The simple guide to decide whether your organization should start an online community
Introduction
Welcome to the Pillar Summit checklist.
This checklist has been developed following years of work with a huge number of companies. This simple guide will help you decide whether your organization or client should start an online community. It will also help you guide your organization through the early process of developing an online community.
If you don’t pass this checklist, don’t start a community (more on this in a minute). If you do pass this checklist, then I hope you will enrol in the Pillar Summit course.
Should your organization start a community?
Many organizations develop communities regardless of whether they should or shouldn’t. They just love the idea, I suppose. If you don’t sell the right types of product/services, have the wrong objectives, or lack the resources to make your community a success – you shouldn’t start a community. Trust me, I’ve wasted too much time struggling with organizations that had no business being in the community business.
The communities that fail are usually doomed from the beginning. If you can get this right, you’re doing better than 99% of branded communities.
Do you understand what a community is?
This is my first goal with any client. I want to know if they understand what a community is. Here I want some evidence of knowledge about communities. I want my client to tell me “yes, a community isn’t a Facebook page, or Twitter account. A community is a group of people who have developed relationships around a strong common interest. It’s a unique social approach with very clear benefits!”
Well, the answer perhaps wont sound exactly like that, but something along those lines is important. If they don’t know what a community is, I begin my engagement with the client at this phase. I have to explain what a community is, provide some examples and distinguish a community from social-media based approaches. I will usually provide both good and bad examples at this level, to give a full understanding.
To pass this stage, they have to clearly understand what a community is, what makes it unique, what a good community looks like and what benefits it offers.
Are you starting a community for the right reasons?
I lose about 40% of potential clients at this stage. Many organizations want to start a community to reach new audiences (new customers, clients etc…). The problem with this approach is that people who don’t yet know you, or don’t yet purchase your product, probably don’t want to spend their spare time talking about it.
There is an exception here, which I’ll explain to them shortly, but they have to start a community for one of the following objectives:
Increase repeat purchases from existing audiences. If they want their existing audience to buy more of their product or service, a community is a great way to achieve it (in many sectors). Gamers play more games when they’re playing with others. Music fans listen to more music. Donors donate more. When you connect soloists and foster a sense of community amongst them, they will use your products and services more frequently.
Increase loyalty. When your product or service forms part of the group identity, the loyalty to your product increases significantly. Your customers will only purchase form you, not from competitors. Your customers will forgive your mistakes. Your customers will buy your premium products at premium prices (see above). When you connect people together, you intensify their interest in the topic.
Research & Development. Online communities are better than focused groups. You can get the opinions of people that actually purchase your products. Communities will let you slash your focus group costs and provide you with incredible opportunities to learn what your audience really thinks. You can also identify aspects of your products you might have considered, identify new opportunities, highlight potential problems first etc…
Lead generation. For businesses that high value products (homes, cars etc) and many in the business to business sector, developing an online community is an excellent method to develop new sales opportunities. You can use the community to meet the people you want to meet, understand their problems and identify opportunities to help them.
New revenue opportunities. Similar to the above, you can use a community to develop new revenue opportunities. You can charge members to join a community, or use it as a competitive edge. You can host events that members can pay to attend (and get sponsors for these events). Thousands of organizations are now offering subscription-based fees to participate in exclusive online communities.
Reducing marketing costs. If you’re spending a lot of money on expensive and wasteful advertising campaigns, an online community is an excellent investment. Instead of reaching thousands of people and persuading them to buy a product. You can build an asset that attracts the people you want to reach. When you want to reach them, you no longer need to buy time and space in media outlets, you can reach them through the community at little cost.
Recruit the best and brightest. Your online community will comprise the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic members of your community’s topic. If you’re looking for a simpler and more effective way to recruit people, a community is a terrific approach. You don’t have to rely solely upon an interview, you can review a member’s history of contributions, answers and support to others in your community.
Improving customer service. Online communities can provide an excellent alternative customer service channel. The majority of successful communities today serve to satisfy customer service questions. This can directly reduce call-centre costs. Over a period of time, as people search online for answers to their questions, they will increasingly find responses from members of the community.
At this stage, I will usually insist we put in methods to measure how successful these communities are. Whilst many community managers actively resist measurement, I embrace it. I do great work. I want my clients to understand how much value I bring to the table. Believe me, if I’m charging $9000 a month to a client – I need to prove I’m worth it.
Since we covered measurement in a recent e-mail, I’ll skip this stage in the checklist for now. Needless to say, every objective is actively measurable to a numeric value and attributable to the community.
Bad reasons to start a community
It’s at this process I also try to stamp out many of the bad reasons to start a community. For example, improving SEO, generating awareness for a new product and anything short-term. All of these are potentially possible within a community, but a community is not the best process for them. Especially for short-term results. I refuse to work on any short-term community project.
Four Terrible Reasons to Start a Community
Here comes the moment when we dash your grand expectations about what a community can do for you. On the positive side, hopefully you haven’t dropped wads of cash on your project before you read this.
At this stage, I will usually insist we put in methods to measure how successful these communities are. Whilst many community managers actively resist measurement, I embrace it. I do great work. I want my clients to understand how much value I bring to the table. Believe me, if I’m charging $9000 a month to a client – I need to prove I’m worth it.
Since we covered measurement in a recent e-mail, I’ll skip this stage in the checklist for now. Needless to say, every objective is actively measurable to a numeric value and attributable to the community.
Establishing realistic expectations
Now we have the right objectives in place, we work on the expectations. I need my clients to understand that a community isn’t a short-term effort and wont deliver short-term results. They need to understand that it’s an approach that develops a long-term asset.
At this stage, I make them provide me with written confirmation that they wont expect or push for results within the first six months. Sometimes clients get angry about me asking for anything in writing. I lost a big client at this stage (“We refuse to do written statements”). But let me explain why this is important.
If I don’t get this in writing, about 3 months into the community the client starts asking why it hasn’t hit the objectives. They start asking me for regular progress reports. Verbal agreements just don’t cut it when they’re feeling the pressure. You can’t compare a community result with the results of a short-term advertising campaign.
You will need to educate your client/boss at this stage. Show them how the communities they really loved develop. I like using Mumset. I show them that it took years for it to be recognised as a successful community. I highlight that they first worked to get a few members at a time, then went after more. You can use any top community in your sector for this.
But remember the result here is to get a written e-mail or signed document that says “of course, I understand that a community needs time to develop and we wont expect results within the first six months – possibly not within the first year”
Trust me, get this in writing. Six months is good, twelve months is better.
Get the resources you need
Every community needs certain resources to be a success. I refuse to let any company dump their entire community project upon me. That’s not what I do. I take companies through the process of developing a community.
There are certain resources that are non-negotiable. The main one is a full-time community manager. This is important for two reasons. First, you need someone who is focused solely upon pushing the community ahead. Any branded community without a full-time community manager fails. Second, it shows that your organization cares enough about the community to have someone responsible for it.
If the organization isn’t serious about its community efforts, don’t work with them.
They will need a budget to develop the community as it grows. They will need buy-in at a high level. They will need others to help support the community and the processes to engage and respond to the community. You need money to hire a great community manager (min. $70,000). You need a budget to spend on community events ($20,000) and, potentially, develop a community platform ($10,000 – $70,000).
There is a lot of talk about listening to the community. But most of this is superficial and customer-service based “We’re sorry this happened, we can help you do this”. But how many organizations genuinely change their processes or products as a result of what their community has said? Not many.
You will also need access to their existing audiences. They will be their CRM systems, their social media outlets and any other groups they have. I once worked with a client that neglected to mention they publish a monthly newsletter that goes out to 90,000 industry professionals. That’s a useful asset when you’re trying to develop an online community.
Decision point …
Now you have the knowledge, the expectations, the resources and the objectives. Now you can begin the process of actually developing the community.
However, for good measure, I’m going to include one further aspect that (rightly) stops many organizations from building a community.
Does the organization sell something people really care about?
I usually rephrase this as a slightly less offensive question. The answer for many organizations, is no. Whilst people are happy to purchase a product and perhaps even like the product, they might not want to spend their spare time with other people that also but the product.
Your community has to be based upon a very strong common interest. Almost everyone eats and loves chocolate, but not many join the communities for their favourite chocolate bars. The same is true for drinks, cafes, and plenty more.
Some people say that every company should be working to build their community. Those people are idiots.
For this I’ve developed the ETER (Expensive, Time, Emotional, Representative) test. I tell my clients to put the topic of the community into one of four categories.
What do we care about?
Generally, we care about products or services that fall into one of four categories:
- We spend a lot of money on them. Products that are expensive are those we usually care a lot about.
- We spend a lot of time using them. I’m looking at you laptops!
- We have a strong emotional reaction to. This is harder to define, but some products/services we have a strong emotional reaction to. These include good causes, politicians, relationship-based products and even companies that have a personality that solicits a strong reaction.
- Are representative/symbolic of us or who we want to be. This is the most common. Apple products are an easy example, but there are a variety.
| Expensive (relative to income) | Leisure time |
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| Emotional Reaction | Representative i.e. Cult/Identity |
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Clearly, there is overlap here. Several of these can be in different categories. This doesn’t matter. It’s important that the product or service you sell will fit into at least one of these categories. I have yet to see a community for a product/service that didn’t meet one of these develop a successful community.
Brands in the middle
Then there are all the organizations in the middle. Champagne drinkers might like to talk to each other, but what about Coca-Cola drinkers? What about ringtone manufacturers? What about business-to-business communities?
If the client can’t identify one, I make them pick between one of the following:
1) Create a broader community. They can create a community about a broader topic or a more specific, focused, interest related to the topic. You can focus on a specific subset of your audience and build a community for them. Pampers develops Pamper’s village for example. Or you can build a community at a higher level, a washing machine manufacturer might develop a community around simplifying home chores.
2) Cult the brand. This is the hardest option of the three. It involves a profound change at a high level in how the brand works. Very few organizations are capable of doing it. Even if a client chooses this option, I’m sceptical that they will be able to pull this off.
3) Team-up. This is usually the least popular option. Team up with other brands/partners in the sector and develop a community together. I’ve only seen it happen once.
Naturally, there is a balance. If you drift too far away from the topic it can become difficult to get the benefits your brand wants. There isn’t a simple answer to how far you should go; I work on my intuition here.
Simplified checklist
If you want a simplified version of the checklist to take into your next client meeting, click here or read below.
- Does the organization really understand what a community is?
- Has the organization set realistic objectives for the community?
- Repeat purchases
- Loyalty
- Research & Development
- Recruitment
- Lead generation
- New revenue opportunities
- Customer service
- Does the organization have realistic expectations for the community?
- Get the required resources
- Budget
- Manpower
- Knowledge
- Time
- Permission
- Does the organization sell something their audience cares about?
If the organization has reached this stage, then we can get started on developing the community concept. What will the community be about? What type of community will it be?
The majority of branded communities that fail, have usually failed before they launch. You can solve this using this checklist. If you’re applying for a community job, I’d bring a copy of this checklist with you and grill them on it. If they fail, don’t take the job. If they pass, they will probably be impressed with you for asking.
