On July 6th, Blizzard Entertainment announced that within three weeks, all forum members would be forced to use their real names when posting. According to Blizzard Entertainment:

Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before.

They felt that their forums had earned a reputation as a place of flame wars, trolling and other forms of abuse and hoped this would change if members were forced to use their real names.

Such a radical change was never going to work. Within 24 hours there were over 1,000 replies to the announcement – the vast majority of which were negative. A week later, Blizzard Entertainment reversed their decision and announced that anonymous posting would be allowed to continue.

Anonymity isn’t (really) the issue

Serious discussion is possible in online communities without the need to prevent anonymous posting. Just because you allow anonymous usernames doesn’t mean you’re destined to end up with a community based on negativity and abuse.

Yes, anonymous posting can lead to trolling, flame wars and abuse – after all, there are limited consequences to bad behavior when nobody knows who you are or where you live. That being said, anonymous communities don’t have to be this way – it would take a brave person to argue that the VisaJourney community suffers because people don’t have to use their real names to contribute.

Privacy concerns are over-hyped

Many opponents of the proposed change expressed concerns about privacy – they didn’t want others to know their real names.

The fault with this argument can be expressed in just one word – Facebook. Millions of us volunteer huge amounts of personal information to Facebook and everyone who accesses the site. Every now and then there is a surge of concern but, by and large, we’re happy to share personal information and our real name with Facebook because we receive enough value in return and because that’s how it’s always been.

When we registered with Facebook, we knew we had to give our real name. Our friends use their real names. It’s the accepted culture and practice of the community.

When people wanted to use Blizzard Entertainment’s forums, they registered with their choice of username (as did everyone else). Not many people registered with their real names – that wasn’t the culture or the practice of the community.

It’s extremely difficult to change such established practices.

Relationship & reputation building in online communities

One reason why there is such a high failure rate for online communities is the fact that it’s hard for members to build relationships. When we go to a friend’s party or a business meeting, it’s far easier to communicate with people compared to when we’re online. In an online community, all we have is the written word. We lose vocal expression and body language. We can’t shake hands. It’s harder to make the mental connection that behind each username is a real human being.

When it comes to developing relationships, online communities rely on reputation. New members of an online community are often ignored or welcomed by only a small proportion of other members. The most powerful members of online communities are usually those who have made the most posts. New members aren’t really ‘in’ until others have got to know them – and that’s done by the new member making a lot of posts and getting noticed.

Members track the activity of other members in online forums in four ways: their username, avatar, signature and writing style/appearance. These are pretty much the only personal identifiers members of online communities have, and they’re guarded jealously. In these four identifiers, an individual’s entire reputation is stored.

Blizzard Entertainment’s proposal to force members to use their real names caused controversy because members didn’t want to lose control of such a major component of their reputation and standing within the community.

Such a change would have caused uncertainty. All the equity that members had built up in their previous username was now at risk.

The uncertainty of change

Members of online communities don’t like change. Change can be hugely disruptive to an online community. You’re making it more difficult for members to build and maintain relationships with every change you make. If you need to make changes, make them slowly and make them minor.

Taking away such a critical aspect of relationship building and removing a member’s opportunity to create (and develop) their online reputation and persona was never going to work.

The proposed change failed because it would have fundamentally affected every member’s reputation. It would have affected the relationships they had established with other members. It would have affected the established order and hierarchy of the community. It would have changed the subject of conversations, their tone and their content. The entire culture of the community was threatened.

Once an online community has its own culture, it’s virtually impossible to change (as Blizzard Entertainment discovered) – that’s why you need to spend a huge amount of time planning your community before it launches and proactively managing your community from day one.

Are you thinking about building your own online community? Perhaps you want to get paid to manage an existing one. If you’re new to the role of online community management, read on – I’ll outline what you can expect.

Hard Work

Regardless of whether you’re building an online community from scratch or managing an existing one, be prepared for a lot of hard work. Don’t expect to write a forum post every now and then, delete the odd post and ban the odd member. There’s far more to it than that. In fact, much of your work won’t even be visible – you’ll spend most of your time behind the scenes.

Irregular Hours

Being an online community manager isn’t a 9 to 5 job. The internet doesn’t conform to the normal working week. You’ll have members log into your community at all hours. You’ll have people asking for help at all hours. There will be conflict at all hours.

You can’t be online all the time, but you will need to be flexible. If you want to work a regular schedule, being an online community manager isn’t for you. You’ll need to check into your community on a regular basis throughout the day (and often at night, too).

Frustration

You’ll spend a lot of time encouraging, cajoling and persuading. Sometimes your pleas will work, other times they won’t. This can be frustrating – why won’t people listen to you? Why do members ignore your community guidelines? Why do some members enjoy nothing but conflict?

A good community manager will never show their frustration. They’ll always remain calm, cool and collected. You need to be human, but you need to remain professional.

Tantrums

It doesn’t matter whether your online community is targeted towards those aged 18 or 80 – you’ll come across your fair share of childish and immature behavior. You’ll likely be surprised at just how childish grown men and women can be – but this is part of the job.

You need to expect tantrums and bad behavior and you need to know how to deal with it, before it happens.

Abuse

Tantrums tend to happen when members disagree with other members, or when you’re forced to intervene. You also need to be prepared for the abuse members will aim directly at you.

You should always encourage the community to deal with any conflict themselves. However, sometimes you’ll need to use your admin privileges to delete member content or even member accounts. When you need to do this, don’t expect that to be the end of the problem.

You need a thick skin if you want to be an online community manager on a long term basis.

Spam

Spam plagues almost all online communities. Some are better than others at dealing with it. Be prepared for spam, and remove it as fast as you can. Visitors will not join an online community that’s overrun with spam. Members will not want to stick around in a community full of spam.

You’ll need to put in place as many safeguards as possible to prevent automated spam. Make it easy for members to report spam and delete it quickly. Over time you’ll notice patterns – the email addresses spammers like to use, common IP addresses and links they like to post. Over time you’ll get better at preventing spam, but it will never stop.

Competition

If you manage a successful online community, prepare to be envied. Others will want a piece of your success – sometimes through devious means.

You’ll need to monitor your competition closely. You can be sure they’re watching you. Expect representatives from other sites to join your community and try to poach your members. Expect other online communities to paint your community in a negative light.

Don’t see competition as a threat – see it as an opportunity. Make sure your community is better than your competition, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

Ignorance

Few people will understand what you do for a living. Some don’t respect the role of an online community manager – primarily due to ignorance. This will change over time, but for now you’ll be doing a lot of explaining. Not only will you be continuously explaining your role, you’ll also be fighting for your community within the organization you work for.

Learning

As an online community manager, you’ll never stop learning. You’ll learn about your members, you’ll learn about what works in your community, how your members respond to your suggestions and why they joined (and remain a member of) your community.

The role of a community manager is always changing. If you want to keep up, you’ll need to be learning all the time.

Risk

You’ll need to take risks every now and again if you want to succeed. You can’t just copy what other community managers are doing (although you should definitely be learning from them). You need to try new things for yourself, and that involves taking risks. Sometimes these risks will pay off, sometimes you’ll fail miserably. You never know unless you try – so make sure you try new things and take risks every now and again.

Reward

I’m not talking about financial reward (although you can earn yourself a pretty penny if you’re talented). Being a community manager can be the most rewarding job imaginable. People have married and had children after initially chatting at Just Chat. A community once managed by Angela Connor saw its members group together to raise $600 and prevent another member being evicted from their apartment.

When people come together, amazing things can happen. Being the manager of a community that does amazing things is an amazing feeling.

Emotion

Being an online community manager will expose you to a number of emotions – good and bad. You’ll have days when you love every member of your online community as though they were family. There will be other days when you’ll want to pack it all in.

Being a community manager is an amazing opportunity. You get to connect with (and learn from) others you would probably never have met before. You get to introduce people to others, and you get the opportunity to change people’s lives. Be prepared for an emotional ride.

To whom it may concern,

It’s great that you’re thinking about building an online community – but please make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, and in the right way. Make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Before you build an online community, make sure you have complete management buy-in. It’s no good going into such an important project if there are still hold-outs in your organization.

If you only have limited time to build an online community and want immediate results, you should probably shelve your plans for now. Successful online communities aren’t built overnight. Yes, you can spend money advertising your online community and even bribe people to join. However, you won’t have a real community – you’ll just have an expensive ego stroke. Relationships aren’t built quickly – they take time, and they take effort.

You believe your products are exciting and inspirational. Your customers (even if they love your products) probably don’t agree. It’s most likely they simply find your products functional – they fulfill a need. They might mention your products to their friends, but that doesn’t mean they want to join an online community that discusses nothing but your products.

Your community shouldn’t necessarily be about your products – it should be about what is relevant, interesting and exciting to your customers. A furniture maker should consider developing an online community for home renovators – not an online community about office desks. A manufacturer of energy saving light bulbs should consider developing an online community for people looking to live an eco-friendly lifestyle – not an online community about light bulbs.

If you’re unwilling to accept that people in your online community will be talking about subjects other than your products, don’t build one. If you’re unwilling to accept that people in your online community may discuss your competitor’s products, don’t build one.

You need to offer value to your audience. You need to give them information that is relevant and useful to them. You need to serve your audience. This means giving genuine advice when asked – this might mean mentioning the product of a competitor. If you’re honest, you’ll be respected and trusted. You can’t build a successful online community without those two ingredients.

In some respects, when you build an online community you are giving up a certain amount of control – you’re giving your members more influence over your company and its processes. Make sure you understand and accept this before building an online community. People shouldn’t just be talking about you and to you – you need to be listening and responding, too.

You need to accept that in some ways, you’re stepping into the unknown. You’re encouraging and promoting discussion amongst real people. People can be unpredictable. They might say things you don’t expect – things that might be bad, things that might be good. Make sure you’re prepared and have procedures in place beforehand so you know how to react.

Your online community isn’t to be used as just another sales channel. People won’t stick around if you try selling to them. If you build a thriving online community around your brand, you’ll naturally build brand equity. It’s OK to post special offers on your online community, just don’t continually post press releases and reviews of your products. This isn’t about you – it’s about your members.

It’s no good building an online community and then ignoring it. Representatives of your organization need to be active and involved in your community. Ideally you should hire a community manager to be that representative. Make sure your community manager has specific contacts within your organization – they will need to have someone to report community feedback to and receive any information you want shared with the community.

Make sure your community manager is empowered. You won’t have a successful online community if your community manager has to get approval for any comment or post they make within the community. Of course, some responses will require approval – but most should not.

You can’t measure the success of an online community using traditional benchmarks. Just because an online community has 10,000 members it doesn’t mean it’s more successful than a community with a hundred. You need to look at other metrics – think about mentions of your brand/community and time spent on your site. Your community manager will help you draw up relevant benchmarks.

You need to be willing and able to change as a company – if your online community is successful you’ll have access to a huge amount of information and feedback. You’ll get to know your customers intimately – make sure you change in response to what you’re learning, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.

Building an online community signals your commitment to becoming far more customer focused. If you’re unwilling to change, if you’re unwilling to be more open, if you’re unwilling to be more ‘human’, then an online community probably isn’t for you.

Don’t go into this blindly. Make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Regards,

Martin Reed
CommunitySpark.com

Online communities tend to fail for the same few reasons:

Lack of focus and understanding – There’s often too much focus on features and technology (most of your potential members are not interested in these but for some reason they’re top of your priority list).

Failure to ask ‘how’ – How will you attract members and get them talking? You spend days/weeks/months building the community website rather than building community (they’re two different things). Talking to people and building relationships is more important than the website itself. A community website without members is an oxymoron.

Failure to ask ‘why’ – Why will people want to join your community? What’s in it for them? Is it fun?

In this article, I want to focus on the very last point; is your online community fun? If it isn’t, or if you decide to build a community around a topic most consider dull, you’ll struggle to succeed.

Is your subject interesting enough?

Let’s say you’re in the early stages of planning an online community. You run an online store that sells toner cartridges – you decide that adding a forum to your site will attract members and customers. Doubtful. How much is there to talk about when it comes to toner cartridges? Sure, there are different brands, sizes, and variations in quality and price. Once you’ve exhausted those subjects though, what is there to talk about?

People are lazy when they go online. Giving up their email address or joining a new community is similar in effort to painting a five bedroom house in the offline world. I doubt there are many people out there passionate enough about toner cartridges to want to join a toner cartridge community.

You need to think differently – in this case, don’t build a community that discusses toner cartridges. Instead, think of your target demographic. You’re probably targeting office buyers/managers/administrators. Why not build a community for them (not your product) instead? More interesting, more scope and definitely more to talk about (office gossip and politics, career progression, entrepreneurship, etc).

People rarely want to talk about you or your products (the only exception I can think of is Apple). They want to talk about themselves. Make sure you satisfy this basic demand – if you give people a place to talk about themselves (and the right people join your community), conversation about your products should come naturally.

How to build a fun online community

Many people reading this will already have an online community in one form or another. All online communities are different, but they should all have one thing in common – they should be fun. Make sure your community is fun by following the following points:

- Don’t wield your moderator powers unless you absolutely have to. It’s hard to have fun when ‘teacher is watching’.

- Don’t tell people off for going ‘off-topic’ on a discussion. This is actually a good thing.

- Don’t insist that people talk only about the subject matter of your community. The most vibrant sections of subject specific online communities are the off-topic areas – don’t fight this, embrace it.

- Be active in your own online community and influence the behaviour of your members by acting as you want them to behave.

- Invite the right people to join your online community – don’t invite everyone you come across just to get your numbers up. Be selective and invite people you think have the right personality to make your community fun, diverse and interesting.

The only online communities that work without being particularly fun are support forums – I’d hardly call the Verizon Forums a fun place to hang out in (others may disagree), but they serve their purpose well. I wouldn’t call Depression Forums a fun place, but that community has a lot to offer members and visitors alike.

If your community doesn’t encourage fun, it better be catering to the self-interests of your visitors. The best online communities, of course, do both.

Not all members of your online community are created equal. Some are more popular than others, some contribute more often than others, and some are just more influential than others.

These influencers are of huge importance to your online community – and they’re also a little dangerous. You need to keep them onside, but you also need to be seen to treat them the same as everyone else.

So how do you react when an influential member starts posting offensive, argumentative or abusive content?

Remember your community guidelines

Your online community needs to have rules or guidelines. Not only do these show newcomers to your community what is expected of them, it also gives them a taste of your community’s culture and personality. They also give you the moral authority to intervene when things get out of control.

If you don’t have clear, published guidelines then you’ll struggle even more than normal to get your members to accept any intervention you may need to make.

When it comes to your community’s most influential members, you’ll want to refer them to the point in your rules that they have broken – you can’t afford ambiguity.

I don’t like seeing long lists of rules when I visit an online community. Firstly, most won’t bother reading a long list of rules. Secondly, the list suggests you have covered every conceivable action or type of content that is not permitted. Thirdly, your community comes across as repressive.

Keep your rules short and simple – people aren’t stupid; simply state that ‘offensive content’ is not permitted rather than listing a hundred things you consider to be offensive.

Influence before action

Using moderator privileges should always be seen as a last resort. The more you have to intervene in your online community, the less responsibility you are giving your members. As a result, you will only end up encouraging them to continue posting similar content or reporting posts they deem offensive (rather than working together as a community to turn attention away from such content).

Influential members see themselves differently to other members – they know that they have influence; they know that they are popular and they know that they have a lot of power in the community. If you want to keep hold of that member, you need to tread very carefully if you come across any change in their behaviour. You need to try to use your influence before you use your moderator privileges.

Let’s say one of your influential members posts something that you feel is unsuitable for your community – here are three strategies you can employ:

1 – Try to steer the conversation

Here’s an example for you. Recently, a member of one of my online communities wrote a post as follows:

New Telephone Greeting:
Wouldn’t it be amazing, if this caught on all over the country…?

“GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED KINGDOM

Press ‘1’ if you speak English.
Press ‘2’ to disconnect until you can.”

Personally, I found this a little distasteful – however I didn’t think it was serious enough to warrant deleting the post or warning the member. Therefore, I replied with the following statement:

What about Welsh – an officially recognised language of the United Kingdom (or Cornish for that matter)?

This brought what could have been a divisive discussion to a close – the member in question chuckled about my reply and I think they secretly knew the point I was trying to make.

2 – Privately contact the member

Sometimes you’ll witness outbursts from members that are completely out of character. If that’s the case, it always pays to reach out rather than simply deleting or editing their posts. They may have recently received some bad news, another member may have been baiting them behind the scenes, or maybe they just misunderstood someone else’s comment (or you misunderstood theirs).

It’s always worth privately contacting members that suddenly exhibit uncharacteristic behaviour. Don’t be confrontational – explain why you’re getting in touch, ask if everything is OK and see if you can help.

In the majority of cases, a member you contact in this way will delete or edit their own post – which is always the best outcome.

3 – Get other members to intervene

The really successful online communities are ones in which the community manager rarely has to intervene – because members do that themselves. A positive online community will see members draw attention away from negative content, and give more attention to the best content.

The more you intervene as a community manager, the more responsibility you are taking away from your members. Next time a conflict starts to arise, consider contacting a member you trust – see if they’re willing to try and diffuse the situation. Once members see that they are able to diffuse situations themselves, they’ll take more responsibility and you’ll have a far more constructive online community.

The same, but different

If an influential member of your online community goes rogue, you should treat them in just the same way you’d treat any other member that acted inappropriately. The only difference being that with influencers, you need to be even more careful to ensure that you’re doing things the right way.

Twitter is the best online marketing tool of the last five years. Thanks to Twitter, you can engage in immediate conversations, receive immediate feedback and find new people who share your interests.

From a community building standpoint, you can use Twitter to find potential new members, make people aware of your community, build your reputation and introduce people to others.

Many businesses and websites don’t use Twitter correctly and wonder why their strategy fails. In this article, I want to help ensure you don’t make the same mistakes.

First, let’s bust a myth.

Twitter followers

Huge value seems to be placed on the number of Twitter followers you have. This is a flawed metric – just as the number of ‘members’ your online community has shouldn’t be used to measure its success, the number of followers you have on Twitter doesn’t mean you’re popular or that people are interested in what you have to say.

What really counts is the number of conversations you’re having. Are people listening to you? Are people responding to what you’re saying? I’d rather have 100 followers that I communicate with on a regular basis than 10,000 followers who are strangers.

It’s about value and relationships

You should be using Twitter as an additional way of providing value. You should be giving more than you are receiving. If you give, you’ll naturally receive. Don’t be scared of using Twitter as a way of building your new online community. Don’t be scared of using it as a way of promoting an existing one – Twitter isn’t competition to your community. Just play by the rules.

A beginner’s guide to using Twitter

Let’s say you’re planning a brand new online community and you’re doing it the right way – you know that you don’t build the website before you’ve built relationships. Remember – you need to build relationships first to see how passionate people are about your idea and whether it’s something they’ll talk about. No conversation, no community.

You want to use Twitter to find and engage potential members. Here’s how you do it.

Signing up to Twitter

- Choose a Twitter username

I think it’s fine to use the name of your website/brand here – as long as you follow my next point. Keep your Twitter username short, snappy and memorable.

- Use your real name

The name you enter in the ‘Name’ field appears in the emails people receive when you follow them. The quickest way to be labelled as a spammer or bot is for this not to be a real name. Why hide your real name, anyway? Hardly the best way to build trust. People can’t build relationships with those that hide their identities.

You’ve already used your brand name in your username – you don’t need to use it again.

- Link

If you have an existing website, put it in the ‘Web’ field. This isn’t essential, though. People won’t frown on you if you leave this blank. If you’re building a new online community, I’d recommend putting up a basic webpage outlining what you’re trying to build/accomplish and link to that page (you could even put up a form for people to join a mailing/waiting list).

- Fill out the bio

The first thing any potential new follower does when they arrive at your Twitter page is read your bio. If it’s blank, they’ll move on. If it’s boring, or full of sales copy, they’ll move on.

Talk in plain English. Be honest, be genuine. This all sounds like common sense, but it obviously isn’t. Believe me.

Using Twitter

- Don’t follow anyone – yet

Don’t start following people as soon as you sign up. You have nothing to offer yet. You won’t attract genuine followers if your Twitter feed is empty.

- Tweet!

Provide content. Don’t start posting links to your website. Don’t start selling. Talk about your niche and provide value. Let’s say you want to build a community for photographers. Suggest starting aperture settings for specific scenes. Talk about the importance of light; share your expertise. Give, give, give.

- Share and promote (others)

If you find a good resource, post a link to it and mention why you’re sharing it. People want to hear your opinion – they don’t just want to see links. If someone else on Twitter gave good advice, give it a ReTweet.

Make yourself known as a resource of good information.

- Engage

If someone gave good advice, thank them for it. Develop conversations with people by thanking them for the information they put out. Ask them questions. Get to know them. Relationship building should be done in just the same way you’d do it in your online community – the only difference is the medium (and shorter messages).

- Follow

By now, you’ll have a good Twitter history. New visitors to your page will see that you give out a lot of useful, relevant information. They will see that you engage in conversations, and promote others on Twitter via the ReTweet feature.

Now is the time to start following others. Use the search facility to find mentions of keywords, phrases or brand names. When you find individual Tweets that are relevant, check out that person’s Twitter feed. You can’t figure someone out from just one Tweet, but you’ll get a better idea of their personality if you read more of their stream.

Check out their bio, and any link they include in the ‘Web’ box. If you think this person would be interested in the information you’re sharing, follow them.

- Return follow

If you’re doing a really good job, you’ll be getting notifications of people following you before you even start following others. I’d always recommend taking a look at the Twitter pages of those that follow you – make sure they’re real, and not connected to something you’d rather not be associated with – before deciding whether to follow them back.

Don’t feel as though you absolutely have to return follow everyone that follows you – but know that people who follow you will appreciate being followed back.

- Be wary of direct messages

When you’re following someone on Twitter and they are following you back, you can both communicate with each other via the direct messaging system. Be wary of this, though – some people do not like being sent direct messages; especially when they don’t know you particularly well. Don’t be afraid to use this feature – just make sure you don’t overuse it.

Twitter is built around sharing – only keep things private when you have to.

There are no hard and fast rules for the best way to use Twitter. Just be social, provide value, be genuine and have fun. You’ll get out of Twitter what you put into Twitter.  Enjoy!

PS – Here is my Twitter page!

The key to building a successful online community is to start small – build individual, meaningful relationships between you and potential members, and amongst your potential members. Don’t rush to build an online community website before you do this – you’ve already made the first (and probably the most common) mistake.

Step one – Why is a community needed?

Why do you want an online community in the first place? To increase brand awareness/perception? To reduce costs? To better engage with your customers/target audience? Because everyone else is doing the same? The first three are valid reasons – the last one might be valid, but it’s the least likely to see you succeed.

Step two – Where are your potential members?

It’s much easier to find vegetarians online than it is fortune cookie writers. This needs to be considered – the harder your potential members are to find, the more challenging it will be to build a community in the first place. There are advantages, though – the harder these people are to find, the less likely it is that a competitor has already moved in. Smaller groups are better at building relationships – so see this as an advantage (albeit a challenging one).

Step three – Reach out and build relationships.

As you come across potential members, you need to reach out. This doesn’t mean you spam them or ’sell’ to them. If they have a blog, read it and leave comments that have value. If they are on Twitter, get involved in a conversation or two. You need to provide the value here – if you aren’t relevant or you don’t satisfy an individual’s self-interest, you won’t get very far.

You need to be genuine, and be human. Have a personality (that’s still allowed, you know) and enjoy this stage – you are now getting your name out there; what it gets associated with (good or bad) is up to you.

Step four – Develop relationships.

Although you should be slowly reaching out to new people, don’t do this at the expense of those you have already built relationships with. Now is the time to build on those relationships and develop them further. Find out what these individuals want – what is their self-interest here? Why were they initially receptive to what you had to offer?

If you aren’t sure, ask. Remember, you need to tailor the online community to meet the needs of your members – not your own needs. Find out what these members want and make sure you deliver.

Step five – Golden members.

Not everyone you approach will be interested in working with you on this project. That’s OK – you only want a small number of dedicated individuals at this stage anyway.

Those that are interested are hugely valuable – make sure you treat them as such. It takes monumental effort for someone to reach out to you (when most of us go online we become lazy, cynical and fed up with being marketed to). Bring these individuals in as your initial members – give them extra responsibilities and make sure you listen to what they say. Choose the right people, and they will help ensure your community is relevant, attractive and fun.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the website is the most important aspect of your online community. It isn’t – people and relationships are. You can build a community without a website. You can’t build a community without people. Always remind yourself of this fact and you’ll be ahead of most of your competition.

Goodbye 2009, welcome 2010. It’s a New Year – a time to refocus, and potentially a good time for a fresh start. Allow me to propose some New Year’s resolutions for those that manage online communities:

Resolution #1 – Be more active in your community

Members love (and need) to see their community manager actively involved in the community. Don’t drop in solely to intervene or take punitive action against members. Be a genuine member of the community; get involved in discussions, share information about yourself. You need to be known in your community, and you can’t expect others to be involved if you don’t take the lead.

Resolution #2 – Reach out to community members every day

Aim to personally thank at least one individual member every day. This doesn’t need to be done publicly. Send them a private message thanking them for their recent contribution. Make it personal – you don’t want to send generic ‘thank you’ messages – they’re worthless. Be genuine; if a member has contributed something great, be sure to let them know.

Resolution #3 – Build more relationships

This will come naturally if you’re actively involved in the community. However, you shouldn’t just be looking inside your community to build relationships. Look outside the walled garden – people that you would love to have as members are out there and probably don’t know you exist. Reach out and build new relationships – some of them may join your community and be a huge asset. Even if they don’t, you’re still creating value – for yourself (knowledge) and them (awareness).

Resolution #4 – Be more generous

A good community manager is already more than generous with their time. I am still to meet the (skilled) community manager who thinks the job can be done well when they are only ‘on duty’ from 9am to 5pm. However, what I am referring to in this resolution is something more than just being generous with your time. It’s about giving, sharing and relinquishing control.

If your community has a blog, don’t refuse to link to an outside source because you consider them to be a competitor. Don’t delete links related to a discussion that members post (unless they’re obviously spam) even if they link to your competitors. Give your members more control and influence. The stronger a community is and the more trust you place in your members, the less of a threat your competitors become.

Resolution #5 – Continue to learn

There are no absolute experts when it comes to building online communities. I have 10 years of experience, but I’m still learning every day. I read the blogs of other community managers and I read their twitter streams. I learn from people that comment on this blog. Every week my existing ideas are challenged. Sometimes I agree with the arguments put forward and change my way of thinking. Other times I don’t. However, I am always willing to listen and learn.

Never think that you know all there is to know about online community management. There is always more. There are always other ways of thinking. Every community is different. Every individual is different. That’s what makes this line of work fascinating and exciting.

Bonus resolution #6 – Make it easier

Even if you think you already focus on the previous five resolutions, here is one you can always target. Make your online community easier to use. There’s always room for improvement here.

Work out what features aren’t being used and get rid of them. Find bottlenecks in your website and fix them. Go back to basics – anything that isn’t essential should go. Too many features and too much functionality can be a distraction. If you aren’t able to remove features, make sure you absolutely force yourself to justify any new ones.

Good luck, and here’s to a successful 2010!

I’m surprised people haven’t pulled me up on this yet – I often state that member count isn’t a reliable indicator of the success of an online community; but nobody has asked me what numbers are better to use. Here, I’ll offer you some suggestions.

Registrations

This is a tricky one. On the one hand, an increasing number of new members implies that your community is attractive to outsiders. You need to bear in mind though, that the faster you attract new members, the more diluted your community can become. A sudden increase in new members can actually damage an online community – so be careful.

Contributions

Without activity, you have no community. There are many ways you can measure contributions to your online community; number of posts per member, overall posts per day, number of posts per discussion thread, etc.

Generally speaking, the more contributions to your community, the more value it gives (and receives). However, not all contributions are equal – is a 5 word post worth as much as a 100 word post?

Don’t assume that the higher the number of posts per day, the better your community is – those posts could be abusive or contain little in the way of value.

Bounce rate

Your site’s bounce rate shows how many of your visitors leave without clicking through to any other pages of your website. For example, if the bounce rate of your homepage is 50%, it means that half of your visitors leave your site as soon as they arrive.

You need to be careful here, though. Remember that not all traffic arrives via your homepage – so don’t rely solely on the bounce rate of your homepage as an indicator of how attractive/relevant your community is to visitors. Monitor the bounce rate of the most popular landing pages of your site. Also bear in mind that a sudden influx of traffic will almost certainly increase (worsen) your bounce rate – for example, if a page hits the homepage of Digg, you’ll typically see a huge influx of traffic to that specific page but very little in the way of visitor exploration of your site.

I’d suggest that if your bounce rate is consistently above 50%, you need to work on the site – either you’re not explaining the community’s purpose, you’re not offering anything unique, you’re advertising in the wrong places, your community is too hidden, or you’ve gone for form over function. I don’t think you could go more basic than the homepage for Just Chat – and its bounce rate is only 20%.

Pageviews

Be careful on this one – measuring the health of your online community with pageviews can easily be a deceptive ego stroke, like member count. If you want to double your pageviews overnight, you can simply edit your forum configuration to hold 10 posts per page instead of 20, or edit your blog configuration to display only 10 blog comments per page instead of 20.

However, as long as you’re aware of the potential pitfalls of using pageviews as a metric, it can still be useful. Not only do pageviews reflect how engaged your visitors are, they can show you where any bottlenecks may be. Are there a high number of pageviews for a specific section of your site? Look to reduce them – bring more content onto the page.

People don’t like clicking ‘next’ over and over again – that’s why you’ll see people jump into a forum discussion thread at page 30 with a comment like, ‘I couldn’t be bothered to read the previous 30 pages, but…’. Sure, even if all the content is spread over fewer pages, you’ll still have people skip over the content, but you’ll be more likely to see them skim some of it. It’s all about making it easier for the visitor.

Time on site

Pretty simple this one. Basically, the longer a visitor is on your site, the more engaged they are. You want this number to be high, and to increase over time (as the amount of content in your community increases and relationships get stronger).

Repeat visitors

Your community depends on its members returning to get involved in discussions. Fresh blood is good, but your community won’t get anywhere unless people stick around and form relationships. The more repeat visitors your online community sees, the healthier it is.

Visitor loyalty

This is a good measure of just how addictive your online community is. If visitors are only dropping by once a month, then it isn’t interesting enough. If people are visiting multiple times per day, they’re hooked.

Endorsements

People don’t recommend rubbish to their friends – they only recommend stuff that’s good. Every time someone uses your ‘tell a friend’ form (you do have one, right?), it’s a vote of confidence in the community. Make sure you are measuring the use of this form.

Do you offer a link for visitors and members to share content from your community? The more content is being shared, the more engaging and interesting it is.

Newsletter response rate

Most email newsletters are done wrong – they are used as a way of broadcasting messages to subscribers. Instead, they should be seen as conversation starters. Don’t send emails from a ‘donotreply’ address – use a real, live email address. Encourage people to hit the ‘reply’ button. You want to encourage conversation, not discourage it.

If people are simply reading your newsletter and not clicking any links or getting in touch, then something is wrong. Either your community is boring, or your newsletters are.

Incoming links and online mentions

Buzz is good. The more people talking about you, the more attention your community will attract. Not all mentions are guaranteed to be positive, though – so don’t just count a mention as a vote for your community. If you do something bad, you might get thousands of mentions; is that a good thing?

I’d keep track of all mentions and incoming links and divide them between negative, neutral and positive and see how they trend.

* Be wary of playing the numbers game *

In this article, I’ve listed 10 ways you can use numbers to measure your community’s progress – but at the same time I’ve shown how they don’t always reveal the true picture. When it comes to online communities, numbers aren’t everything. A community is about relationships – and relationships are subjective, not objective. Don’t forget this key fact.

Maximise your chances of success – only launch your community website to the world when the following conditions have been met:

◊ You know why you want to launch an online community

Why do you want an online community in the first place? To increase brand awareness/perception? To reduce costs? To better engage with your customers/target audience? Because everyone else is? The first three are valid reasons – the last one might be valid, but it’s the least likely to see you succeed. Do you really need an online community?

◊ You are committed and supported

Building an online community takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of effort. It also takes time (shortcuts are here). Are you ready for this? Perhaps even more importantly, are others inside your business (if applicable) supportive, too? Building an online community can be a struggle – you don’t want to be distracted, fighting against those that should be supporting you.

◊ You know how you are going to measure success

You shouldn’t base ’success’ on the number of people you can coax into registering. Member count is not a particularly good measure of a successful community. Instead, think of your own goals (or your organisation’s) and how the community will help you reach them.

When it comes to online communities, numbers can be difficult – sometimes success is measured on more subjective terms; for example, online communities can change the internal processes of an organisation to make it far more customer focussed (if the organisation itself is willing to change). That can be difficult (but not impossible) to measure using numbers alone.

◊ You know where your potential members are

It’s much easier to find vegetarians online than it is fortune cookie writers. This needs to be considered – the harder your potential members are to find, the more challenging it will be to build a community in the first place. There are advantages, though – the harder these people are to find, the less likely it is that a competitor has already moved in. Smaller groups are better at building relationships – so see this as an advantage (albeit a challenging one).

◊ You’ve already built relationships with – and amongst – potential members

You know where your members are, and you’ve built relationships with some of them. This doesn’t mean they follow you on Twitter – this means they actually talk to you and engage in meaningful dialogue.

Don’t make the easy mistake of ‘top down’ relationship building here – remember, you want a community. You need to introduce these people to each other; be a matchmaker and introduce people to others.

◊ You have a group of early adopters involved in the development process

You don’t want to launch a desolate online community or one that isn’t relevant to your target audience. Make sure you take advantage of the relationships you have developed and engage with these individuals during the website’s development to ensure it is tailored to your members and accumulating content at the same time.

◊ You have a plan

Don’t open the doors until you know what’s next. Opening an online community isn’t the final stage of community building. How will you continue to attract new members and keep hold of your existing ones? How will you encourage new conversations and the development of existing ones? How will you deal with abusive members? There are a lot of questions when it comes to community building – make sure you have the answers before you launch.