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Learn how to approach your community strategically.
In the inception stage of the community lifecycle, you promote the community to the fringe radicals, the true believers, and the people who know you best and are closest to you. These are the people with the passion to create something that doesn’t exist yet.
In the establishment stage, you promote the community to the topic enthusiasts.
Sense of community is to community professionals what Maslow is to motivation (albeit with more scientific evidence).
If you’re working in this field, please read it (or at least read the summary).
Then learn how to apply it. This video below might help.
A friend mentioned she had to change her metrics three times as new bosses came and left.
The one time she tried to stick to her guns, she lost half her team.
When a new boss arrives, you often have two options. You can repeatedly try to reinforce the existing value of the community and persuade the new boss to your point of view.
Does a newcomer have the information they need to be a good participant?
Do they know what good participation looks like?
Do they know how to look up and find information they can share with others?
Do they know what’s on the edge of domain of knowledge?
Diversify growth streams.
Google will send you traffic, but Google can change quickly.
Get yourself featured more prominently on the company website, newsletters, or outbound emails to customers.
Get inbound links on major news sites which get lots of traffic.
While speaking at IAC in DC on Sunday, someone asked what to do about rival communities.
This depends if you’re dealing with a split or a shift.
A split is when two factions emerge and you need two communities to handle them.
In Bitcoin’s case, there has been a very literal split.
The simplest behaviors are often the most effective.
Getting members to write reviews, for example, consistently ranks as one of the highest-impact tasks a member can undertake.
One study shows why:
Have a few people track how long they spent asking around and looking for a document (or answer) outside of the community.
You can use a survey if you want broad guesstimations.
Now, look at how long people spend getting answers or finding documents in the community.
The strength of most community platforms is they are asynchronous.
If someone doesn’t login today, they don’t miss out on anything. They can catch up tomorrow.
But that strength is also a weakness. If you don’t need to visit today, then why bother? In fact, why not wait a few weeks?
A growing number of apps tackle this by incorporating the daily bonus.
