A Primer About Successful Online Communities

If you’re new, here’s a background primer on successful communities.

Successful online community building is connecting a group of people online and making them feel a part of something special. This 'something special’ element is the overlooked bit.

You do this by identifying something people believe in and inviting them to talk to each other. You don’t create the interest, you create the platform that epitomizes it. It’s important you don’t try to create the raison d'etre. i.e. Don’t try to persuade non-swimmers to become swimmers and join your community, just focus on persuading enthusiastic swimmers to join. Most brands stumble at this stage.

However, the common interest is the first level of the group bonding. It’s usually overrated. If you’ve ever been part of a purposeful group you know it’s not the mission/common interest that matters. The most important missions on the planet often have the lowest level of engagement. What matters most is how well you bond with others members of the group.

The better you get to know and like your fellow members, and the more you care about their opinion of you, the more you participate and thus work towards a successful goal.

Your role is to create an environment, through both your mass and micro (one to one) communications, that facilitates this. This means in public you might recognize top members, talk about the community and plan events. In private you might build relationships with key members, introduce members to each other, ask for opinions and suggestions and work towards a greater good.

This also means designing your community that reflects both the common interest and the individual contributions as equals. Half your community might be about developments on the topic, the other half should be about the contributions of members.

It’s important to start small. Big launches tend to struggle with their own high expectations. No successful online community had a big launch day. They began small and celebrated other milestones, perhaps their birthday, or perhaps their 1000th member.

So begin by talking to a few members at a time and introducing them to each other. Make sure you know the early members very well personally. Aim for slow, steady growth and a high level of participation from each member. As you grow you can begin focusing your attention on the key members and recruiting volunteers to help develop the community. 

The most difficult element is usually recruiting people in the first place. You need to target people that use the internet but typically aren’t heavy internet users. You can find them on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and dozens of other outlets. Use search.twitter.com too, find people talking about your topic and get to know them. It’s time-heavy, but pays off in the longer run.

As you recruit members you need to bond them together. Bonding a community means doing things together. Like challenges for your community, milestones to reach or problems to overcome. It also means having a high level of interactions per member and ensuring members are happy to disclose their thoughts, feelings and other information.

This self-disclosure is important. If you’re not continuously asking members to share their thoughts and experiences, members will never truly bond as a group. No bonds means low engagement and participation rate. More importantly, it means no community spirit (the something special we mentioned at the beginning).

Allowing self-disclosure also means accepting negative comments. Not personal attacks, they’re nearly always worth removing (as our racist, bigoted and sexist remarks, but allowing conversations to be negated. Allowing heated debates and open disagreement to take place. It’s tough to let this happen, it feels like you should jump in and break it up. But don’t. Let people get their opinions out into the open.

Now as your community grows you need to begin decentralizing responsibility. Give popular members their own forums/groups to moderate. Schedule regular events/activities that other members can be responsible for organizing.

Finally, dream big. Begin arranging offline meet-ups and consider pushing the boundaries. Try adding a paid job adverts page, developing branded products, inviting relevant companies to run focus groups.

If only creating a community was as easy as writing about how to create one. You’re going to find it hard. You’re going to find some things fail. You might not get it right on your first time. However, give it time, be patient and you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Good luck.

Comments

[Kimmo]

This was a very, very useful post! Thank you!

I have recently started a community. While I feel there is a need for it, it is still very difficult, especially as a beginner. Your post makes it very clear on what to focus. Thanks!

[Globetrooper Todd]

Great post, very useful, refreshingly motivating. When we started our website (http://globetrooper.com), we didn't even think of it as a community. But we've come along in leaps and bounds, from starting to see it as a community, to acknowledging the many nuances that help build a great community. We're just starting to see traction, but even that incipient traction is pretty exciting stuff. Especially since it's taken a lot of effort just to get this far. Love the blog; great work.

[@dolo_osende]

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[@noah_chandler]

Nice post. I think a few points are key:
1. Don't be afraid to use other channels: phone, email, face to face, to drive participation. Most communities at launch aren't self-sustaining.
2. Start small, but in your targeted participants and your functionality. Limited participants makes it easier to use the channels noted in pt. 1 to cultivate activity with more personal touches. And limited functionality will keep your environment manageable. You can always introduce new functions down the road. Taking functionality out if it isn't working well, or isn't being used, is more problematic.

Here at Forrester Research, we created an evangelist program, which was a week long program, where we walked a small subset of participants through a limited set of functionality. At the end of the week, we were able to generate enough conversation to take the communities live and avoid a ghosttown.

[Marc Ryan]

Smart read. We created an exclusive on line community for Sperry Top-Sider passionforthesea.com for people who love all things related to the water.

All these points proved themselves true for us - we are currently at 4100 members and tracking for more - all the members are engaged and truly have a passion for the sea and water performance - can't buy this type of authentic audience.

Another key, is you can not be too corporate in the effort - for instance, we say the site/community is "powered by Sperry Top-Sider" it is not a corporate site. The significance here is a true community should not reek of corporate advertising - allows your brand to be authentic and also gives you reach beyond your current customer. Let them find you!

Thanks for listening.

Marc Ryan
President
Crunch Brand Communications

[Susan Smith]

Sage advice, and timely! Thanks!

[michael atkinson]

Good primer, thanks. We have found that starting and running a B2B community of practice, very challenging but very rewarding at the same time. At fohboh.com, we have nearly 15,000 registered members and visitors from over 180 countries. Keeping their attention is the most difficult part of managing fohboh. One initiative that seems to work well is featuring content and creating a newsletter that is a bi-weekly wrap-up of what's happening in the community. Traffic increases immediately.

But it's our core philosophy of steering, not managing that seems to work best, at least in our community. We also have a zero tolerance policy for spamming and seek to find balance between all foodservice industry stakeholders.

Our membership is about 70% operators, 15% vendors and 15% service providers all looking to connect, communicate and collaborate in an open forum, dedicated to the foodservice/restaurant industry. It's this balance that makes the community work. And, this balance cannot be artificially created.

[Brandon Cox]

In four weeks, my career/calling is shifting and I will be the online community coordinator for a brand well-known in my niche. Your article is indeed an excellent primer and thanks for writing from your experience! Whets my appetite for connections!

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