The platform for a community performs a single function: to facilitate interaction between members. An excellent community platform improves the quality and quantity of interactions between members. A bad community platform inhibits interactions between members.
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You can’t use your power to get any member to do anything. Much of what we recommend is impossible unless you have influence. You can have influence in one or two ways.
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Most communities overlook a number of elements that would increase engagement and participation. Here are, by far, the 8 biggest elements every online community should have.
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Don't compare community platforms by the features they do/don't have. Compare community platforms by the features that are essential to you and how well they execute on those features. The number of essential features is very limited.
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Your biggest influence over a community is your subtle influence. If you master subtle influence, the value and effectiveness of your community will increase significantly.
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Optimizing the platform (the user experience) is part of the community manager's role which tends to get overlooked. Once it's developed, most people leave it.
It should be an ongoing process. The goal is to increase the number of interactions which take place in the platform. This is a process which can be continually refined.
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You usually get a bigger response by asking closed questions.
It's easy to answer a specific, closed, question. Do you think that {x} is better than {y}?How many times have you {x}?
Open-ended questions require you to think.
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Switching community platforms is one of the riskiest things you can do. The benefits are usually minimal and the dangers are colossal. Unless you picked a terrible platform initially, changing a platform won't help you much. If you want a better community, it's rarely a new platform you need, it's a new and better approach to community management.
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Too many communities focus on content. They place the content at the top of the page and bury the community either beneath the fold or behind a community tab. This might look great, but it's not effective for building communities.
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Your online community won't die overnight. That never happens. Most communities end with members gradually drifting away.
There are some clear danger signals that your community is going downhill, these are a few to watch out for.
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If an organization is investing in a community, they deserve to know what they’re getting for their money. The most common objections to measuring this ROI are 1) You can’t measure everything 2) it’s not about ROI. The first is right, but you can still be accurate. The second is misguided (what does engagement eventually lead to if not greater profits?). There are a few techniques that can really help here.
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