The Online Community Guide

Transience

It’s very hard to build a genuine community for a transient audience.

Communities for teenage entrepreneurs all suffer the same problem. By the time the audience is old enough to care and connect with others, they only have a few years of participation before they want to associate with older entrepreneurs.

Communities for account executives, interns, pregnancy, people getting married, and people facing a major surgery etc… forcibly limit the amount of time members will remain. In the process, you lose a lot of tacit knowledge.

It’s still possible to build a community for these audiences, but it’s better to focus on psychographics (what they think/feel about different issues), as opposed to demographics/habits. Don’t imply a short-term circumstance, target a belief/feeling that’s associated with that age.

Many young people entering a profession belief a fresh approach is needed, want to rise quickly in their fields, embrace new technology (and believe that technology should be embraced in their jobs).

If you can find a belief/feeling that’s associated with that short-term circumstance, you can build a community with a much longer retention rate.

Instead of building a community around pregnancy, you can build a community for mums that want to continue their careers. This includes the short-term pregnancy, but also encourages groups to form and share advice/support throughout the early years.

Looking for a belief and desire that your audience has, not just what the audience is and based your community concept around that.

A Few Rules For Choosing Your Online Community Platform

A few months ago a potential client confessed they were going with a terrible platform because their CEO was friends with the guy that made the platform.

This didn’t end well.

This is the golden age of community platforms. The majority of platforms we see today are good enough to build a community on. However, many organizations still end up with terrible, debilitating, platforms.

The challenge shouldn’t be in avoiding the terrible platforms. The challenge should be picking the best of a great bunch. Here are a few rules that might help.

 

Rule 1) Don’t develop your own community platform

Few organizations that develop their own, bespoke, platform develop a successful community. You don’t have the experience or knowledge to develop a successful platform from scratch. The odds on making a mistake are high. Even if you do develop a good one, members will still have to learn how to use it. That’s a big barrier.

There are enough good platforms out there today that you don’t have to develop one, you just have to choose one.

 

Rule 2) Don’t try to change fundamental habits 

If your audience has never used a community platform before, stick to e-mail mailing lists (which works extremely well for the community of community managers). If your audience doesn’t use e-mail, find what technologies they do use and include this in your decision-making. The less an audience has to learn to use the platform, the more people will use it. 

 

Rule 3) Don’t blow your budget on the platform 

The high-end enterprise platforms may charge over $100k per year (plus $100k setup fee) for their platform. This is fine if your budget is $500k+, otherwise get something more affordable.

For a rough idea, expect to spend $50k+ for most known enterprise platforms. $20k to $30k for a developed open-source platforms, $15k+ per year for lower level enterprise platforms and those that target specific verticals i.e. associations, and sub $1k for hosted white-label platforms, forums etc…

 

Rule 4) Be aware of your own organization’s skills and resources 

Platforms need maintenance, updating, further design, security, and plenty more. Does your organization have the time, knowledge, and money to perform these actions? Setting up a platform is easy compared with managing it. If you lack these resources, open-source platforms aren’t a great option for you.

 

Rule 5) Be open to different types of platforms

Almost every organization ignores mailing lists, forums, and LinkedIn groups. Most won’t even consider using these as their community platforms. Yet these are the cheapest, most popular, and most successful community platforms in the world.  

You don’t need the number of features you need, the specific design you have in mind, nor a number of other things. If you’re disregarding an incredibly successful platform because it doesn’t have single sign-on, something is wrong.

 

Rule 6) Ask for help

If you’ve never done this before, ask for help. You can seek professional help from organizations like ours that do this with multiple clients, or (cheaper) ask friends whom have done this before. 

FeverBee's Community Management Course

In two weeks time, we're launching our community management course. 

If you're just beginning your community efforts, this course will guide you through the entire process of developing a community.

We will teach you how to conceptualize a community, develop an excellent platform, get your first members, initiate activity, and reach critical mass. You can avoid the mistakes that kill most branded community efforts. 

If you have an existing community, this course will teach how how to grow that community, increase the level of participation, and increase the ROI.

Most importantly, it puts in place a clear, replicable, structure for further developing successful communities. What you learn in this course you can apply to many others. 

This course brings proven social sciences into community development. This isn't a technology course. There are plenty of them. This is a course that explains how you can apply proven social sciences to develop thriving online (and offline) communities.

In addition, the course has an esteemed alumni which includes Wikipedia, Oracle, Amazon, Autodesk, LEGO, EMC, and many others whom have given us terrific reviews. 

Our aim is to ensure organizations have highly trained community professionals with the right knowledge, resources, and skills to develop their communities. 

The course includes:

• Live and recorded lessons
• Guest speakers from throughout the industry
• Over 100,000 words of written material
• Our own template scripts, templates, and strategies
• Unlimited personal coaching
• Access to our playbook and digital library of case studies
• Graded assignments
• A certificate of completion

We believe this is the best course of its kind.

If you want to learn more, click here: http://course.feverbee.com.

Exploding To Life

No amount of planning and preparation is going to make your community explode into life. 

Even if you pulled off the most successful marketing campaign ever, persuaded all the top people to join, had the greatest content of all time, the community still wouldn't explode into life. 

This is because communities don't explode into life. The biggest of pops is still just a pop. A surge of activity fades. Momentum dissipates. Then you're left with an empty shell, a lot of disappointment, and some explaining to do.  

Communities grow steadily. They rise from their slumber. A few members join, then a few more arrive. Members participate, then keep participating. 

This post is as true for communities as it is for books.

Planning for a big launch is a bad idea. It makes far more sense to plan out the first 3 months. Create a big calendar of what you're going to do. Be specific. Figure out who you're going to approach, when you're going to approach them, what's you're going to tell them, what activities you're going to initiate in the community, what discussions you're going to initiate in the community etc...

These questions are more important than a big launch. It's the organizations that put together a big plan for the launch and a small plan for post-launch that struggle the most. 

Rivalries, Conflicts, Grievances, And Communities

3 years ago, when my barber first heard I had moved to the area, he took it upon himself to tell me about the local community.

There was a deep sense of community. There was a shared history. The community had faced some big problems and chalked up some impressive achievements.

There were big personalities too, mighty organizations, and a familiarity between most of the long-time residents.  

Most interestingly, there were rivalries, conflicts, long-held grievances stretching back decades. Some families didn't like other families. Sometimes this erupted into furious rows both online and, more commonly, offline in the market. 

Despite this, everyone believed in and supported the community. They all felt a part of the community. No-one wanted to leave the community.

Much the same is true in online communities. There are big personalities (that annoy many people). There are rivalries, conflicts, and grievances. There are people that say controversial things. 

Real communities have all these things. 

Too frequently, we see these as edges to be sanded off to achieve a more harmonized community. It's better just to see it as part of what the community is. A community isn't harmony. There will be people that don't like each other, that bear grudges, and this will occasionally erupt into an open debate.

Don't overreact. Don't shut down the debates. Don't remove the big personalities. Don't sand down the sharp edges. People are far more likely to stop participating in a community because it's boring, than because there are people, opinions, and activities which they don't like.

Overcoming The 'Too Busy To Participate' Problem in CoPs

About half of our clients manage communities of practice (CoPs).

The most common problem facing those involved in communities of practice is busyness. Their target audience is too busy to participate in the community, or so they claim. 

This is almost never true. In almost every sector you can find an example of a successful community. It can be doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers. You will find successful communities. 

The challenge is changing the prospect of the community. If they community is something they have to do instead of something they want to do, of course they will never have time. In fact, they wil never make the time. 

Too often, the community feels like extra work. Too often, it's presented as extra work "hey, please can you share your best advice about {x}" or "please can you participate in this community, or "please write a column about {x}". 

Some CoP managers listen to their members complaints of being too busy and go too far in the opposite direction. The opposite direction ignores the work required from members. This is also bad. "Just click this link and you'll get great advice about "x". If you only stress the benefits members get just from reading, members are only ever going to read. The levels of participation will be minimal. 

A happy balance is needed. From the very first contact about the community through to regular participation, there needs to be a stress on something that makes members want to participate.

This might mean appealing to utopian motives; such as creating something bigger than themselves or changing the industry. It might mean appealing to their ego and stressing that this is an exclusive community with invited-members only. It might mean appealing to their social needs, and creating a community where they can talk to and impress their peers. 

There is no shortage of basic tactics to persuade people to participate. It's the strategy and appeal that makes the difference. Everyone makes the time for the things they want to do. The community has to be something they really want to do. 

The Psychological Impact Of Interactions

When you reply to a fun, closed, question on Facebook it doesn't affect you on a deep level. 

It doesn't increase your connection to the organization or fellow likers. It has little influence on your future actions (and certainly not your buying habits). The only thing that changes are the engagement stats. They skyrocket.

If you were to look at VisitSweden's Facebook page, clearly they have high engagement rates. They have hundreds of people liking posts, commenting on posts, and even sharing posts. It looks terrific. 

Therein lies the problem. It looks so much better and more active than their community did. They decided to close the community and focus on social media platforms. 

If look at engagement metrics, this makes sense. Closing struggling communities is a good idea anyway. But it's mistaken to believe that the types of interaction are interchangable between platforms.

In dedicated community platforms people talk to each other, not just the page admin. They build relationships with each other. They visit daily to satisfy their social needs. This has significant, long-term, impacts on future actions and, yes, buying habits. 

The FB page has few discussions. No-one is getting to know other people on the page. This is an audience, not a community. Despite all the engagement, it will be tough to demonstrate any measurable impact. 

Interactions aren't equal. interactions between members are very different from interactions with members. Responding to a Facebook post has a far weaker psychological commitment than participating in a discussion with other people. Likes have no beneficial impact. 

You can look at the interactions themselves above. They don't bring the same value as discussions which take place in community platforms. They don't bring new value, new information, encourage high levels of self-disclosure, build relationships between members, nor build bonds between members. 

This presents a problem for a community professional. You're going to get pressure to move to social media platforms. You're going to find it easier to develop a page that looks really active and pleases the boss. Yet you also know this page doesn't have the same impact as community platforms do. This is a really, really, tough argument to make. But if we don't make this argument, we'll find it impossible to build communities.

FeverBee is hiring a Community Advocate

In our quest to help people build better communities, we’re once again expanding our team.

This time we’re looking for an advocate of best practices, someone that strongly believes in the power of communities and wants to bring proven practice to a range of different sectors. Think business development more than consultancy/sales.

We’re looking for someone that can build positive relationships with a range of groups/organizations, help promote and advocate the use of social sciences in communities, and take on and deliver projects to completion.

Specifically, we’re looking for someone that can:

1)   Expand community development best practice into different regions and sectors.

2)   Build mutually beneficial relationships with a variety of different organizations, groups, and influencers.

3)   Create, publish and promote content that spreads best practice.

4)   Organize events that champion community development and connect thousands of people around the cause.

Last time we advertised a role, we received over 200 applications. We’re hoping to narrow that down a little this time. 

You should be the following:

1)   A natural communicator. You are perfectly happy introducing yourself to groups, building connections with a variety of people, selling your ideas (and our consultancy/training). Don’t apply if you’re not, we’ll weed you out.

2)   An expert in communities. You should have read most of the material on this blog, bought the book, and agree with our principles. Experience building and managing your own communities is a major plus.  

3)   A terrific writer. You need to have a clear, concise, writing style.

4)   Experienced in advocacy. You should understand how to create excitement and interest around different topics. You know how to promote something valuable without being sleazy.    

5)   100% reliable. You say what you’re going to do and do it. Missed deadlines are a cause of panic (and short-lived employment).

6)   Driven like a maniac. You have a burning, unquenchable, desire to make change in the world. You want to show off your intrapreneurial spirit.

Please no Klout-obsessed social media junkies. If your idea of this role is participating in the conversation all day long on Twitter, don’t apply.

If your vision is to be making dozens of calls every day, approaching groups/organizations, building mutually beneficial connections to people that matter, producing and packaging materials, achieving real results, and working with an intensity that comes from a true belief in the power of communities to change lives – we want you. This is a role for a do’er more than a thinker.

 

Benefits of FeverBee

• You get full training in communities and community development – along with our own certification.

• You get freedom to develop your own projects and deliver on them.

• You get to work from home and set your own hours. If you want to hit the gym in the afternoon, go ahead. 

• Your work matters. You get to see organizations connecting thousands of otherwise disconnected people into strong, beneficial, groups.  

To apply, give me a call and persuade me that you’re perfect for the role.

There is no deadline, we’ll stop looking when we find someone we like.

Richard Millington

Richard@feverbee.com

+44 20 7792 2469

Facilitating Interactions Between Members (with one simple fact)

It's difficult to initiate a discussion with someone new.

What do you talk about? 

This is as much true online as it is in person. 

When people arrived to our live event, we asked them to write down their name and one interesting fact about themselves on a label. 

It's far easier to start a discussion when you have a clear, safe, topic to talk about. 

The curious thing was that even thinking up a fun fact for many people was difficult. It's a fine intersection between being interesting, bragging, and being boring. In hindsight, we should have given a question that would have led to a fun fact.

What was your biggest failure? What is your favourite book? How many countries have you visited? Where are you going on holiday this year? 

All these are simple topics to get people to talk between themselves. 

If you want to increase discussions both between you and community members, and between the members themselves, it helps to have members highlight their fun facts. You want the facts that people can ask questions about.

By using the right questions, you can guide these. You can mention them in your newcomer welcome posts. e.g. 'This week we welcome Brian who once hitchhiked across Europe, Sophie who can juggle 4 objects at once and Dennis a MD of a rapidly growing company'.

Small Victories For Sub-500 Communities

Resist the urge to tackle a big goal when you launch a community.

Big goals take time, they're hard to achieve, and you're likely to lose your members before you get there. 

If you want a community that can achieve big goals, you need to have a thriving community. To have a thriving community, you need momentum. 

In the early stages (or in a revival phase) a community needs momentum. Small victories are essential for momentum. There are plenty of ways to build momentum. The process is fairly simple:

1) Identify a small goal the community can achieve within 1 - 2 weeks. e.g. producing a recommended equipment document. 

2) Invite several people, by name, to participate in this goal.

3) Write about progress towards the goal. 'we have recommended equipment for x, y, and z, now we just need it for ... and ....!'

4) Achieve the goal (publish the document)

5) Write about the success in achieving the goal and give credit, by name, to the people that participate. 

These small victories may sound frivolous, and initially they might be. However, the goal isn't for you, it's to bond a group of people together, create a stronger group identity, document success, and build the processes through which people can collaborate.