There has been a lot of buzz lately about the number of failed online communities litter the web. In fact, Gartner Says 80 Percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits through 2015. As with any hype-cycle, people run out to get or make the latest thing – in this case a social network or community – and often don’t think through what having one will be like. It’s kind of like getting a puppy – exciting at first, but hard work thereafter! So, is not how do you launch an online community but how can you keep it alive and thriving? As we all grow weary of prosaic advice, here is are the top 10 ways to kill an online community. Do this and you are likely doomed.
1) Launch your community without a beta group. Do not involve users in the design of the community under the assumption that you know better than they do what they want. Just design the features and functions without them and assume they will like it.
2) Throw feature-spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks. Add as many new and cool features to your (business) community and clutter it with bells and whistles. Business people love to learn lots of new tools (not).
3) Don’t “feed” your community once it is open. Fill it with people by marketing the heck out of it and just see where things go. Assume the members will do all the work from the start and they don’t need content or assistance after they have joined.
4) Don’t use off-line outreach and engagement techniques. Just wait for people to post messages and then moderate them without endeavoring to engage people behind the scenes to help them post messages and participate.
5) Assume size is THE critical differentiator. Fill your community with anyone and everyone regardless of their role or function. If they have a pulse they are welcome and it doesn’t matter if there is a cohesive goal for the group to collaborate.
6) Try to monetize the community at every opportunity. People like to be badgered with micro-payments and teasers when they are in a community setting. Abandon a business strategy or never develop one and just give people lots of opportunity to pay for access and content at every turn.
7) Hire any staff who are on-the-bench to moderate the community. Any underutilized employee will do regardless of whether they have the expertise to facilitate knowledge-sharing or not. Heck, this will give them something to do.
8) Don’t have a newsletter or steady, predictable communication to members. Assume they will want to visit your community during their busy work day and will remember to do so independently.
9) Don’t evolve the community based on member feedback and suggestions. Believe when you launch the community that your work is done. Go tell your investors and executive team the community mission is accomplished as soon as the site is up and running and don’t look back.
10) Measure meaningless metrics that make you look good. Number of posts (include all those “me too” messages to bump up your numbers), number of members (regardless of their engagement or visit frequency) all can make you look good with out ever really determining whether the community serves your business and customers well.
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Great post! It’s good to know not only what makes a community successful, but what will also kill it before it even gets out of the gate.
Loved the post. About your first first point: How early would you say that a Beta Group should be interacting? Prototype phase?
Ang, thanks for your comment! Glad the article was useful.
Miguel,
I recommend having a beta group involved at at a few stages – first when determining which features and how the features should behave. Sure, most communities will have a member directory – but what information do they need to know about each other to make the connections fruitful and enticing? So, deep interviews with prospective members about the ways the currently collaborate and about what is missing from their in person collaboration and work practices is the first step. Second, a paper walk through or camtasia based usability test with a smaller set of highly engaged beta members to is beneficial to the community. It surfaces any large issues quickly and engages the users in co-creation process. And, third, after the community features have been defined – and before you “open” the community invite the larger beta group to populate the site and seed it with profiles, content and a few forum posts/discussions so when it is open to the whole group there is member driven activity there. I also recommend collecting or inspiring member driven articles, interviews, quickpoll questions etc. to keep a steady drumbeat of member focus on the community.
Great post. I will be hanging it up in my office as a constant reminder.
Great post. I think I will post it in my office as a reminder.
Thank you Erin, that is a high compliment and great idea.
Thanks for this great post, Vanessa! This applies to many community web-based sites as well.
Elegant and to the point. I might only add the converse of ‘tent cities, not edifices’. Chris Anderson’s Dandelion strategy – ala YouTube – applies. Aim for trying much, letting the members choose what to keep, course correction as you go is critical. Hello Vanessa!
One other problem that I’ve seen over the years, and all the fuss at Facebook recently just reminds us all over again, is that clear community guidelines need to be in place from the start. Then, if you want to change them, engage the community about what changes you’re considering and why. Not to mention what they might like to see in the new document. Of course, there may be some changes that just can’t be helped, but if you don’t explain why, you’ll hear the backlash.
Thanks Robin and Susan for your comments. Robin – you raise a really good point about the importance of defining the rules of engagement and clearly stating what the members can and shouldn’t expect from the community. Too often (especially lately) in efforts to monetize, communities switch from free to paid without warning or grandfathering in existing members to the free subscription – as an example. This alienates members and mismanages expectations for community involvement. Thanks for adding to the list and making it stronger!
Great post… On the mark and I know you have the empirical evidence to back each of the point.
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