Month: February 2013
Document The Outputs Of Your Online Community
We spent a lot of time talking about the inputs.
We spend a lot of time talking about the clicks, traffic, comments, likes, drama, and plenty more.
However, a community has to do things for members. A community has to have real outputs.
What is the real, meaningful, tangible, impact that the community has had on members?
You might not know, but it's worth finding out.
Ask members, what impact has the community had on their lives. What specific things has the community helped members achieve/do/be?
Document these. Literally write these up and add it to areas of your community. You can publish this as a weekly/monthly round-up if you like i.e. 'Joe discovered an entirely new way to takes photographs in dim-lighting without a flash.'
This sets an example of behaviour for others to follow, increases the sense of pride felt by members, and provides a nice place for member-generated tips. Perhaps, most importantly, it keeps the community focused on the meaningful outputs, rather than the neverending inputs.
Simple and effective to do.
How To Build An Online Community: The Ultimate List Of Resources (2013)
This is a collection of my favourite and most popular posts from the last six years. It should give you a great overview about both the strategy and the process of creating an online community from scratch.
The Online Community Basics
- A Primer About Successful Online Communities
- The 11 Fundamental Laws of Online Communities
- The Four Tenets Of Professional Community Managers
- Building An Online Community: How You Start With 0 Members
- How Do You Build An Online Community?
- 7 Contrary Truths About Online Communities
- Don’t Start A Community For Any Of These Reasons
- Basics Community Building Principles
- What Is An Online Community?
- Different Types Of Communities
- The 4 Fundamental Things A Community Provides Its Members
- Types Of Communities And Activities Within Those Communities
- Visitors, Lurkers, And Members
Strategy & Planning
- A Free Online Community Strategy Template
- The Online Community Lifecycle
- Understanding Conceptualization: The Process You Go Through Before Launch
- How To Develop Your Community Management Strategy
- How To Write A Practical Online Community Plan
- Online Community Strategy & Data
- Setting Objectives For Your Online Community
- Settings Targets For Your Online Community
- Starting An Online Community? First Get The Concept Right
- Planning For A Big Online Community?
- How To Make Your Community Better, Not Just Bigger
- The Online Community Ecosystem
- Total Feasible Audience Size: And Why It Matters
- Which Communities Tend To Succeed?
- Big Launch Syndrome: Don’t Faill Victim To This
- From Maturity To Mitosis: The Problem Facing Large Communities
- The Establishment Phase: Building Structures & Shifting Processes
- The Huge Gap Between Reading and Participating
- Identifying And Articulating The Community Benefit
- Audience Analysis In Online Communities
- Ensuring Your Community Personifies The Interests Of Its Members
- The Rush To The Niches
- How To Position Your Online Community
- The Importance Of Developing A Strong Community Identity
- Don’t Target The Wrong People
- How To Make An Accurate Membership Projection
- Naming Your Online Community
- 12 Ways To Doom Your Community Before You Launch
- A 3-month Pre-Launch Strategy
- The Assets Businesses Need To Develop Successful Communities
- Don’t Dilute The Community Identity
- Make The Community About Your Members
Building An Online Community Website
- Before You Spend $500k On A Community Platform
- How To Optimize Your Community Website
- Test Before You Invest
- How To Design Your Online Community
- 20 Things That Should Be Included In Every Online Community Website
- The Perfect Landing Page
- 8 Overlooked Elements Every Online Community Should Have
- A Radical Change In Our Approach To Community Platforms
- Developing Forum Communities
- Easy Ways To Add Value To Your Online Community
- The Toolbox Of Community Reputation Systems
- A Simple Reputation System
- Pick An Online Community Platform That Works
- Stopping Human Spammers
- 7 Things A Community Can Live Without
- The Problems With Incentives
- A Basic Online Community Wireframe
- Essential Elements Of Community Platforms
- The Notification Cycle
- The Case Against Facebook As A Community Platform
- Using Your Real Estate: A Quick Case Study
- Easy -vs- Difficult -vs- Impossible: Exporting Community Data
- Refine or Develop?
- Social Density In Online Communities
Launching An Online Community
- 5 Things Every New Online Community Should Focus On
- 20 Ways To Start An Online Community
- Never Wait For The Website To Be Ready
- Seeding Your Online Community
- Who Are You Trying To Reach?
- Who Do You Need At The Beginning?
- How To Find Your Community’s First Members
- The Founder Role In Starting A New Community
- Create An Easy Reason To Take A Small Step
- How Small Businesses can Launch Successful Online Communities
- Simple Steps To Creating An Online Community
Converting Newcomers Into Regulars
- How To Convert Newcomers Into Regular Members Of Your Online Community
- Designing The Perfect Newcomers To Regular Conversion Journey
- The Ultimate Welcome For Your Online Community’s Newcomers
- How To Keep Newcomers Hooked For 21 days
- Awesome Questions To Ask New Members Of Your Online Community
- Which Visitors Are Most Likely To Become Regulars?
- Newcomers: Are They New To The Topic?
- The Online Community Joining Process
- Optimize That First Contribution
- How To Help Members Overcome Their Fear Of Initiating Discussions
Growing Your Online Community
- How To Grow Your Online Community
- Why People Aren’t Joining Your Online Community
- Create A Criteria
- Types Of Community Growth
- Use The Right Symbols To Attract The Right Members
- Growing A Community: A Campaign-Based Process
- How To Get More People To Join Your Online Community
- How To Find Your Community’s Founding Members
- Basic Tactics To Grow Your Online Community Without Any Promotion
- Target Clusters Of People At A Time
- How To Get Members To Invite Their Friends
- 3 Perfectly Acceptable Ways To Invite Someone To Join Your Online Community
- Growing From A Social Media Following To Small Groups
- How To Persuade Your Employees To Join Your Online Community
- How To Get The Best People To Join Your Online Community
- The Right And Wrong Way To Grow A Forum
- The Problem With Asking Members To Invite Friends
- How To Convert Existing Contacts Into Active Community Members
Increasing Participation
- How To Increase Activity In Your Online Community
- Why People Join And Participate In Online Communities
- A Brief Guide To Reaching Unbelievably High Levels Of Participation In Your Online Community
- How To Keep Members For The Long Term
- Increasing Activity And Participation In A Community
- Using Social Proof To Increase Activity In Your Community
- Creating A Sense Of Community
- Sustaining Long Term Participation In An Online Community
- Initiating And Sustaining Discussions
- The Basics Of Increasing Interactions In Any Online Community
- Why Members Participate: Fame, Money, Sex, Power
- A Few Quick And Simple Tips To Boost Activity In Your Online Community
- 4 Types Of Contributions You Want Your Members To Make
- The Only Way To Keep Everyone Active
- 20 Questions which Will Stimulate Activity In Your Online Community
- 7 Kinds Of Conversations That Always Stimulate Activity
- Concentrate Activity
- A Weekly Debate: A Good Idea
- How To Find New Discussion Ideas For Your Online Community
- Simple Tactics To Encourage Your Members To Talk More
- Sense Of Ownership
- Two Types Of Participation Problems
- Programme Of Activities
- Epic Events
- How To Find Major Issues To Boost Activity And Unite Your Community
- Why People Stay In Your Online Community
- Create A Guide To Be A Top Member
- Segmenting And Contacting Members
- What You Can Do To Make Your Community More Fun
- 8 Ways To Encourage Individual Contributions In Your Community
- The Benefits Of Off-Topic Conversations
- Open -vs- Closed Questions
- Themes And Topics
Managing an Online Community
- The Community Management Framework
- The 10 Principles Of Professional Community Management
- Building An Online Community Team: The 5 Roles You Must Fill
- High Value Community Management
- What Tasks Should Online Community Managers Prioritize?
- Community Management: Planning The Week
- Moderation Strategy
- Turning Data Into Activities: A Simple Example
- What Affects Most Members Over The Long Term?
- Interact With Your Community Like A Human Being
- Attaining Power And Influence
- Hierarchy Of Communicating With Your Members
- Uniting Your Online Community: Creating Strong Ties
- The Art Of Forging Strong Friendships
- A Process For Dealing With Complaints
- The Base: Every Regular Participant Is A Big Win
- The Behaviours You Really Want To Discourage
- How To Subtly Influence Members Of Your Online Community
- How Many People Can You Really Look After?
- Creating Momentum
- The Personality Of Community Managers: A Few Tips
- A Brief Guide To Building Relationships With Your Top Members
- 10 Excellent Rewards You Can Offer Members
- Creating Titles For Members
- How To Use Transferrable Elements To Develop A Strong Sense of Community
- The Unlimited Supply Of Important Work You Need To Do
- The Small Simple Processes Which Make The Biggest Difference To Your Community
- How To Handle Troublemakers
- Using Data To Prevent Violations Of The Rules
- Finding Inspiration In Other Communities
- Reorganizing Your Forum
- Allocating Your Time As The Community Grows
- The Status Dilemma: Don’t Bite The Hook
- 11 Processes For Scaling Online Communities
- Huge Online Communities: What Do You Work On Next?
- Resolving Problems
- Building Strong Relationships Between Members: A Few Practical Steps
- Why Fights Are So Important
- A Guide To Rewarding Members Of Your Community
- Helping Members To Have Influence
- Community Guidelines
- The 24-Hour Response Rule
- 14 Events You Can Organize And Celebrate In Your Online Community
- What Would A Passionate Community Manager Do?
- Link Your Community Management Activities
- Member Lifetime Value
- Explaining Conflicts In Communities
Content
- Creating A Content Calendar
- The Secret To Awesome Content
- Basic Community Newsletter Tips
- Converting Traditional Content Into Community Content
- Information Needs And Why Content-Driven Community Strategies Are Flawed
- Writing Content That Bonds Your Online Community
- 20 Fantastic Content Ideas For Your Online Community
- The Power Of Exclusives
- Interviewing Members
- Every Online Community Needs A Local Newspaper
- An Online Community Newsletter Clinic
Community Psychology
- Getting Members Into The Community Mindset
- Motivation, Opportunity, Ability
- Understanding Motivation In Online Communities
- Recognition Is A Complex Tool
- Influencing Behaviour And The Problem With Broken Windows
- Permeable Boundaries Between Groups
- What Discussions Are Most Popular To Men And Women?
- 40 Participants In 20 Minutes And Information Overload
- Participation for Intrinsic Reasons
- Community Boundary Maintenance And Behaviour Modification
- Compliance Without Pressure
- An Aligned Process – Motivation To Participation
- The Shame Effect
- The Efficacy Factor: Increase Participation By Accentuating Impact
Measurement/ROI
- Techniques To Help Measure The ROI Of An Online Community
- Measuring An Online Community: Master Your Data To Gain An Unfair Advantage
- What To Listen For, And How To Listen For It
- Establishing The Value Of Online Communities
- Measuring The ROI Of Online Communities
- Ace The Community ROI Question
- How To Check Your Community builder Is Doing As Promised
- Communities, ROI, And Misplaced Enthusiasm
- Measuring DIY
- Proving Benefits Of Building A Community
- How To Spot Your Community Is In Trouble: 8 Red Flags
- The Huge ROI Of Small, Exclusive, B2B Communities
- Data Secrets
Monetizing
- The Definitive Guide To Monetizing Your Community
- Becoming A Community Intrapreneur
- 40 Ways To Make Money From Your Online Community
- The Pros And Cons Of Charging For Membership
- Community Souvenirs
- How To Give Sponsors Access To Your Online Community
- Integrating Your Community With Your Business
- Getting Innovative About Monetization
Branded Online Communities
- Never Let Your Company Start An Online Community
- 10 Things Organizations Should Be Comfortable With When They Launch A Community
- 12 Steps For Successful Online Communities
- Brands Must Use Their Unfair Advantage To Build Successful Communities
- A Case Study Of A Branded Onine Community
- Why Most Online Communities Shouldn’t Try To Create A Community
- Why Branded Communities Fail
- 6 Huge Advantages Big Organizations Have Over Amateur Community Builders
- A Requirement For Branded Online Communities
- Brands: Get The Benefits You Want Without Upsetting Members
- Common Branded Community Mistakes
- The Choice Most Brands Don’t Know They Have
- The 2 Most Common Reasons Why Branded Communities Fail
- Decide Between These 2 Types Of Communities
- How Do Online Communities Make Your Business Money?
- Why Amateurs Build Better Online Communities Than Businesses
- Failed Corporate Communities
- Your Dream Online Community
Non-profits and Online Communities
Examples
- The Slow And Steady Evolution Of A Successful Online Community
- 15 Examples Of Successful Online Communities
- 15 Ideas You Can Steal From The UK’s Best Community
- You Can Learn A Lot From This Wildly Successful Community
- The Best Online Community You Can Begin Today
- Case Study: How To Improve A Recently Launched Community
- Some Great Ideas From A Terrific Community
- What Is A ‘Successful’ Community?
- The Genius Of Kotex’s Community
- A Simple, Effective, Community Design
- 10 Examples Of Great Online Communities
- A Great Example Of An Online Community
- Never Hire A Marketing Agency To Build Your Online Community
- A Great Example Of An Online Community
- Hampton People
- A Great Examples Of Game Mechanics In Online Communities
- The Usual Errors From The Big Brands
- Importants Lessons From A Failed Online Community
- A Lesson In Successful Communities
- The Evolution Of A Big Community Launch
- Stories, Clicks, and Relationships: The Sad Story of MetroTwin
Resources
- A Simple Example Of A Great Online Community
- 8 Brilliant Posts About Online Communities
- Essential Reading For Online Community Managers
- Forrester Wave Report
Misc
- How To Improve Any Online Community Without Spending A Penny
- Great Findings From Social Sciences Applied To Online Communities
- Creating A Community From Your Social Media Efforts
- The One Essential Task For Newly Hired Community Managers
- The Online Community Narrative
- Social Scaling Processes
- Rethinking How We Hire Community Managers
- The 7 Most Likely Ways Your Online Community Will End
- Struggling To Build An Online Community? Try This Easier Approach
- What Data Disproves Common Community Myths
- The Easiest Solutions To Your Community’s Biggest Problems
- An Example Of How To Diagnose And Resolve Common Community Problems
- 10 Steps To Building An Online Community In Your Spare Time
- 8 Ways To Merge Your Online Community With The Real World
- How To Revive Your Local Community
- How To Create Exclusive Online Communities
- 6 Social Psychology Hacks For Online Community Managers
- 5 Features Of Really Strong Online Communities You Can Embrace
- Searching For Online Communities
- The One Book Every Community Manager Should Read
- Rules For Growing A Group Of Insiders In Your Community
- Community Awards 2010
- Beyond Your Website
- What’s Wrong With Community Management?
- Turning Employees Into Stars: A Tip For Internal Buy-In
- Integrating The Community With Major Events
- Making Tough Community Decisions
- Tactics -vs- Processes
Reports & eBooks
- 2012 State Of Community Management
- 2012 State Of Branded Communities
- Howard Reingold – The Virtual Community
- The ROI of online customer service communities
- The Forrester Wave Report
- eModeration White Paper – Communities of Purpose
- Deloitte – 2009 Tribalization of Business Study
- Lithium – Community Health Index
- Radian6 – Building & Sustaining Brand Communities
- Jono Bacon – The Art of The Community
- Forrester – The ROI Online Support Communities
Websites & Assocations
- e-Mint
- The Community Manager
- The Community Roundtable
- Facebook Community Manager Group
- Community Builders
- The Community Management Group
Blogs
- Alison Michalk
- Amy Sample Ward
- Angela Connor
- Blaise Grimes-Viort
- Community Roundtable
- Connie Benson
- Dave Cayem
- Debra Askanase
- eModeration
- Eric Foster
- Holly Seddon
- Jake Mckee
- Jeremiah Owyang
- Jono Bacon
- Judi Huck
- Juergen Derlath
- Kirsten Wagenaar
- Lauren Klein
- Mario Ogneva
- Martin Reed
- Matt Rhodes
- Michael Norton
- Patrick O’Keefe
- Phil Wride
- Rachael Happe
- Sue on the web
- Ted & Rosie O’Neil
- UX Booth
- Vanessa Dimauro
- Vanessa Paech
Academic articles
- McMillan and Chavis (1985) Sense of Community
- Robin Hamman (1997)- Introduction to Virtual Communities Research and Cybersociology Magazine Issue Two
- Moore and Serva (2007) Understanding Member Motivation for Contributing to Different Types of Virtual Communities: A Proposed Framework,
- Williams and Cothrel (2004), Four smart ways to run online communities (Sloan Management Review, 2000)
- Bughin & Zeisser, (2001) The Marketing Scale Effectiveness of Virtual Communities
- Iriberri and Leroy (2009) A Life-Cycle Perspective on Online Community Success
- Ridings and Gefen (2004) Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online, JCMC 10 (1), Article 4
- Ardichvili, Page and Wentling (2003) Motivation and barriers to participation in Virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice, Journal of Knowledge Management, 2003; 7,1
- Wang and Fesenmaier (2003) Understanding the Motivation of Contribution in Online Communities: An Empirical Investigation of an Online Travel Community, Electronic Markets, Vol 13, No 1.
- Sugiyama and Rothaermel (2001) Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com, Journal of Management 27
- Sangwan , S (2005) Virtual community success: A uses and gratifications perspective
- Andrews, D.C (2002) Audience-specific online community design, Communications of the ACM, Vol 45, N. 4
- Barab, S.A, MaKinster, J.G, Scheckler, R. (xxxx) Designing System Dualities: Characterizing An Online Professional Development Community
- Baym, N.K. (2007) The new shape of online community: The example of Swedish independent music fandom, First Monday, Volume 12, Number 8 – 6
- Stanoevska-Slabeva, K. (2002) Towards a Community-Orientated Design of Internet Platforms
- Arnold, Y. Leimeister, J.L, Krcmar, H. (2003) CoPEP: A Development Process Model for Community Platforms for Cancer Patients, Community platform engineering process
- Porter, C.E. (2004) A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, Vol, 10. No. 1.
FeverBee’s Products
- FeverBee’s Podcast
- Book: Buzzing Communities: How To Build Bigger, Better, And More Active Online Communities
- CommunityGeek: Community Geek is an exclusive community of practitioners dedicated to sharing knowledge about how to grow and curate successful online communities.
- On-Demand Training Courses
- Live Training Course
- FeverBee’s Community Consultancy
How To Start An Online Community
We've covered this before, but many people are new here.
Skipping the internal aspects, this is our process. We've simplified it as much as possible.
Build up a list of 50 to 150 potential members
Build up a list of 50 to 150 potential members of the target audience. You can find these people through a variety of channels. Existing relationships/contacts/customers works best, social media channels is secondary. There are lots of examples here.
As a tip, look especially for words or actions members of your target audience are likely to do.
Make contact with each of these members
This is a full-time job. Begin outreach messages to each of them. Ask them an ice-breaker, something that's relevant to who they are, what they do/have done, or what they think/feel about a certain issue. If you can't establish these early relationships, don't even think about growing a community.
This is when they list of 50 to 150 potential members begins to dwindle. Some you can't sustain relationships with, others simply won't have any interest in you. Especially to lose up to 50% at this stage. You can read Tim's post for some help on good outreach. Skip to a few paragraphs down,
Interview them
When you have a good standing, ask them if they wouldn't mind speaking on the phone for a few minutes about a project you're working on. Specifically, you want to know more details about who they are (demographics), what they spend most time doing (habits), and what they think/feel about different issues in that sector (psychographics).
This is simplified, but specific questions we ask include: "What are your biggest problems/challenges", "What are your goals/aspirations/dreams?". You can base your entire community concept around this.
Importantly, at the end of the interview ask if they would like to be one of the founding members of the community. These people are the first members of your community. You want to have good relationships with each of them. It helps if you're already a prominent, participating, member of the community.
Conceptualize the community
This is a huge topic, see here. Based upon your data, decide the following:
1) Who the community is for (pick a specific sub-group of the interest to begin with. Use demographics, habits, or psychographic clusters)
2) What the community is about (similar to the above, be specific. i.e. This is a community for {x} that believe/like/do/are {x}.
3) What type of community it will be (action, place, interest, circumstance, practice). Use your competitive analysis here to make sure it is the only community of its kind.
4) What will the community aim to do / What will happen in the community. These two are connected.
Build a founding members group
Begin inviting these founding members to a mailing list, Facebook/LinkedIn group, or some other simple platform. Invite a few members per day. Initiate regular discussions based upon the biggest challenges they highlighted in the interviews. Directly reach out to the people you invite and ask them to give their opinions on the discussions. Continue inviting a few more people every day until you reach the 25 to 50 mark.
Remember, if they're not actively participating, it doesn't count.
At this stage you typically rejig the concept around the topics that got the most discussion/generated the most excitement in the community. This is a quick process of testing different community concepts until you find the one people love the most.
Once the platform is ready, move the discussions across and use the initial group as the insider/volunteer/meta group.
Keep inviting new people, initiating discussions, soliciting responses and building relationships with key members. You will find it soon begins growing by itself. it will begin taking off by itself. You will also find you can begin initiating regular events/activities for the community, plan out a regular content schedule, and focus on other elements of the community management framework.
Good luck.
If you want to learn more, sign up for our training day on March 9th at the London School of Economics.
Community Sites -vs- Content Sites
Look at these two platforms; HR.com and the HR Business Network.
Both cater to the same audience, yet one is designed as a content site and the other a community site.
HR Business content, above, is a content site. It gives full priority to giving people information. It features content in the most prominent areas of the community. Members will visit when they want information.
HR.com, below is a community site. It's designed to connected HR professionals with one another. When you visit the community you seek the contributions of other members in the most prominent positions.
Both are perfectly fine, but produce very different results.
If you create a content site, you're in the content business. You're not building a community, you're building an audience. You're competing against every other source of information on the topic. Loyalty levels are quite low. Average length of visit is low. Members only visit when they want information, and might not be that often. It might only be when they have a problem.
If you're building a community site, you're in the connection economy. You're competition are other social groups. People keep visiting because they feel part of a peer group. They want to know what their peers are doing. They're participating to satisfy their social needs (ego, validation, self-esteem etc…), not their information-needs. Loyalty to communities is extremely high and members visit for longer periods of time.
Both have their uses, but they're very different approaches. Pick one or the other with great care. Design your platform to be a great content site, or a great community site. Don't try to do both.
If you want to learn how to design (or redesgin) and develop your community's platform, join us for FeverBee's Community Management Masterclass at the London School of Economics of March 9th.
Something I Want Community Platforms To Do
Perhaps this exists, but I haven't seen it.
I want a platform that will send a daily e-mail to the community manager. This e-mail will contain a list of members whom have made their first contribution to the community.
We know from theory that the response to a member's first contribution is critical to retain that member. If the response isn't quick enough, doesn't ask a question, doesn't disclosure any information about the responder, or simply isn't good enough, the member doesn't participate again.
This is a high impact area. A small intervention here can significantly increase the number of members that become regulars. If the community manager is sent a daily list, they can easily ensure that every first-time contributor gets a good response.
We need a platform that has the capability to do this. Let's make it happen.
Helping Members To Have Influence
Members need to feel they can influence the community.
If you don't feel you can influence the group, your participation in the group declines.
This means you need to do two things:
1) Provide members with opportunities to have influence
2) Amplify and showcase the influence members have had.
The former is easier than the latter. The latter, however, is more important.
Not every member will have influence, but every member must feel they can have influence.
The first step is to ensure that every member does have the opportunity to have influence. This means creating the right sort of platform. Next it means creating these opportunities.
It helps to have a be more involved area in the community. This can ask members to be more involved in running areas of the community. You can specifically list things taking place in the community for which you need more support. This might be someone to do regular interviews, create columns, contribute news, or be responsible for newcomers etc…
Second, this means frequently calling for opinions, ideas, and advice. It means asking members for their opinions on topical debates and ensuring these contributions make an impact in the community.
You can also give members influence in other ways. You can turn one of smartest members into an ask the expert series. Autodesk and Element14 do this well. Element14 gives top members their own area in the community to run.
It makes a lot of sense to give members whom have showcased an area of expertise their own group/forum category for people that want to showcase that expertise. This also gives members a single destination to ask questions about this topic.
Autodesk lets top members create blog posts. Autocad gives participants their own blog in the community where those that have showcased a high level of expertise can regularly update what they do.
Mashable highlights the best comments of the week. Note, not the people that post the most comments, but people that post the best comments. This lets the rest of the community know that a single, quality, contribution can have a big impact upon the community.
Join us and many great community managers in London on March 9th for our Intensive Community Management Masterclass. Click here for full details.
Building A Real, Meaningful, Community Is Worthwhile
Is the idea of building genuine communities for organizations too utopian?
Why bother with the sense of community, building real relationships between members, and trying to create a community that makes a meaningful different in the lives of members?
What if you just need members posting?
There are two reasons. First, members that develop real relationships and feel a stronger sense of community participate more frequently and stay for longer. If all you wanted was activity, then this makes building a real community worthwhile.
In every type of community (action, circumstance, interest, place, practice), pushing members to participate to satisfy their social needs (validation, ego, efficacy, self-esteem, affiliation etc..) generates more growth, activity, and a stronger return on investment. Catering to the types of discussions that get members emotionally involved, self-disclosing information about themselves generates better results.
Second, isn't the job more rewarding if you're building a community that does make a real impact upon the lives of members rather than collecting clicks? Wouldn't it be easier to attract and retain the type of community managers that want to do this sort of work? Isn't this the sort of organization you would want to be?
It makes sense to be very selfish and build an incredibly strong community.
p.s. Click this link to watch a slightly suspect recording of my Amsterdam talk; How to use social sciences to increase activity in your community.
Your Biggest Community Problem
We're inviting you to our Community Management Masterclass on March 9th.
Judging by the registered attendees so far, it's going to be a group of terrific community professionals. It's also a good mix of non-profits, internal community specialists, and external community managers.
One of our goals is to tackle your biggest problems. Not just tackle the problems, but to master the process for identifying, prioritising, and tackling the problems in your community.
Many organizations complain about something relatively minor. There might be a member posting too frequently or driving away newcomers.
When we look at the conversion funnel, we might find that most members drop out after their first contribution…or after the second week…or fail to complete the registration process. When we fix these, the numbers increase significantly.
For mature communities, understanding what to work on next, mastering the social sciences to tackle the problems, and being able to measure results is critical. If you can master this skill, it makes it easier to put together a comprehensive community strategy.
If you want to join us in London on March 9th, please sign up.
We would love to meet you.
Why Can’t The Community Manage Itself?
Kirsten asked a good question last week.
Why not just hire a community manager until the community can run itself?
Isn't this the ultimate goal? Once the community is self-sustaining, can't organizations let it run itself.
There are two problems with this logic.
The first is why moderation companies exist; something bad might happen. The community might be invaded by spam, the community might engage in an activity that makes the organization liable to legal repercussions, the community might flame out, or member's might engage in non-stop fights.
This is easy enough for everyone to explain and understand. Yet it's the second reason that's more important.
The second reason is the community won't be developed to it's potential. A community manager is the person that develops the community to its full potential. A community manager pushes the community as far through the lifecycle as it can go and keeps it there. That role never ends. That role keeps paying dividends.
As the community progresses through the lifecycle, the community manager's role evolves. They begin on micro-level tasks, move to macro, and finally to optimization-level activities.
This presents a danger to community manager's whose role doesn't not evolve and those that are doing the same tasks they did last year. This means you're not progressing and developing your community.
The community can always be bigger, more active, have a better sense of community, and deliver a better ROI. If you reach critical mass and drop the community manager, not only will your community likely regress, but it will also never reach it's potential. You get better returns from keeping the community manager.
A Good Assumption To Make
Sagazone, a community for the 50+ founded by Saga, is dead.
Recently there have been complaints about content posted in the Soapbox and Debate Zone. We closed these areas of the site but people continued to post controversial and offensive content on other areas of the site.
A social networking site is about freedom of speech and there are many places on the web where people can express their views in a robust and unfettered manner. However, Saga Zone is in a Saga branded environment and when members post content that others find offensive on a company's website it can impact how the company itself is viewed.
We are sad that the site has been used to post offensive messages and that we cannot continue to run Saga Zone with the threat to the brand that this content poses.
Here is a good assumption to make about your community; anticipate that members will make racist and homophobic comments. Anticipate that your community will attract trolls. Anticipate that a small minority will do the worst thing they can possibly do.
…and have a plan to deal with it!
The solution to members posting offensive/illegal comments isn't to remove the place where members are posting such such comments. It's to be quicker and more effective at preventing and removing those responsible.
Speedier moderation, vetting members, instant banning, and greater awareness of guidelines can help. The key is to have a plan to deal with your worst problem before it becomes your worst problem.
The Pros And Cons Of Growing A Community
There are two schools of thought.
First, when you grow a community, each member sees the possibility of having a bigger impact. They have an increased sense of efficacy. The level of participation increases. Everyone wants to be part of a growing community.
This is true…up to a point.
The second school of thought is that growth is bad for a community. The problem is two-fold. Growing too quickly is bad. The more members there are in a community, the less familiar you are with each. The community's unique identity begins to dissipate. The recognition, familiarity, tone, references to previous discussions/activities decline. Everything that attracted the new members can vanish quite quickly.
Growing too big without planning for it causes problems. These are problems like information overload, declining attention for each member, inability to recruit volunteers to keep undertaking all the necessary community tasks. Over time, the community becomes a numbers game. Hire {x} moderators to handle {x} comments per day.
Yet, a community that fails to attract new members enters a death spiral. More members leave than can be recruited. Less activity begets less activity.
The solution is not to treat growth as a standalone activity. It's a delicate balancing act. You juggle an increase in growth with sustaining both activity and a strong sense of community.
If you're going to recruit members, you need to target them as a group. You need to plan out their first few weeks in the community, you need to have a plan to integrate them with existing community members (interviews, welcome discussions, newcomer orientation, community culture documents, rituals/traditions etc…).
You also need to protect existing members. Ensure that the level of familiarity doesn't drop, facilitate sub-groups for members based upon more distint interest. This is why you can never focus on one single thing.
That's not going to be easy, but then you probably knew that.
The Problem With Community Platforms (and asking the right questions)
Discourse looks interesting. It looks sleek, modern, and displays most of what people need. It's also open-source. It might be a fantastic new community platform.
It's going to tempt a lot of people to switch platforms…and this is the problem.
Switching community platforms is one of the riskiest things you can do. The benefits are usually minimal and the dangers are colossal. Unless you picked a terrible platform initially, changing a platform won't help you much.
If you want a better community, it's rarely a new platform you need, it's a new and better approach to community management.
How are you driving activity and growth in that community?
What are you doing to recruit members? Whom are you approaching? What are you telling them? What is their reaction? What tactics have you tried/not tried? How are you encouraging them to invite others?
How are you initiating and sustaining discussions? What topics have you tried? Who and how are you prompting people to respond to these topics? What types of discussions work best? What does your audience analysis tell you will be most interesting?
What events are you facilitating? Have you scheduled regular, live, events? Are you reaching out to and inviting the top people in your community and sector to participate in these events?
Are you building relationships with members? How are you building these relationships? What is working/not working here?
Have you diagnosed your community? What specifically does your data tell you is going wrong? Is it growth, activity, or sense of community?
Are you embracing the full community management framework? Or are you just doing a tiny sliver of the work you should be doing.
Too often, we jump straight to the conclusion that the platform is the problem. That's rarely the case. It's almost certainly the activity you're doing on the platform that matters.
This is why new platforms have made it easier to build communities, but haven't helped us build better communities.
The answers to these questions are far more important than the platform or its features.
If you want to learn how to increase growth and activity in your community, sign up for our live training day in London on March 9th. We would love to have you and look forward to meeting many long-time readers of the blog.