How to kill an online community in 10 easy steps

There has been a lot of buzz lately about how many empty or failed online communities litter the web. 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, the question at hand is how to keep your community alive and thriving. Or, on the flip side, here are the top 10 ways to (inadvertently) to kill an online community:

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 monitize 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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What Community Building and Sled Dogs Have in Common

There is a great racing saying "Sometimes you gotta go slow to go fast." This is especially true with community building. The race is on to get customers' attention and to bring them into the fold of two-way communication and collaboration. The big brands are lined up with shiny new social media engines to get to the finish line first. But is this really what successful social media is all about? What is the definition of the winners circle? What defines the prize? In reality, the race should be a thoughtful journey to enable customer intimacy.

When I think of community building and races - the Great Alaskan race the Iditarod comes to mind. While speed is essential and the fastest racer of course wins the prize, it is a true cooperative effort. Race teams - led by sled dogs - cross dangerous and complicated terrain across the wilds of Alaska. Life and death are in the hands of the skill of the musher and the collaborative strength of the sled dogs. There are many stops along the way and the race takes time to complete. It is a test of endurance and skill as well as speed. Community building also takes time and is an endurance test. Finding a suitable software tool and getting members to join is the easy part, but often times, if members aren't properly engaged, they don't last long as members and never return or contribute. No one wins if followers or member count is the definition of success. Instead, achievement should and could be measured in member engagement.

How many implementable new product ideas did your customers suggest?

How well did your product development team or customer care group respond to suggestions, issues and ideas?

Did you serve your clients better virtually than you ever did before online?

Did you drive more attendees to an in-person event and therefore offer them greater learning and opportunities to connect with your company through an online presence?

These are the types of questions that define the race, not the speed by which you go but the path you take. With this said, I challenge enterprise communities and marketers everywhere to re-think their value systems to focus on what is important, to give to their members and not try to only take. I believe in the three-fold rule - give three things to your community members before even endeavoring to take one thing. Make "everyday heroes" out of your community members as they hold the success stories, best practice, and experiential wisdom. Create a platform for them to share ideas and connect with each other and you. Put your users - your clients, customers and prospects, at the center of your operations and the spoils of success can be shared by everyone!

New Comm Forum and social media journey

I had an amazing week of learning and connecting with old friends at the New Comm Forum in San Francisco taking time out to attend sessions and explore social media through the different lenses of the presenters. We talked about so many issues relating to social media - Twitter, consumer communities, professional communities, the evolving role of journalism and the transformational effects of social media on journalism and PR. It is definitely an honor to be a fellow for the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) this year – and I am wondering if these conferences and research efforts produced by SNCR may be a modern-day like Bloomsbury Group.

The presentations from the New Comm Forum can be found here. Some of my favorites included Jenn Mcclure's panel on Trends in Journalism; Shel Hotz on Social Media and Crisis Communications and Adrian Chan on What can we learn from Social Interaction Design? And, while I wasn't able to attend Arthur Maruggi's presentation, I had a chance to speak with him offline and his ideas and POV are very insightful. Marketing Mystic is great blog that is covering the conference with case studies about the findings. My presentation on Enterprise Communities was interesting as well as a lively discussion ensued about the differences between consumer communities and enterprise communities.

While the tools and techniques are different, as brought to light by the different presentations and discussion, the driving commonalities are the users, the members, the recipients and participators within the social media efforts. The journey of the users or online participants remains, I believe, largely the same regardless of where the social media road begins. And, the goals of each social media or community footprint is the same - to engage users, provide value and a platform for collaboration and co-creation. But this kind of engagement does not tend to happen naturally for most users - it is a learned behavior - one that takes time and experience to cultivate. What are the stages for user involvement – whether it's on Twitter, Slideshare, YouTube or an online community? What are the similarities characteristics and engagement triggers through out the user lifecycle?

At the end of the day, it seems that every user goes through four stages of activity within an online community: being online, doing online, acting online and finally, thinking online. Each of these stages represent a greater level of user engagement and involvement with the content and with the other users or members of the community.

At each stage, different tools and techniques are used to capture the user’s attention, support and sustain their current activity and encourage participation at the next level of involvement. The end state is a user who is active and engaged, who visits regularly, who makes useful contributions, who collaborates widely, who offers help and guidance to other users and is viewed as a “model” participant or mentor and is a recognized leader within the community.

These stages of user activity and behavior offer a strategic framework for applying the various techniques and activities needed to build user engagement. Keep in mind these stages are layers. For example, at the second stage, the user is being and doing online, so both the being and doing resources apply to this second stage user. Therefore, the fourth-stage user benefits from the techniques used at all four stages.

Stage One -- Being Online Characteristics: New and infrequent users who may be hesitant to participate or contribute. They may feel unsure about the technology or uncertain about what is expected of them. They need training, support resources, mentors and models to follow. Engagement resources: Calls to action; onramps for different user types.

Stage Two -- Doing Online
Characteristics: Occasional users who interact with existing content. They may post documents or make comments. They are contributing to the overall information but have not yet expanded their participation into new or unfamiliar areas. They need to be encouraged to increase participation and experiment. Engagement resources: Basic user recognition incentives and rewards; best practice examples to support more participation and experimentation; receive mentorship.

Stage Three -- Acting Online
Characteristics: Regular users who make frequent contributions; set up new projects; offer help and support when asked; experiment with tool uses. Engagement resources: encourage user-to-user support and leadership; intermediate user recognition incentives and rewards; best practice contributors.

Stage Four -- Thinking Online
Characteristics: Most active and engaged users; problem-solvers and inventors of new uses for tools; invested in use of the community based on successful outcomes. Engagement resources: Leadership and governance opportunities; advisory board members; best practice award recipients; advanced user recognition incentives and rewards including site performance metrics; mentors.

As users, members of the social media community of collaborators move through these kinds of stages, they (we) grow in our understanding of social media and enable our participation to be increasingly fruitful.