How To Avoid A Costly Ghost Town
Many organisations launch communities with very noble intentions, only to struggle to sustain meaningful activity within them.
I frequently see organisations launch a community to improve a profession, only to struggle to sustain a decent level of engagement. The reason for this is usually pretty simple: the community doesn’t solve a problem that enough people face.
As a result, the community never becomes a priority for members to engage with or participate in.
For example, a community for teachers to establish common standards is a well-sounding idea. Still, it is almost sure to fail if launched following the same techniques as a typical support community (open, public, big launch).
This kind of community needs to be small, exclusive, and HIGHLY facilitated by someone individuals trust. An open forum will either be a chaotic free-for-all or a ghost town. There really isn’t any in between here.
Creating A New Behavior Is Hard
Another example might be a community for sales professionals to share advice and tips.
On the surface, this sounds like a good idea for a community – and you can find examples of communities like these that have thrived. But they’re very hard to build – at least at the scale most organisations are keen to make them.
That’s because you have to create a new behavior. And making a behavior is much harder than substituting for one. Because you don’t just need people to perform that behavior once, you need them to perform it multiple times. That means creating a habit. It means people need to make time to do the new thing.
And to make time, it needs to be a priority. And it’s tough to shift people’s priorities.
Most Enterprise Communities Thrive By Substituting A Behavior
Most enterprise communities are essentially painkiller communities.
They take away someone’s pain.
Instead of people getting relief from their pain through one channel, they’re taking another, more efficient channel.
Put simply, the vast majority of enterprise communities thrive when there are lots of people with questions to solve and nowhere else to go.
These communities succeed primarily because they help people do something they were already doing even better. Better in this context means quicker, easier, or cheaper than through their existing channel.
It’s often far less burdensome (or quicker) to ask a question in a support community than file a ticket or, god forbid, pick up a telephone and make a call.
Aside: This is why task competition rates (and effort scores) are great things to track.
If it’s quicker, easier, or cheaper than achieving the same goal through other channels, the community wins.
How To Make Your Community A Priority
The challenge is, if you’re not building a support community, how do you make your community a priority?
Simply enabling someone to do something is never enough (nor is it constantly reminding someone to do it.)
Instead, it comes down to two specific things.
- Is the concept of the community itself a priority?
- Is the community structured to align with that concept?
Take the first question: Is the community concept itself a priority?
Priorities vary by person and time of day. In almost any profession, you can structure your community so people visit daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on their goals.
You can see this in the table below.
In most sectors and professions, there are both immediate and long-term needs.
Generally speaking, the more you base your community on immediacy, the easier it is to attract and sustain a good level of engagement (albeit with limited long-term impact).
The moment you move away from immediate needs, the harder it is to drive activity.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It just means you need to know what kind of structure and appeal you need to create to make it happen.
Noble Communities Need Less Noble Incentives
On the far right sides are growth and aspirational communities.
These communities aren’t places we go to when there’s a problem, but places where we go for personal development and to change the environment around us for the better. These types of communities are a LOT harder to build.
I think we all intuitively know that most people want to improve the sector/environment, but it’s tough to make it a priority in our daily lives.
Yet these communities do happen. But they don’t tend to happen in these broad, forum-centric, public environments.
To make these concepts work, you need to combine it with at least one of three things:
1) Exclusivity. Exclusivity is a powerful tool for persuading people to do things. It helps make the activity a priority in the audience’s eyes. When it’s exclusive and scarce, people value it more. Which is why many of the communities on the right are exclusive. But exclusivity has an obvious problem—it has to be small (or time-limited).
You have to have the resources to moderate the community, approve the right people, etc, and you also need to turn people away. If anyone can become a member, why would anyone want to?
2) Fun. Fun is a powerful motivator. It’s no surprise that the majority of communities towards the right you can name are probably hosted on Reddit. They’re not problem-centric; they’re simply fun places to hang out. Surprising news, memes, and more make it a fun place to visit. When we have free time, we want to check them out to see what’s new or different.
The problem with fun is that brands are terrible at it. Most brands don’t want to be associated with or host the types of content that people find the most engaging. They prioritise seriousness over. They become like the educational programming everyone ignores.
3) FOMO. Fear of missing out comes in two forms. The first is communities that are so established that everyone visits them, so they don’t miss out. Many of these communities fall under the same category as before. They’re simply ingrained in the fabric of the industry. These are the least common in this decentralized era—but still relatively easy to find.
Another type of community here is time-limited, creating a sense of scarcity. I.e., if you don’t engage now, you will miss out. This is why people who never take the time to engage in an online community happily attend an event—they have a unique fear of missing out.
The real lesson, though, is that noble motives to help people grow and change the sector aren’t usually enough to draw people in and keep them engaged. You need something more than that. You need to add a wrapper that prioritizes the community. And that wrapper will usually be exclusivity, fun, and/or fear of missing out.
What Do Members Want From Brand Communities?
If we focus on urgent wants in these communities, we can break these down into the categories below.
If you want your community to thrive, you need to be clear about the value proposition and ensure it aligns with the structure (platform, community management type, and open vs. private).
You should also be aware of the must-win battle for your community type.
If you’re trying to build a community around personal growth and/or sector transformation, noble goals aren’t usually enough. You need to offer exclusivity, fun, or create a few of the missing out.
In short, you need to sell the community to people who are already busy.
Build Your Community Around Something Members Already Prioritise (Or Add Specific Incentives)
If I could summarise everything in two simple lessons.
For an enterprise community, you have one of two choices.
- Either launch a community that meets members’ immediate needs (the things they will actively seek during their day). In this case, focus on time-to-value and ensuring members get the value they want as quickly as possible.
- Or launch a community around non-immediate goals, but add an engaging twist. This will usually be exclusivity, fun/excitement, or fear of missing out. The former and latter are usually the best options.
If you find yourself in between the two, you’ve got a problem.
