How to Start and Leverage an Online Community
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Organizations of all shapes and sizes are increasingly looking to private online communities as a means to connect with and engage their base. However, building and sustaining a thriving online community is no simple task. In this presentation, we dive into all things "online community." From a high-level perspective, we provide specific insights into the reasoning for, timing of, and considerations involved with launching an online community. We then highlight a specific use case from a member-based organization that traveled along this path and emerged with a valuable asset for the organization and its members.
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How to Start and Leverage an Online Community
- 1. HOW, WHEN, AND WHY TO GET STARTED WITH AN ONLINE COMMUNITY
- 2. OUR SPEAKERS Ken Aponte Sr. Director, Community Solutions Small World Labs Kristina Jakstas Membership Manager Greenlights
- 3. OUR AGENDA • Online Community Basics – What, Why, When, Where, How • Greenlights under the Microscope – What is Greenlights? – What is the 501(c)ommunity? – Why did Greenlights pursue an online community? – How do you leverage the community for your members? – How does the community fit in with your ‘Big Picture’? – How do you support your community? – Any unexpected gains or opportunities? – How does the community fit in with your other channels? – What’s in the future for your community? • Wrap up and Q&A
- 5. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHAT IS AN ONLINE COMMUNITY? A group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue like interests over time
- 6. ONLINE SOCIAL HUB Knowledgebase / Resource Library Conversations to support or inspire Captivating environment Event management Information portal Critical user information Micro-communities Forms and applications
- 7. Global Business Travelers Association ONLINE COMMUNITY EXAMPLES • Resource library is the cornerstone of the experience • Almost 3,000 resources (videos, links, articles, etc) • 7,000 members loosely organized into geographical or topical groups
- 8. Institute of Food Technologists ONLINE COMMUNITY EXAMPLES • Serves as the IFT’s online user directory for peer-to-peer networking • Badges on user profiles used to indicate engagement in the community and other items via integration to AMS
- 9. Orbis International ONLINE COMMUNITY EXAMPLES • Community used as the basis of application and credentialing process for all potential volunteers • Forms engine allows us to collect information and upload things like certifications and licenses
- 10. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHY BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY?
- 11. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS ENGAGEMENT PYRAMID
- 13. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS ATTEND AN EVENT
- 15. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS RECEIVES AND READS DIRECT COMMUNICATION
- 17. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS LIKES, RATES, SHARES
- 19. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS VOLUNTEERS , CONTRIBUTES CONTENT
- 21. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS ANSWERS QUESTIONS ON YOUR BEHALF
- 23. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT OR GROUP LEADER
- 24. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS THE DILEMMA FOR MOST MEMBERS
- 25. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHEN TO BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY? When you realize you have pockets or conversation everywhere but “here” When you have answered the same question or emailed the same document for the 1,000th time When you start looking for ways to engage people between conferences When you want need to know more about your membership to survive
- 26. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHERE TO BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY?
- 27. Your Member Ecosystem Your Website AMS Community In-person meetings and conferences Webinars Email Campaigns and Communications Blogs and other feeds Social Media Channels • Your online community is the electronic embodiment of your physical organization • Community should be the hub of all your activities • All communications and interactions should drive traffic back to your community • You community should integrate to your AMS / CRM to maintain a 360 degree view of your members
- 28. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS HOW TO BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY? Completely custom Out of the box Hybrid approach
- 31. • Go-to social sector resource and leader • Strengthening nonprofits and other mission- driven organizations to solve big community problems • Forging cross-sector collaboration
- 32. • Who we serve: – Nonprofit staff, board, key volunteers – Philanthropists and community leaders – Social innovators • Services include: – Accelerator program – Consulting – Learning & Leadership offerings – Research – Membership of 500+ organizations
- 33. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS ONLINE COMMUNITY BACKGROUND
- 34. 501(C)OMMUNITY BACKGROUND The 501(c)ommunity is… A secure place for nonprofit professionals to: • Share experiences to avoid recreating the wheel • Ask questions that only nonprofits understand • Network with peers …all with the goal of strengthening the sector as a whole. 501community.org
- 35. Resources
- 36. Discussions
- 37. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHY DID GREENLIGHTS PURSUE AN ONLINE COMMUNITY?
- 38. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS HOW DO YOU LEVERAGE THE COMMUNITY FOR YOUR MEMBERS?
- 39. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS HOW DOES YOUR COMMUNITY FIT IN WITH GREENLIGHTS ‘BIG PICTURE’?
- 40. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS HOW DO YOU SUPPORT YOUR COMMUNITY?
- 41. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS DID THE COMMUNITY BRING COLLATERAL GAINS OR UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITIES?
- 42. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS HOW DOES THE COMMUNITY FIT IN WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OR CHANNELS?
- 43. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR YOUR COMMUNITY?
- 44. ONLINE COMMUNITY BASICS WHAT HAVE YOUR RESULTS BEEN SO FAR?
- 46. Upcoming Events ASAE Marketing, Membership & Communications Conference 6/1 – 6/2 Washington, DC Planet Philanthropy 6/7 – 6/9 Jacksonville, FL ASAE Annual Meeting 5/19 Detroit, MI
- 48. Schedule a Live Demo Contact Jeremy Demers 512.474.6400 x 22 jdemers@smallworldlabs.com
Editor's Notes
- Extend definition – facilitate advocacy efforts, expand reach for globally dispersed organizations, encourage Talk through SWL examples Relay Nation, Cancer Connection, Shatterproof, Climate Reality Project
- Greenlights members receive a variety of member benefits (trainings, resources, etc.), including access to our online community.
- Within each member organization, multiple staff/representatives can access the 501(c)ommunity. Each member can log in to share experiences, ask questions, and network with peers Two big features: Discussion Forums, and the Learning Library
- Increase connectivity among our members. Our members are smart and knowledgeable, an online community gives them a way to connect and learn from each other. This way it’s not top-down, where only GL distributes info. It’s more collaborative learning. Collaboration is really important to us. We were already the “go-to” for questions and resources, we needed a more streamlined way to share our knowledge too. It allows us to take a step back and not get stuck in the weeds, while still supporting our members and sharing our knowledge.
- I make sure our members get the most out of their membership as a whole, and the 501community is a big piece of that. It’s for their benefit, not mine. When someone calls me and asks “Should we run background checks on all our staff members?” or “Do you know a good CPA?” I can recommend they post their question in the 501community. I’m not an expert in either of those areas to begin with, so they could connect with someone who has that direct experience. And they can get multiple opinions. If I notice a lot of conversation around a particular topic (example: how to orient a new staff or board member), I can upload some samples or documents our members might find useful. And other members can add to that. We’re able to help each other more by having this knowledge centrally stored and available for the whole group. Important: We do very limited self-promotion, and don’t allow any solicitation from businesses or vendors. (Ex: I’d only post about an upcoming event if it was directly relevant/solicited in someone else’s post). This is a safe space for members to get advice from trusted sources.
- Reinforcement is key. I’m constantly talking about the 501community. It’s on our website, it’s in our email signatures, it’s everywhere. Ex: One of our member benefits is invitations to members-only events. I’ll post the supplemental event materials to the 501community, rather than emailing them out. Ex: When someone calls me to ask a question that is clearly a fit for the community, I walk them through the log-in process right there on the phone.
- I spend at least a third of my time moderating the 501community (seeding content, contributing to posts, answering questions and helping members get started, cleaning up our member listing, tracking metrics, etc.). Another GL staff member spends a portion of her time managing the tech-y side of things: back-end updates, troubleshooting, web content creation. It seems like you’d at least need half a fulltime employee’s time to really make an online community work, but SWL may have better input! You can’t launch it and leave it, it takes commitment.
- We’ve gotten to know more of our members (at least surface-level), and they’re exposed to what GL does. I can see their profiles and interact with them more regularly. I’m not just communicating with the leader of the organization or one key contact, but they might have 10 staff members of all levels who log on and contribute to the community.
- Formstack feeds data to SWL automatically, which feeds data to Salesforce. Integration definitely streamlines data entry and upkeep for the team.
- We’re exploring options for re-designing our website, and hope to better integrate the 501community into our main website. As SWL rolls out new features (i.e. weekly digests, “reply by email”) we’ll keep embracing those to create a better experience.
- We get pretty high marks on our annual member survey – our members really like the 501community. Engagement has slowly but steadily increased over the past couple of years. Internally, we’ve been able to stop reinventing the wheel in a lot of ways.