Month: November 2018

Giving customers a place to chat with one another doesn’t directly boost customer loyalty.

This study closely mirrors our experience. Just chatting isn’t enough. What really matters is getting members to create things which are tremendously useful to the group.

This means giving members the tools, motivation, and opportunities to create something unique.

A strategic question we sometimes ask clients is; “what is the craziest most amazingly game-changing thing you could do for your members if time, money, and resources were no object?”

Surprisingly few people have an answer.

They don’t know what would really make members much more successful, much happier, or much more closely connected.

Mumsnet had (has?) a transphobia problem.

A small minority of members made consistently offensive comments.

After toeing the free speech line resulted in a severe backlash, Mumsnet published a revised moderation policy with a view to removing hurtful and offensive posts.

How can you encourage conflicting viewpoints while protecting minorities who may be targeted through those viewpoints?

At SuperForum last week, Jackie Huba explained how Lady Gaga built her Little Monsters community by focusing on the most passionate 1% of her audience.

Several community managers at associations later told me they liked the talk but it didn’t apply to them.

They couldn’t nurture passionate fans the way Lady Gaga can. Their association is “boring”, they couldn’t create and amplify new values, they couldn’t create the same kind of passionate following.

Emily asks whether community experience or passion for the topic is more important when hiring community professionals.

Ideally, you want both. But when that’s not feasible, it depends upon the role.

The Starbucks’ Leaf Rakers Society isn’t an indispensable community.

It doesn’t significantly improve the lives of its members.

It doesn’t deliver clear, irreplaceable, value throughout the business.

It doesn’t bring to bear a brand’s unique assets to create an unparalleled community experience.

This time next year, it will be long gone and forgotten.

Related to yesterday’s post, be ruthless about removing things from the community.

The temptation is always to add more, cater to every whim, and let old items linger in the community indefinitely in case someone needs them.

It’s the same reason why you probably have drawers in your house stuffed with electric cables.

A recent course participant had diligently undertaken a survey of 250+ community members and had personally interviewed a further dozen community members.

From this research, he had created a detailed list of 19 things roughly prioritized by the number of members who wanted the item (e.g. document sharing, chat rooms, activity streams, VIP interviews, etc..).

Whenever you try something new, especially something big that everybody in the community sees, you often get a spike in activity.

This happens when you add a new banner, host a new interview series, begin a ‘working out loud’ series, start regular off-topic discussions etc…

When this happens you often get a spike of activity followed by a decline. We’ve seen spikes can be bad. Much of the spike can be explained by curiosity, initial excitement, and a fear of not joining in with the group.