Creating Healthy Online Communities

Communities are powerful customer relationship management tools for any business, association, organization or fanbase.

Great communities provide an enhanced level of interaction and immediacy that can't be found with standard dialogue through email, website submissions and voice.

Organizations adopting and fostering communities have some challenges when launching, including how to:

• establish a community that attracts members,

• keep a community exciting and engaging,

• make it "sticky" so users keep coming back, and when they do, they stay and,

• create a place that can be easily shared and grown through community member networks.

I've launched some internal and external communities and want to share some make-or-break lessons learned as an experienced community manager and executive stakeholder:

Single point of failure

Having only one person responsible for community is a single point of failure and an accident waiting to happen. A community manager's responsibility is to create content, interact with users and promote the community to potential members. Essentially they are the point of contact for all things community, or is that the single point of failure? The community manager should be an overseer vs a lone ranger with critical contributors on their team to keep the community running smoothly. One community manager responsible for all content and interaction is a sure way for your community to fail. This is especially true where the community manager is wearing multiple hats for the company, and community management is only a part-time job. They need help to ensure they are effective and your community thrives! From an organizational perspective, empowering your employees to participate in the community-building experience is essential to keep them as engaged as the members you serve.

The Chokehold

Everyone wants to ensure content is customer-ready, on-message and bulletproof. Who doesn't? Super sanitized content requires approval from the Communications Director, Marketing Director, and Legal and revisions to make the posts suitable for community viewing. Epic #Fail! If you go down this path, you will encounter at least two things with poor and potentially damaging side effects to your community.

Issue #1 – When your content goes up and down the flagpole, it will be stale, like old bread. Your members won't care because it won't be timely, nor will it be relevant.

Issue #2 – Your customers are savvy and can smell sanitized spin from miles away! Quite frankly, they won't tolerate it for long. People want to do business with people. They don't come to get hooked, spun and buzzed. Save this material for your collateral, presentations and website.

The poor side effects I was eluding to? Your members won't stay, won't return, your message won't stick, and your community will ultimately fail.

Some Employees aren’t "Customer Facing."

This is a terribly old argument. In most cases organizations haven’t ever tried empowering non customer facing employees with being a face of the company. Consider giving them an opportunity and train them to engage with the people who build your business.

To make a community successful, we need to establish a team of primary contributors representing the organization to their members in various capacities ranging from development, support, marketing and through to sales!

But you can't throw traditionally non-customer-facing people into the fire. That is just asking for trouble. Set up your employees for communications success with simple rules of engagement that foster a positive sense of community and encourage engagement by members with your community ambassadors. Train your people on the standards of care to be delivered and the type of conduct expected when they represent the company. Then MAKE IT HAPPEN and empower your employees to engage and interact with your community members. Communities will only be able to respond and participate if company participants are assigned to respond and participate. REAL PEOPLE – REAL DIALOG is a win-win for your members and your organization.

Contributor Abandonment

Recognize and reward critical internal and external participants in your community who go above and beyond in contributing to the content, discussions and dialogue. These members should be part of your company's top-tier TLC group. They should be publicly recognized in the community as key contributors and even given special treatment as ambassadors of the organization. Some platforms offer badges and visual recognition of contributions and participation. Leverage these features and reward and recognize critical members of your community that are keeping your community vibrant and alive.

CRISIS, SCANDAL, #FAIL, OH MY! What to do?

Your community will not always be filled with sunshine, happiness, rainbows and unicorns. Your members will use their voices in your community if they are unhappy. In the case where there is a negative statement or a concern or if your organization screwed up (yes, it happens), use it as an opportunity to demonstrate leadership with this approach:

RESPOND, OWN, ADDRESS and REPORT back (ROAR)

The ROAR shows your constituents that you are serious about customer satisfaction and will address a problem if it arises. It will always be a little fishy if there are never voices of displeasure or, worse, if posts voicing discontent are suddenly "missing." Some organizations censor activity; however, this creates a false community that will fail.

Organizations that solve customer issues build stronger customer relationships. It is easier and more cost-effective to "fix" a customer problem than to get a new customer, so it is worth the investment.

We don’t need to be “involved.”

The community will run itself they said. We don’t need to be involved they said. Some organizations believe that if you build an online community, not only will "they" come, but they'll contribute, maintain and interact. They think the community will make itself with little or no organizational involvement. While it has been successful for some huge organizations with knowledgeable external self-designated customer ambassadors to run and manage their community, being present and available in your community and contributing content is vital to the initial and future success of any community you launch for your organization. Don't believe that creating a community will magically attract your target members, and they will run it themselves. If you build it, they may never come, so get and stay involved! Take ownership, responsibility and accountability for your community's success with clear objectives and contributions.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAMITY SPAM

Spamming is a huge problem facing companies today, especially in free communities. If your users are being pelted with spam and have to wade through it to get to the actual content, your community is at high risk of losing the majority or all of its members. No one will return to a community if they spend most of their time sifting through spam to get the content they want. Once one spammer gets through, spam will multiply like rabbits and fast, so take care of it immediately. How to do this? Consider gating your community, setting entrance criteria or even a pay model. Spammers prefer to make less effort and like easy targets. They also won't typically pay to spam in your community. Consider a more robust account validation service if pay models are not in your future. Try limiting activity for a period, providing complete profile details of accurate profile information and, depending on volume or bandwidth, a review and approval of new accounts.

A negative disruption

- We’ve got Negative Disruptors and Trolls!

It will happen. Someone will act out or say something inappropriate that doesn't align with your community (or anywhere, for that matter.) The great thing about a healthy community is that its members will not tolerate disruptors with personal attacks, profanity, bullying or unfounded negativity. In any case, you need to address it. If there is profanity, racism, and direct attacks on members or ambassadors – REMOVE IT and consider removing the offender. No good can come from that type of content in your community. If, however, it is a simple disruption to be acknowledged or get attention, consider leaving it there for a little while and see how your members respond. You can quickly gauge the health and loyalty 

Community is a great way to stay connected with your customers but building community takes effort and time. Creating or upleveling your community starts now Get started!