Something from nothing

By On October 20, 2009 · 6 Comments

Online Communtiy of happy people

You can’t build a community of people using a template.  Then again, you can’t always build a perpetuating community of from a 100% organic movement.  So how then do niche social communities, brands, and large scale sites like Facebook and LinkedIn build online community?

Let’s explore the question from the perspective of a mayor or city planner.  These people are not able to control the direct behavior of the residents of their community, yet they are often charged with responsibility of growing and developing their municipality.  So, using this illustration let’s explore how you can plan out communities, apply strategy, and shape your community using some proven techniques.

What similarities are there between developing a city and developing an online community of people?

  1. Growth is not something you can control, therefore make sure you are offering incentives for people do what you want them to do.
  2. Take care of the infrastructure.  Roads, Electricity, Sewer, Water, etc…  (aka web site features) If you have these in place your new residents will be able to thrive more quickly.
  3. Taxes need to make sense.  What’s the revenue model for your community?  Free isn’t always the best answer.
  4. What does community leadership look like?  If you’re responsible for developing your community, you need to make sure you know what you’re doing.
  5. Commerce.  Make sure your residents have a way to get what they need.  If you don’t have what they need within your community, develop a way for them to get it from another source.
  6. Freedom of movement.  You can’t be the one stop shop for everything, make it easy for your residents to get from place to place.  It wouldn’t make sense for you to go through customs when you traveled from Indianapolis to Chicago, so don’t make your community members.
  7. Lastly, a community needs to have something for the members to do.  In the real world this is called a Job.  In the online world, I call this content.  Content, whether user generated or not is what drives community growth and interaction.

Am I missing anything?

 
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  • http://brandoncoppernoll.com/ Brandon Coppernoll

    Not just any content will do. You must be able to have content that encourages interaction. Communities have to be viewed differently than Web sites. Most Web sites are meant to inform and collect data. Communities must encourage growth and interaction with your brand and amongst themselves.

  • http://brandoncoppernoll.com Brandon Coppernoll

    Not just any content will do. You must be able to have content that encourages interaction. Communities have to be viewed differently than Web sites. Most Web sites are meant to inform and collect data. Communities must encourage growth and interaction with your brand and amongst themselves.

  • http://chipmccomb.com/ Chip

    Brandon,

    thanks for the comment! You’re correct, not just any content will do. Web site content needs to meet some basic requirements. I think I’ll hash through that question in another blog post.

    On your second point I’m not sure how different web sites need to be viewed from communities. In your opinion is YouTube just a successful web site or is it also a successful community? YouTube has all of the features of a community, yet why do the majority of people go there?

  • http://chipmccomb.com Chip

    Brandon,

    thanks for the comment! You’re correct, not just any content will do. Web site content needs to meet some basic requirements. I think I’ll hash through that question in another blog post.

    On your second point I’m not sure how different web sites need to be viewed from communities. In your opinion is YouTube just a successful web site or is it also a successful community? YouTube has all of the features of a community, yet why do the majority of people go there?

  • http://brandoncoppernoll.com/ Brandon Coppernoll

    YouTube is a successful community in my perspective because of the interaction between users. You can post your videos/content while others can leave comments, share or perform other interactions with your work. It’s a successful community built around the video premise. You can’t compare YouTube, Facebook or even LinkedIn to sites like Apple or Microsoft. Their goals are completely different than that of a community.

  • http://brandoncoppernoll.com Brandon Coppernoll

    YouTube is a successful community in my perspective because of the interaction between users. You can post your videos/content while others can leave comments, share or perform other interactions with your work. It’s a successful community built around the video premise. You can’t compare YouTube, Facebook or even LinkedIn to sites like Apple or Microsoft. Their goals are completely different than that of a community.