To those who joined our webinar last week, we thank you very much for your time. I hope you left with practical, action-oriented insights to help you transform your community from stale to effective. If you weren't able to attend the webinar or would like to see it again on-demand, you can download the complete recording and the presentation slides.
During this informative webinar, founder and CTO Rob Howard covered the following five important steps to building a sustainable online community:
1. Create value by listening.
Why are businesses using social technology? There are several reasons. First, social technology is the new norm, the way that people expect organizations to do business. Second, organizations are realizing that they can create internal and external value through the use of social technologies. Third, organizations are shifting their mentality toward data-driven decision making. And fourth, organizations are using social technology to understand and leverage peer-driven decisions.
2. Define a community strategy.
Organizations struggle with this step. They understand community technology but want to know the ROI. The key is to create a strategy first, for a particular audience, or you will overwhelm yourself considering the technology. Determine your audience, then goals and objectives, then formulate your strategy, solutions, and results. Each one depends on the previous.
For example, if your audience is your prospects, and your goal is to turn those prospects into customers, your strategy is digital marketing with forums, blogs and wikis. But if your audience is your customers, you will more likely need support, search, and so on. Your strategy will involve security, workflow and reputation, with widgets, extensibility, and APIs.
A strategy must be defined, whether external or internal. Common use cases for internal deployments include: empowering employees, connecting people, supporting a globally distributed workforce, and leading with business innovation.
3. Understand the community life cycle.
Understanding the community life cycle can help you avoid making major mistakes. There are four main stages in the community life cycle: on-board, established, mature, and mitosis. It is important to know that within and between the stages are smaller life cycles, and communities can (and should) repeat and fluctuate between stages.
4. Know the three cardinal sins.
All three can cause a community to fail.
- Build it, and they will come.
- Launched and done.
- More is better.
5. Measure, analyze, and improve.
In order to be successful, an organization must understand user engagement both inside and outside of the community. There are three different types of metrics: web analysis, social analytics, and social intelligence. The type of analytics you run depends upon your organization's objectives and where your community is in the life cycle.
We got a lot of great questions at the conclusion of the webinar. We're working on answering them and will post those upon completion.
To learn more about the community life cycle and the three cardinal sins, read Rob Howard's Mashable article.
Watch the webinar recording and download the slides.