How do you "plan" community content?
Do you create an editorial calendar? Do you outline "talking points"? Do you provide your community managers (bloggers, forum admins, social networking managers) with talking points and messaging guidelines for your products/services? Do you create/receive regular reports on community buzz around your products/services?
Clarification added 9 months ago:
Perhaps a better question to ask is, DO you plan community content? Seems to me a lot of companies just empower the community manager to keep the conversation going. That means having the community manager live and breathe in the community, right?
Answers (6)
By definition community experiences are created by the members. However, editorial consistency, tone and modeling can impact user behavior and create a community that is lively but also inviting to new users. A community that is dominated by a few strong personalities (often early adopters) can be a turn off to new people.
I have had great success with regular communication to members that emphasizes constructive dialogue and highlights behavior by specific members that I wanted emulated by others. The cultivation of key opinion leaders in your community is also really important. Bring the most popular members of your community inside the tent a little bit by granting special favors (access to a beta, direct communication with key marketing people beyond the help desk) and they will keep the others largely in line.
Again, be consistent, be fair, and communicate regularly and you'll be fine.
Community is about creating a forum for "discussion". The topics relevant to certain groups will manifest themselves naturally with time. I was involved in the creation of two communities in the software industry and to get the community started, your best bet is to get feedback from the intended users on areas of interest. Let your community design the community so to speak. In terms of measurement, a growing membership with an interactive, engaged community is a sign that you're community is moving in the right direction.
Richard P
Senior Marketing Consultant at P-Zip Marketing
Best Answers in: Lead Generation (1), Green Products (1), Information Storage (1), Web Development (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
I'm not sure you can plan - but you can lead and suggest.
Mostly it depends upon the sophistication of the community. In the early times (first 6 months or so) with one community I was leader in the creation of, I could lead/push the growing membership in almost any direction.
As time progressed and the community developed its own life, it also developed its own agenda and directions. At most I could bend things mildly in suggested directions, but if the membership didn't want to go there I found myself talking to the air.
This was a wildlife conservation group - mostly fairly old membership with little or no internet experience.
In another community, dedicated to a vertical market that had been around for years, we could do a number of things that would capture eyes and feelings of a fairly significant portion of the membership but rarely could we count on much better than 20% uptake on a concept. The rest kept talking and interacting as they had to their own beat.
The interactive community is nothing like the print one - or maybe it is but with the print one you just don't get the feedback about the relevance or uptake of your theme.
Your mileage may vary.
Mariam C
Interaction Manager at guardian.co.uk
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Small Business (1)
I think it helps to begin by considering the people you wish to reach, where they are, and what they are doing, first. In terms of community buzz and outreach, what will you do with what you discover? Are you just going to observe or will you get involved in the conversation? Are you willing to adapt your product or service to what the community wants? Regular reviews should be carried out to determine what is happening on the social web and what you can do in response. I think the first question with creating any content is how useful it will be to the community. i.e. forget your message for a moment.
If you have built your own online community you should consider every stage of participation / engagement: Awareness, Visitor to your central site, Repeat visitor, Member, Active member, Loyal / super member. Any content, activity or promotion should be geared to address one or more of these. Once you have determined ideas for them all, and resources & time needed to carry them out, you can prioritise.
For example, if you are a new community you may prioritise gaining new members. If you are a growing community you may prioritise member engagement by adapting your software or content in response to community behaviour. You could do a funnel analysis (See Joshua Porter) to determine where you are losing people - are people visiting but not joining? Joining but then not participating? Are active members leaving? Can you ask them why?
When you know all this what you will have is more of a 'participation calendar' - which maps a user's stage in the lifecycle, to the activities you plan to carry out over time. As stated above measurement is key - reports should enable you to decide whether to amend or to abandon certain activities, or try new ones - and when to focus on another stage in the lifecycle.
Erica F
Social Media Optimizer, Publisher at ALC Publishing, President of Yuricon
Best Answers in: Blogging (19), Internet Marketing (16), Using LinkedIn (15), Business Development (10), Small Business (5), Writing and Editing (4), Advertising (3), Viral Marketing (3), Public Relations (3), Communication and Public Speaking (3), Web Development (3), Job Search (2), Staffing and Recruiting (2), Search Marketing (2), Positioning (2), Career Management (2), Professional Networking (2), Customer Service (1), Freelancing and Contracting (1), Government Contracts (1), Compensation and Benefits (1), Work-life Balance (1), Direct Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Lead Generation (1), Sales Techniques (1), Business Analytics (1), Change Management (1), Branding (1), Product Design (1), Professional Books and Resources (1), Professional Organizations (1), Incorporation (1), Starting Up (1), Telecommunications (1)
To a certsain extent, yes, the community manager is required to spend a lot of time on the community, coming up with new content when no one else is posting, starting discussions and keeping discussions alive.
Some community content can be planned - newsletter articles, events, etc. But the lifeblood of any community is the new people, because community lifecycles run in 3-month cycles. New people come in, are all energetic and post alot, then as they get their immediate needs for informtaion and companionship filled, some drop out. Others become more engaged members of the community.
At six months, some of the advanced members drop out, others become senior members, because they've been through the same Q&A a few times. The people who stick around after this tend to becomes comunity managers and cognitive authorities.
When a person becomes a community manager, they ofte stop posting "for fun," because their responsiblity now requires that they no make irresponsible comments and undermine their own authority.
Anyone who has ever mangaed a community will know that there comes a moment when it's just not interesting anymore. In my experience, people hang on longer than they should, because that has become their community.
I've administered my own online community for 9 years now, and on the whole, it's still fun. I've also been a community manager on many other communities, and in every case, there just came a moment, after about 3-4 years where I was done. I no longer had the energy or inclination to post.
To have a community manager job would be hard, but it could be very interesting too. It would be an excelent position to use as a springboard for learning things about the company, talking to people and researching things you might not otherwise ever know anything about.
Back to the question - I think that in most social communities, the best content is organic, with maybe some minimal guidance from the managers - like making room for and promoting events, chats and articles.
Cheers,
Erica Friedman
Yurikon LLC
Intelligent Business Promotion
Guillaume F
New Media Marketing Specialist: Social Media, SEO, SEM, Digital Marketing, Blogger
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (3), Advertising (1), Mobile Marketing (1), Public Relations (1), Sales Techniques (1), Search Marketing (1), Blogging (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
I think you should not use the word plan. You ENABLE people to create things, you moderate the comments, maybe you can orientate them towards a certain direction. Social media is all about the user generated content anf to offer people possibilities.
However I understand what you meant by "plan". It is something you need to thing when you set up you community. Ask yourself: What do I want to do with this community? What do I have to offer? What kind of resources do I have for that? What are the tools I want to implement on my community?
If you have more questions just let me know.
