AssetBrand Brand Asset Management
Online communities are the stock of trade in the social media age. 
Facebook is approaching 700 million, 
Twitter 175 million,
LinkedIn about 100 million.
In China qq.com has 380 million and video.baidu.com, soso.com and image.baidu.com each have over 200 million! We tend to think of these people as "users" like we think of drug addicts, but actually they are a willing and captive audience; they are our stock stock, individual shares in the human company, and owning their profile information is going to probe to be more valuable than gold and Apple shares.
The fact is that almost all of these "users" have many social media accounts, and if someone have a social-site profile already they are much more likely to have a branded community site profile also.
This is a target of a trillion potential customers!
There are generally two kinds of responses to the on-line social community proposal in the boardroom:
"Facebook, Twitter and all that stuff already exists, let's just use that."
and "We don't have the time or the resources to manage an in-house on-line community."
In ten years time there will be only one response:
"Our competition is cleaning up. How do we get one of these on-line community things?"
Of course by then it will be too late. The time to build an online community is now!
Here are a few pointers to build an online community:
1. Develop with Open-Source software.
Don't use priority software, it's developers will hold you hostage to their program, whether they intend to or not. Pick Open-Source web development software that had development legs.
The primary reason why this is important is that development is quicker, cheaper and by the time you need it most of it's already done. Bit there is an added benefit: If you have a fallout with your developer (or your developer has a fallout with you), someone else can pick up where they left off.
At Access we use Joomla precisely because there is just so much development of the platform itself as well as software for it.
2. Start with an on-line newsletter.
This is by far the best way to incentivize initial sign-up. Offer an incentive with sign-up also.
But you must make sure that 1. You write a good, regular newsletter, and that 2. The sign-up is into a community database at the same time.
3. Use Facebook / Twitter / Google log-ins.
The last thing you want to give your users is another password to have to remember. Develop your community with that in mind.
You can still own the community even when they are signing in with Facebook.
4. Collaborate
Let the community use the site as they see fit, listen to their suggestions, don't try and control everything. It is better to have a moderator who can remove offensive content and censor filters than have someone approving everything before it's posted.
Listen to criticisms and complaints, be constructive and friendly.
Your customers should be seen as your collaborators in making your/their community site. This attitude has much better results than restrictive control.
5. An online community website is never "finished".
The marketplace and the technology is evolving extremely quickly, users are finding new ways to interact all the time. On-line development needs to be fluid, with very few defined parameters. It's obviously a good idea to set goals but it is a lot better to have a monthly development budget than to get a quote on a year long development that will be signed off at the end. By the time it's signed off it's already redundant and for the last few months you developer has been racing to complete features that were relevant a year ago.
If your developer offers a monthly development / support contract take the risk with them (as long as they're using open-source tools), if not find another web developer.
6. Allow as much interaction as possible.
Ultimately people are not as interested in your brand as you'd like to think they are. They get no recognition or satisfaction from your brand by itself. They get those things from other people, they don't just want a profile... they want to show their profile to other people on your site! And that goes as much for B2B and in-house networks as it does for B2C.
7. Get your marketing on other social media sites, Facebook (BranchOut), Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Interact, make some videos, create fan pages and update it. Answer questions, read blogs and share them, make jokes. Speak about your religion, politics etc.
If you'd like people to regard you as interesting and click on the website links you post on social media, then the rule is post only 1 in 7 about your own business.
8. Have a monthly blog, written or video.
A point of credible reference is absolutely necessary for a successful on-line community. And that reference is a blog, that allows comments. The secret to a successful blog is to be relevant, interesting and regular but not annoying. It's also really helpful to use images.
Welcome to the new world!
