How Do You Build An Online Community?

My former boss, who reads this blog, asked me how to actually build online communities yesterday.

Good question.

You start by identifying what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it by. You figure out what resources you have and who you want to reach. Find a metric to measure success by.

Then you focus on the people you want to reach. What do they value? Identify your first members. What are the topical issues here? Who are the big influencers? What technology do members use? What are their personalities and motivations for participating online?

This saves you from firing blanks.

Now put this together and answer what type of online community will it be? What’s the big appeal? What do members need from the interface? How soon can you launch? Who is going to build the interface, and when?

When you’re ready, launch it. Drop personal e-mails to your early members before you launch. Build relationships with the influencers you’ll need later. Introduce members to each other. Seed content some early content, and give new members clear actions to take. Develops tactics to keep growing internally.

Next you begin developing a sense of community.

Encourage members to invest time in your community, create boundaries. Shine the spotlight on high-achieving members. Ensure everyone can influence the group, in at least small way. Offer rewards to motivate members. Introduce members to each other, set tasks and celebrate milestones. Treat top members much better. Get some press coverage. Continue reaching out to members to join. Recruit and train volunteers to take on your workload.

Comments

[Brian Hsi]

Nice tips, thanks! I'm wondering if there's another series of questions we should be asking though. For example, are destination communities relevant? Put another way, does X mark the spot for community?

[Paul C]

Hi Richard,
I have tagged you for a blogosphere chain post. I hope you can take part. Wordle has commercial as well as educational applications.

I look forward to your posts.

[Peter Gold]

Rich

We conduct internal social media audits of both Exec Team and potential community members so we can 'predict' a bit more.

Peter

[Peter Bekel]

Great post, good ideas. Thanks!

[Tom Harle]

Really good stuff, thanks

[Kevin Cesarz]

Thanks a ton, Richard.
A lot of great information - clear, orderly, and succinct. I am trying to develop a basic business plan to help local companies as a social media manager here in Toledo, Ohio. This really helped me. I had been in the newspaper business for many years (terminated recently because of the bad economy) and always expressed disappointment with our one-way communication strategy. An exciting time to actually build conversations and communities. They were there all along but newspapers ignored them to their own peril.