Book Excerpt

Introduction:

We are living in the conversation age, where one-way communication is no longer enough. Savvy consumers with infinite choices across the web expect interaction and engagement and those who can’t deliver will find themselves at the end of the line. What that means is the days of broadcasting your message to the masses and reaping huge benefits are fading fast.

The deepest pockets once delivered the biggest audience, but the audience can no longer be bought. It must be earned. Many businesses and organizations are aware of this fact and have built online communities, or become involved in existing social media platforms, to actively listen to and communicate with customers. They understand the power of engagement and recognize the importance of transparency. Others are still in denial, ignoring the conversations and refusing to embrace this new way of communication. However, when the President of the United States creates a new office dedicated solely to Public Engagement, it underscores a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

I wrote 18 Rules of Community Engagement after spending two years experimenting with approaches to community building. I’m proud to report that these experiments have paid off and I’m happy to share a chapter from the book in which I document the strategies I found most effective.

Chapter 1: If you build it, will they come?

The answer, simply, is NO! Many organizations and businesses mistakenly believe that if they provide the tools for community engagement and interaction, a community will form on its own and ultimately engage and interact. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creating an online community or social network with user profiles, blogs, forums, chat rooms, image galleries, and other bells and whistles will not make it a destination for compellingconversation or encourage users to create content.

Allowing comments on blogs and news stories won’t make people post them, nor will opening a chat room attract large groups of people who will enter and start chatting. Along those same lines, creating a forum won’t make interesting topics suddenly appear. Providing the tools is only the first step toward building and growing communities and it isn’t the most important one. While providing the tools does indicate a desire to bring people together, it does nothing to actually make it happen. It takes a different kind of investment to grow community, and a major portion of that investment is time. The other part is engagement. If you don’t have the time or patience to engage and do so genuinely, or if you’re unwilling to pay someone who can do it on your behalf, you cannot realistically expect to grow a community around any topic, or succeed in an existing one. What you will do is waste a lot of time and set yourself or your organization up to fail. My advice to you would be: Don’t even bother.

Why Communities Fail

A study of more than 100 businesses with online communities found that 35% had less than 100 members and less than 25% had more than 1000 members. This was published in the Business and Technology section of the Wall Street Journal’s website on July 16, 2008.1 The headline was: “Why Most Online Communities Fail.” According to the article, Ed Moran, the Deloitte consultant who conducted the study, indicated that most of the sites failed to attract visitors because businesses focused on the value the community could bring rather than investing in the actual community.

That was a big mistake, and most of the people who took the time to leave comments with that story agreed. A blog poster by the name of Mitch Bishop wrote: “The success of online communities is directly related to the passion of the participants, not the money invested by the underwriter.” Susan Salgy of WebWise Solutions, a company that creates corporate websites and web communities wrote: “We have seen this time and time again—companies want the benefits of a community without ponying up the content and attention that will deliver the core value to community members.” She went on to mention that her organizations’ best clients understand the scope of the commitment, and provide the necessary long-term nurturing that will make it a success.

The key phrase in that statement is long term. Success will not happen overnight, and anything short of a long-term commitment will produce mediocre results. Communities fail when no one is tasked with providing that long-term nurturing. Communities fail when they are neglected and taken for granted and when the assumption is made that it will always exist or that if you build it they will come. Communities fail when the endurance needed for success is underestimated or misunderstood. The recommendation made by Ed Moran, the consultant with Deloitte, was dead on: “Put someone who has experience running an online community in charge of the project.” I’m convinced that this is the best solution. In fact, it’s the only solution. Enter the Community Manager.

What Is A Community Manager?
What exactly is a community manager? And what does this person actually do? Well, it depends heavily on the goals of the individual, group, or organization behind the community. The goals of a company looking to grow brand recognition, connect with customers, and grow its customer base will differ slightly from an organization or individual interested in bringing together cancer survivors or music enthusiasts. A blogger working to build a video-gaming community will have a different set of goals and perhaps a different approach than a retail store such as Pottery Barn, a cable giant such as Comcast, or a nonprofit organization such as The American National Red Cross. These differences make the role of a community manager very unique and underscore the importance of having clear goals and knowing what constitutes success.

With GOLO, WRAL.com’s online community, I strive to attract new members who live in or have strong ties to the Raleigh/Durham (N.C.) area. I want them to feel that GOLO is the best local community on the web, where they can make friends, learn from others, and voice their opinions about the things that matter most, the great majority of them being issues that are geographically relevant. The original job description for which I applied stated the following: “Energetic, community minded person needed to oversee all aspects of content creation and editing for new community based internet product. The ME will provide vision and long range planning/direction for all content areas while managing balance between staff, freelance and community generated content related to the Raleigh/ Durham area.”

The job also involves cultivating relationships, and with the tagline “Go Local. Talk Local. Share Local.” It’s easy for me to stay in line with the day-to-day mission and long-term strategies. That tagline guides almost everything I do within the community. Without a clear-cut mission, you will find it difficult to reach your goals. General goals such as “reach out to the community and communicate” will only get you so far. What are you reaching out to the community for? What are you communicating about? Those are the questions that have to be answered so you can gauge your success.

FreshNetworks, a European firm that builds, manages, and moderates online communities for brands such as Microsoft, HSBC, and Procter & Gamble, stresses the importance of the community manager and the need to focus on the skills and strategies needed to build, grow, and manage an online community. In a call for participants for the International Online Community Management Association, German blogger Sascha Carlin describes online community management as a challenging profession that involves facilitation and moderation and refers to community managers as product managers of a special kind with a potential audience of millions. The challenge, according to Carlin, is knowing how to reach these people, what services to offer to them, and how to get them involved in our companies’ business goals.

Community strategist Connie Bensen characterizes the position as “broad and encompassing,” with this definition: “A community manager is the voice of the company externally and the voice of the customers internally. The value lies in the community manager serving as a hub and having the ability to personally connect with the customers (humanize the company), and providing feedback to many departments internally.” While Bensen’s definition seemingly applies to enterprise only, phrases such as “personally connect” and “humanize the company” are far from corporate. They bring personality into play, and that resonates across the board. The rules of engagement are the same for Ford, Comcast, and JetBlue as they are for Pottery Barn, The New York Times, bloggers, marketers, business professionals, and entrepreneurs. They just have to be tailored to meet individual and specific goals. Some of the 18 rules laid out in this book will be more helpful than others, but each rule should be practiced at some point to determine which ones deliver the best results.

To learn more about the role of the Community Manager and Angela’s first-hand experience growing an online community, order your copy via Amazon today.

And read the praise for the online community management wisdom in “18 Rules of Community Engagement.”

Interested in talking to Angela directly? Connect with @communitygirl on Twitter or send an email to AngelaDConnor-at-gmail-dot-com.