In The Art of Creating a Community, Guy Kawasaki lists a number of things for you to think about when forming a group. Out of his list, there are a few I'd like to take a closer look at and dig below the surface a bit to flesh out the value they can deliver - both to your company and to your community users.
Assign one person the task of building the community. I can't emphasize this enough. Trust me, if you build it they may come, but they won't stay. Not unless you engage them and work hard at it. Putting the responsibility of the community into the hands of someone who lives, breathes and sleeps with it will give the community the attention it needs to build relationships. Now, before any of you run screaming from the room, that one person doesn't have to do everything. Here are a few ideas:
- They can create opportunities to involve users and then recruit subject matter experts to participate in specific instances: A discussion forum, a Q&A session, a brainstorming session for innovation or enhancements.
- They can develop themes from the user discussions and solicit articles about topics the community is interested in. Creating an ongoing knowledge-transfer environment will help the group learn more and feed the discussion and development of innovative ideas.
- If discussions morph, create separate areas for those topics that need their own space so you don't dilute or bury the conversation underway.
- Invite users to lead discussions or submit articles on some of their thinking about the ideas. People love to be taken seriously. Many of them are worth listening to. Encourage them to continue by validating them.
- Make sure you give them something to do. Unveil enhancement ideas and enroll them to help you refine them and make them better. Not all of them, of course, but you're going to have to help with the ideas too. As Guy says, "...the payoff is huge because once you get people chewing on a product, it’s hard to wrest it away from them."
Foster discourse. As you can see above, this will happen organically if you assign someone to be responsible for the community. But here's the thing, it can't just be that one person engaging the community. In order for the group to stay enrolled, they will want to know that the company as a whole is interested in what they have to say and contribute. So make sure key people drop buy now and then and interact. But, even more knowledge can be gleaned if you get the group interacting among itself and join in the exchange, rather than trying to lead or dominate the conversation.
Welcome criticism. Guy says this really well - "The minute that the community says anything negative, however, companies freak out and pull back their community efforts. This is a dumb-ass thing to do. A company cannot control its community. This is a long-term relationship, so the company shouldn’t file for divorce at the first sign of possible infidelity. Indeed, the more a company welcomes—even celebrates criticism—the stronger its bonds to its community."
In addition, I think if you cut off criticism you are keeping your company from learning how to make your great products even more fantastic. This is where you learn. Think about it. What do you learn if all your community ever says is how wonderful your products are? You may not like what they have to say, but it's wonderful that they're choosing to share these thoughts with you instead of 20 of their closest friends who will pass it on. You know how that works. Criticism gives your company an opportunity to make an impact. How you deal with it will define your ongoing relationship with your customers. Take advantage of it.
Publicize the existence of the community. Guy also says this one well, "Your community should be an integral part of your sales and marketing efforts." There are many ways to do this. You can have a sign-up for it on your website, include a link to join in your company e-newsletter, have your sales team issue personal invitations to their customers, blog about it, offer an invitation at the end of a customer satisfaction survey, invite them after they take delivery of your product. Opportunities abound. You might also want to think about how to publicly attribute innovations that your company develops to your community. Spread the credit around. They'll invite their peers who use your products to join if there's something incredible going on in the community.
That's up to you. Be willing to engage.
