Key Takeaways:
1) Rules of "90-9-1"; "30-10-10"
2) 5-20K target audience needed for forums to be self-sustaining
3) Most important method of outreach: visible links on home page (email & incentives are secondary)
4) Moderating:
Year 1 – first 12 months of community
No one really knows about the life cycle of communities over 5, 10 years; however there's lots of data on “year one”
Numbers
90-9-1 (1% are the hardcore users – answer 40% of questions)
Small percentage always contribute the most
Perhaps it’s best to target efforts toward the 1%
30-10-10
Within a 30 day period, 10% who see invite will come, 10% of them will post
If you look at the numbers and do 9 or 10 things right, it’s hard to fail
If 5-20K target audience is required for keeping forums going, what is required for pure social networks - good question!
Forums are the most easy-to-use, welcoming, time-tested type of social media.
We're halfway through a generation-long transformation:
Phase one – getting people to interact (most companies have done this)
Phase two – learning how to listen (this is where most companies are at today)
Phase three – companies create their products, services, and processes in continuous collaboration with customers (no one is doing this today)
No tie, weak tie, strong tie - different ways your customers relate to the community around your company and products.
5-10 posts per day on average per forum – minimum to keep site looking busy, i.e., If you have 4 forums, average of at least 20 posts per day
Look at your forum structure every week to see what’s working – expand or contract as necessary, do keyword searches to see what people are talking about to understand what forums to add next.
Metrics - the pulse of the community - posts, page view, registrations, searches
Quality of posts - software should allow person who asks question to identify the best answer, and other users to mark any answer or question as helpful.
Must-have forums:
Welcome & News board
-Lets users know someone owns forums
-E.g. “how to ask a good question”
Feedback
-Gives users a channel for suggestions
-Lets super users identify themselves
When beginning or improving your community, look for good examples. As you compare, think about
Size how large is your target audiennce compared with the example?
Type what are your goals and who are your users?
Tenure are you just launching a community or redesigning an existing one?
Tip on “support” communities - not using the word “support” in title drives down the number of complaints/expectation that a supportTech will show up
Support communities should be enthusiast communities; enthusiast communities should be support communities
Most important methods of outreach (go big and broad):
1) **Visible links on homepage
2) **Email outreach
3) **Other (incentives, etc)
Don’t go below the radar – soft launches trusted customers can work for seeding purposes, but the timing needs to be managed tightly (no more than a week or two)
Don't need a lot of seeds - users are looking for content but also freshness
To succeed in first two quarters:
Promotion
Don’t expand structure too quickly – paradoxically, more boards can drive participation down (if less than 5 posts/forum)
Super Users – open communication channels; identify super users – they need to know that you know they’re there – but don’t move too fast in the first two quarters
Private forums for these types of users - hold off for at least 6 months
Different abilities, avatars, permissions, signatures, etc. for these users - an important benefit
Guidelines/TOS – Good Examples-Complete guideline: Dell (they’ve encountered every possible situation)
-Flickr’s are “friendlier” (we’re not worried about you, we’re worried about the other
guy)
-Make it yours – don’t copy and paste – make sure it ties back into your company
-Make it clear if you’re enforcing your guidelines and how you are enforcing them
Terms of service – apply to people who have registered for a service
Terms of use – apply to anyone visiting your site
Guidelines – friendly version of terms of service
Moderating:
1) Moderate to guidelines – point to a specific guideline
2) Never rise to the bait – stand on an even keel/be positive in responses
3) Don’t publicly chastise users – private communication is best for reminding them
about guidelines
4) Moderators need to keep notes – usually there’s a private part of user profiles where
You can keep notes for other moderators (e.g. this user has 3 warnings)
Staffing configuration
-Moderator
-People who author content, answer questions, etc.
-Community manager – might be a part time job – their name should be at the top of the
Welcome board – someone needs to be in charge – needs to be someone who has credibility
Inside organization
Keeping your company in tune with forums
-Encourage RSS feeds for phrases, search terms, etc. – they can keep tabs on what users think
About specific products
-There are methods/tool of automatically analyzing data; posts, etc. but none are ideal
Page Last Updated: Jul 9 1:36am by Joe Cothrel