities and discussions must be recorded in the databases and actively used in future work.
This especially concern with the information of the relevance and importance of the community and the data needed to evaluate them.
In Fig. 3 is an ER diagram of the database in part of accounting for the relevance and importance of online communities and discussions.
Compliance with OC and MT topics PK,FK1 Community ID PK,FK2 Marketing term ID
Comment
Marketing term Group PK MP Group ID
MT Group Name
Comment PK
Marketing term (MT) Marketing term ID Marketing Name
Comment FK1 Marketing term Group ID
Relevance of D and MT PK,FK2 Marketing term ID PK,FK1 Discussion ID
Comment
Community relevancy PK,FK1 Community ID PK Analysis Date
Community importance PK,FK1 Community ID PK,FK2 Task ID
PK Analysis Date
Comment
Online community (OC) PK Community ID
Marketing activity PK Task ID
Description Begin Date End Date Comment Factors of community importance PK Factor ID
Factor of discussion importance PK Factor ID
Discussion iimportance PK,FK2 Community ID PK,FK1 Task ID PK Analysis Date
Discussion (D)
Discussion ID
Discussion relevance PK,FK1 Discussion ID PK Analysis Date
Comment In general, all the activities of the marketer, the activities he took part in, the results of the analysis and evaluation of the online content of online communities should also be recorded in the database. This will also add transparency and validity to the - process of making decision of marketing in online communities.
It is also important to accumulate and save the information related to process of finding data and creating content for online communities. Particulary, following information is a subject for accounting: multiple marketing terms for search communities and discussions; types of marketing activities and types of community outreach activities; global search engine query templates; regular expression templates for parse the content of the pages; options for assessing the importance of online communities and discussions; templates for typical posts.
In addition, in this database, it is advisable to account the distribution of executors on siteswhich are important for marketing online communities.
An important moment in the process of filling the database "Service Information" is to form comments about the conditions of obtaining and using practical experience: when a particular query was used, template or set of parameters, etc. This data can be served as a knowledge base for contractors and experts. 3
Architecture of the Complex of Automation of Company Marketing Activity in Online Communities The software for support the company marketing activity in online communities contains the following components: "Searcher" is use for search online communities and discussions; "Analyst" is use for analyzing the information flows in online communities; "Online Marketer" is use for interaction of the marketer with online communities; "Coordinator" is use for organizing and coordinating activities of marketers in communities; “Manager” is use for strategic planning and overall process control. Figure 3 shows the functionality and basic information flows of the system. Depending the chosen strategy for using online communities in your marketing activities, some features may not be involved. In this case of an analytical strategy, all activities are limitedfor finding relevant and important online communities, monitoring and analyzing their content, and therefore the functionality of "Coordinator" and "Online Marketer" is not required. In case of limited human resources one specialist can work in several workplaces, provided the functionality does not violate the logic of the system in a whole. Particulary, it's possible to combine the following features: “Searcher” and “Analyst”; “Analyst” and “Coordinator”; “Manager” and “Coordinator”.
However, combining a “Coordinator” and an “Online Marketer” by same person can lead to abuse on her part and, as a consequence, a poor coordination of the activities of marketers in online communities.
The search of online communities and discussions is carried on the early stages of organizing the company's marketing activities in virtual environments. In the future, part of work is about monitoring selected online communities and discussions. In addition, when marketing topic changes or need to be in another (possibly larger) set of online communities, there is a need for repeated or expanded community searches and discussions that can be further used to retrieve and disseminate information.
The Searcher provides the following main features: accounting of primary and adjuvant information, including: accounting of the multiple marketing terms that are searched; formation and accounting of search query templates; rating of the relevance of found by marketing communities terms; accounting for relevant online communities and their characteristics; assessment of the relevance of the discussions found; consideration of relevant discussions and their characteristics; updating statistics of online communities and discussions; monitor company web-sites and online communities to identify suspicious activity and likely information attacks on the company.
Determination of
marketing strategy, key metrics and performance
criteria
Analyzing the content of relevant online communities Analysis onlinecommunities
WWW
Manager Analyst
Coordinator
Analyzing the use of online communities in marketing
Organizing marketing activities in online communities
Interaction of representatives in online communities Searcher
Online marketer - 1
Online marketer - 2
Online marketer - N ...
WWW Services
Site access logs
Онлайн-спільноти Онлайн-спільноти Online-communities The analyst processes the content of online communities and performs the following functions: formation and analysis of multiple marketing terms; analysis of online community statistics and discussions; determining the criteria for selecting important online communities and discussions; identifying the importance of online communities and discussions; selection of important online communities and discussions to accomplish specific marketing tasks; analyzing the activity of competitors in online communities and taking them into account in the planning of the company activity; аnalyzing critical messages in online communities and identifying problem areas in their business.
An important function of the analyst is to analyze information flows on company sites and relevant communities and to identify threats for organization that arise from unqualified and malicious activity in online communities.
In case of confirmation of the information attack on the company in social media, the analyst sends the necessary information to the Coordinator to plan the counteraction measures and their further implementation by the online marketer.
Guided by the strategy chosen by the management, the analyst assesses the sufficiency of the many found relevant online marketing and statistical data. Next, the specialist analyzes the importance of online community and discussion characteristics for marketing tasks and determines the weighting factors that willbe used for evaluation the online community's importance for discussions and discussions.
An online marketer uses the “Information Streams” database to perform the following functions: forming and posting new messages, comments and replies to requests from users on community sites; monitoring discussions in online communities; interaction with the administration of online communities; accounting and analysis of their own marketing communications; analyzing the reaction of other online community members to actions of marketer. The efficiency and transparency of the communication process and it independence from the contractors are determined by the completeness of accounting of the activities of marketers in the database "Information flows" and the activity of using their data (characteristics of online communities, supporting information, etc).
The coordinator provides support for the following features: analyzing the effectiveness of using online communities in marketing; determining restrictions on the activities of marketers in online communities; ensuring the best distribution of marketers across multiple communities; assessing the effectiveness of marketers in their assigned communities; coordinating of marketers' engagement with online communities. "Coordinator" and "Analyst" generate analytic data to evaluate the effectiveness of the online community's communication capabilities to disseminate marketing information and consumer communication. Analyzing the effectiveness of communications, combined with the cost analysis of business representatives in online communities, allows management to review the strategy of using virtual environments, to plan marketing activities and resources for their implementation. 4
Conclusions Computer support for marketing activities in a virtual environment can be done using a database that takes into account the search results of relevant and important online communities and the information flows of the company's interactions with the community. The strategy of using online communities determines the functionality of the system and the list of tasks for marketers, during the execution of which information content of the database is formed. The proposed database model can be the basis for building a knowledge base for communications in online communities. The implementation of the complex of automation supports the planning of marketing actions and decisions making to coordinate the activity of marketers and increases the efficiency of using virtual communities in marketing.