Every online community has a life cycle. The
key is to identify which part of the life cycle you are in to determine
your strategy in order to strengthen the community to achieve your
goals. Whether you are augmenting an existing community, starting a
member/customer community or developing an interest-based online
community, the life cycle is the same. Just like a butterfly, before it
can fly on its own it needs careful attention each step along the way.
So let's take a deeper look. Below is a break down of the life cycle
that each online community goes through. The goal for any online
community is to get to and stay at the maturity phase.
1. Growth
- Inviting potential members that fit the target audience of the community
- Less than 50% of the activity inside of the online community is generated from active members
- The focus is on developing individual relationships with members
- The content posted inside of the community should be about the community itself
- Individual outreach to members to get them to participate in activities inside of the community
2. Establishment
- Active members start to inviting their own contacts to join the online community
- Up to 90% of the activity inside of the online community is generated from active members
- The focus is more on promoting the community to potential members
- Building relationships with the most active members to keep them active and influencing non-active members
- Prompting non-active members to participate in areas of the community where there is a high level of engagement
3. Maturity
- The online community becomes self sustaining by its members and the community has a high sense of community
- Over 90% of the activity inside of the online community is generated from active members
- The focus is more on recruiting highly active members inside of the online community to take on tasks such as recruiting new members, publishing content, running events, building relationships with other members, etc.
- The content and discussions inside of the community begin to focus on several topics still based on the overall purpose of the community (i.e. in the Campbell's Kitchen online community discussion groups shifted from talking about soup recipes to parenting tips, discussions and ideas)
- Members begin to spend more of their time in a segment of the community due to emotional need of still being able to influence the community and other members
4. Mitosis
- Nearly 100% of the activity inside of the online community is generated from active members
- Members start to feel disconnected to the community because they no longer feel their voice can be heard with so much activity with too many different focuses that aren't in alignment with the purpose of the community
- Members feel less connected to other members due to the growth in the number of members that join that don't share the same reason for being there (i.e. It's the same disconnectedness people feel when moving from a small town to a big city)
- The member participation ratio begins to drop due to too many super active members controlling or leading most of the discussions
- Community managers need to focus on breaking down the community into sub-segments (i.e. based on interest, demographics, psychographics, etc.) to bring back a sense of community among members
- Most social networks that have declined in active members over time (i.e. MySpace) have hit the Mitosis stage of their online community. Social networks like MySpace are starting to realize that they do have an opportunity to go back to a mature phase, but with a specific purpose. Google Plus circles (which allow members to segment their activity inside of their own personal community) is a working example of social network putting in features that prevent members from hitting their own Mitosis stage. In short, large social networking sites really provide you with an online community based around you inside of a certain type of environments, versus the based around the community as a whole. The key for their success is how relevant the network becomes to each member.
There are 3 main factors that help you identify which stage you are in. They are based on the following:
Active members
Determine
the amount of people that are contributing on a regular basis. Just
having more members is not going to cut it. You need to focus on making
each member active at some level even if it means only starting with a
small number. An online community of 15 active members is much better
than 1,000 non-active members.
Engagement
When I say the
word "engagement" I am really referring to responsiveness (time) and
level of participation (quantity). To measure the engagement level of
your online community you might look at the time it takes for someone to
respond to a discussion, number of contributions per member or average
number of responses to each discussion. There are many other metrics
that can help you determine the level of engagement inside of your
online community, but this will give you a starting point.
Sense of community
Sense of community breaks down into a couple different factors:
Sense of membership
- Common factors that members share with each other (i.e. part of a "real life" community, sharing a specific talent or trade, etc.)
- How relevant the content is to each member (i.e. publishing a prospect list in a referral community is relevant to members that need to see it in order to fulfill their contribution to mission of the community - in this case , generating more referrals)
- How well does your online community appeal to the ego and emotions of the community. This can be accomplished by adding symbols that represent the status of a current member by either engagement level (i.e. most active) or role (i.e. community leader)
Influence
- What opportunities are available for members to gain recognition for a contribution
- What power does each member have to change something inside of the community (i.e. a policy, a product, a way of doing something, etc.)
- Are there areas inside of your online community where you recognize the opinions of members (i.e. top rated ideas, most influencial discussion, etc.)
- Do you include the opinions of particular members inside of the content you post
- How often do you mention certain milestones and achievements of your members (i.e. 100+ referral club)
Fulfillment of human needs
- People want to be part of community that matters. Promote, brand and design your community to show members the prestige of being part of your online community.
- People want to be part of a community that achieves a high level of competence. Does your community demonstrate (i.e. through member contributions or content added by you) a high level of expertise on a subject? One way to accomplish this is to invite well-known people in an industry to join the community as a guest contributor. You can also start interviewing well-known people in an industry and promoting it to members. It continues to bring a sense of added value to members.
- People want to be part of a community where other members share similar values. Make sure you focus on inviting people that are coming into the community with the same intentions. If you get this right you will find members naturally connecting with other members without much work on your end.
Sharing emotional connection to the community
- Develop a high level of interaction among members. Setup more opportunities (i.e. events, webinars, live chat, etc.) to allow interaction to happen more often. The more members communicate with each other, the more they will feel a deeper emotional sense of connection to the community. Think of membership organizations that you belong to. Most of the time there is a certain group of people that you communicate with more regularly inside of that community. That interaction is what keeps you connected to the community.
- Make sure your discussions provide members with the opportunity to express their feelings and emotions. Sometimes this means posting topics that are controversial.
- Celebrate important dates and events that have occurred. This shows new members that the community is active and thriving. A good example of this could be showing pictures from the latest live event that took place.
- Welcome new members and make it a habit to thank existing members for their participation. Sometimes a pat on the back goes a long way. It shows you are listening and that you care.
Determining what part of
the life cycle your community is in will help guide your strategy in
running a successful online community. I find way too many organizations
that get discouraged in the beginning stages of their online community
because they are employing tactics that are best fit for an established
or mature online community. Don't compare your online community to
popular communities in the beginning. Most of the popular online
communities you hear about are in the mature phase of their life cycle.
It's better to start small with purpose and understand why people want
to be a part of it.
The key to reaching the goals of your online
community is to get to the mature phase while maintaining a solid focus
toward a specific result (i.e. new members/customers, happier
members/customers, dollars raised, etc.). Start with a vision, know
where you are going, who you are starting with and how you need to get
there. Keeping these points in mind will help your online community be
one of your most valued assets.
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