Cultivating an Online Community
In the book titled The Social Organization, authors Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald outline three steps to cultivating an online (collaborative) community: refine purpose, launch, and guide.
Defining a purpose is the most important step because it is the reason people collaborate. People need a compelling cause; one that is magnetic, aligns with business goals, has low risk, is measurable, and facilitates evolution to other purposes. The Twitter page @LEGOIdeas is an example of an online community with a high-quality purpose that meets all the characteristics mentioned above.
Launching a community involves strategic planning and community engagement. A strategy will describe 1) how individual community members should interact with one another, 2) the community environment and how it works, and 3) how to gain attention, draw in users, and become self-sustaining. Community engagement requires your business to lead by example. A company must address comments from users, be timely in its response, be honest, seek out and respond to brand mentions, address negative sentiments with grace, and always follow its brand voice. Despite its large size and years of success, @McDonalds engages with members of its online community in an effective way.
Lastly, guiding a community requires leadership to keep it functioning well and stay focused on a purpose. Managers must be careful not to micromanage an online community, which will strangle it. Yet, they must also ensure the online community operates within the context of the company’s overall goals. @USATODAY is a good example of a company that guides its social media properties effectively while relying on user content to generate page content.
Once you have a well-established online community, the next challenge is to grow it. According to Hootsuite, here are three easy ways to grow your online community.
1. Reach out to your offline community and encourage them to join your brand online.
2. Connect with the right influencers to help you attract the right following.
3. Find people who are already advocating on behalf of your brand.
Additional resources for growing your online community can be found from
Revive ME Marketing or the Gartner Blog Network.
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