Building online communities: Sizing up the task
I get SO TIRED of marketing agencies telling their customers to create an online community EACH TIME they launch a new marketing campaign.
It’s like deciding you have to build an ENTIRE CITY each time you open a new store location.
With this post, I thought I’d share the bloggers’ point of view on creating communities: Regardless of scale, effective online communities require purpose, passion, and persistence.
Blogs
The easiest type of community to create (but the hardest to monetize) is one that is organized around blog. They provides a continuous stream of consistent information to interested readers. Blog-driven communities are typically small, but committed. They are fueled by the passion of their creators and their ability to build readership over time.
The rewards of creating a blog-based community are often intangible and long anticipated. Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? said his Buzzmachine.com blog netted less than $15,000 in ad revenue in 2007. However, it eventually netted him a prestigious job opportunity, consulting gigs, speaking gigs, and his book deal. All extensions of his passion.
“Most companies out there aren’t talking from the heart,” said Penelope Trunk, professional blogger and cofounder of BrazenCareerist, “It doesn’t work.”
Niches
Niche communities are powered by a shared passion and a common purpose. These communities engage members; provide answers to common, shared problems; and provide a foundation for conversion about a shared interests. Building successful niche communities takes time and focus.
To create an effective niche community, Steven Von Yoder, author of Get Slightly Famous said you need to identify what your prospects want and spin it into a community over time. “Absolutely paramount is knowing what your community ‘is’, how you intend it to function, and what the overall goals are,” Von Yoder said. “Write yourself a candid mission statement and make careful note of the expectations you have of both the community as a whole and of individual participants.”
You need to recruit and empower community members; deliver more features than members expect; involve and engage members to achieve a sense of ‘buy-in’; form strategic partnerships; and endlessly promote your niche community on a shoestring budget.
“Success in social media is about connecting with one person at a time,” Trunk said. “You can’t fake it.”
Solutions
The most successful way to build a large online community is to solve a big problem. “The best way to approach community building is to look for a problem — and solve it,” Trunk said.
- Newspaper classified ads were too expensive and a hassle for most people with stuff to sell. Craig’s list solved the problem.
- Business owners had a difficult time managing business relationships and leveraging those relationships. LinkedIn solved the problem.
- Maintaining relationships with school classmates, friends, and acquaintances required too much work. facebook solved the problem.
- It was difficult for people to create, publish, share and view video using the Internet. YouTube solved the problem.
Social media solves problems. What problem can you solve?
What is online community?
When in doubt, ask the online community. Created from more than 400 submissions, this video is one of YouTube’s largest collaboration videos.
“Communities are already there. The best thing you can do is offer them ‘elegant organization’” – paraphrasing Mark Zuckerberg
“Success in social media is about connecting with one person at a time,” Trunk said. “You can’t fake it.”
Speaks the truth.
One of the biggest hurdles to building community is registration. Many people will consider participation in your community, and are turned off by any registration process. Most blogs dodge this hurdle by not requiring membership to post a comment. This may bring the threshold low enough to get comments but does so at the expense of a continuity in user identity. Those who post have made very little commitment to the community and have no strings connecting their comment back to them, their larger online community or even to their other posts on the same blog.
Platforms like FacebookConnect and Disqus attempt to solve this problem. While these services may lower the barrier to participation while maintaining a consistent user identity, you still must acquire participants in your community one person at a time. And you will only do this by offering them something of value.