Month: February 2017

Some topics are seasonal.

At Square, it’s tax season. This means lots of questions about taxes.

You can alleviate a lot of frustration and scrambling around during seasonal topics by posting them on the first page of the community (see below).

Some time ago we took a decision not to allow job ads in our community.

Our rubric here is simple.

1) Can we do this better than anyone else? (i.e. will we do anything differently to others doing job adverts? For example, we can design a system that matches job-seekers with those open to jobs. We can identify or filter out the top people (or top jobs) and only allow those etc..)

The secret to popularity is making people feel good around you.

The simplest way to make people feel good around you is telling people what they want to hear.

You can do this unintentionally. You might see a positive news story about the field and share it. This gets more likes than your analytical piece so you share more positive news stories and less new insights.

Every question should get a response, even if it’s a response the member won’t like.

No, they might not be able to integrate your tool with a specific service.

They won’t like that answer, but at least now they know.

Here’s a common narrative. A member complains about an issue in your community.

She complains about every discussion, posts personal details of staff members to complain too, keeps going until she’s removed.

Then she writes to relevant people or different publications claiming she’s being censored by the website for criticising the company.

You have questions you would love the answer to.

How many members do we need to reach critical mass?

What activities do they need to perform to become regulars?

Do personal welcomes work as well as automated messages?

Which activities drive the behavior we need? etc…

Don’t go off-topic too early.

Off-topic discussions can be useful to build strong levels of self-disclosure between members. This facilitates relationships which keep people participating and establishes a strong group identity.

But don’t do this too early.

You know the saying, first they ignore you…

There are relatively fixed stages of doom for most communities.

1) You don’t notice the new trend (a shift to new technology, member launching a rival community, decline in topic popularity, collapse in internal support).

2) You ignore or dismiss the trend (“it’s a fad”, “he doesn’t have the support”, “our topic is strong” or “Mr. Smith has our back”).

3) You fight against the trend. You persuade people your technology is better, you attack your rival, you try to promote the topic, or you try to gain internal support. But it’s usually too late.