As part of our consultancy, we spend a lot
of time reviewing a client’s existing plans for a community.
There are a variety of things we look out
for. Some we’ve listed below:
Strategy
- Do you have clear, ROI, goals?
i.e. not likes/engagements but one of these? - Do you have a framework for
measuring the health, progress, and ROI of the community? Is this framework
logical and valid? - Have you set a specific time to
collect and analyze the data you need? - Are your data collection methods
valid? - Is your community concept clear
and based upon research you’ve undertaken? - Are you taking the right
actions for your stage in the community lifecycle?
Growth
- Do you have a plan to
proactively grow the community? - Are you targeting a specific,
segmented, group to join the community? Is your approach genuine or does it
feel corporate? - If you’re just launching, do
you know specific who to contact and have you already established relationships
with this audience? - Do you have a process for
converting a newcomer into a regular? - Are you inviting members to do
something specific within the community? - Are you optimizing the newcomer
to regular conversion ratio? Do you know where members are dropping out?
Moderation
- Do you have a calendar of
discussions you plan to initiate over the next 3 months? Is this based upon
audience research? - Are you highlighting and
promoting the most popular discussions in the community? - Are your discussions linked to
your events and content? - Do you have a process and
criteria for removing negative members from the community? - Have you reviewed whether your
community needs to concentrate or dissipate activity?
Content
- Have you established a weekly
calendar of content categories? - Are you creating daily content
about the community? - Are recruiting and making it
easy for members to submit their own content (not just providing the means, but
also the motivation)? - Does your content establish a
social order and narrative within the community for members to follow?
Events
& Activities
- Are you organizing and
facilitating regular online activities for members? (webinars, live chats,
challenges/quizzes etc…) - When will you host an offline
meetup? - Are you documenting the results
of previous events and publishing these somewhere?
Influence
- Has the community manager
chosen a path to gain influence within the community (reciprocity, likability,
or expertise)? - Have you identified the top
members of the community, is there a plan and specific time set aside to build
relationships with these top members? - Is there a plan to recruit
volunteers to help contribute guest content, undertaken community activities,
and provide regular support? - Are the opinions of members
regularly solicited?
User
Experience
- Does your platform feature the
latest activity, above the fold, on the landing page of the community? - Is there a clear place for
members to interact with each other, not for the organization to interact with
the members? - Is the platform easy to modify
and update? Or will it require a lot of maintenance? Has it been used before to
develop successful communities? - Is the platform open, with all
content accessible to non-members? - Are there any plans to concentrate
or dissipate the level of activity in the community? - Is there a community history, a
good FAQ, and a simple registration form?
Business
Integration
- Does the organization understand
what a community is, how to participate in the community, the benefits of a
community, the time it takes to develop a community, and the resources a
community requires? - Is there a full-time community
manager? - Are more employees than just
the community managers participating in the community? - Is the community integrated
with the product, price, place, and promotion of the organization? - Does the organization have the
ability to scale the community?
All of these are important questions to
answer. You can also use our community strategy template, development process, and checklist.
