We've been brainwashed by years of corp-speak. We've largely forgotten how to connect with non-employees.

If you're running a community on behalf of an organization for the first time, you might assume this is easy. Most people do. 

There are a lot of subtle nuances, expressions, and seemingly minor variables which will significantly impact the development of the community.

If you're doing outreach to a prospective member, and you speak in the third person, make the message too long, don't properly space out the message, don't clearly explain your connection to that person - you're chances of getting a reply plummet. 

If you're replying to members, and can't meaningfully connect with them, you're going to struggle. If you don't have the passion for the products/topic as they do, they sense it. They drift away. 

If you're writing content, and it just has that slightly corporate whiff, that lack of personality, that lack of familiarity or caring, it's going to repulse members. 

If you initiate discussions that just don't sound right, have the aura of someone that doesn't really have much experience in that sector, you're not going to get many responses.

If you're managing a community on behalf of a brand, spend some time going through communities. See how members talk together. See the personality they use, how they create discussions, what type of discussions work best, and how content is written.

Too often, we assume that these communities (especially those targeting business professionals), should be entirely formal. A quick glance at LinkedIn communities would tell you that's not the case

Every professional community manager I speak to claims they know this. Yet nearly every single one will make one of these mistakes. 

You have 5 days remaining to sign up for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course and learn how to develop and manage a thriving community for your organization.

The course features: 

• 100,000+ words of written material.
• A library of case studies.
• Weekly live (and recorded lessons).
• Expert guest speakers.
• Weekly themed problem-solving discussions.
• Our proven templates and resources package.
• Extensive one-to-one coaching to resolve your specific community problems.
• Access to a range of proven, academic, literature.
• Assignments and feedback. 

By the end of this course you will know how to build and manage a thriving online community for your organization. 

You also get to watch us in action. What do we do to initiate discussions, keep people participating, develop a platform, organize events etc...

We also offer a full-refund gaurantee. If you're not happy, you can get all your money back.

You can find more information here: www.pillarsummit.com.

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. 

If you get the community concept wrong, nothing else you do matters. A community can't overcome a terrible concept. A community about something that isn't a really strong interest can't possibly succeed. Too many communities are created for by organizations for customers to talk about their products.

The Conceptualization Phase

Conceptualization is a phase, a process...it takes time. It's not a series of instant decisions to be made in a meeting one afternoon. It's a steady process of testing ideas, analyzing the audience, and understanding the community ecosystem.

Organizations make many common mistakes at this phase. They make the community about their brands, products, or service - as opposed to making the community about their audience and a strong common interest. 

Some questions you will want to answer here include:

1) Identify the target audience

In the beginning, you need an extremely focused target audience. You're aiming to get a fewer number of members who share a stronger common interest. 

You're looking for at least two-qualifiers. You want a community for {who} who are {qualifier 2}. This qualifier will be a demographic, habit, or psychographic. So it will be a community for people that {purchase product} who also {believe in...}.

This demographic is identified by understanding the strong common interest. You can't ascertain that strong common interest without interacting with members of that target audience. 

If your target audience doesn't already talk about the topic online, then you have the wrong topic. During this phase you should also have an extensive understanding about the strong common interest. 

2) Determine the type of community

Will it be a community of place, practice, interest, action, or circumstance? 

Don't default to a community of interest. This is the most competitive. It's easier to build a community of place or action. There aren't many things we're interested in. You can make it a community of people who want to change something in the world, or a community for people who live in a certain location and use a product/service. 

Review the existing ecosystems. Make sure that yours is the only one of its kind. This might be achieved solely through selecting a unique 

Use a different type of community, unique personality etc...

3) Positioning

If a community like this already exists, the positioning becomes important. The type of community can help, but so does have a unique tone of voice, unique goal or unique benefit.

The positioning problem will not be solved by technology. People wont join a community because it offers picture-sharing. Having a better platform doesn't help you much here. What helps is a social-related change. Targeting unique groups, being exclusive, unique tone of voice/personality etc...

4) Benefit

What will be the benefit to people from participating in the community?

Will members learn about a topic? Will they become an expert? Will get receive attention for their expertise? These self-interest related benefits do better than utopian statements of connecting, making friends, sharing your knowledge etc...

The only way to understand the benefit a community needs is to be deeply embedded within the ecosystem. This means speaking directly to members of the target audience. Don't avoid this. You need to identify what people want.

5) Unique environment

Now we need to conquer the amateur-competition problem. Amateurs can always do things that you can't. They can criticise your brand, for example. You need to use your resources to configure an exclusive environment.

This will mean providing exclusive news, unique information, introducing your contacts, have your employees participating etc...

6) What will members do in the community?

What will community members talk about? What are the major topics to build discussions, events, activities, relationships, and growth around? Gather data on your audience's current habits and from other trade press to identify the major topics here. 

Have a very clear idea of what the general themes are going to be in the opening stages of the community and a plan for testing/refining what works best. 

If you want to learn more, sign up for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course by Feb 20. 

17.6m posts. 

14m of them are in off-topic discussions.

These discussions range from "I have a headache" to "do you have imaginary friends?". 

If you look closely, you notice that the majority of these discussions are no more than a sentence or two. The speed of response is a matter of seconds. The number of responses vary wildly. 

Why is this important? 

Because these discussion appear on the forum for no more than a few minutes. They get pushed down by even newer discussions the second they're posted.

If people are only sending single messaging to each other, repeatedly, at that speed, we have a better channel for this; a chat room. 

It reduces the burden inherent in forum post discussiosn, allows people to communicate quicker, and increases the level of social presence. 

When your members begin to use the forum as a chat room, it's time to introduce the chat room.

If you want to learn more, enroll in the Pillar Summit’s Professional Community Management course.

The webinar was designed to change the way we approach community management. 

We covered:

• Why most community managers waste 80% of their day. 
• A completely new approach to online community management that every community manager can embrace.
• Proven techniques that keep people engaged and participating.
• What you need to do at every stage of the community lifecycle. 
• How to gain and measure the ROI of an online community. 

You can view the full video here: 

http://pillarsummit.com/rethinking-community-management-webinar/

The feedback we received was incredible. We hope you enjoy it. 

If you want to learn more, enroll in the Pillar Summit’s Professional Community Management course.

We have weekly live lessons, a library of case studies, 100,000+ words of written material incredible guest speakers, access to key academic journals, template scripts/documents, and unlimited access to our consultancy support. 

Forums are old. Outdated. They don't look great. 

I disagree.

Just look at communities like WarriorCats; a community for 8 to 14 year olds. It has 17.6m posts from 64,396 members. 

If you can find another platform that racks up these figures, then be sure to use it. Until you can, I'd look at forums as still the best, most cost-effective, and most popular platforms for developing successful communities for all audiences. 

If you're not using the best platform for developing a community, you should have a good reason. 

It makes for a good case study about the interplay between the elements of social psychology and platform design.

So if Shoemocracy was a client, this is what we would tell them:

The Concept

A community for shoelovers is ok, but it's competitive. It's a community of interest. There are a LOT of communities about shoes out there. It's competing against fashion communities, sportswear communities and a variety of other shoe niches. Generalist sites will never beat the niches. 

They should apply Ramit's two-qualifier rule. A community for shoelovers {qualifier 1} who  who ... {qualifier 2}

This 'qualifier 2' should be either a demographic qualifier (young shoelovers, old shoelovers, shoelovers in San Francisco, budget-shoeshoppers etc...), a habit qualifier (who who love to go clubbing, who are shopaholics) or a psychographic qualifier (who believe in recyled materials, who hate shopping malls, are introverts etc...). 

In the conceptualization phase you deliberately narrow down the total target audience to better resonate with a specific audience. The more relevant your community is to that audience, the more successful it will be. 

They should also consider changing the community from one of interest (which is highly competitive) to one of the other types of community (place, action, practice, or circumstance). A community of practice for example for people that are actively hunting out the best shoes in their town/city. You need to stress the benefit and tickle the motivation of your target audience.

They also miss the benefit. Connecting with others only works when we care about the others. We need something more tangible here.

e.g. Find the next mainstream shoes...become the shoe-maestro (?) in your town, get advice from experts on what shoes to wear and when to wear them, promote rare shoe designs. 

Don't overlook the importance of getting this conceptualization phase right.

The Platform

Everything is hidden behind a registration page. Not only do you kill your search juice, you also repel most of your visitors. What could possibly be so sensitive about shoes that it can't be discussed out in the open? 

The activity of your community is your greatest promotional asset. Don't waste it by hiding it between a registration wall. Display the latest activity on the homepage to unregistered members. 

* It's also best to avoid the marketing fibs. We all know that a community which has just launched can't be the 'hottest shoe community'. 

Beyond registration the platform isn't terrible. It's different from most communities, in that it's not based around a forum pages, but that's ok. Shoes are graphic. However, this ignores the rules of landing pages.

Landing pages need to shoe what's new, what's popular, who's new, and who's popular. 

This solely shows what's new. It doesn't show which shoes are the most popular. It also doesn't allow for a content/news page. Or make it easy for people to interact with each other. 

Having a tab for popular shoes is good, but not enough. Most people are lazy. They don't click on the popular tabs. You need to shoe it for them.

This would benefit greatly from regular content such as 'shoe of the week', or 'shoe hunter of the week', interviews with top members, and showing the most popular shoes in a different area. There needs to be a greater narrative around this community than what we see here.

At the moment, a lot of the narrative has been outsourced to a Facebook page. 

To gain a high conversion rate, people need to identify something to participate in before registering to join. 

Converting Newcomers Into Regulars

Like most communities, Shoemocracy makes the mistake of directing newcomers to fill out their profile when they first join. 

This is a mistake.

The absolute first thing you want a newcomer to your community to do is participate in something interacting. You want them to enter your notification cycle. 

Once someone has registered, the very next page should be to a topical discussion they you think they can participate in, or a major event/activity/popular shoe they can give their opinion on right now. You can change this page on a regular basis to keep it fresh. 

They also don't use any welcoming e-mails, greeting from the community manager or provide any other means of learning more about the community. Here you want people to begin to buy in to the community identity. So an e-mail about the greatest shoes to ever appear on the site, isn't a bad idea. Or an e-mail with top tips or recommendations for finding great pictures of shoes, works well too. 

Anything here that helps better explain the culture of the community is useful. 

Tone and Language

Throughout this platform it feels like the copy has been written by a marketing flunky than by a member of their target audience. Which is strange as the founder (Patrick) is such a huge fan of shoes. 

The words you use and your tone of voice matter a lot. They help shape the community identity. People need to decide whether to accept or reject that community when they join the community. It needs to appeal to them.

At the moment (and with the caveat of wearing trainers which are 6 years old), I doubt this appeals to shoe lovers. You need to use their language. You need to speak to the target audience directly and identify their symbols. You then use these symbols within the copy of your site and when interacting with members.

Management

There seems to be a lack of active community management on the site. Many of the posts about shoes receive no response at all. There is no clear narrative to follow. New members aren't welcomed to the community. There is very little to shoe that the community is being actively managed.

The focus at the moment appears to be on developing the technology further, and not the people in the community.

Inception Stage Activities

This is a community in the inception phase of the community lifecycle. It's just getting started. At this stage, you want to hold back on your promotional assets. You want to focus on directly inviting people to join and participate in the community. You want to master how to keep people engaged and sustain high levels of participation. 

Over time, as the community becomes self-sustaining, then you can move on to the promotional activities. But at the moment, make sure you're spending your time on the correct activities and plan your week accordingly.

If you want to learn more, enroll in the Pillar Summit’s Professional Community Management course. We have weekly live lessons, a library of case studies, incredible guest speakers, access to key academic journals, template scripts/documents, and unlimited access to our consultancy support. 

Applications close on February 20. 

Registration closes on Feb 20.

There is one thing we haven't yet mentioned about the course.

In addition to over 100,000 words of written material, a library of case studies, weekly recorded lessons, incredible guest speakers, access to key academic journals, template scripts/documents, and problem-based live discussions, we're offering something even more valuable.

Unlimited access to FeverBee consulting. 

During the course participants will receive constant coaching from us about how to develop their specific communities.

You can ask us any question at any time. We will coach you at each stage through the development process. You have unlimited use of our time. We will explain what you need to do and how to do it.

Not just to any community, but to your specific community. 

This is a service we've previously only offered to a relatively exclusive number of consulting clients (at a significantly higher fee). 

If you want the details about the course, click here: www.pillarsummit.com.

1. Increase sales.
2. Reduce costs.
3. Fulfill your mission (non-profits).

When you increase sales or reduce costs, profits rise and shareholders are happy. 

You need to link what your community to one of these three goals. If you can't, your community is worthless. It's entirely possible to have a very successful, but ultimately worthless, community. 

Once your organization works that out, they'll rightly stop supporting the community. You need to make sure all stakeholders understand the value of your community. 

For example, if you're building an internal online community, you need to talk about how it increases productivity, lowers attrition, increases innovation or improves morale. You can connect all of these to reduced costs or higher sales.

If you're building a customer community, you need to talk about how it increases repeat sales, improves loyalty, generates amazing new product ideas. 

If you're building a client community, talk about sales leads generated, new services developed to match identified needs and referrals gained. 



Measure the value, not the actions

This means you need to measure the value, not the actions.

The number of members, fans, and activity within the community are irrelevant to your organization. You measure growth, engagement and development to understand the community's health. That's your job. Those metrics are critical for you.

You measure the value to understand it's worth to the organization. These metrics are critical to your organization. If your community isn't generating good value, your organization should cancel the community. 

Once you connect the community to the value it offers, you can determine what value it's delivering. Remember, value isn't just what it's achieved so far, it's the value of what it could achieve in future years.

Lets take a simplified example.

Lets image you run a community which sells skis. You create a skiing community. You have 15,000 active members over the year and you establish, through systematic sampling  techniques, they now spend 15% more than they did before they joined the community.

If they used to spend $300 per year, they now spend $345. That's $45 extra per member and approximately $675,000 additional revenue per annum in the community. This is a defensible figure. 

Once you establish your community is generating an extra $675,000 per year in sales, how will your organization will treat you then? Might it be easier to ask for a budget to hire additional community managers, develop the platform? Take professional community management training?

Value of recruitment communities

Here's another example.

Imagine you sell a recruitment product/service. You might set up a community for HR professionals with a view to understanding your audience, making connections and generating sales leads. 

You set up a community, get people to join, write content, host events etc...

Through getting to know members, you begin understanding your audience and generating sales opportunities. 

In the first year you might generate 7 sales of your product. If your product sales for £15,000, that's a potential £105,000 in value.

This doesn't include future years, longer-term engagements, greater efficiency (getting better at networking) and referrals. This could easily double or triple the value of your community over a matter of years.

Suddenly you're not a low-level community manager, you're responsible for driving a tremendous amount of value.

Value of Non-Profit Communities

Here's a final example. 

Let's imagine you manage an online community for a non-profit. 

You don't have a financial motive, you need to fulfill your mission. 

If you run a cancer support site, as two participants on the previous Pillar Summit course did, you need to assess the value of your community. 

You might survey members before and after they join. After a period of time you can ascertain they feel 60% happier with your organization, have 20% less cancer-related problems etc...

Again, you're no longer the community manager minion, you're the person responsible for executing a bulkwark of your organization's mission. 



Don't wait for the value question to arise

Don't wait for someone to question the value of your community. Get ahead of the question. Establish the value today.

Ask about the value on your first day on the job. If it's low, then it's your job to make it better. If it's high, then you have a level of authority to get things done. 

If your company doesn't know the value, make it your mission to establish it. Show your organization that you speak their language. Show your organization you're committed to establishing value.

One of the biggest challenges we face is changing the concept of community management. We need to change it from the person that moderates facebook discussions to a clear value-adding discipline. 

Make sure everyone knows that your community is one of the most respected value-producing assets you have...because it probably is. 

If you want to learn more, enroll in the Pillar Summit’s Professional Community Management course. Applications close on February 20. 

They think their community is in the maturity phase. It's really in the inception phase.

Progress through the community lifecycle isn't dictated by the sole metric of registered members.

It's dictated by growth (number of members whom have made a contribution over the past 30 days), engagement (quantity of contributions per member), and sense of community (do members feel like they're part of a community?).

A community with 10,000 members and limited levels of participation isn't in the maturity phase, it's in the inception phase. 

You shouldn't be working at the macro level. You shouldn't be spending your time tweaking the platform, soliciting volunteers, going for big promotional hits, or trying to steer the overall direction of the community. This only works when you have an active, engaged, community. 

Your community has regressed to the inception phase (or never left it).

You work at the micro level. You initiate discussions and individually message a handful of members at a time to participate. You reach out to people and invite them to join. You focus on getting a few discussions going, then a few more. You organize an event or two. 

Over time, you begin to see activity pick up. Then you see engagement increase. Members build relationships with each other. The sense of community increases. Soon, you'll be in the establishment phase. 

Registration is now open for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course. This is an advanced, online, course which will equip you with the skills, knowledge and resources to be a world-class community manager. Click here for more information.

This is a collection of my favourite and most popular posts from the last five years. It should give you a great overview about both the strategy and the process of creating an online community from scratch.

The Online Community Basics

1. A Primer About Successful Online Communities
2. The 11 Fundamental Laws of Online Communities
3. Building An Online Community: How You Start With 0 Members
4. How Do You Build An Online Community?
5. 7 Contrary Truths About Online Communities
6. Don’t Start A Community For Any Of These Reasons
7. Basics Community Building Principles
8. What Is An Online Community?
9. Different Types Of Communities
10. The 4 Fundamental Things A Community Provides Its Members

Strategy & Planning

1. The Map: A Proven Process For Developing Successful Online Communities
2. How To Develop Your Community Management Strategy
3. How To Write A Practical Online Community Plan
4. Setting Objectives For Your Online Community
5. Settings Targets For Your Online Community
6. Starting An Online Community? First Get The Concept Right
7. Planning For A Big Online Community?
8. How Big Should Your Community Be?
9. The Online Community Ecosystem
10. Which Communities Tend To Succeed?
11. Big Launch Syndrome: Don't Faill Victim To This
12. Why Will People Participate In Your Online Community?
13. Getting The Appeal Right
14. A Simple Formula For A Successful Online Community
15. Audience Analysis In Online Communities
16. Base Your Online Community Around Real People
17. How To Position Your Online Community
18. The Importance Of Developing A Strong Community Identity
19. Don’t Target The Wrong People
20. How To Make An Accurate Membership Projection
21. Naming Your Online Community
22. 12 Ways To Doom Your Community Before You Launch
23. A 3-month Pre-Launch Strategy
24. The Assets Businesses Need To Develop Successful Communities
25. Don't Dilute The Community Identity

Building An Online Community Website

1. Test Before You Invest
2. How To Design Your Online Community
3. 20 Things That Should Be Included In Every Online Community Website
4. The Perfect Landing Page
5. 8 Overlooked Elements Every Online Community Should Have
6. A Radical Change In Our Approach To Community Platforms
7. Developing Forum Communities
8. Easy Ways To Add Value To Your Online Community
9. The Toolbox Of Community Reputation Systems
10. A Simple Reputation System
11. Pick An Online Community Platform That Works
12. Stopping Human Spammers
13. 7 Things A Community Can Live Without
14. The Problems With Incentives
15. A Basic Online Community Wireframe
16. Essential Elements Of Community Platforms
17. The Notification Cycle
18. The Case Against Facebook As A Community Platform
19. Using Your Real Estate: A Quick Case Study
20. Easy -vs- Difficult -vs- Impossible: Exporting Community Data
21. Refine or Develop?
22. Social Density In Online Communities

Launching An Online Community

1. 5 Things Every New Online Community Should Focus On
2. 20 Ways To Start An Online Community
3. Never Wait For The Website To Be Ready
4. Seeding Your Online Community
5. Who Are You Trying To Reach?
6. Who Do You Need At The Beginning?
7. How To Find Your Community’s First Members
8. The Founder Role In Starting A New Community
9. Create An Easy Reason To Take A Small Step
10. How Small Businesses can Launch Successful Online Communities
11. Simple Steps To Creating An Online Community

Converting Newcomers Into Regulars

1. How To Convert Newcomers Into Regular Members Of Your Online Community
2. The Ultimate Welcome For Your Online Community’s Newcomers
3. How To Keep Newcomers Hooked For 21 days
4. Awesome Questions To Ask New Members Of Your Online Community
5. Which Visitors Are Most Likely To Become Regulars?
6. Create A Welcome Pack
7. The Online Community Joining Process
8. Optimize That First Contribution
9. How To Help Members Overcome Their Fear Of Initiating Discussions

Growing Your Online Community

1. Why People Aren’t Joining Your Online Community
2. Create A Criteria
3. Types Of Community Growth
4. How To Get More People To Join Your Online Community
5. Basic Tactics To Grow Your Online Community Without Any Promotion
6. Target Clusters Of People At A Time
7. How To Get Members To Invite Their Friends
8. 3 Perfectly Acceptable Ways To Invite Someone To Join Your Online Community
9. Growing From A Social Media Following To Small Groups
10. How To Persuade Your Employees To Join Your Online Community
11. How To Get The Best People To Join Your Online Community
12. The Right And Wrong Way To Grow A Forum
13. The Problem With Asking Members To Invite Friends
14. A Free Invite With Every Purchase
15. How To Convert Existing Contacts Into Active Community Members

Increasing Participation

1. Why People Join And Participate In Online Communities
2. A Brief Guide To Reaching Unbelievably High Levels Of Participation In Your Online Community
3. Increasing Activity And Participation In A Community
4. Creating A Sense Of Community
5. Sustaining Long Term Participation In An Online Community
6. The Basics Of Increasing Interactions In Any Online Community
7. Why Members Participate: Fame, Money, Sex, Power
8. A Few Quick And Simple Tips To Boost Activity In Your Online Community
9. 4 Types Of Contributions You Want Your Members To Make
10. The Only Way To Keep Everyone Active
11. 20 Questions which Will Stimulate Activity In Your Online Community
12. 7 Kinds Of Conversations That Always Stimulate Activity
13. Concentrate Activity
14. How To Find New Discussion Ideas For Your Online Community
15. Simple Tactics To Encourage Your Members To Talk More
16. 10 Simple Ideas To Increase Activity In Your Community
17. 9 Ideas To Revive Your Stale Online Community
18. Sense Of Ownership
19. When You Have Lots Of Members But No Activity
20. Epic Events
21. How To Find Major Issues To Boost Activity And Unite Your Community
22. Why People Stay In Your Online Community
23. Create A Guide To Be A Top Member
24. Trade Control For Participation
25. What You Can Do To Make Your Community More Fun
26. 8 Ways To Encourage Individual Contributions In Your Community
27. The Benefits Of Off-Topic Conversations
28. Open -vs- Closed Questions
29. A Simple Way To Stimulate Interesting Discussions
30. How To Make Your Online Community More Responsive

Managing an Online Community

1. The 10 Principles Of Professional Community Management
2. Building An Online Community Team: The 5 Roles You Must Fill
3. High Value Community Management
4. What Tasks Should Online Community Managers Prioritize?
5. Community Management: Planning The Week
6. Moderation Strategy
7. Interact With Your Community Like A Human Being
8. Attaining Power And Influence
9. Hierarchy Of Communicating With Your Members
10. Uniting Your Online Community: Creating Strong Ties
11. The Art Of Forging Strong Friendships
12. How To Subtly Influence Members Of Your Online Community
13. How Many People Can You Really Look After?
14. Creating Momentum
15. The Personality Of Community Managers: A Few Tips
16. A Brief Guide To Building Relationships With Your Top Members
17. 10 Excellent Rewards You Can Offer Members
18. Creating Titles For Members
19. How To Use Transferrable Elements To Develop A Strong Sense of Community
20. The Unlimited Supply Of Important Work You Need To Do
21. The Small Simple Processes Which Make The Biggest Difference To Your Community
22. How To Handle Troublemakers
23. Finding Inspiration In Other Communities
24. Reorganizing Your Forum
25. Allocating Your Time As The Community Grows
26. The Status Dilemma: Don't Bite The Hook
27. 11 Processes For Scaling Online Communities
28. Huge Online Communities: What Do You Work On Next?
29. Resolving Problems
30. Building Strong Relationships Between Members: A Few Practical Steps
31. Removing A Provocating Member
32. Why Fights Are So Important
33. A Guide To Rewarding Members Of Your Community
34. Never Reward Your Volunteers
35. Community Guidelines
36. The 24-Hour Response Rule
37. 14 Events You Can Organize And Celebrate In Your Online Community
38. What Would A Passionate Community Manager Do?
39. Link Your Community Management Activities
40. Member Lifetime Value

Content

1. The Secret To Awesome Content
2. Converting Traditional Content Into Community Content
3. Information Needs And Why Content-Driven Community Strategies Are Flawed
4. The Problem With Great Content
5. Writing Content That Bonds Your Online Community
6. 20 Fantastic Content Ideas For Your Online Community
7. The Power Of Exclusives
8. Interviewing Members
9. Every Online Community Needs A Local Newspaper
10. An Online Community Newsletter Clinic

Measurement/ROI

1. Measuring An Online Community: Master Your Data To Gain An Unfair Advantage
2. Measuring The ROI Of Online Communities
3. Community Health Index
4. Ace The Community ROI Question
5. What Matters (and what doesn’t)
6. This Wasn’t Part Of The Plan
7. How To Check Your Community builder Is Doing As Promised
8. A Faith Challenge
9. Measuring DIY
10. Proving Benefits Of Building A Community
11. Me And You, Them And Us
12. How To Spot Your Community Is In Trouble: 8 Red Flags
13. The Huge ROI Of Small, Exclusive, B2B Communities

Monetizing

1. The Definitive Guide To Monetizing Your Community
2. Becoming A Community Intrapreneur
3. 40 Ways To Make Money From Your Online Community
4. The Pros And Cons Of Charging For Membership
5. Community Souvenirs
6. How To Give Sponsors Access To Your Online Community
7. Integrating Your Community With Your Business

Branded Online Communities

1. Never Let Your Company Start An Online Community
2. 10 Things Organizations Should Be Comfortable With When They Launch A Community
3. 12 Steps For Successful Online Communities
4. Brands Must Use Their Unfair Advantage To Build Successful Communities
5. A Case Study Of A Branded Onine Community
6. Why Most Online Communities Shouldn’t Try To Create A Community
7. Why Branded Communities Fail
8. 6 Huge Advantages Big Organizations Have Over Amateur Community Builders
9. A Requirement For Branded Online Communities
10. Brands: Get The Benefits You Want Without Upsetting Members
11. Common Branded Community Mistakes
12. The Choice Most Brands Don't Know They Have
13. The 2 Most Common Reasons Why Branded Communities Fail
14. Decide Between These 2 Types Of Communities
15. How Do Online Communities Make Your Business Money?
16. Why Amateurs Build Better Online Communities Than Businesses
17. Failed Corporate Communities
18. Your Dream Online Community

Non-profits and Online Communities

1. Fundraising From Online Communities
2. What Non-Profits Need To Change

Examples

1. The Slow And Steady Evolution Of A Successful Online Community
2. 15 Examples Of Successful Online Communities
3. 15 Ideas You Can Steal From The UK’s Best Community
4. You Can Learn A Lot From This Wildly Successful Community
5. The Best Online Community You Can Begin Today
6. Case Study: How To Improve A Recently Launched Community
7. Perhaps The Best Online Community I’ve Seen
8. What Is A 'Successful' Community?
9. The Genius Of Kotex's Community
10. 10 Examples Of Great Online Communities
11. A Great Example Of An Online Community
12. Never Hire A Marketing Agency To Build Your Online Community
13. A Great Example Of An Online Community
14. Hampton People
15. A Great Examples Of Game Mechanics In Online Communities
16. The Usual Errors From The Big Brands
17. Importants Lessons From A Failed Online Community
18. A Lesson In Successful Communities
19. The Evolution Of A Big Community Launch
20. Stories, Clicks, and Relationships: The Sad Story of MetroTwin

Resources

1. A Simple Example Of A Great Online Community
2. 8 Brilliant Posts About Online Communities
3. Essential Reading For Online Community Managers
4. Forrester Wave Report

Misc

1. How To Improve Any Online Community Without Spending A Penny
2. Great Findings From Social Sciences Applied To Online Communities
3. Creating A Community From Your Social Media Efforts
4. The One Essential Task For Newly Hired Community Managers
5. Rethinking How We Hire Community Managers
6. The 7 Most Likely Ways Your Online Community Will End
7. Struggling To Build An Online Community? Try This Easier Approach
8. The Easiest Solutions To Your Community’s Biggest Problems
9. 10 Steps To Building An Online Community In Your Spare Time
10. 8 Ways To Merge Your Online Community With The Real World
11. How To Revive Your Local Community
12. How To Create Exclusive Online Communities
13. 6 Social Psychology Hacks For Online Community Managers
14. 5 Features Of Really Strong Online Communities You Can Embrace
15. Searching For Online Communities
16. The One Book Every Community Manager Should Read
17. Rules For Growing A Group Of Insiders In Your Community
18. Community Awards 2010
19. Beyond Your Website
20. What's Wrong With Community Management?

Reports & eBooks

1. The 2011 State of Community Management Report
2. Howard Reingold - The Virtual Community
3. The State of Online Branded Communities
4. The ROI of online customer service communities
5. The Forrester Wave Report
6. eModeration White Paper - Communities of Purpose
7. Deloitte – 2009 Tribalization of Business Study
8. Lithium - Community Health Index
9. Radian6 - Building & Sustaining Brand Communities
10. Jono Bacon - The Art of The Community
11. Forrester – The ROI Online Support Communities

Websites & Assocations

1. The Community Backchannel
2. The Community Roundtable
3. The OC Report
4. e-Mint
5. Facebook Community Manager Group
6. Community Builders
7. The Community Manager
8. Online Community Managers
9. The Community Management Group

Blogs

1. Alison Michalk
2. Amy Sample Ward
3. Angela Connor
4. Blaise Grimes-Viort
5. Community Roundtable
6. Connie Benson
7. Dawn Foster
8. Dave Cayem
9. Debra Askanase
10. eModeration
11. Eric Foster
12. Holly Seddon
13. Jake Mckee
14. Jeremiah Owyang
15. Jono Bacon
16. Judi Huck
17. Kirsten Wagenaar
18. Laurel Papworth
19. Lauren Klein
20. Mario Ogneva
21. Martin Reed
22. Matt Rhodes
23. Michael Norton
24. Patrick O’Keefe
25. Phil Wride
26. Rachael Happe
27. Sue on the web
28. Ted & Rosie O'Neil
29. UX Booth
30. Vanessa Dimauro
31. Vanessa Paech

Academic articles

1. McMillan and Chavis (1985) Sense of Community
2. Robin Hamman (1997)- Introduction to Virtual Communities Research and Cybersociology Magazine Issue Two
3. Moore and Serva (2007) Understanding Member Motivation for Contributing to Different Types of Virtual Communities: A Proposed Framework,
4. Williams and Cothrel (2004), Four smart ways to run online communities (Sloan Management Review, 2000)
5. Bughin & Zeisser, (2001) The Marketing Scale Effectiveness of Virtual Communities
6. Pitta and Fowler (2005) Internet community forums: an untapped resource for consumer marketers
7. Iriberri and Leroy (2009) A Life-Cycle Perspective on Online Community Success
8. Ridings and Gefen (2004) Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online, JCMC 10 (1), Article 4
9. Ardichvili, Page and Wentling (2003) Motivation and barriers to participation in Virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice, Journal of Knowledge Management, 2003; 7,1
10. Wang and Fesenmaier (2003) Understanding the Motivation of Contribution in Online Communities: An Empirical Investigation of an Online Travel Community, Electronic Markets, Vol 13, No 1.
11. Sugiyama and Rothaermel (2001) Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com, Journal of Management 27
12. Sangwan , S (2005) Virtual community success: A uses and gratifications perspective
13. Andrews, D.C (2002) Audience-specific online community design, Communications of the ACM, Vol 45, N. 4 
14. Barab, S.A, MaKinster, J.G, Scheckler, R. (xxxx) Designing System Dualities: Characterizing An Online Professional Development Community 
15. Baym, N.K. (2007) The new shape of online community: The example of Swedish independent music fandom, First Monday, Volume 12, Number 8 – 6 
16. Stanoevska-Slabeva, K. (2002) Towards a Community-Orientated Design of Internet Platforms
17. Arnold, Y. Leimeister, J.L, Krcmar, H. (2003) CoPEP: A Development Process Model for Community Platforms for Cancer Patients, Community platform engineering process
18. Porter, C.E. (2004) A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, Vol, 10. No. 1.

If you like these resources, be sure to sign up for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course. Learn how to develop and manage a thriving online community for your organization. 

It's a highly specialized community. It targets people within a niche, of a niche, of a niche. The total target audience is no more than a few hundred people. 

Why bother with a community that targets a few hundred people?

Because these are the few hundred people that matter. They are the people whom make buying decisions, give proper feedback, and use the products/services. 

Individuals in these communities can each be worth six to seven figures in revenue. This tiny, exclusive, community that no-one will know about (that's by choice), can generate a greater ROI than the likes of Dell, Best Buy, and most of the communities you've heard about. 

Whilst it might be the huge, customer-facing, communities that get all the attention. I suspect it's the small, exclusive, communities that generate the bigger ROI.

Registration is now open for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course. This is an advanced, online, course which will equip you with the skills, knowledge and resources to be a world-class community manager. Click here for more information.

We identified where clients are in their community efforts and then provide them with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to progress their community further. 

Usually, this meant the client had an idea for the community but didn't know how to implement it. So we explained what they needed to do at each stage.We developed their strategy and community platform in line with best practices. We ensured they didn't make the mistakes many brands make. We gave them our proven scripts, templates and guides. And we trained their staff. 

The problem with consultancy

Unfortunately, this is time intensive. We can only take on a handful of clients a year and not every organization can afford our time.

So last year we wrapped our entire approach up into a course organizations could take. 

The course was the most advanced of its kind.

It's intensive, fully online, and highly practical. It delivers hands-on coaching, refers to over 100 case studies and just under 300 references to peer-reviewed material. We teach students how to develop communities and how to apply this knowledge specifically to their own community efforts.

We've run the course twice now and been blown away by both the demand, quality of participants, and results achieves by our participants. 

So we're very happy to run the course again this year.

We have opened registration for The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course. You can download the prospectus here: http://www.pillarsummit.com/

(only read on if you want more information about the course)

The Pillar Summit Course

The Pillar Summit is comprises of 3 modules:

1) How to start an online community. This takes the participant from conception (just coming up with the idea of a community) through to critical mass (when the community has reached the stage where growth/activity have come self-sustaining)

2)  Successful Community Management. This is our flagship module. This covers how to manage an active online community. Specifically, it explains how to grow a community, moderate a community, build relationships, what types of content to create and how to sustain high levels of activity amongst members.

3) Advanced community strategy. This module covers scaling a community, how to develop and executive a community strategy, measurement, metrics and gaining a positive ROI. We also go deep into community and group theory. 

During this course you will learn how to: 

• Develop any community concept from scratch to critical mass.


• Identify the resources your organizations needs to dedicate to the community. 


• Select and develop the best platform for your online community.


• Ensure people join and participate in your online community.


• Sustain high levels of engagement in your community.


• Use advanced social-psychology, and community-psychology techniques to develop a strong sense of community amongst members.


• Tackle common community problems such as participation inequality, disputes, low engagement, and weak growth.

• Participate in a platform and build relationships with members in line with proven relationship-development theory.

• Measure the community using reliable metrics.


• Gain a clear, provable, ROI from your community efforts.


• Train other members of your community team.

How The Pillar Summit is taught

The Pillar Summit is an online course taught through both extensive written material (over 70,000 words) and a series of live, interactive, webinars. 

Webinar lessons are scheduled twice a week (so participants around the world can participate) and recorded to ensure no participant misses a lesson. 

During lessons we explain how to apply the material to your community efforts. We outline the material, use case studies, and help you use the material to improve your community efforts. 

In addition to this lesson, we also offer a huge number of extra benefits. These include: 

• One to one coaching. We coach participants how to tackle their community-specific issues. 


• The Pillar Summit’s Community Management Playbook. Learn how to tackle the most community problems communities face. 


• Proven scripts for inviting members to participate, news posts, soliciting volunteers etc…


• Weekly live-discussions. During these discussions we tackle common problems faced by members every week.


• The Pillar Summit's case study eBook. We provide participants with an eBook for case studies in successful community management.


• Template strategy documents, website wireframes, content and action calendars. Drag and drop your activities into our pre-designed documents. 


• Checklists for your community efforts. Ensure you're following best practices and are undertaking every necessary activity to develop a successful community.


• The Pillar Summit’s Community management Bible – the full text of every lesson. We don't share this with anyone else.


• Access to several community management journals. Access a variety of academic literature to online communities. Especially use for niche industries.


• Guest speakers from some of the world’s top online communities. Every week, we have a live webinar featuring a community manager of a highly successful online community.


• Open-clinic hours where you can seek help for any problems faced by your community.


• Practical assignments. These help you apply the material learnt during the lessons directly to your community efforts.

Previous participants

Previous participants have included community managers for Oracle, Amazon, Lego, GreenPeace, Telligent, TeachFirst and a range of marketing agencies, non-profits, and associations. 

Previous participants have given the course incredible reviews. 
 

Registration

Registration for The Pillar Summit closes on Feb 19. 

If you want more information either download our prospectus at this URL: http://eepurl.com/geSRL or visit www.pillarsummit.com.

We hope to see a few of you there.  

DreamHost is down. People are angry. No-one from DreamHost is managing the comments. This, therefore, means it's terrible community management.

I would argue that this might be great community management, at least from a community perspective. A common enemy is good for the community. A community united against you is still a united community. That's not easy to achieve. 

If the community were to find a way to band together and resolve the problem, community theory suggests they will be much stronger for it. There is some evidence of this happening. They're suggesting different hosting providers, for example. 

None of this will help DreamHost. Upsetting your customers isn't smart. Many of these customers wont be coming back. But this isn't the point (of this post).

Customer service and community management aren't the same. They overlap...in places. But they're different. The art of developing a strong community isn't synonymous with the art of pleasing every customer. They diverge, frequently. This isn't terrible community management (or community management at all), it's terrible customer service. 

A community practitioner sees a major problem as a big opportunity for the community to work together to find a solution. As a result, the community is stronger. A customer service rep should will press the panic button and tell the audience to sit tight until the problem is resolved. That audience has no power. 

This might seem like a minor, terminological, difference, but it's far bigger than that. Time to start considering if you're doing community management or customer service. 

The answer is fairly simple. 

You don't get all the e-mails done in an hour.

You only give yourself an hour to go through it (the hour is arbitrary).

You get through as many as possible in that hour. The rest of the time you spend developing your community. 

The danger here is spending more time on unhappy members and ignoring the happy people in your community.

Would you rather spend 20 minutes resolving a minor issue of one member or working on a piece of content that the entire community will like? How about spending those 20 minutes reaching out to potential volunteers who can help answer questions?

Or if you want to simplify this, let resolving individual members problems be the last thing you do in the day. Once you've got all the development activities done, work on the individual responses.