6 Concepts That Matter

Don’t be distracted by any book with a focus on Social Media.

Instead focus on concepts that matter for building communities. Here are 6 of the most important.

1. Sense of Community. Chavis and McMillan’s brilliant article about developing a Sense of Community. It can be implemented as a practical framework to creating a community. Easy-reading version.
2. Dunbar’s Number. What impact does different size groups have upon each element? Why you should slowly get to 9 members then try to reach 25 as quickly as possible. What’s the arguments against letting your community grow as quickly as possible? See Dunbar’s paper, Christopher Allen’s great work and Lee Bryant.
3. Motivation. What motivates people? What’s the different between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Which should you use? What’s going to provoke members to join, participate and invite friends to your community? Skip Maslow and read Albert Bandura on self-efficacy, David McClelland’s N’ach, N-Pow and N-Affil, and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory.
4. Game Systems. How can you keep your community fun? What feedback systems do you have? How can members collect points? How are you igniting primal responses? Read Amy Jo Jim on the application of Game Mechanics.
5. Self-Verification. What do members really want from others? What do they think of yourself? How can you predict the reactions of events upon members? Read Self-verification.
6. Social Psychology. What is group process? How do communities form and split? How do group members influence each other? What are the key stages of communication? How do you identify major influencers? It’s a huge topic. Read around: Social facilitation, group development and group psychology.

At least half of these links are from Wikipedia, it’s the best entry point on a topic. But dig deeper.

Comments

[Martin Reed]

That's a lot of reading! I am with you when it comes to Wikipedia - you start out on one page, reading up on one topic and after an hour you find you have around 20 tabs open!

I love the fact you constantly reiterate that online community is based on the same principles as offline community.

- Martin

[Scott Drummond]

Hey Rich.

I'd echo Martin's point that I think it's great that you don't distinguish all the time between on- and offline community.

I also love this post - full of useful content and actually incredibly good timing for me too.

I have just added a group discussion to the LinkedIn group Online Community Manager entitled: Essential Reading for Community Managers.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1173397

There have been four responses so far, but I'd love to re-post your great list here up on the group if you're up for that.

If you'd rather I pointed people to your blog, that's cool too. Just let me know which you'd prefer.

Very important that the group reads this post I think.

[Jack Ricchiuto]

There is a wealth of links and sources here, very appreciative and will pass them along.

My friend George Nemeth and I, who coincidentally have the two oldest blogs in Cleveland's thriving blog and tweet spheres, did a book this summer on building community: http://www.intentionalmodel.com. If you'd like a complimentary PDF, let me know, thanks much.

[Jennifer Brooks]

Thanks for the wealth of information ... this post reiterates that the most effective (and fun!) communities are created through dedicated relationship building!

Cheers,
Jennifer

[Nick]

Really interesting post. Thanks for the pointers, I have more stuff to read now :) I especially liked the link with game systems, I'm convinced that even in "serious" communities, there has to be some sort of a fun/play factor, albeit hidden sometimes.

Thanks!
Nick.