Communities are the most powerful customer relationship management tool for any business, association, organization or fanbase.
Great communities provide a level of interaction and immediacy that cannot be found with traditional dialog through email, website submissions, social media and an increased level of contact with you as a business leader.
Organizations adopting and fostering communities have some challenges when launching including how to:
- launch a community that attracts members,
- keep a community interesting and engaging,
- make it “sticky” so users keep coming back and when they do, they stay, and,
- create a place that can be easily shared and grown through community member networks.
I’ve launched a number of internal and external communities want to share some make or break lessons learned as an experienced community manager and executive stakeholder:
Single point of failure – The Lone Community Manager
A community manager’s responsibility is to create content, interact with users and promote the community to potential members. Essentially they are the point of contact for all things community or is that the single point of failure? The fact is, the community manager should be an overseer vs. lone ranger with key contributors on their team to keep the community running smoothly. One community manager responsible for all content and interaction is a sure way for your community to fail. This is especially true where the community manager is wearing multiple hats for the company and community management is only a part time job. They need help to ensure they are effective and your community thrives! From an organizational perspective, it is important to empower your employees to participate in the community building experience to keep them as engaged as the members you serve.
The Chokehold – Super Sanitized Content
You want to make sure all of your content is customer-ready, on message and bullet proof. Who doesn’t? To do this it requires approval from the Communications Director, Marketing Director, Legal, and revisions to make the posts suitable for community viewing. Epic #Fail! If you go down this path you are going to encounter at least two things with really poor and potentially damaging side effects to your community.
Issue #1 – by the time your content goes up and down the flagpole it will be stale, like old bread and your members won’t care because it won’t be timely nor will it be relevant.
Issue #2 – your customers are smart and they can smell sanitized spin from miles away! Quite frankly they won’t tolerate it for long. People want to do business with people. They don’t come to a community to get hooked, spun and buzzed. Save this material for your collateral, presentations and website.
The poor side effects I was eluding to? Your members won’t stay, won’t return, your message won’t stick and your community will ultimately your community will fail.
The Old Argument: Some Employees are not “Customer Facing.”
Why not?
Seriously…why not? Because your organization never tried? Because these employees were never given the opportunity? Because traditionally, some people just don’t talk to customers? Because you never trained them how to engage with the people that build your business?
To make a community successful we need to establish a team of key contributors that represent the organization to their members in various capacities ranging from development, support, marketing and all the way through to sales!
But you can’t throw traditionally non-customer facing people into the fire. That is just asking for trouble. Set up your employees for communications success with simple rules of engagement that foster a positive sense of community and encourage engagement by members with your community ambassadors. Train your people on the standards of care to be delivered and the type of conduct that is expected when they represent the company. Then MAKE IT HAPPEN and empower your employees to engage and interact with your community members. Communities will fail if company participants are not empowered to respond and participate. REAL PEOPLE – REAL DIALOG is a win-win for both your members and your organization.
Recognition and Rewards
Recognize and reward key internal and external participants in your community who go above and beyond in contributing to the content, discussions and dialog. These members should be part of your company’s top tier, TLC group and should be publicly recognized in the community as key contributors, and even given special treatment as ambassadors of the organization. Some platforms offer badges and visual recognition of contributions and participation. Leverage these features and reward and recognize key members of your community that are keeping your community vibrant and alive. Rewards don’t necessarily have to be big ticket items. A gift card for coffee, books, music or movies can be a great incentive with a tiny investment.
Damage Control – CRISIS, SCANDAL, #FAIL, OH MY! What to do?
Not everything that happens in a community is sunshine, happiness, rainbows and unicorns. Your members will use their voice in your community if they are unhappy for whatever reason. In the case where there is a negative statement or a concern or quite frankly if your organization screwed up (yes it happens) use it as an opportunity to demonstrate leadership with this approach:
ACKNOWLEDGE, OWN, ADDRESS and REPORT BACK
This shows your constituents that you are serious about customer satisfaction and will address a problem if it arises. Some organizations choose to censor this activity however this creates a false community that ultimately will fail. It will always be a little fishy if there is never voices of displeasure or worse if posts voicing discontent are suddenly “missing.”
Organizations that correct customer issues ultimately build stronger customer relationships. In fact, it is easier and more cost effective to “fix” a customer problem than to get a new customer so it is definitely worth the investment.
We Don’t Need to be INVOLVED in our Community
Some organizations believe that if you build an online community not only will “they” come but they will contribute, maintain and interact in a way that will build your community all by itself with little or no involvement of the organization. While this has been successful for some very large organizations where they have very knowledgeable external self-designated customer ambassadors to essentially run and manage their community, it is not the norm. Being present and available in your community and contributing content is vital to the initial and future success of any community you launch for your organization. Don’t believe that if you create a community it will magically attract your target members and they will run it themselves. The inmates should not be running the asylum. In other words, take ownership, responsibility and accountability for your community success with clear objectives and contributions. If you build it they may never come, so get and stay involved!
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAMITY SPAM
This is a huge problem for free communities. If your users are being pelted with spam directly and have to wade through it to get to the real content, your community is at high risk of losing the majority or all of its members. No one will return to a community if they will be spending most of their time sifting through the spam to get to the content they came there for. Once one spammer gets through, spam will multiply like rabbits, and fast so take care of it immediately. How to do this? Consider a pay model. Spammers don’t like to pay to spam in your community. If pay models are not in your future consider a stronger account validation service. Limited activity for a period of time, providing full profile details of real profile information and depending on volume or bandwidth a review and approval of new accounts.
What to do with Negative Disruptors and Trolls?
It will happen. Someone will act out, say something inappropriate that doesn’t align with your community (or anywhere for that matter.) The great thing about a healthy community is that the community members themselves will not tolerate disruptors with any personal attacks, profanity, bullying or unfounded negativity. In any case, you need to address it. If there is profanity, racism, and direct attacks on members or ambassadors – REMOVE IT and consider removing the offender. No good can come from that type of content in your community. If, however, it is simple disruption for the sake of being acknowledged or get attention, consider leaving it there for a little while and see how your members respond. You can quickly gauge the health and loyalty of the community by how members defend it. Don’t let it go on too long. Use it as an opportunity to communicate the value and values of the community, address the situation head on and quickly in order to move on to more positive community building.
