Social Flare

Loose Communities

It might be useful to have a web-based "loose" community, one I can join and leave with ease, one that's designed from the ground up for loose affinity.

For a real life example, imagine a cocktail party, or better, a great wedding reception. For that evening, I am part of the "community" there. I have "friends" after a fashion, we cluster together, share, and then after that night our community disbands.

We go our separate ways, though sometimes you connect with someone special enough to keep in touch with.

I am not thinking about organizing a web-based loose network around wedding receptions ( but hmm ), I am thinking about the idea of a network that enables and supports other loose social interactions; my stay at a hotel or resort, my cruise, my conference. I've blogged in other places about these ideas, but it seems that Mr. Brogan's post would indicate the idea is becoming more and more visible.

As websites became more and more then norm, it said something very definite about a business or establishment that didn't have one. "Oh...  you don't have a website? Hmmmmmm." There might be legitimate reasons for a business not to not have a website, but if you are dealing with the public, selling anything to anyone, or have a message to communicate to others, I can't think of one. I have this suspicion the same thing will happen with social networks.

But not every business or organization has the same social network need. Sometimes your members are transient. Sometimes -you- as creator of the network are transient.

Right now we're in a place where more and more large-scale "permanent" networks are setting up. That's how you build them- to last. To have people come in, and stay. To use a physical world analogy, the whole place is built around the idea of a condo; we build, and you move in, and stay. But what about the space where that's not the best case? What if I need a hotel? or a large tent?

Maybe the idea is that I don't stay for long. The network might last, but my membership is definitely temporary...  this is the case for networks centered around a hotel or resort, or around a cruise. Maybe the network itself is not permanent, along with my membership being temporary...  conferences, family reunions, and one-time events could benefit from such a loose network.

To enable this, a few things would have to be solved for...

You'd need an easy way to join these networks, or at least a feeling that my investment of adding myself to one is worth the payoff of belonging. If I have to spend 20 minutes to join my hotel's social network, it's probably not going to happen. So to a person with my background in usability and IA, this means I'd need a place to host my "profile" in a more or less permanent and very portable way, that I could just apply to these networks as I saw fit. FoaF and other XML dialects for personal profile storage come to mind.

The revenue model seems obvious; who wouldn't want to be able to advertise to such a targeted group of people? Or maybe, who wouldn't want to be able to sell such targeted advertising?

Where to build a Discussion Forum - Location Location Location

I have the opportunity to work with an individual, a potential client. He is highly placed in a retail company with a name you'd recognize, and he's -the- "Social Network Guy" for his company. He's led them into at least two debacles, public and Dugg, because he's never read Seth Godin's remarkable book "Meatball Sundae".

Well, I don't know that for sure. He might have read it, and then just disregarded all that stuff about using traditional marketing thinking when making forays into new media, and about how bad that is. Which was pretty much the entire book.

Anyway, this retailer now has a forum, a threaded discussion. The idea is that customers can come and talk about our products, collaborate and build content for the community. Experts would emerge, dialog would be engaging, and the company would reap the benefits of a win with this social media stuff, having their own barrel full of fish to shoot market to, so to speak.

The problem of course is in the first sentence of this description. Never never are people going to show up to your community just because and discuss your products, in any numbers approaching a critical mass.

Other companies have done this, yes?

Well, no. Not really.

For examples.... Dell & HP run forums that are dedicated to discussing their products. But these are support communities; people show up with problems, or answers, and these are traded. There's value there. Apple and Lego have strong communities around their products, but this is brand advocacy and serious adopters sharing with one another... something this retailer will never need to worry about. They make meatballs, to take a page out of Mr. Godin's lexicon.

What a tired , borrowed quote "If you build it, they will come" is, eh? But time and time again, stakeholders embracing traditional media views take up this concept, and lose track of a major reason why people come to, revisit, and stay at online communities. At every single successful community, there's some value for the visitors, there.

Very very few early villages ever sprung up in a place that was not a crossroads, or alongside a water source. People gathered in these areas and formed a community because it made sense; "Let's hang out while we exploit the resource."

What resource would "settlers" exploit in this retailer's electronic village?

None. There's no value there. No crossroads, and no water source. As it happens, 10,000 employees were emailed before the public launch, encouraging them to register and participate in the community, a few weeks ago. As near as I can figure, about 50 have posted, about 5 have done so regularly. The busiest thread is the one asking "What ( are we ) doing wrong?", by a factor of ten.

Such low-traffic or meandering forums should not use tag clouds, by the way.

In the book "Groundswell", Proctor & Gamble is held up as a shinning example of how-to start a community. P & G wanted to sell more feminine products. But they also realized you can't really announce a feminine product forum and have the groundswell show up, populate it, and carry your brand off into the future.

So what they did was start a community for girls that focused on their problems, and solving them. For details see the very good book. They made a subtle brand plug here and there, of course. But it was in the context of what was being discussed, and was never in-your-face. The short summary of this story is P & G attracted large numbers of their target demographic with something useful and valuable.

Not their feminine hygiene products and dreams of controlling a community of brand advocates.

...

A book that's waiting to be written ( by someone. Hmmmmmm ) has to do with organic social media; the parallels between nature and the principles of social media. It would demonstrate clearly with fables from nature such no brainers as "don't plan a city in the middle of nowhere".

Location definitely matters, and online that "location" is very similar to what it is in real life - proximity to something necessary, riveting, compelling, valuable, or scarce.

Starting a community - things to keep in mind

A small list of things to be aware of, steps to follow, when starting your community. More on each of these will follow.

Plan – know your purpose of your community, know your intended reader. This might change, but have it in mind, before you set the community up. this also informs your choice of community type ( blog, threaded discussion, etc ).

Provide value – I say this over and over again, and I don't mean just putting your stuff up there. Make it funny, novel, or -really- worth my time to look at it. Otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

Seed it from other communities you have access to. Being the first in a new community is -not- like being first to a hot new restaurant. People will notice no one where, and they will leave.

Keep it current – update every day for a month, then every other day for a month, then every third day… and never go below that. More if you want. Call this Pete’s Law of Effort.

Plan to spread the word – physical channels, other like-minded communities, press releases, corporate blogs, and so on should be considered. More to follow.  Have these action items in mind -before- you open your doors.

Know how you'll handle problems - they will come up, and having a list to go by ( even if the situation isn't exactly covered ) is many times better than dreaming up a course of action on the fly. this is true for any disaster.

 

Myth - retaining community members

"If you build it, they will come."

This is the hallmark line from the movie "Field of Dreams" resounds on the web today. Everywhere you can find a website or a community or social network effort that seems to embrace the above ethos as its primary marketing strategy. With websites it's bad enough, but communities are entirely another level of effort, a different kind of beast. And it bums me out when I see folks who have the fire to start a community make mistakes that will insure its demise.

Back in the late 90s or so, The Line might have been true; having a website was novel and just putting one up meant that you could be assured of people finding you and visiting. This is not the case anymore... your site needs to provide -something- to retain anyone at all. And retention is what you need. "Visitors" or even "registered users" is no way to measure success, regardless of what the marketing folks might tell you. Sift a list of registered users through a list of purchasers, and you have the beginnings of a glimpse at how effective your web presence might be.

For Communities, the issue is even more intense. The deeper we move into Web 2.0, people expect more from the web, and the things they find there. They are more savvy, and just putting up your community ( a blog, a threaded discussion, or a full-on social network ) is not a guarantee that people will be there, flocking to your brand.

You love your brand. You're excited about it. You see communities forming online, and you go to the effort to build your own community. How in the world could anyone -not- come to your community, post on your forums, follow your blog just as devoutly as you do?

The answer of course is the simple reason most communities fail. People aren't invested. They show up to the door of the blind date with your community, but when you answer, they see what you have to offer, and beg off that blind date. Wonderful advertising, killer SEO and brand recognition might be enough to get people to the front door...  but absent compelling content, the above is all wasted effort.

So, maybe we should tweak that above statement a bit, to really fit the fallacy:

"If you build it, they will stay."

This is no truer than the first version, of course.

People need a reason to stay. They do not feel the same way you do about your brand; they are not drawing a paycheck from it, and they did not build it up.

...

To follow, I'll be posting about some of the basics to keep in mind when you're getting your community off the ground.

Live or Memorex?

I am finding myself increasingly interested in alternate reality games ( ARGs ). This is a game that uses the real world as the gameboard, with clues and actions being all present in real time, in real life. You might have to go to a certain website or a certain address and do something, talk to someone, or whatever. I played a kind of lame-but-still-interesting version of this kind of game at GenCon last year... and now I'm interested in making one go.

It would bring into one tight little package several areas of interest I have: viral flow of information across social networks, social media, game design, and writing in particular.

I have an idea for a sort of starter-game. We'll see what I can come up with.

Here's a story from Wired that discusses one such ARG.

communities for conferences

A year ago, we spoke about using communities for conferences and symposiums; just as it's possible to have a blog that has a finite lifespan, it's definitely possible ( and practical ) to have a conference who's days are numbered, so to speak.

Imagine that weeks before attending a conference, you were able to "meet" and speak with other attendees, vendors, and speakers. How much time is wasted now on setting up meetings or demos on the fly, while at the event?

The way it woudl work is simple: you'd set up a temporary community for your conference, in much the same way you'd set up space for it at the convention center you're renting out. Attendees and vendors and speakers and other interested parties could friend up, form interest groups and demo products, create buzz or give previews of material to be presented. Contacts could be established before feet hit the ground and ID badges got affixed to lapels.

Your community could last for a month after the conference, to solidify ties made before and during, to post materials, and to end things on a good note. Then you could laythe groundwork for next year's conference.

As it happens, the folks at MacWorld is doing just this...   using Ning, of course. Check it out here. Sadly, we didn't have anything to do with this, but it's nice to see that kind of validation of a good idea, eh?

Ning is our tool of choice when it comes to rapidly creating a community; there are most costly out-of-the-box solutions if your needs are more proprietary, but Ning does rather nicely for many different  needs.

Always On, and going vertical

So, the most recent Stanford Summit came and went. Innovators and technologists ( a Who's Who, of course ) gathered for two and a half days to discuss, among other things, future trends. Of interest to me was a discussion about the evolution of the space occupied by social network sites. Predictably, the voices from the Summit speaking on this topic thought it "very unlikely" that another biggie such as MySpace or Facebook would come to dominate across the whole of the web.

That is to say, the future is probably with more niche-oriented social networks; people looking for other rabid pulp SciFi fans or canning enthusiasts or renfaire participants ( not to mention personal finance aficionados,  usability professionals, and other such non-hobbyist communities ) will likely gravitate towards their own corner of the social network webspace.

Duh.

For a time now, various entities ( WalMart, Microsoft, etc ) have attempted to develop the "next MySpace", dreaming dreams of going head to head with that phenomena and competing in its own space. After the first few got there and expanded beyond all  prediction, the space is proving exceedingly difficult to penetrate, just like any market dominated by  major players.  Not impossible to be the Next Big Thing, but desire and millions of dollars are not a guarantee you'll succeed at getting a place to the table.

The point of my post, and yes I have one, is that technology that supports portability between networks is going to be coming into its own, and someone smart will become quite rich helping to facilitate this.

We, members of the social networking masses, have one or two presences on the biggies like MySpace or Facebook. Maybe one on something more specialized or in a different area like Virb or Digg. I'm not giving up my membership in the communities I've been a part of for some time now, and there's a definite bandwidth limit, here: I can't track my info ( let alone other people's info ) on more sites.

So, what to do?

As vertically-oriented social networks emerge and grow, some way of making "me" ( that is, my online presence ) portable would sure be helpful. FoaF is a tiny step in this direction. This is a first step in a Rosetta Stone for all the different social networks I might want to participate in.

Don't make me learn 5 or 10 languages; help me learn one, and get me a good translator.

8 things to keep in mind when starting your community

Community building is tough work; ask any kindergarten teacher, senator or experienced online community builder. Here are 8 things to keep in mind when the Marketing department at your corner of the Brand Forest suggests building an online community.

Actually have a community

This seems like a no-brainer, but a client we do non-community related business with advertised its new community on the home page ( via popup, I might add… ~groan ~ ) and after taking the new member through 30 minutes of surveys and spyware installation reward them with a message… “Come back soon, exciting content on the way!”. Do I have to say this is not only a good way to kick any potential community members in the balls, but also poison later attempts to –actually- grow a community?

 

Give members something to do up front – more than "See the Egress"

You need to get the new members started. Uncounted people have been lured to community sign-up pages only to complete the process then stare blankly at the screen and ask “Hmmmmm now what do I do?” Give the newbies a first few places to start, something that’s not totally self serving, like “Tell your friends about us!”

Provide something of value - All take and no give is still uncool

Just like on the playground, the “friend” that always took stuff and never shared or gave back was a jerk. The adult that did that was even worse. If all your new community does is gather demographic info and enable people to talk to one another, you’re not providing value. People will not flock to you just because they think you have a cool brand. Well, not if you’re not Apple, anyway.

 

Have a watercooler – I’m supposed to talk, right?

Part of “community” is “being able to communicate”; this means being able to find people ( search, browse or look up ) being able to initiate contact, being able to find that person again, and being able to somehow connect with them. More than this, more than providing the tools, enable the process… provide a watercooler. Show newbies where to go to introduce themselves, to search for members with similar interests, and so on.

 

Reward participation – give them a hotdog

Forever ago, I worked for the casinos in the upper Midwest. One of the ( countless ) things I noticed was that even if someone was upset after losing thousands of dollars, if they were comped ( given free ) a hotdog, they were all better. The lesson is this: pat the conflicted members on the back in some way that satisfies some immediate need of theirs. Don't patronize, don't quote rules, don't tell them they were wrong and think that's the end of it. Give them a little recognition, more access, or maybe just a personal email. Nothing expensive or grand is necessary most of the time to resolve huge anxiety, just a bit of deftness, lighting fast attentiveness, and a hotdog.

 

Crisis Management - Prepare for badness

Someone will rain on your parade. They will not like something you say or do, and they will use the very tools you gave them to grow your beautiful little community to try and take you down... or at least make your life/brand miserable. Plan on this in advance. Decide what you’ll do when it happens, how you’ll respond. Actually have a strategy. In a few words, it should be this: be quick, be honest, be empathetic, be non-markety.

 

Acknowledge feedback - Listen with both ears

An online community is a funny thing- a lot of the feeling of community is built up in the member’s mind, based on experience and mutual interaction. People have an expectation in quality communal situations to be answered when they ask a question. If they ask and don’t hear back from you, they will not assume you’re busy, they will assume you don’t care.

 

Respond to shifts in community sentiment - Bend like a reed

People might not use your community as you intended. If you fight the direction the community is leaning towards, you will lose; you’ll either have a revolt, or your community will disband. Here your community is like your significant other- put not-so-much energy into winning a fight, but rather work to maintain the peace over the long haul. Bend like a read, don’t break like a branch. You will never win a fight with your members, so don’t start one, and if one brews, do what you can to dissipate it.