community growth

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community growth (22)

How Many People Can You Really Look After?

Posted by Richard Millington on May 13, 2014 at 8:30am in quick tips

Growing a community that’s too big for you to manage is dumb. Sadly, it’s the goal of most corporate communities.

The Problem With Community Platforms (and asking the right questions)

Posted by Richard Millington on March 27, 2014 at 8:00am in best practices

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.

8 Signs Your Community Is In Trouble

Posted by Richard Millington on February 4, 2014 at 3:59pm in quick tips

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.

How To Persuade Employees To Join Your Company's Online Community

Posted by Richard Millington on October 30, 2013 at 10:00am in best practices

Your employees probably aren’t keen to help you build a community. It’s more work for them. It’s not even in their job description. If you force them to get involved, you’re going to get the minimum effort. So don’t force them, addict them. Here’s a few ideas to get your employees involved in building your community.

Designing The Perfect Newcomer To Regular Journey - Step Five: Continued Participation

Posted by Richard Millington on September 19, 2013 at 7:10am in best practices

To turn a newcomer into a regular, they need to be socialized. They need to get to know other people in the community. They need to visit the community out of habit, not out of necessity.

Designing The Perfect Newcomer To Regular Journey - Step Four: Return Visit

Posted by Richard Millington on September 10, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

The biggest influence upon whether a newcomer becomes a regular (after their first contribution), is the speed and quality of the response to their first message. If they don't get a response within 24 hours, they're gone. Give priority to ensuring newcomers (the people with a 1 post count) get a quick response.

Designing The Perfect Newcomer To Regular Journey - Step Three: Registration and Participation

Posted by Richard Millington on September 3, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

The goal at this stage isn't to persuade members to create an online identity for the community. Don't ask any questions that don't relate to the name, e-mail, and password. The goal is simply to get them through this stage and back to participating.

Designing The Perfect Newcomer To Regular Journey - Step Two: First Visit

Posted by Richard Millington on August 27, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

In the first visit, members need to see something they want to participate in. Too frequently we focus upon getting members to read. That's easy. Getting them to participate is more difficult.

Designing The Perfect Newcomer To Regular Journey - Step One: Awareness

Posted by Richard Millington on August 20, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

How do people hear about your community? Do you wait for people to join or approach them? The biggest influence upon someone’s likelihood of becoming a regular participant is their level of interest in the topic.

The Online Community Lifecycle - Stage Four: Mitosis

Posted by Richard Millington on August 6, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

Your goal, and the goal of every community manager, is to progress their community through the lifecycle. If you achieve this, you maximise what your community can be, the benefit it brings to your organization, and the benefits that members gain from the community.

The Online Community Lifecycle - Stage Three: Maturity

Posted by Richard Millington on August 1, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

  If there is one single thing every community manager should know about communities, the lifecycle is it.   Using the lifecycle you can identify exactly where you are now and where you need to go next.  In this series of posts, we're going to explain the full online community lifecycle.   The maturity phase of the online community lifecycle begins when members of the community are generating 90% or more of activity/growth, and there is a limited sense of community.

The Online Community Lifecycle - Stage Two: Establishment

Posted by Richard Millington on July 30, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

If there is one single thing every community manager should know about communities, the lifecycle is it.   Using the lifecycle you can identify exactly where you are now and where you need to go next.  In this series of posts, we're going to explain the full online community lifecycle.   The establishment phase of the online community lifecycle begins when the community has reached critical mass.

ForumCon 2013: Nir Eyal on How to Hook Your Community

Posted by Crystal on July 10, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

A writer, lecturer at Stanford University and frequent speaker, Nir Eyal's specialty is educating companies and consumers on habits and behaviors that help and hinder their lives, both online and off. In talking about what traits apps need to "hook" users, much of his information was directly relevant to building communities that keep members coming back .

Growing An Online Community: Attracting Clusters

Posted by Richard Millington on July 2, 2013 at 8:30am in quick tips

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.

Understanding Conceptualization: The Process You Go Through Before You Launch An Online Community

Posted by Richard Millington on June 26, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

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.

Basic Tactics To Grow Your Online Community Without Any Promotion

Posted by Richard Millington on June 19, 2013 at 9:00am in best practices

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.

Types of Community Growth

Posted by Richard Millington on May 29, 2013 at 9:30am in best practices

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.

How to Find your Community’s First Members

Posted by Richard Millington on May 24, 2013 at 11:15am in quick tips

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:

20 Fantastic Content Ideas For Your Online Community

Posted by Richard Millington on May 20, 2013 at 7:30am in quick tips

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.

Cultivating Communities From Your Audience

Posted by Richard Millington on May 13, 2013 at 10:40am in best practices

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.

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Community Picks

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