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You’re probably getting a lot of product feedback.
So, what should you do with it?
Here’s what not to do. Don’t surprise people in a meeting or a company-wide report with community feedback that is critical of someone’s work. This makes people defensive and creates enemies determined to undermine everything you do (believe me).
If you’re not willing to build a community until you’ve seen someone in your field build one first, you’re not going to have a community.
Outside of transactional communities (customer service), most lasting communities are built upon shared experiences and shared memories.
If you positively remember going through events and circumstances together, your propensity to continue supporting and participating in future community activities rises considerably (wouldn’t you do anything for your college buddies?).
Aristotle’s logos, ethos, and pathos stands the test of time.
If you want your boss (or community members) to support you and come around to your way of thinking, you need to have credibility (ethos), have a logical argument (logos), and leverage their emotions (pathos).
Someone recently came to us to help them start a community for entrepreneurs from scratch (i.e. no existing audience).
What would you advise?
“Yes, go ahead and start a community for the web’s busiest people, who receive countless spam, and have dozens of existing communities to choose between?”
Driving Innovation Through Communities doesn’t usually generate many useful ideas.
Take a second to look at Dell’s Ideastorm’s top implemented ideas.
They’re interesting, but we can agree they’re primarily tweaks around the edges of products. None saved Dell or helped invent the iPad. They’re also likely ideas Dell engineers already considered.
Careful of reporting on metrics you can’t influence.
Customer support communities often fall victim to this. A new product release drives scores of people with problems to ask questions in the community. This is reported in activity or calls deflected.
That’s now the benchmark you’re judged against.
Better educated members make better customers. But, educating members is extremely hard.
Most don’t have the time to be educated beyond a useful tidbit or answer to their problem. Others don’t have the motivation. (A few might already consider themselves experts).
The challenge isn’t sourcing the knowledge in the first place. It’s easy to find experts and useful solutions in almost any field. The challenge is turning the knowledge into a format the audience can digest.
Large, established communities tend to die in one of three ways. They lose internal support (see Carnival), they lose their audience to a new community (gaming communities and Reddit), or they lose relevancy and slowly die.
