Everyone’s interested these days in building new online “communities” that surround particular interests, an organization, or a ministry. There’s wisdom and value in that, so why not?
But building one is the easy part. Knowing how to do it “well” is the hard part, and a little strategy never hurt anyone.
So, with that being said, here are 10 Tips for helping you to make the most of these new endeavors and to make sure that you’re building the best community ever:
- Less is More: Especially when you’re starting out, the rule of “less is more” really applies. There is simply no end to the number of feature sets that are available to you, but not all of them are absolutely necessary to the success of the project or community. You can always add them later if you need, but best not to start with them out the gate. There is a very good strategy of slowly rolling out functionality and features to the community as the community grows and matures.
- As Small as Possible: With your “grand” vision of what your community “could” be start with what it “should” be when you start. Start thinking as small as possible with a very limited number of engagements. Think “locally” instead of “globally” and solve the simple problems before you tackle the more complicated ones. Getting your community involved in this process is a gold mine of an opportunity too.
- Make it About Them: Solving your community’s needs is more important than satisfying your project’s needs. Apparently this gets confused way too often. If you make the community about the community you’ll have more of a return and growth rate than if it was always about the organization and ministry.
- Peer to Peer Works: Your community will thrive if you make sure that the channels of communication are not just between individuals and the ministry but also peer-to-peer. It’s a many-to-many relationship model that works best, and it’ll become self-sustaining the better you manage and create this culture.
- Limited Moderation: Dialogue is messy. Conversations are messy. That’s because people are “messy.” Go figure. Moderation should be kept at a minimum, and done only when absolutely necessary.
- Empower Individuals: Make sure that you capitalize on “peer celebrity,” not just making them look awesome but acknowledging their contributions to the community. Find a way to be a cheerleader for them and respond and reward when necessary and if possible. Empower them to carry the community, not just wait on you to do that for them.
- Don’t Just Watch: It baffles me how many community managers actually don’t really do anything with their community. Silence kills community because communication is the lifeblood of community. If there’s nothing to talk about there’s no reason to be there, and especially in the beginning there’s going to be a lot of responsibility on the creators of the community (and ministry) to jumpstart the conversations.
- Provide Opportunities for Digital Representation: Provide ways and incentives for the community to break outside the community and to represent it from their own personal spaces. Creating “Digital artifacts” is one of the best ways to do this and give community members an even greater sense of belonging and value.
- Creating Channels of Expansion: Growth is something that everyone desires. Is there room for it? Is that even part of the plan? Is the community “in” on it? This is another good reason not to drop all your eggs into one product basket and launch with everything out the gate. Make it a journey more than a fire-and-forget project. Create a story. Go ask Ben Arment about that.
- Lead Together: Share with the community your hopes, dreams, goals, and futurestate with them so that they can engender and become a part of the work. Visioncasting is important, but include the community in the process as well. Lead together, not alone.
kennysnow says
Thank you for this, I really needed to hear #2 today. It's hard to be in infancy stages when your heart and vision are looking at the mature results, and that's been frustrating me lately. God is the one in control of the timing, not me.
human3rror says
Kenny,
Definitely man. feel free to pass it around and share!
stephenbateman says
I'm with you on #2, I always want to go for never ending features that all kinda suck…workin on it.
Daniel_Berman says
Excellent post. I need to save this on my computer for the development of the @IssacharNetwork. You have been watching my global Christianity thread haven't you?
human3rror says
i acdtually haven't been, but i am now!
Matt Harrell says
Excellent post indeed. This is very hard stuff to come up with John. You've obviously thought this through some. One more point to add is to do a good job of communicating the advantages of using online communities to all staff and members. Not only do they supplement real community and enhance communications, the save the staff time. When ministries are empowered with online tools to form community and generally connect, each part of the body can do it's thang! This should be one of the big ones to get into pastors' heads that are nervous about launching an online community but know there are advantages. I'm keeping in this post in my back pocket for MemberHub marketing material :). Thanks John!
human3rror says
word up.