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A query popped into my inbox yesterday that I thought might be relevant to anybody trying to build an online community from scratch.
An Australian state government agency established an online community of practice some six months ago. Over the six months some 200 people have signed up to the portal but not one has left a comment. This is not an uncommon experience.
This is not our core business – we focus on external rather than internal consultation processes – however, it has always been my observation in the online community’s of practice that I have been part of that it is incredibly difficult to get them up and running and even more difficult to maintain ongoing enthusiasm. I have seen them work really well for very specific industry sectors; anything to do with IT being the obvious example, and they work extraordinarily well for the “passions” – think any of a million hobbies, fan clubs etc – but I haven’t seen a lot of great examples of them working for lower key professional groups. The LinkedIn groups I’m a member of are a classic example; sure there are occasional gems and I’ve personally benefited from the sharing, but it is rare. Most of the groups muddle along without a great deal of activity.
Not doubt there are lots of very good reasons for this, chief among them for me would be that the utility value of the space hasn’t been demonstrated or cultivated. We’re all very busy at work and if something isn’t adding any obvious value to my day it tends to get pushed aside very quickly.
So for what they’re worth, here are my suggestions for making online communities of practice work. I’d be really interested to hear from anyone out there with more experience and success in getting these up and running.
- Only start an online community of practice when you know for certain that you have “buy-in” from solid core group of your target market.
- Ensure your market is “online savvy”.
- Task your core group – who have been so enthusiastic about setting up the space – with being discussion starters, leaders, facilitators, managers and potentially moderators.
- Agree on a list of “hot” issues for discussion prior to establishing the site so that your have engaging content ready to go and the “group” has a clear reason for being. You also need to agree up front on exactly how the content generated by the discussion will be used constructively beyond the immediate benefits of sharing and organisational learning.
- Drive traffic and therefore hopefully participation in the forums by posting all of your sharable content on the site rather than distributing it by email.
- Make participation in the forums a KPI – this will obviously only work for inter-organisational community’s of practice. For example, members could provide regular updates of their project work via the forum space rather than as a paper report to their manager.
- Identify a number of internal or external “stars” to produce provocative content to fuel forum discussions.
Any other ideas?
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Thanks. I agree entirely. This has been my experience too.
Yes, KPI inclusion would help. Some other things that might help are:
Create little tasks like voting people or answering simple questions so people can do them confidently and ‘test the water’.
Allow people a finite number of anonymous posts or allow people to delete their posts so they can make their early mistakes without feeling the mistakes will be there for posterity.
Have a community manager whose job it is to invite people in and make them feel comfortable commenting in public.