Your Dream Community

Most businesses trying to create communities are deluded.

They assume they matter far more to their customers than they do. They assume people want to hear about their latest news and products. Most fundamentally, they assume people want to talk about them, that’s horribly wrong.

If you made a list, right now, of a community you would love to join, it might look like this:

• It will be a community about {your interest}
• It will have a few hundred members, possibly a thousand. Not too few, not too many.
• You will have fun, conversations wont be too serious not restricted
• You will get to make new friends.
• There will be events that you can attend.
• You will learn interesting stuff.

Can you spot the problem? There is nothing in here about products, businesses, crafting messages for supporters to rally behind and being seduced by a business.

You’re looking through the wrong lens. The lens through which you see yourself is very different from the lens through which your customers see you.

Perform this task before creating a community. Brainstorm what a dream community would looks like for you. Make it about your personal hobby. Now create a community like that.

Comments

[Michal Batistich]

Rich,
I think you're spot on.
After working on market research commuities for the past year I have come to the same conclusion. Customer communities should focus on the customer and their interests. Common sense right! It seems that, as they say, common sense isn't that common.

We have found that research communities that have been populated by online research panels and that have not been fed valuable content have performed poorly.

At the moment we're spending some time re-thinking our strategy with a focus on advocacy, purpose and creating real value in the product context. I think if we can serve value to the community first we might just get insights in return.

I'd ike to hear you views and opinions on research communities. Fail by definition or research nirvana?

[James Cherkoff]

My favourite example of a poorly conceived community feature was from Walmart. The world's largest retailer tried to launch a social networking site called The Hub. Only ten weeks after the big launch, the site was shut down after a poor reception. Why? Well one feature which required users to create a list of products they most wanted to buy from – you guessed it – Walmart, probably offers the best clue.