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Replacing your community platform with another might replace your current set of problems with another.
Switching platforms is not a silver bullet to increasing engagement or the end of your technology challenges.
This doesn’t mean it doesn’t help. Some of our clients have seen great success switching platforms. But it’s a calculated risk. You need to know the risks and how to navigate them.
I was recently honoured to participate in a podcast with Sitevisible on the current climate of online communities and what happens next.
If the topic isn’t part of a member’s identity, you can’t build a typical community.
No-one is in AT&T’s community by choice. Something broke and they want a quick resolution. You shouldn’t try building a sense of community, initiating off-topic discussions, and interviewing your newcomers*.
The name of this game is speed and quality. You need to solve a member’s problem before they’ve had to ask a question. That’s the gold standard you edge closer towards each day.
It’s hard to select and implement a community platform.
You need to know the different platforms, their pricing tiers, comparable features, and know if others liked the platform.
Then you need to see demos of each and negotiate with each. It’s an exhaustive, risky, process.
Don’t believe a community is a forum with good questions and helpful responses.
This pervasive mindset limits the potential of your audience.
Kaggle has 500k members. It’s the most important data science community in the world. It’s a huge success. And it’s almost entirely oriented around competitions. Companies post data sets, prizes, and members compete to solve them.
This is entirely different from how most people approach communities.
Did you use the wrong tactics or were the tactics badly executed?
Are you measuring the metrics that matter to you or to metrics you heard someone else was measuring?
Are you just looking to impress your boss or are you sincerely looking for ways to improve your community?
When we do use data in online communities, we use it badly. There are 7 simple rules that might help:
My flight to Spain was delayed by 13 hours. The airline told us not to be angry.
Telling someone not to be angry is much like telling someone not to be tired. They couldn’t do it even if they wanted to.
A sure-fire way to ignite a difficult situation is to tell someone how to feel (or worse, explain why someone is being irrational).
Most of your traffic will come via search to specific community discussions (often very old discussions).
This means most newcomers won’t see the carefully crafted messages on your homepage.
They won’t see the large registration button or go through the expertly designed journey to increase conversion.
If you enjoy the outcome more than the process, you might have a problem.
It’s great to see an idea from the community included in the product, or feedback reaching the upper levels of management, or a huge community event filled with passionate fans.
But these moments are fleeting and tough to predict. If this is what gives you joy, you’re not going to get much joy. Or worse, you will see the daily inputs as something you have to get through to experience those fleeting moments of joy.
Like many lines of work, you really need to find a way to love the process here.
