Heather Champ, Director of Community for Flickr, shares her experiences in shepherding passionate communities at HICK Tech 2008 in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. In this keynote presentation Ms. Champ shows you how Flickr has learned their most valuable lessons: Own it; Don’t wait; Change is hard; Avoid creating super-villains; and Embrace chaos
Should you have to ask people to spread the word for you?
I recently got asked to RT (retweet) something on Twitter. I didn’t do it. Not anything against the person or organisation that made the request (they’re actually doing good stuff), but it’s more against my principles. I’m happy to spread the word when I feel it is right for me, my brand and the people that may be following me.
You are probably doing something not quite right if you find yourself asking people to review your product. Or to write an article on it. Or to tweet about it.
A great way to let your community grow is to keep your members happy. If they are happy they won’t think twice about promoting your online community or business for free (and with pleasure).
Facebook worked well initially because it was friends you already knew that you were connecting to. It probably doesn’t work as well (or is used very differently) for those that use it to keep in touch with anyone and everyone willing to be their ‘friend’.
LinkedIn originally worked well because people were connecting with people they had worked with. I feel it doesn’t work as well now (or is now serving a different purpose) as people strive to get as many contacts as possible without considering the important quality angle.
Relationships take time to build. We have the technology available to make it easier to find the people we want to connect with. However it doesn’t mean the process of building your community of friends (social or business) is any easier.
We still have to deal with normal human behaviour, which is frankly quite complex and takes time to evolve into a sound relationship.
Technology can help us do this, but it certainly can’t do it for us.
A cup of coffee is an opportunity to meet someone, talk about a few other things, make a friend or a business acquaintance. Done right, the face to face reference check is a lot more than a reference check. It’s a way to grow your network and your business. And it’s also the best way to find out exactly what you need to know about a person you want to hire, invest in, or otherwise go into business with. – Fred Wilson
10 years ago it was hard and expensive to create any decent kind of online presence. Now everything is so easy and minimal technical know how is needed to get things started.
I remember working on projects that seemed to take forever to agree on, create and launch. They cost tens of thousands to make. The actual impact post launch was minimal.
Clients realised after the launch that they should have done things differently.
The problem with big launches are that expectations are high. Perfection is expected. If you don’t reach certain ambitious goals then it (and you) will be seen as a failure.
Instead of spending money on something that your team thinks will work, why not use the time launching something simple and reaching out to understand what people actually want or need.
Make them feel special by implementing features that they request.
Communicate to your fans. Listen to what they say. Action your words. Provide great customer service.
It’s not the technology that will make you stand out. That’s now the easy part. It’s your down to earth people skills.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/torek/2467519466/
The problem with this is that with so many online communities fighting for your attention then nothing much differentiates them and it all becomes incredibly boring and saturated.
So imagine online communities:
Communities like these start to feel real. Kind of like the corner or coffee shop in your area. Something that you can’t see yourself live without and wouldn’t hesitiate to pay for.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/305410323/
A common strategy to grow a sustainable and profitable online community is to recruit a relatively large a mount of members. The business model would then to be upsell to the members with an expectation that only a small amount will take up the offers. This small percentage would be enough to make the online community sustainable and profitable.
However, there can be different models, here is one idea:
This type of online community is where the majority of your community members love what you are doing and have a very high and probable chance of paying for something that you create. So instead of having 1% of members generating income, 99% do.
A True Fan community means that the quantity of members are significantly smaller, but that’s ok because the majority are contributing to your cause.
It doesn’t mean a True Fans community can’t grow into a much larger community, but it does mean that much more focus should be given to each fan. This is possible in smaller groups, but gets much more difficult (or impossible) in larger online communities.
See: 1,000 True Fans for a very interesting read on the idea of True Fans.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/humanoide/138782217/
You have an online community or want to start one. You want to promote it. Where do you start?
Here are (just) some ideas:
The web has gone social and so has link building. Forget the “can we swap links” or “I’m pretty cool, please put me on your blogroll”. That’s the old way. It may have worked a few years ago, but is now most likely a waste of your precious time.
Frankly yes. I’m looking back five years and the truth is:
There are now so many people online. The majority I would say have some kind of web presence. It might be as simple as being on FaceBook or Twitter, through to the the more involved of having a website or being strongly involved within an online community.
Link building still exists in a much different form and it may not be entirely about search rankings – it’s more now a form of online social existence. Think about it, how can links be measured when they are being posted where search engines cannot reach?
The clever way to do link building and attract people to your online community is to get people to do it for you – without them realising it!
Consider this a guide, it’s not comprehensive, but it should hopefully get you thinking in a different way.
The hardest part of starting any online community is the beginning. It sure can be hard work. All the technology is in place, but where are the people? They haven’t come flocking. Why? Because in the real world this doesn’t usually happen. People are busy, what’s in it for them?
Some basic tips to raise awareness:
If you are the only one book marking your own site it’s not really going to have much of a positive effect. The results happen when other people are doing the bookmarking for you. Not only do you get the valuable links, but if they have a following there’s a better chance other people may pick up on the information.
Example bookmarking sites: delicious and StumbleUpon
Not all links posted within a social network or online community are equal. Some people are trusted more and may have a bigger network of ‘friends’. If a link is posted by someone with 10 ‘friends’ compared to someone with 1000 ‘friends’, who would you prefer to post the link? Search engines may not see a difference in the link value, but people do.
Closed social networks should also not be underestimated. Much of FaceBook and LinkedIn are closed (ie. not searchable by the likes of Google), but the opportunity to drive traffic and increase awareness is immense.
For your own sanity and for the sake of being efficient, pick and choose networks where you have a chance of making an impact.
For example, if you run a professional online community then somewhere like LinkedIn or Facebook is a good bet to interact or create a group. However, you would be wasting your time to create a presence on Bebo (which is where teenagers hang out).
Remember that by having an online community you want people joining and having the conversations in your space, not on others. So whatever kind of presence you are creating remember that the focus is to attract them to your online community.
schux build, maintain and nurture online communities.
Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195/
So what should you check for when joining an online community?
Here are some ideas:
Around 2 years ago we started the Software Testing Club. It started as a low key experiment and is now a thriving and leading online community for software testers.
There are some really nice and collaborative exercises happening over there at the moment. Such as the Software Testing Book and the Software Testing Mentors group.
Testing has long been stigmatised with being a boring or second choice career path. The lack of a professional community has not helped the perception. This is why I wrote an article (which conveniently was featured) for a the new TEST Magazine.
Download a PDF copy of A call to arms.