The Online Community Guide

Permeability

There is a social order within every community.

 If that social order is rigid, if it’s hard to move from being a member to being a top member, if the boundaries are impermeable (or appear so), members will participate less.

 Or worse, social identity theory would predict they would attack members on the fringe of the group (perhaps newcomers) or out-groups to increase the feeling within the group.

 It’s dangerous to have an accepted group of top members which never changes. Others will also feel the outsiders. If you always focus content, discussions, and other activities on the same group of regulars – members perceive it impossible to reach the same status.

 It’s better then, to highlight the contributions of people rapidly rising within that community. Highlight the contributions of members whom have joined within the previous six months and have made a series of great contributions.

Offline, status is a subtle manner. We take both non-verbal and verbal cues. Online, you need to be more explicit. You may specifically state that this member is rapidly becoming a top member of the community.  You can also specifically point to the contributions that have increased their standing within the community.

If you want more activity. Make sure that 1) group boundaries are permeable. People can increase their status and 2) they have a proven path for increasing their status. This is a path that has been taken by other members. 

A Few Working Definitions

Even academics disagree.

Let’s try to use more specific definitions. 

• Online Community. A community is a group of people whom have developed online relationships around a strong common interest. This means people whom have crossed an agreed boundary. By developing relationships we mean an extended reciprocity cycle and familiarity/trust in other members. By common interest, we mean something members spend a lot of time thinking about.

• Community building. The act of creating a community and reaching critical mass. This begins in the conceptualization stage of the lifecycle and ends when the community has achieved a critical mass. 

• Community management. The process of developing the community through the lifecycle to its maximum potential. This includes responsibility for all activities in the community. 

• Community organizing. The process of identifying community needs/desires and working with the community to realize those needs/desires. 

Don't Use Recognition Shortcuts

For recognition to work, it has to be meaningful.

Congratulating members on joining your communities isn’t meaningful. Recognition is a complex tool. If it feels slightly patronizing, it has the opposite affect. 

The goal of recognition is three-fold. First, to showcase contributions you want to encourage. Second, to reinforce existing behaviour. Third, highlight the influence members have had upon your community.

Gamification is a terrible way of recognizing members. Most automated methods of recognition are meaningless. Recognition has to be given for meaningful acts in meaningful ways.

Don't recognise simple or basic acts of little significant. If a member hasn't done much to deserve recognition, don't give any. You undermine yourself if you give recognition for meaningless acts. 

If a member has made several excellent contributions in the community, then profile or interview the member, highlight those contributions, but don’t give them a gold star.  

Motivations For Crowdsourcing

Two years ago, someone approached us with a novel idea.

They were going to create a crowdsourcing a site where members would share product/service manuals. This place, they excitedly explained, would be the ultimate venue in the world(!), for product/service information.

You can guess our first question. “Who wants to spend their spare time sharing product manuals with each other?”

Wikipedia, Kickstar, Kiva, and a few others have created a success bias in crowdsourcing efforts. Like traditional communities, most crowdsourcing efforts fail (abysmally). We only hear about the successes.

They fail because the motivations of users aren’t considered. Why would people want to spend their spare time undertaking that activity? If your answer is “because it would help other people”, you’re going to struggle.

To understand any crowdsourcing effort we need to understand the nature of commitment. People will undertake crowdsourcing-based activity for one of three reasons: 

• Commitment to the topic. Wikis for Star Trek, Star Wars, traveling, and a few others thrive through sheer passion for the topic alone. You’re not in this group. Trust me, you’re not in this group. 

• Sense of ownership of the topic. Wikipedia thrived, in part, because anyone with a sense of ownership over a topic would create and curate that topic on Wikipedia. I loved Seth’s IdeaVirus book, so I created a Wikipedia entry for it. If you have a large group of people, each of whom have a specific niche within the crowdsourcing effort’s broader topic, the idea of creating and curating information can be powerful.

  This also works for most review sites. People whom have visited the venue or experience the product feel a sense of ownership of that topic. TripAdvisor thrives on this.

• Increase reputation. This is related to the above. Many crowdsourcing efforts succeed because members are trying to increase their own reputation. By creating and sharing content, they’re enhancing their own profile amongst their target audience. Quora is a great example of this.

• Commitment to the group. This is the most common. Members are committed to others in the group. This means they know and like other members. They want to achieve something together. Unless members have a high level of familiarity with others, this won’t work.

• Association with the group’s success. Once a crowdsourcing efforts is thriving, everyone wants to associate their own identity with the group’s success. This doesn’t work for you until your crowdsourcing effort is thriving.  

Of the five listed above, ownership, increased reputation, and commitment to the group which are easiest to manipulate.

If you want to build a successful crowdsourcing effort, look for those that feel a sense of ownership over niche topic, provide messages related to enhanced reputation, or build strong connections between the group before you begin. 

Priming Group Commitment

If it’s too easy to join the community, the act of joining carries no mental significance.

It has no impact upon whether someone is likely to participate and become a regular member. If you incentivize registration, it may even do the opposite. 

Yet joining a community should be easy. You don’t want to turn away interested members through a difficult registration process.

If you ask members for a lot of information, you’re going to lose a lot of members. Every extra question, click, or word required to read and complete the registration form is going to lose you members.

We need a balance that embraces the idea of group commitment. You can use three small tweaks. 

a)   Turn the registration form into an application form. 

b)   Ask members why they want to join the community.

c)   Ask members what they intend to offer the community (skills, knowledge, charisma!).

If you prime members to commit to certain actions before they join the community (in writing), you’re more likely to convert them into regular members.

These questions achieve three goals. First, they create a sense of exclusivity. People want to join this community and be accepted as part of the group.

Second, they give you terrific information about who your members are and what they want. You can also use this information to introduce newcomers to the community.

Third, they prime members to participate and accept the group identity.

The process of joining a community is more psychological than physiological. Mentally feeling you’re a member is more important than clicks and registered member counts. The process neither begins, nor ends, with the registration page...but the registration page can help. 

Don't Fight Anger With Facts

Sarah was completely right and lost her role (fortunately, not her job).

During a member uprising, she explained in clear, precise, terms, how they were wrong and the organization was right. Her language was polite, if a little terse. 

The responsible was predictable. Members became angrier.

Facts aren’t the solution to anger. Telling an angry person they’re wrong, (even if they are) will exacerbate the issue. The issue is the emotion, not the facts. You can’t outright reject someone’s anger.

Worse still, Sarah thus made herself the sole target of that anger. Members will never accept her now. That made her role impossible.

When people are angry, they want to be listened to. I’d suggest you respond with a message similar to:

“Hey everyone,

Clearly something has gone wrong here, I’m furious and very sorry about that.

Let’s try and fix this.

Rather than overwhelm all discussions here and lose track of everyone’s comments, I’ve set up a thread/group here for people that want to fix it. If you have the time, please come and help.”

 

This simple message (or any variation you like) aims to achieve three things:

1)   It listens to members and takes their emotional side.

2)   It gives members a place (outside of the main discussion area) to talk more and help resolve the issue. It shows you intend to take action to resolve it.

3)   In this place, you can gradually ask members to come up with a solution and gradually highlight the possible constraints you’re working in.

It might not always work, but it’s far better than telling angry members how wrong they are. 

Speaking At CMGR Boston

I'll be speaking about content and community at CMGR Boston on May 28th.

If you would like to attend, click here. 

Mental Buckets

We have two mental buckets; work and play.

The work bucket is where we place all the activities we have to do. This bucket is incredibly crowded. It’s tough to rank highly on any list of priorities here.

The play bucket is where we place all the activities we get to do. This bucket is relatively empty. You might have TV, surfing the internet, spending time with friend and family.

Many people work ferociously during the day, complain about a lack of time, and then spend 3 hours watching TV in the evening. 

Most communities do everything they can to get themselves placed within the ‘work’ bucket. They tell people to participate, they talk about the tangible benefits from joining and participating in the community, and they ignore all the potential ‘fun’ aspects from the community.

As you’ve guessed, it’s far better to be placed in the ‘play’ bucket. Reddit is clearly a community in the play bucket. No-one would consider it something they have to do.

The only way to get yourself in the play bucket is to make your community fun. That means livening the mood at times and catering to an individuals social needs – not just their information needs. 

Bragging, Self-Esteem, And Status-Jockeying Discussions

Here’s a common (and tedious) question in community circles; how do you prevent burnout? 

This question allows people to talk about themselves. It allows people to brag (and lie) about what they do with their spare time.

Most participants declare they prevent burnout by doing sports, travelling to exotic places, going to cool bars, doing interesting hobbies, or anything that reflects positively on them.

People are desperate to impress their peers. They love to participate in off-topic, status-jockeying, discussions. It’s why some people tweet every run they take or every airport they visit. They’re trying to impress their peers “Hey, I’m healthy AND on business trips!”

However, bragging has an inverse correlation with an individual’s self-esteem. Broadly, the more you feel compelled to brag, the lower your likely level of self-esteem. Since those with high self-esteem are also likely to be powerful, self-actualizing, people, you might lose valuable contributors by catering to the bragging crowd.

It might be an easy way to facilitate discussions, but it has long-term consequences. 

Important People

Set up Google alerts for your topic and the word book.

You want to find people that are publishing a book relevant to your topic.

Invite them to a live interview for the community and ask for 20 copies to giveaway. Authors are very keen to reach this specific group of people.

Look on LinkedIn for people that have recently joined a relevant company at a high position. Invite them to do an interview for the community talking about their life and career. Create a regular column of people on the move within your sector (Jeremiah did this well for years).

Afterwards, ask if they would like a regular column or can give your community exclusive first look/trial versions of the product to generate buzz.   

Search for terms relevant to your topic and the word conference/event/exhibition/tournament. Find who runs the event. Ask for a discount for members from your community. Interview the person behind the event. 

There are many key people in your sector. Your community should build relationships with every one of them.

You want these key people to endorse your community, help you get exclusives for members (news or products/services), participate in your community, and promote the community to their own audiences. 

For most communities, awareness is your biggest barrier. This is easy to change.