We all gather in interconnected clusters. You’ve probably seen a cluster map somewhere. Think of it like social groups in a playground. Friends gather in circles of 8 to 12 people, but one of those people might have connections to another group of similar size.
Read more…
Everything between the moment you establish the objectives and the moment you begin doing outreach to your members is the conceptualization phase. This is when you decide who you're targeting, what the community will be about, what type of community it will be, and how you get it going.
Read more…
Sometimes new members do find their way to your community. Sometimes they do invite their friends. Sometimes you don't need to do much work to make this happen. It's probably not a good idea to bet your client's fee on 'sometimes'. A better approach is to think of tactics and a process to stimulate growth.
Read more…
Events play a vital role in the successful development of online communities. Alongside discussions and content events is one of the three ways you can increase participation in your community.
Read more…
How you persuade new members to join a community isn't as interesting as why you are persuading new members to join a community. Making a community bigger won't necessarily make it better. In fact, evidence suggests that making a community bigger will decrease the level of participation. It gets noisier, harder to follow and less personable than it used to be.
Read more…
To get going, you want people who are interested in your company or your industry. You want people who are comfortable with technology. Here is some fertile recruiting ground:
Read more…
Too many communities focus on advice or industry news when they should be focused on community people and activities. The best content for any online community is content about the community. Here are 20 content ideas you can use.
Read more…
The difference between an audience and a community is relationships. The benefits of building communities are high. You can increase spending from existing customers through up-selling, increase in repeat purchases, higher levels of retention.
Read more…
Closing struggling communities is a good idea. But it's mistaken to believe that the types of interaction are interchangable between platforms.
Read more…
Members need both the motivation to initiate and to overcome their fear of starting a discussion. Their motivation to initiate will be to either learn something (e.g. "Does anyone know how to....?"), to impress others (e.g. "does anyone else think business class travel isn't as great as it used to be?" or to bond with others (e.g. "I'm upset Kelly got fired from the Apprentice").
Read more…
Successful amateurs will still thrive, but organizations will want the reliability of the proven professionals. As part of FeverBee’s Professional Community Management Course, we have developed our 10 principles of professional community management.
Read more…
The best content for an online community is content about the online community. Stop copying content from bigger or smaller news sites. Instead, write about what your members are doing.
Read more…
Your community platform is your home. It’s the destination you want your target audience to reach so you can cultivate a community. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn are not good platforms for building community, because they don't offer you the control you need and you can only reach a tiny percentage of your audience.
Read more…
Most communities are setup to repulse newcomers. You have to complete dumb questions when you join. Then you’re asked to introduce yourself to others. You should welcome members, not out of obligation, but with the firm intention of ensuring they begin participating and making friends within your community.
Read more…
Many community managers are either too slow or too fast to remove antagonistic members. They either remove the antagonistic member without fully realizing the role this individual plays within the community, or they spend copious amounts of time trying to convert the antagonist into a happy member.
Read more…
Are you struggling to stimulate activity in your online community? Do you have lots of members but little participation? Try asking the sorts of questions that stimulate discussion in every online community. Here are 20 conversation starters that will get your community talking.
Read more…
The majority of communities struggle to sustain high levels of activity in their communities. We typically only hear about the rampant success stories. It’s fun to believe that a community will just attract members and explode to life.
Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, an understanding of why people participate in communities, some principles of activity, and a clear plan of action.
Read more…
