Not since moveable type was popularized, leading to the Renaissance and eventually the Industrial Revolution, have we had such a vast global communication connection as has been brought by Web 2.0 and beyond (social connecting, social media and social networking and interaction). The 1960’s slogan, “think globally, act locally” is coming to fruition with instantaneous news, the blogosphere and soundbites.
How to build community for your business out of all this? There are basic steps in successful online community building. It is a lot of hard work, but worth the effort if done well.
1. Define your purpose and audience. In other words, PLAN.
This is no different than any marketing and outreach undertaking. Without definition, it is difficult to proceed or to attract and keep members.
At CommunitySpark.com, Martin Reed has a great PDF whitepaper with questions for you to consider before building your community.
2. Choose the right technology tools.
This is important, but not a place to get sidetracked. Find a community building application (Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Groupsite, Facebook are the more used ones). If you specialize, look for those, such as photographers at flickr, writers might join Seth Godin’s Squidoo or Network Solutions’ “My Solution Spot” or Google’s knoll. Speakers should look at online speaking bureaus as well as the Yearbook of Experts.
Features to look for when deciding on which tech tools include discussion threads, tagging, search, RSS feeds, file downloading, and the ability to link to and display just about any type of standard web based interface to a wide variety of systems, data stores, and presentation media. Don’t add features just for the sake of having the most toys. Grow the community first, then add tools as the community needs demand.
Spending a lot of time on developing the technology misses the point. Look at Richard Millington’s “Online Community Manifesto” to get you thinking in another direction.
3. Brand and promote your community.
Branding is critical to growing your community. Define your community clearly and unequivocally. This is no place for cute and clever. Demonstrate a consciousness of kind, build traditions, and celebrate successes and history through stories that strengthen your brand. Then promote it everywhere. Once you know what your brand stands for, your users will find you. And then you need to keep them. Do this with good content and your active participation in the community.
4. Content is still king - and a weapon.
Organizations invest in a web site’s architecture and understand the need for great user interaction, yet the ROI is often missing because the content is insufficient, does not support the goal of the site or the actions to be taken by the visitor, making the value worthless. A wireframe is no good and cannot be launched without developing and implementing a content strategy plan (and content), at the same time and with the same care taken to build our perfect site.
Content strategy helps you and your team know what needs to be written for publication and why, as well as what to omit. Publishing is complex. Content is being developed for multiple uses: syndication, collaboration, community, social media, user-generated content -- and then there are the technologies used to push all this content.
Use content as a weapon to improve the community experience. Improved experience is the key to grassroots, word-of-mouth referrals, which builds on itself, sending more customers, which drive the social web.
Content strategy is even more critical when building a community as collaboration needs to stay focused.
5. Collaboration is key -- make it easy for the community to contribute.
Make it easy, but remember that content needs to be appropriate and on point. Make sure someone is daily managing the collaborators. Reject posts that are not appropriate to your brand and the community message. Make it simple to login to a user forum. Provide various means for users to access the forum and information in the community. Evolve the best practices and solutions into an FAQ and manuals. Integrate the community into your business web site. As with all things web, don’t just leave your community out there alone.
The key to successful collaboration, therefore community, is sharing.
Sharing requires tools that create a central repository. Documents, emails, messages, resources are all in one place. Collaborators can follow the entire conversation, and see the latest versions of documents, without missing an undelivered email or attachment.
Basecamp is an excellent, free such application. Tadalist is another such tool, with a different focus (shorter for to do lists, rather than for longer collaborations). Online communities naturally share through comments and vetted authors.
6. Recruit active members as collaborators -- and give them recognition
This sounds simple, but might get complex, especially as the community grows. A lot of successful communities create awards. Some don’t publish the exact criteria for being a top contributor to prevent gaming the system. Others, like LinkedIn, offer those getting responses to their questions a means to spotlight a particular answer.
Recognition should be timely, simple and sincere, specific (tell what the recognition is for exactly) and personal. This last means taking time to know the people you are recognizing. Make the recognition fit the person. I often take the time to review their web site, read their other collaborative efforts, and their biographies so when I do promote them in our community,
Especially, recognition should make the recipient know s/he is a valued member of the community. How to do this?
Does a member mention an event or important date? Ask them about it afterward.
Engage in a dialogue with your members. Answer their questions and pose some follow up ones of your own.
Be available to members. If there is trouble, they need to know you are around for support.
Support the uniqueness of each member. Allow them to custom color their member areas, upload an avatar, and/or give badges for those who deserve them.
Use email and personal online outreach, but don’t forget a hand-written note for successes or personal bad news is still the most meaningful gesture.
7. Listen and Improve
Listen to your community. Take the opportunities offered and the advice so kindly, and freely, given. Build relationships and your community will thrive.
Posted from Broadside: Taking Aim at the Social Revolution
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