What's Your Biggest Problem?

Try asking your members this. 

Create the thread, turn it into a sticky thread, include it in your mailing list, add your own problem, and see what response you get.

Your members will do two things:

1) They will give you an incredible amount of useful information. You can orientate your community to tackle the most common problems. You can develop new groups/categories for these problems, establish action teams to resolve the issues, and create content based around these problems.

2) They will increase their emotional investment in the community. By disclosing information about themselves (and seeing that disclosure reciprocated), they increase their emotional investment in the community. This is even more effective in communities where problems and emotions might directly overlap (action, circumstance).

Simple, but useful.

 

Comments

[Benjamin]

In general this suggestion is great - but there are also a lot of problems connected to it.

If the problems are not connected to your community or plattform (but to a product) or you can't change your plattform (missing resources) asking for feedback is bad - because you can't change anything and you cant follow up the feedback or will have to admit that you can't change it.

So: just ask for feedback if you feel / know that you will be able to fullfill some of the wishes and solve some of the problems your members will post! ;)

[Adrian]

You're right, this question is so powerful. Too many people in community management, and to go even broader, marketing, think they thenselves are the same as their community members/target audience. Therefore they believe they know their members hopes, fears and dreams. Just ask this question, and you'll find it very surprising what people are really thinking.