A healthy community is one of the best ways to create sustainable, long-lasting word of mouth you can build on. Here are a few tips to help make yours better:
1> Create focused communities
2> Offer training and certifications
3> Reward participation
1> Create focused communities
People tend to organize themselves around specific ideas or topics they’re passionate about — not big picture, vague causes. Ensure your communities stay active by creating them based on central themes or popular products that allow the really passionate people to get together without all the outside distractions. If you keep your members focused on niche things they can’t get elsewhere, you’ll have much more than a generic fan club.
2> Offer training and certifications
Make your communities more than a static message board by using them as educational resources that members can use to gain status and certifications. Offer courses, bring in outside experts, and create certifications that members can put on resumes and show to their bosses. A few simple training sessions can be a simple way to offer something beyond a one-time experience that keeps everyone coming back.
3> Reward participation
If you want to see consistent engagement and fresh community content, make a habit of recognizing and rewarding your biggest contributors. While it’s common for the vast majority of members to be “consumers,” it’s your steady contributors that keep things interesting. Give these big talkers credentials, special perks, and leadership roles to keep them going.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[…] As we often say, engaging with the talkers in your industry is one of the essentials of building relationships that lead to sustainable, long-lasting word of mouth. This study of IT professionals provides some fundamental findings that can be extrapolated to any industry, most notably of which is that vendors are more than welcome – with 76% of respondents saying it’s important that vendors participate in online communities (which echoes a 2008 cone study that showed 93% of social media users believe brands should be involved in social media). […]