Your site or publication wants to create online community to encourage more user engagement and drive more web traffic. Cool. But how do you do that? Here's the basics. Presentation given at the Niche Digital conference, September 2009.

1. Community Gone Wild
Esther Schindler
Writer. Editor. Community Gal.
Also Chocoholic.

2. Who the Heck is Esther?
• I was online before online was cool
– 72241,1417: CompuServe sysop in 1990
– Chief sysop for AT&T/ZDNet Interchange
– Community manager for CIO.com, ZD’s
DevSource.com and many more
• Oh yeah. I write and edit too.
– Most recently senior online editor at
CIO.com

3. A 3-Second Test of Online
Community Readiness
• A magazine reader posts a community
message critical of an article or its
author.
• Or slamming a key advertiser.
• What do you do?
– How do you respond? Are the answers
different for the two scenarios?
– I’ll give my answer before the end.

4. Whyever would you want an
online community?
• Reader engagement
• Editorial participation
• Online ad revenue
• Brand support and reader loyalty
• Sell something

5. Reader engagement
• People want
to share
stories and
experiences
• Rating
content has
value (to
them at least)
from Olive Magazine (BBC)

6. Editorial community
participation
– Opportunity for
interactive
“letters to the
editor”
• You’ll get honest
feedback
• (Oh boy is it
honest.)
– Also find out
what floats their
boats CIO.com blog post (by me) A Pointed Question from a Job Applicant:
How Would You Answer This Question?

7. Online ad revenue
• Some
advertisers
are reluctant
to buy ads
against
community
sites
SQAforums

8. Brand support and reader
loyalty
• Community
helps readers
feel that they’re
part of the
publication
• Their
contributions
matter
From Threads Magazine (Taunton)

9. Sell something
• Upsell to conferences, products,
subscriptions
• Sell access to each other
CIO Council (CIO Magazine)

10. So why did you want a
community again?
• The only real reason: to encourage
conversations.
• And to make money (somehow) by
doing so.

11. What’s Your ROI?
• Your ROI depends on your purpose in
creating the community
• We can come up with metrics
– But they’re rarely meaningful
– What’s the ROI of customer service?

12. My Personal Measure of
ROI
– Community members have an off-topic
conversation about their first car, their
first computer, or the first quilt they
made
– Community members get together In
Real Life

13. What’s Community,
Anyway?
• Cheers: Where
Everybody Knows
Your Name
• “User contributed
content”
• Like minds: people
with shared interest
having a
conversation

14. The Lesson
• “Understand the business you're in.
Social media are not a silver bullet
solution for improbable business
models, scattershot marketing or the
everyday blocking and tackling of
satisfying customer needs.” --Ryck Lent

15. Types of community
• Discussion forums
• Blogs
• Article comments
• Voting, rating, contests, and community
without talking
• Where the user contributions is the
community

16. Discussion Forums
• The round table
• Opinions equally shared
• The person paying the check controls
the venue

17. Blogs
• One person at the podium
• Others can comment or respond but the
blogger controls the conversation
• We used to call these “opinion columns.”

18. Article Comments
• Graffiti can be
beautiful. It can
be meaningful.
• But it is rarely
interactive.

19. Voting, rating, contests
• Community without talking
• Social media is community with voting
privileges. Well, sometimes.

20. Where the community is
the content
• Members upload photos
of their own projects

21. Intersection with social
media
• Are you better off with a Facebook fan
club, a LinkedIn group, a twitter
account?
• The answer depends on your
commitment to the conversation and
how much control you want.

22. It’s not one-or-the-other.
• Even when you have your own
community, use social media.
• Use external community and social
media sites to support your online
presence.
– Are your events listed on Upcoming.org or
LinkedIn Events?
– Are these slides on slideshare?
– Some pubs treat Twitter as an RSS feed.
That’s not community.

23. When not to have an
online community
• You want to get it started and then
ignore it.
• Nobody’s in charge.
• You don’t actually want to interact with
readers. Who has time for that?
• Too much competition from community
sites doing a better job than you could.

24. Who should run the show?
The person who wants to.

25. The Community Manager
• You need one.
• No, I mean it. You really need one.
• The bartender and the bouncer

26. Choosing the Community
Manager
• Not the overworked magazine editor for
whom this is yet another task

27. A unique editorial
challenge
• Journalists are trained as observers.
– They want to report, not chat. They can
have a hard time making a transition to
conversations.
– This isn’t insurmountable. Just pay
attention.
• If you require the community manager
to be an on-site position, I will
personally slap you.

28. Technology
• What to look for in the software
– Software features
• Whatever makes it easy to contribute
• Whatever makes it easy for readers to find stuff
they care about: categories, tags, sections
• It must kill spam
– Integration into your website
• Community should appear on your home page
• It’s not always clear what content to promote

29. Budget
• Price of the “community” software
– Free doesn’t suck.
– What do the vendors give you?
– Web site integration is where you’ll spend
the money
• Salary for a community manager

30. Making a Success of An
Online Community
• Editorial involvement
• Getting people talking
• Answering the tough policy questions

31. Editorial involvement
• Readers want access to you.
– Answer their comments and questions!
• Listen and interact
– Passive
• Lots of controversy on a topic -> maybe we
should write a feature?
– Active: Ask for input
• “Who has the best happy hour in the Airpark?”
• “What did I miss in my “28 ways to know the job
interview is over?”

32. Getting people talking
• The participant : lurker ratio
• The welcome wagon
• Asking leading questions
– People love to tell their own stories
• Reward community members for
participating
• Separating by topic and function
• Manage the jerks

33. The Three-Beer Questions
• Anonymity
• Require registration to participate?
• Managing the culture
• The rules of the community
– Naughty language.
– The difference between “that’s a stupid
idea” and “you are stupid.”

34. A 3-Second Test of Online
Community Readiness
• Remember the offensive comment
posted by the reader?
• What did you do? Why?
– Removed it
– Argued with it
– Responded to it
– Used it as a platform
• Here’s what I’d do.

35. Resources
• Online community report:
www.onlinecommunityreport.com
• e-Mint, Association of Online
Community Professionals www.e-
mint.org.uk/
• Books
– Managing Online Forums, Patrick O'Keefe
– Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo
Kim

36. Thank You
Esther Schindler
esther@bitranch.com
twitter.com/estherschindler