FeverBee--The Online Community Guide

Sustaining Long-Term Participation In An Online Community

Monday, February 20, 2012 by Richard Millington

Beyond the short-term interest/need that compels a member to join, long-term participation is driven by four needs.

1) Power (efficacy)

2) Fame/recognition (appreciation)

3) Friends (affiliation)

4) Achievement.

Your members will participate because they want to have an impact upon their surroundings (even online), want people to say nice things about them and feel appreciated, make friends or feel a sense of achievement.

If the majority of your active members have been in the community for less than three months, you have a motivation problem. Your members don’t feel they can satisfy their power, fame or achievements needs within your community.

This doesn’t mean you need to give recognition, power etc…to these members. You just need them to feel they could quench their motivation thirst in these areas.

The difference is important. You can’t quench everyone’s motivation thirst in a scalable way. Nor should you try.

This isn’t an excuse to be lazy about giving members recognition, power or helping the community achieve things together. It’s the opposite.

It’s a compelling reason to be highly active in giving recognition (interviewing members, mentioning members in news posts, celebrating their milestones etc…), power (control over areas of the site, responsibility for certain topics, initiations to the volunteer group) and that sense of achievement (milestones, activities external to the community, collaboration activities), amongst a diverse group of members.

The more members see others being recognized, given power and achieving things within the community, the more they will feel they can get the same. The more they are likely to participate to achieve what these members have.

It’s the motivation thirst that will drive long-term participation.

Don’t try to be fair in dolling out recognition, power and achievements amongst all your members, you don’t need a rigid criteria for giving recognition, you just need to be highly active in doing it.

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit , an exclusive course in Professional Community Management. Richard's clients have included the United Nations, The Global Fund, Novartis, AMD, BAE Systems and several youth & entertainment brands. Richard is also the the author of the Online Community Manifesto.

Avectra, the leader in web based membership management software, is proud to partner with FeverBee Limited to help organizations around the world understand best practices for creating thriving online communities and build invaluable communities of their own. For more information on MemberFuse, Avectra's private online community platform, and Avectra Social CRM for Associations, click here.

High Value Community Management

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Richard Millington

What can you do that an intern with a few weeks training can't do?

If you spend your time welcoming members, removing spammers, responding to comments, writing content, answering questions, resolving disputes, and tweaking the platform, then you might struggle to think of an answer.

Worse, your answer might be to proclaim that you're less likely to make mistakes.

That's not good enough.

All these tasks are important, but they're not difficult. They can easily be outsourced. They treat the community as a problem to be managed. The company just wants the community taken care of. They don't want to be bothered by it.

So what's high-value work when it comes to developing communities?

Exactly that. High value work is developing communities.

I'd pay a premium for a community manager that can analyze where the community is now and set a direction for the future. This would include an action plan about what s/he would achieve every single week.

I'd pay a premium for a community manager that can ascertain the ROI of the community and then steadily increase it.

I'd pay a premium for a community manager that can create and execute a defensible plan for growing the community, increasing participation and building a strong sense of community amongst members.

I'd pay a premium for a community manager that can steadily build an internal network of support for the community, and increasingly integrate the community into the organization's activities.

I'd pay a premium for a community managers that proactively cultivate relationships with the top 100 members of the community and those in the community's ecosystem. Can you use your earned influence to shape what members do in the community? Can you get top people in your sector to give interviews, participate in events and submit guest columns to the community on a monthly basis? Can you get media coverage for your community as often as Mumsnet does?

There are a lot of high-value community management tasks that are incredibly valuable to a community. The key is they're all proactive and focus upon development, not maintenance. They treat the community as an asset that needs more attention and nurturing, and not a problem to be managed.

If you came in to work today without a plan for what you want to achieve in your community this week (not actions you take, but an improvement in the state of the community), then you're probably not doing high value community management...yet.

The Different Types Of Groups: How To Make Sure You Pick The Right Approach For The Right Result

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 by Richard Millington

In current usage, a community can mean almost any group of people that interact in almost any place in any manner.

This needs to end. It’s too encompassing of a broad array of different groups and outcomes.

Offline we have many of collective nouns to define groups of people based upon how they interact. We have audiences, mobs, crowds, congregations, tribes, and yes, community.

We do need to better understand what sort of group we want to develop. Each type of group produces a different outcome. The result that you get depends very much upon the approach you take.

For example:

Audience/fans. A group of people that read/watch/follow a singular stimulant. This group will have minimal relationships with each other.
Crowd. A group of people brought together by something unusual. This could be extremely good, extremely bad, extremely exciting. Attention is high for a short amount of time,
Mob. A mostly disorganized group of people uprising against a major issue. This will usually be leaderless with minimal relationships.
Tribe. A group with a defined leader attempting to affect change within the world. This group usually will have some level of relationships with each other.
Community. A group of people who have developed relationships around a strong common interest.

There are overlaps here. There are more types of groups too. But lets keep it simple for now.

We can agree that building an audience is different from a community. A crowd is different from a tribe.

This means we need to answer some important questions.

Does this group need a leader to guide them towards a fixed goal? Why?
Does this group need to build strong relationships with each other? Why?
Does this group need to be around for the long-term or does it need a short amount of attention? Why?

Your answers to these questions define what sort of group you create.

Let's imagine you want to promote an upcoming product, a product your target market hasn’t purchased before. You don’t need a tribe, nor a community. Your target market doesn’t need to communicate. You just need their attention. You probably want a crowd. You want a lot of attention for a short amount of time.

Let's imagine you want to increase repeat purchases of your product. A crowd or mob probably wont get the job done. You need a longer-term group than that. A tribe probably isn’t appropriate, unless it is the founder of the brand him/herself. So you want either an audience or a community.

Let's imagine you’re trying to change how something is done in your industry. A mob might work. You can alert people to a major issue they should be upset about. Or you can be a leader and build a tribe. You can position yourself again an issue and invite people to follow and help you.

Let's imagine you’ve just launched a start-up. You probably want an audience to manage. You want to respond to their questions and build good relationships with them. That doesn’t require relationships between your members. So you probably need an audience. However, you may consider a tribe if you want to cultivate advocates.

This is heavily simplified. The point is we can’t keep using community to encompass all manner of online social activities. Online social groups are all around us now, we need to know which are right for us.

Friday Community Traditions

Friday, February 3, 2012 by Richard Millington

Traditions help develop a sense of community amongst members and stimulate participation. Don't dismiss them as dumb, try one.

Fridays are an excellent opportunity to encourage an off-topic tradition. People expecting something fun and different. They want something to smile about before the weekend.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

Craziest weekend plan award. Who has the craziest or most bizarre weekend plan? Invite members, once every Friday in a short-term sticky-thread to share their plan for the weekend. After 24 hours close the thread with a message announcing the winner.
Caturday. Ruthlessly stolen from caturday, why not let members share funny pictures of their pets for a day?
Games. Word-association, trivia etc…
Beat my score. Pick a simply browser-based game and challenge members to get the highest score. It is Friday after all…
Discounts/Promotional days. One day a week, let members promote their products/items.
Mod-day. What’s the most interesting modification of an existing product/item a member has?

It’s easy to dismiss fun and off-topic traditions as silly and ill suited to your community. Yet, like many other activities mentioned on this blog, they’re a proven tactic. They stimulate activity and help develop a sense of community.

You might just be silly not to do it.

Making Your Community More Responsive

Monday, January 30, 2012 by Richard Millington

Does your community have a low level of responsiveness?

Are there a large number of discussions with a small number of replies?

Do members have to wait a long time to receive a reply to a discussion?

There are a few simple tips to increase responsiveness.

Ensure every discussion receives a reply within 24 hours. You need to work hard or have volunteers to do this.
Create a weekly list of unanswered questions/toughest questions.
Bump popular discussions towards the top of the community, let weaker discussions slide.
Proactively recruit experts to take responsibility for certain topics. If someone makes an excellent contribution to a discussion, ask if s/he would like to be responsible for responding to discussions on that topic.
Guide contributions with a list of topical issues newcomers might want to make a post about (and topics not to initiate a discussion about)
Recruit members/groups with a particular interest in a specific topic.
Write content about discussions taking place ("Mike asked a tricky discussion about ....")
Promote discussions through social media channels with links back to where members can reply.

This isn't comprehensive, but it should be a good start.

A Brief Guide To Building Strong Relationships With Key Community Members

Monday, January 23, 2012 by Richard Millington

A community manager should cultivate positive relationships with top members in the community.

These relationships provide the community manager with a great deal of influence over the community. They also boost activity, provide a feedback mechanism and develop volunteers.

Offline, building a relationship is a relatively simple task. Online, we tend to struggle. We rush it, or play the numbers game.

So here is a very quick guide on building a relationship with a top community member (or anyone).

1) Identify who you want to build a relationship with. Why this person? Judging by their past contributions to the community what do you and they have to gain through a relationship? Your time is limited, so you need to decide who to build a relationship with. Will it be the most prominent? Most active? Most knowledgable? Most experienced? Newest? Why?

2) Review their contributions to the community. Learn a little about them. Where are they from? What are their interests outside of the topic? What contributions to the community have they made in the past? What image of themselves are they trying to construct?

3) Question, compliment, or comment. Ask a relevant question, give them a compliment or make a statement you believe they will have a strong opinion on. All these will be based upon your research. You can't mass-mail this, each approach has to be based upon something specific.

4) Continue the discussion. Ask more questions based upon their responses. Identify a topic of mutual interest. Look for ways you can help them. Endeavour to talk on the phone or participate in something together. Disclose more information about yourself (thoughts, feelings, experiences).

5) Sustain the relationship. Maintain contact. Don't make a connection solely when you need something. Schedule it in your calendar if you like. Find a time every week to continue the relationship.

6) Only ask for something when you have completed the steps above. By far the biggest mistake is approaching someone too early. Wait until you have developed a strong relationship. It's best if you've already helped them do something first.

This works for any type of relationship you want to build in almost any situation.

Remember you should only ask the member to do something that benefits you after you have built a relationship. The benefit is the final step. Too frequently we treat it as the first step.

Don't be reactive to relationship development. Proactively cultivate positive relationships with a large group of members.

The Case Against Facebook As A Community Platform

Friday, January 20, 2012 by Richard Millington

People get upset when you claim Facebook is a bad community platform.

But the case is compelling. Lets look at some figures.

Of Coca-Cola's 34 million fans, only 56,000 are active (0.2 percent of the total). Disney's engagement is .03 percent; Starbucks, often lauded as a social media leader, is 1.3 percent; and McDonald's doesn't register (only about 3,900 fans can be considered active). Compared to offline engagement, these numbers represent a relatively small percentage of active consumers.

Yet, this is misleading. Active is defined as having made a single action (e.g. clicked like on a post within the past month). The gap between clicking like and posting a comment is huge.

If we go through the figures, we see that the number of active fans to real contributions (making a post/comment) is in the region of 10% - 50%.

Does an active community member only post once per month? I doubt it.

An active fan usually makes several comments a month. If each active fan posts just 5 comments a month (a low figure by community standards), the number of truly active fans drops by 80% or more. The more they post, the lower the number of active members.

Even if this were not the case, 56,000 fans who make one contribution a month is hardly a sign of a healthy, engaged, community.

We either have a large number of people who have made 1 contribution or a tiny number of highly active fans. Possibly as low as a few hundred. Remember, this is from 34m.

A dedicated community builder using a community-based platform (Drupal, Joomla, VBulletin, PHPBB, Pluck, Ning, BuddyPress, Teligent, Lithium, Jive etc...) will easily top that figure. Better yet, they will do it on a platform developed specifically for communities, which they control and where they can contact all members.

Facebook isn't the best community platform, it's quite possibly the worst.

How To Find Major Issues To Boost Activity And Unite Your Online Community

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 by Richard Millington

Major issues help unite a community. They provide a source of activity and a reason for new members to join.

Identifying, promoting and escalating these issues is part of your job.

In some industries, issues come naturally. In many, that's not the case. You can use this process.

1) Identify the relevant issues in your sector. These should be new. Use the PESTEL framework if it helps. What's new politically, economically, socially, technologically, environmentally or legally? Which will affect your members? You can take a big news story and put a topical spin on it.

2) Ask members how they feel about this issue. Use a forum post. e.g. in an expat community you might ask "I've seen the USA is trying to make it more difficult to get a visa, will this affect many of you? What are your thoughts on it?"

3) Make a news post about this. Make this a sticky thread and publish a news post/notification/e-mail/Social media update to all members of the platform. Invite all members to give their opinion.

4) Host a poll. From the opinions, identify the common themes and post them as a poll in your community. Again, invite members to participate and give their views. You may also start sub-discussions on the topic.

5) Summarize. This is important, summarize what your community has said in a news post/forum category. Tell your community what they have said. Make sure they own their own ideas in the issue.

6) Statement. Publish a statement on behalf of the community on the issue. Send it to relevant journalists, bloggers. Use data if possible (63% of members thought this would cause major restrictions on their lives). Don't neglect local and national news. This can be a good source of growth and pride on behalf of the community to be featured in any relevant media.

7) Cause. Put together a few ideas for how you would like the issue changed. It can be a political/legal change, or even a social change ("A pledge to ...."). Launch a separate page of the community to collect signatures, encourage members to contact their friends or take the pledge. Make sure this is integrated with other social media platforms.

8) Updates on progress. Keep the community and media contacts updated on the progress of your efforts. Encourage members to be more involved and do more to help your effort. Stimulate discussions on how it's going, what members can do, and sub-categories of the major issue.

9) Win / Lose. Declare victory or defeat. It doesn't altogether matter which. It's not winning or losing that matters, it's members participating in a joint activity over a shared period of time. Winning helps, but a good defeat can help members feel pride in trying (and opens the door for future efforts).

10) Update your community history. Update your community's history page about the issue. Let members make the entry if they like. Ensure all new members can see it. Perhaps give badges/unique profile customisation to members that participated.

Mumsnet have multiple issues at any single time. Yet Mumsnet is huge and there are no shortage of parenting issues. You might like to try a major issue every six - nine months.

Brands that are really sneaky might identify a product/service related issue that members might be frustrated with and begin the process there. This is especially useful if you plan to change it. It means your community will win.

The 10 Principles Of Professional Community Management

Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Richard Millington

We've reached the era of the professional community manager.

Those that run communities for organizations will be expected to know what they’re doing, not learn on the job.

I like Seth's definition here. Professionals have deep and broad knowledge of their sector. They know the theory behind their work. They know the case studies of success and failure. They test, measure and adapt. They work to understand what is/isn't working (and why).

In communities, professionals will be expected to excel in key skills. They will be expected to guide their organization through the community development process. They will be expected to prove their value numerically.

Successful amateurs will still thrive, but organizations will want the reliability of the proven professionals. As part of The Pillar Summit, we have developed our 10 principles of professional community management.

We’re happy to share them:

Professional Community Managers build a strong sense of community amongst a specific group of individuals.

Professional Community Managers work from proven templates to develop their community through the community development process (they are proactive, not reactive).

Professional Community Managers excel at building relationships both with and between members.

Professional Community Managers master their data and use their data to optimize every activity and stage of the membership life-cycle.

Professional Community Managers have deep knowledge of technology, sociology, social-psychology, anthropology, network science, psychology, group dynamics and community development.

Professional Community Managers build internal and external systems to scale their communities without incurring a large financial burden.

Professional Community Managers integrate the community with the organization's systems.

Professional Community Managers excel at stimulating and sustaining high levels of participation per member.

Professional Community Managers excel at conflict resolution and work from proven techniques to resolve potentially detrimental disputes.

Professional Community Managers deliver a clear ROI to their employers (not fuzzy statements concerning engagement).

These 10 principles might change over the next few years, but I think we've made a good start. If you're hiring a community manager, does this sound like the type of person you would like to hire?

How To Use Transferable Elements To Develop A Strong Sense Of Community

Monday, November 28, 2011 by Richard Millington

If you can identify and isolate the elements in successful communities, you can apply them to develop any number of online communities.

For years, we weren’t sure what those elements were. However, McMillan and Chavis’ 1986 article about Sense of Community changed that.

There are four transferrable elements.

1)   Strong membership.

2)   Influence.

3)   Integration of needs.

4)   Shared emotional connection.

If you can implement these factors into your community, your community’s strength of community will rapidly improve.

Membership

Boundaries. Tight boundaries help the feeling of membership. A community for the top physicists in the world will be far stronger than a community for physicists. What skills, knowledge, interests, experiences or assets will be necessary to be accepted as a member? How can you raise this?

Emotional safety. Invite members to talk about their most difficult issues. Initiate discussions related to the geekiest and most emotional topics. The discussions about whether an XG3265 TransistorWidget is marginally better than a HDF5342 TransistorWidget are perfect. They show people this is the community for them. Likewise, discussions relating to the use and fate of contractors employed to develop the death star, are ideal for Star Wars communities. Make sure your community is the place to discuss the geekiest and emotive topics within your community.

Personal investment. You need members to make four types of contributions to a community. Time, emotions, ego and resources. You need to create and solicit these investments. Initiate discussions on emotive topics, appeal to the ego of members (challenge them), invite members to participate something that will take time and effort.

Common symbol systems. Identify the words, images, ideas, signs that have unique meaning to community members, and use them in your community. You can have themed weeks base around the community, you can name the community after a symbol (quite literally in Element14’s case) or you can use symbols in your content.

Influence

Members have to feel they can influence the community, and feel the community influences them. A big mistake of branded communities is they don’t offer members enough influence. Members are attracted to communities they feel they can influence. This is our efficacy needs at work here. These are a few things you can do to encourage this.

Provide opportunities. Proactively provide members with opportunities to influence the community. Frequently call for opinions. Have a be more involved tab, recruit volunteers, and mention the opinions of members by name in your content – let members contribute their own content. Opinions columns, advice pieces, interview each other etc…

Feature contributions. Prominently feature the contributions of members on the community platform. If a member makes a great contribution, mention it in a news article and encourage members to respond.

Write about your members. Use your content to write what members are doing. Talk about their milestones. It might be a work achievement, a topic-related success or even a lifestyle success. If a member is getting married or has a child, congratulate them.

Integration and fulfillment of needs

What needs does your community satisfy? If you’re solely relying on information, your community wont achieve its potential. There are three key elements to this:

Status of being a member. Being an accepted member should be a status symbol that members can embrace. You need to raise the profile of the community outside of the platform. Make sure it gets featured in relevant media. Set goals for the community to achieve, and achieve them. The more you raise the profile of your community, the more members want to join.

Competence. You need to attract and retain talented and knowledgeable members. People want to be in a community with the best and brightest. You need to attract them (appeal to their ego – weekly columns, interviews etc…) and keep them engaged in the community. You need to ensure your community is the best fountain of knowledge for your topic in your industry.

Shared values. You need to attract members which share the same values. The closer these values, the stronger the community. Write these values down, literally, write them down and then seek out members that have these values. If you attract members which don’t share the same values, you’re crippling your sense of community. You need to be proactive in looking for these members, not reactive. Identify sub-groups online and invite them to join.

Shared emotional connection

Developing a shared emotional connection is perhaps the hardest and most important element of the four listed here. It comprises of several elements.

Regular contact. Members need to regularly interact with each other. The more members interact, the more they are prone to like each other. You need to drive and sustain a high level of interactions. This means you need to proactively do things that drive these interactions. Events, activities, challenges, universal discussions etc…

Quality of interaction. The interactions have to be meaningful. Exchanging information is fine, but limited. Introducing and highlighting (via sticky threads etc…) bonding-related discussions will improve the quality to discussions.

Experiences. Ensure your community has plenty of experiences. An experience doesn’t have to be an event (although events are the easiest experiences). It can be a number of events along a similar theme. It can be something very good or bad that is happening, it can be a campaign that your members are fighting for. It’s not too important what the experience is, so long as your community is having regular shared experiences.

Shared history. Ensure your community has an epic and explicit history. Write it down. Talk about the major events and activities that have taken place within the community. Make sure all newcomers understand the community they're joining.

By introducing these relatively simple elements into your community, you should considerably strengthen your community.

A Few Quick and Simple Tips To Boost Activity In Your Community

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by Richard Millington

Sometimes, you just want quick and simple tips to improve the community.

Here are a few you can apply right now.

Write in the first person using your real name. You’re not an impersonal corporate drone. You’re a real person, act like one. Use your real name, not a corporate account. Give your own opinions and emotions. You’re not dumb enough to criticize your own company. People want to interact with real people.

Write about community members. Talk about what your members are doing. Write about their milestones, job changes, great contributions to the community, topical discussions. Have a place where members can submit their own news to appear on the community.

Ensure every discussion receives a reply within 24 hours. This boosts activity as much as any other tactic on this list. Keep track of all discussions and ensure every one receives a rapid reply. Get people into the notification system and coming back frequently. Encourage responses from others.

Ask questions in the subject line of discussion posts. Discussions posts that ask a question in the subject line generally receive a higher number of views and replies than those that don’t.

Start a regular quiz. Challenge people with a difficult quiz about the community, the community’s topic or even topical news. Quizzes are universally popular. Make sure people can’t easily Google the answers though. Give everyone that participates a clear score. A quiz about the community and community members usually goes down well.

Approach members to take responsibility. Approach a member who has published an excellent contribution within the community and ask if they would like to take responsibility for that topic? They can stimulate regular discussions, write content, and ensure every discussion within that topic receives a reply.

Interview a member about topical issues and publish the content. This works even better when you then task that member to interview another member. It’s excellent content (we love to read interviews) and establishes a social order within the community.

Introduce a ritual. Give members a special mention when they reach 1000 posts, or a certain level on your reputation system. Over time, you can have different rituals for different levels. A ritual for newcomers is especially useful at encouraging the first contributions

Link with Twitter and Facebook. Use Facebook/Twitter to highlight popular discussions taking place within the community and ask for more opinions with a link back to this discussion.

Write content about discussions. Use your content to write about popular discussions taking place and mention, by name, the different viewpoints of members participating in that debate.

Sticky threads. Use sticky threads on discussions which have received a significant number of replies in a short amount of time.

Host a simple event. Plan a themed live-chat or a series of talks by members of the community. You can get a free GoToWebinar account for 30 days to see how successful this is. Invite members to put themselves forward to give a short-talk and let people pick five they would like to hear from.

There are probably thousands most methods to increase activity, feel free to share your favourite in the comments.

Huge Online Communities: What Do You Work On Next?

Monday, October 24, 2011 by Richard Millington

Some communities are huge. They have thousands, potentially millions, of members. They generate thousands of posts every day.

What do you do with these communities? What's the next step?

Large events. You can have major annual or bi-annual event. You can book a single venue and invite members to fly in, or they can organize world-wide meet-ups in cities around the world on specific days. Blizzard (World of Warcraft) does the former, Twestival does the latter. These events build lifetime bonds between members and ensure everyone finds a group within the community where they can exist. They created a shared history amongst members. They increase the ownership members have over the community. Events are worth the time, trouble and investment.

Scaling processes/self-sufficiency. You can help the community become self-sufficient. You can focus on scaling processes to ensure the community can continue to grow and develop without forever escalating costs. You can develop a process for members to manage themselves. Eve Online has a government.

Efficiency. You can work to optimize your conversion process for the community. You can aim for 100% conversion of newcomers to regular members. You can identify where members drop-out. You can tweak the copy and plan social/technological interventions to improve the conversion ratio.

Sub-groups. You can work to develop sub-groups for the community. You can begin by developing them yourself, then allowing select members to create and finally allowing any member to create them (once they have 30 interested members).

Culture development.Huge communities can work on developing a stronger culture. They can implement elements highlighted within sense of community theory. They can measure the sense of community and work to increase it.

Mainstream. You can work on moving your community to be the big player within your ecosystem. You can move towards the mainstream and influence broader society culture. You can raise the profile of your interest within the mainstream sector.

The community as a business entity. Huge communities can work to become a business entity. This is the community as a business, rather than for a business. You can host regular events, create/sell products to your members, move into new areas (e.g. a TV show), sell focus group access, and otherwise follow the Mumsnet model.

Campaigns. You can campaign on issues you care about. You can try to change the products companies create for your sector. You can change government legislation. You can make things more favourable for your members. You can adopt a non-profit cause and work to support that.

Sell. You can sell the community. If you lose interest, no longer feel you want to be heavily involved in the community, then you should sell.

The danger of creating a big community is to get sloppy. It's to assume that the community will continue to take care of itself. Don't let this happen. Always have a plan of where you want the community to go next.

Accepting the Group Identity

Friday, October 7, 2011 by Richard Millington

In a matter of seconds, a visitor will decide whether to tentatively accept or reject your community's group identity.

If they reject it, they leave. That's it.

If they accept it, they go deeper into the community. They click the next page. They complete the registration process. They make their first contribution. They begin to assume the group identity for themselves. They begin to feel the group represents them. What happens to the community, happens to them.

Some communities have a clear, strong, identity. It's apparent in the name, the topic, the design, the type of discussions, and how members interact. The Rock and Roll Tribe pulls off the cool middle-aged rockers vibe to perfection. The tag-line reads: "F*ck the middle age, lets rock". It doesn't take long to determine if it represents you.

We need good cues to discover the group identity. It can be reflected of the tone of copy on the website, the design of the community, the discussions taking place and any visible information about the community.

You can guess where this is going. It's good to have a strong identity that most will love, but some will reject, than a weak identity. You need to craft that identity. You need to create those cues that guide others to this community identity.

Who is your community going to be?

Show a clear personality in your web copy. Set the early tone for how members interact with each other. Highlight what sorts of discussions the communtiy has. And, if you need graphical help, use it. If you're polite caring, then push the polite and caring angle. If you're joking and jesting, then push that angle too.

Proactively craft a strong group identity.

Employee Online Communities

Monday, October 3, 2011 by Richard Millington

Vanessa writes an interesting post on internal online communities for employees.

I worry that she misses a key point. Employee communities are very similar to any other type of community.

Organizations focus too much on enabling staff to participate and too little on motivating staff to participate.

The same rules apply to internal communities as most other communities.

You still need to find and communicate a strong common interest. You need to give members a reason to join. You need to give members a reason to participate. You need to stimulte activity. You need to produce community-orientated content. You need to satisfy basic human drivers. You need to start the right sort of discussions. You need to convert newcomers into regulars. You don't launch with a big announcement, you launch slowly, find your first 50 to 100 members and grow from there.

Fundamentally, you need to work just as hard to capture and retain the interest of the people you want to participate. You can't order people to participate, only motivate them.

Like future members of any community, your staff aren't sitting around waiting for a community to participate in. They don't know they need one. Your job isn't to create a platform that enables but, but to work hard to persuade them to join and participate.

Profile Pages Come Second to Participation

Sunday, October 2, 2011 by Richard Millington

Profile pages are overrated. Too many communities drive newcomers to fill out detailed profile pages before participating.

This is a mistake.

The fundamental thing you need from a newcomer is participation. Once a user participates in a discussion he has a reason to return (several times) to see what others have said. He might reply to those responses. It gets exciting, the newcomer gets hooked.

Completing a profile page feels like work. We don't like doing it. We put it off. If your members feel they have to complete a profile before participating, you will lose many potential members.

If possible, let members enter a username, e-mail address and a security question - then begin participating. Once they participate, began to care about what others think of them, they will naturally update their profiles because they want to look good. You don't need to force this.

Page Views Per Member

Saturday, October 1, 2011 by Richard Millington

Heather mentioned her community has reached 15,000 page views in just a few months. Her engineers are excited. But is that good? Well, it depends.

How many active members is that?

15,000 page views from 15,000 people is a sign that people visit and then leave. That's not very good. Great reach, but no engagement. The lesson here is to spend more time on each member converting them into an active member of the community.

15,000 page views from 100 members is a more positive sign. It shows that 100 members are coming back frequently. It shows the the stable base of a community beginning to form. The focus now can be on slow, steady, growth.

Page views alone is a blunt tool. But when combined with the number of members it can reveal some useful insights.

Audience Analysis in Online Communities

Friday, September 30, 2011 by Richard Millington

Audience research is too important to skip.

If you haven't got a community, you should do it before you start. If you have a community, you should do it again now. It will help you set the direction for your community.

You need to know your audience. Specifically:

Identify why they have joined the community (or became interested in the topic)
Identify the key issues they care about.
Identify their hopes and aspirations.
Identify their fears and concerns (both immediate and long term)
Identify the language they use when they talk.
Identify the common symbols they share
Identify who they love and hate.
Identify where they live and how they live

You can't do this research simply by using social media monitoring software. You have to literally talk with dozens of your target audience until you can draw some common themes in each field.

Then build content and conversations around these themes. Ask questions in around these topics, give advice around these topics, interview members about these topics, initiate discussions in these topics, challenge conventional wisdom around these topics.

Too many organizations skip this because it's boring. If you want your community to be as relevant to members as it needs to be, this is the crucial step.

Growing a Community: Traffic that Sticks

Thursday, September 29, 2011 by Richard Millington

Here is the common approach to growing a community. Initiate a big promotional drive. Get coverage in major blogs, host a major competition and attract 50,000 visitors to the platform. After which perhaps 500 join the community and 50 are still active after 3 months.

In approach 1 the bulk of the effort is undertaken before members join the community. Compare this with approach 2. Here the community manager wants to grow the community. They work to increase referrals from existing members. They get 1,000 members to visit the site and a high number to join, perhaps 80%. They work hard to keep these members and ensure they stay engaged. After 3 months, 500 are still active.

These numbers aren't uncommon for either approaches.

If you want to grow your community focus your efforts after members have joined, not before.

You might think it's the chicken and the egg. If no-one visits, you can't keep them engaged. However, if you take care of the members you have, they'll bring in more members. Most successful communities have never undertaken any promotional activities at all.

Persuading Your Boss

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 by Richard Millington

There are two ways to persuade your boss to develop a community.

First, use powerful anecdotal evidence. The metrics of a community usually aren’t thrilling. Communities are smaller that followings. It’s hard to link it to direct income generation. Overwhelm your boss with amazing anecdotal stories.

Talk about what the people in your community are likely to do. Bring up specific stories of what’s happened in other communities. Show how you’re falling behind your competitors (or have a rare chance to get ahead).

Second, don’t persuade your boss. Just do it. I’m amazed at just how many communities at very large organizations have been built on the sly. Sometimes it’s just easier to show your boss than to tell your boss. Risky? Sure. Probably worthwhile too.

5 Social Approaches Misleadingly Called Communities

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 by Richard Millington

The definition of community has been stretched to breaking point...and a little beyond. Almost any online social activity is now referred to as a community.

There are three elements to a community. 1) A specific group of people who have 2) developed relationships with each other through a 3) strong common interest. Specific people + strong common interest + relationships, that’s it.

So lets highlight 5 activities which aren't communities.

Online customer service channels. Customer service channels are fantastic. One person asks a question and another responds. They’re scalable and everyone benefits.

Facebook fan pages. Fan pages can be a great promotional tool. They can increase loyalty and deepen engagement with fans. But they’re terrible at building relationships between fans. Fan pages encourage their audience to interact them, not with each other. Even those that can encourage their fans to interact with each other, struggle to develop these conversations into relationships.

Twitter followings. A twitter following is similar to a fan page, it’s a great promotional tool, but your audience interacts with you, not with each other. The author creates a message and a few recipients reply. Most of the time, you can’t see who else replied to the message.

Fundraising campaigns. These are some exceptions here, but most fundraising campaigns aren’t communities. They’re people giving to a particular cause. They don’t interact with each other. Even the platforms of Avaaz and Causes struggle to get their vast audience to build relationships with each other. There platforms can, and often are, tremendously successful, but we do a disservice to call them communities.

Blogs. Some blogs are communities. Mashable, TechCrunch and co have developed an audience in which many members have gotten to know each other. They’ve organized offline meet-ups and developed a true sense of community. However, these are very rare exceptions. Most blogs, like this one, have a following. They don’t have a community. They have a group of people who have a shared interest. But this audience doesn’t interact with each other.

Knowing the difference matters. Imagine if you got sales and PR mixed up. Each is a different approach with a different benefit at a unique stage of the customer life cycle. The same is true with communities. As our social field grows we need to know what approach to use in each situation.

I hope we become better at differentiating between the two.