Following up on my post about Amazee’s decision to close its doors and the importance of online networking platforms by and for civil society organizations, I want to turn my attention to Joshua Paul, who has written an extraordinary laundry list of reasons why most online communities fail, broken into four categories:
I like the attention Joshua pays to failure, which I agree is a useful approach for avoiding the mistakes of others and a shortcut to identifying potentially fatal issues with any project. I think it’s important to celebrate failure and to recognize it when you see it, learn the appropriate lessons, and then move on.
As a low budget, volunteer-run platform, Kabissa suffers from many of the problems Joshua outlines. Below are seven points he makes that jump out at me as particular priority areas that the Kabissa team needs to work on urgently, especially now that we are working on improving our volunteering infrastructure and planning the launch of a major site upgrade this fall.
#12) Not Having Measurable Goals
Anything related to social media seems to get the lion’s share of the buzz at conferences, online, and inside organizations. It is true that is it very exciting to put a significant amount of time into planning and launching an online community, but how can you measure its success after 3, 6 or 12 months? Be sure to have measures of success going into the planning process and metrics by which you can measure your private online community’s performance against tangible goals on an ongoing basis.
#16) The Organization Did Not Get Enough Help with Implementation, Training, or Launch
A private online community is not a simple social network, especially in the B2B world. Consumer online products, like Twitter, Mint, or YouTube, are designed not to require any help or training. However, private online communities for businesses or industry groups combine the needs of customers who expect a return on their investment, the complexity of your products and services, and the online engagement requirements of your marketing, support, and product teams.
Online communities for business are not a “flip a switch” type of social application. The platform needs to be configured to your unique goals and organization. Systems, like your CRM or membership database, need to pass specific information to and from your online community platform. Staff must be trained. And most importantly, though most online community platforms are well designed and usable, customers or members still need guidance to ensure that they are getting the most out of your online community and products. Often times, associations even hold live or online training for their members to ensure they get the most value from the organization’s private online community.
#19) There is Not Enough Content in the Online Community
In the same way content keeps you coming back to CNN.com or MSNBC.com daily, content will keep your customers or members returning to your private online community. Though discussions and being able to reach out to others for answers to questions about your job, business, or industry is important in your private online community, insightful and helpful content is the glue that keeps community members coming back.
Adding exclusive content to your online community will keep enough members coming back to your community so that there are people in your community to see and participate in discussions forums. Here is a great resource for creating an online community content plan that allocated content topics across multiple areas of interest to your audience and spreads the burden of content creation across your organization.
#20) You Don’t Have Enough Staff to Handle Content Production, Posting Content, Engaging Community Members, Monitoring, and Reporting
Since all of the roles and responsibilities of managing a professional network have been rolled into the nice neat title of community manager, it is easy to underestimate the amount of time it takes to manage a successful private online community. Not only is it the amount of time that matters, but it is the type of time.
Managing a community takes more than responding to email and browsing discussions for inappropriate content. It takes strategic planning, analysis, precision execution and content creation, and working across your organization to make sure your online community is as valuable to your target audience as possible.
Tip: If you don’t have the resources to hire or appoint a dedicated community manager, be sure that someone in your organization owns your online customer or member community. Assign someone already in your organization whose job it is to wake up each morning and make sure that your private online community is successful. Check out The Online Community Launch Guide for tips on setting up your community manager for success.
#22) You Are Not Preparing Users and Providing Ongoing Training
Though most online community platforms are mature enough to have developed into usably social platforms, this enterprise software must combine the complexity of your products, the needs of customers, and the customer engagement requirements of your marketing, support, and product teams.
In the same way that you provide an online customer community to help your customers get the most out of their relationship with your organization, you must provide upfront, as well as ongoing training, to members on your private online community to help them get the most out of the community. Webinars, content posts in the community, and live training all help your members or customers stay active in your online community and become more successful with your products and services.
#24) You and Your Team Don’t Have Time to Fully Manage and Engage a Community
Engaging customers or members in an online community takes time. Assume that the planning, in-the-trenches decision making, and tactical execution to launch and manage an active private online community successfully take more time than your think it does. This is a big problem with smaller organizations where the staff and budget are already stretched thin.
The best advice in avoiding this pitfall is to seriously think about whether you should launch an online community for your customers or members now, or wait until your budget and resources have more flexibility to give you the time needed to maintain a successful private online community. The wait will be worth it in the long term if you avoid a very public and brand-damaging misstep in the short term.
#29) Your Online Community Platform Does Not Provide Enough Analytics Data
To your company, the business intelligence about your customers or members is one of the most valuable aspects oF your online community. As you select your technology platform, make sure that it captures, slices and dices, and can output (in a usable format) demographic, transactional, and behavioral data about your members or customers.
Some valuable lessons for @kabissa – would also be interesting to see how @wiserearth and @nabuur match up. http://t.co/88g27KpK
On my radar: Why Private Social Communities Fail & How to Avoid It …: http://t.co/zTARStqI
Hi, Tobias! This post is eye-opening in some way. I’ve been a part of several online communities before, but never have I fully realized their weaknesses after these excerpts you quoted from Joshua Paul’s post. I feel strongly about #12. We will be launching a new site soon, and it’s really vital that we maintain the progress by just regularly brainstorming on process innovation. In my previous company we referred to this as “Passion for Better Ways”. Things like looking for ways to make the site more user-friendly or setting KPIs for all volunteers in terms of fulfilling their responsibilities can really help in propelling the organization forward. In other words, we should never settle. I know these things are SO MUCH EASIER to type than to do, but if we will all just be in one accord with Kabissa’s vision, then I just think it’s possible. Persistence and perseverance to improve systems and processes even during our “dry spells” will take us far.
#24 is so true! I personally believe that we already have a talented pool of human beings who have the ability to start and develop great things for Kabissa. If we continue to commit toward achieving our vision, then the funds will eventually come. Faithful workers reap worthy rewards.
Training – we’re relatively few, so we can perhaps put forth a way to express our weaknesses or our own areas for improvement so we can begin to address them. Either each person will take the initiative to further augment his or her knowledge on a specific area, or we can just train together as a team to enhance our bond. If ever we grow larger, then we can probably pick subject matter experts (SMEs) among ourselves and pass on the required knowledge to the new batch of volunteers to make the training process more efficient.
I also agree that new content must be regularly posted to keep the attention of the readers/subscribers; otherwise, we will just eventually fall off the radar of most of our generally busy readers. As I was browsing through some of the previously published content of Kabissa in one of the groups, I am delighted with that idea of Mwikali (or is it someone else, I’m not sure) of changing the way people think about Africa by posting more positive or encouraging online posts about this continent. Apart from highlighting the pressing issues that affect Africa, a balance must still be achieved by giving focus on the promising achievements done by its people, the positive changes that have been observed so far, and the solutions that are already in the process of being implemented to address Africa’s biggest woes. Seriously, with the way media has portrayed Africa for several years now, online readers will certainly be in a great treat to read refreshing articles about how Africa is not just about famine or starvation. I mean, who will not be tempted to click and read these kinds of articles in full?
I’ll try to express more of my thoughts next time (it’s just hard to think at this ungodly hour). But seriously, I cannot await of what the future holds for Kabissa. We can only get better from here, I know!
Thanks Arthur! These are thoughtful insights and I appreciate very much that you took the time to write them. Keep it up! So pleased to have you on the Kabissa volunteer team as our new project manager. Let’s try to incorporate some of these ideas (e.g. training) into our weekly team meetings and think up some more team building activities to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Yes, it was Mwikali (@mwixxy7 on twitter) who was talking with @visionafrica about “good news from africa” blog posting, and I agree we should revisit that idea and see about promoting it on Kabissa.