Building Web Communities That Add Value

Building Web Communities That Add Value Can organizations build better web communities with predictable success? David Terrar – D²C and WordFrame with contributions from: Dennis Howlett – AccMan & ZDNet Philip Woodgate – Goodman Jones

Agenda
Why build communities?
What motivates people to participate?
What is ICAEW doing with ion?
Other examples
Success factors for community sites
Can we build communities with predictable success?
Conclusions and best practice
Recommendations
References

Why build communities? New Product Development Customer service Idea generation Market research Developer relations Amplifying Word of Mouth Employee communications General Marketing Reputation management Product testing Public relations LONG TAIL SALES PROJECT COLLABORATION Co-innovation Member networking Capturing Knowledge

What is a web community?
An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest.

What motivates people to participate?
Expressing themselves
Support
Listening
Sharing
Recognition
Power
The culture of the organization
"Culture is a mealy-mouthed way of talking about power.“ - Euan Semple

Participation Inequality Jakob Nielsen’s 1-9-90 rule Diagram courtesy of http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

What is ICAEW doing with ion? http://www.ion.icaew.com

What is ICAEW doing with ion? http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts

What is ICAEW doing with ion?
Winning awards:
“Best New Web 2.0 Initiative”
Web 2.0 Strategies 2008

Some other examples SocialMediaToday.com

Building a community
User won't just come like Facebook
What is the purpose?
What's in it for me?
Champions
Teamwork
Coherent technology framework
Prepare to lose control
Moderation guidelines
Community manager needed
Corporate standards
Not just bottom up

Content and community management
Seed the community
Need professional content
Engage professionals and be prepared to pay
Need the community manager acting like a party host
Content guidelines
Help, support, videos, livechat
Focus on what the users want
Marketing is vital

Not in support of any goal…

Success factors for community sites
Speed of adoption
Number of active users
Number of posts
Number of comments

Life cycle of a successful community

Can we build communities with predictable success?
The more CONTENT you have the more MEMBERS you will get.
The more MEMBERS you have the more CONTENT you will get.
The better you match CONTENT and MEMBERS to MEMBER PROFILES the more MEMBERS and CONTENT you will get.

Community best practices BEST Clear goals + purpose Right talent Commitment + time Topic engenders passion Social + communal WORST Start with technology Marketing “campaign” Mixing business/consumer motives No facilitation Metrics vs. business measures

Conclusions The Technology Infrastructure of the community is important The Social Infrastructure of the community is MORE important

Recommendations
Recognise it will be hard work
Focus on usability
Community manager needed, and they have to act like a party host
Content, content, content
Basic marketing e.g. email key posts
Brand advertising and incentives don't work
Use available resources e.g. Wikipatterns
Coherent technology is important
People and culture more important
Make sure the key stakeholders involved understand new marketing
Make sure they understanding social networks by using some and getting their hands dirty

Key take away from Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 Boston

Recommended reading Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? – Seth Godin

References
Tribalization of business study 2008
Francois Gossieaux
http://www.emergencemarketing.com/2008/04/24/2008-tribalization-of-business-study-preliminary-results/
Online Community Best Practices
Jeremiah Owyang
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/03/14/online-community-best-practices-slideshare-and-zero-cost-publishing/
Wikipatterns
Stewart Mader and friends
http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns
http://ikiw.org

Contact details David Terrar CEO - D²C Limited and Executive Director - ITBrix / WordFrame p: +44 (0)1727 838285 (direct) m: +44 (0)7715 159423 e: [email_address] and [email_address] w: www.d2c.org.uk and www.wordframe.com skype: david_terrar twitter: DT linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidterrar blog: http://biztwozero.com

http://enterprise2forum.it	116
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http://urano.logotel.it	6
http://reestols.blogspot.com	2
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Building Web Communities That Add Value

by David Terrar on Jun 25, 2008

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Building Web Communities That Add Value — Presentation Transcript