What do members want?

If you want to start a community (or improve an existing one), you might begin by asking members what they want.

Members will say they want interesting, relevant, information. They want advice. They want entertaining content.

The brand then works overtime to create this interesting, relevant, entertaining content.

If it works well, members will visit frequently to read this content.

Can you spot the problem?

There is a MASSIVE gap between providing interesting information which people read and hosting interesting discussions in which people participate.

Sure, some communities like Mashable, Techcrunch, Mumsnet, and many others are driven by content.

But only a minuscule number participate.

These sites have audiences in the millions and responses in the hundreds.

They also took years to generate anything resembling meaningful discussions.

If you want to wait years to having any meaningful interaction, then be my guest.

If you want to waste most of your audience’s potential, then be my guest.

If you want to compete against the news sites you want to support you, try to change a user’s consumption habits, and work overtime to compete in the internet’s most competitive field (content), then be my guest.

Just be aware that news sites don’t like promoting the competition, people rarely change their reading habits, and creating the best content is almost impossible. It’s a winner-take-all game which you will probably lose.

What members really want

I recommend you follow what the academics say about what members want.

Members might join for a clear benefit (e.g. receive advice), but they participate for a very different reason.

Members want to find a place they can fit in. Be themselves. They want to find a peer group. They want to impress other people. They want to feel appreciated.

But they wont tell you that.

This is why content-driven community strategies are so tragically flawed.

They rarely succeed and ruin the potential of their audience.

Giving members what they want

From the moment members join a community, you need to give them what they really want, not what they say they want.

Fortunately, most of these things are easier than creating content.

Members want to give their opinion on topics they feel passionate about.

You need to identify the topics your members care about, initiate discussions on those topics, and invite these members to participate in those discussions.

Members want to feel appreciated. They want to be mentioned by name, receive responses to their own posts, be given a level of distinction unique amongst other community members.

Members want to feel influential. They want to be invited to write guest columns about topics they feel strongly about. They want admin powers. They want to provide feedback directly to you. They want to know that they make a difference within the community (however small).

Members want to feel like they belong. They want to be referenced as part of the group. They want to feel that their group identity matters. They want to see their group succeed. They want to see the group they belong to mentioned elsewhere. They want to share a common group identity.

Members want to make friends. They want to really become familiar with each other. They want to build relationships that matter beyond the platform. They usually want to meet people in person. They want to participate in self-disclosure discussions.

You can give members all these things. It takes time, but not money.

It’s easier and more effective than any content-driven community strategy.

Justin is brilliant

Justin Isaf, who we interviewed a few weeks ago, is brilliant.

He can run a community that receives millions of comments a month with a small team of 17 moderators.

He can train a new moderator in two days.

That’s not just brilliant, it’s outstanding.

He uses data, community theory, and his incredible community skills.

The Huffington Post saves millions by having someone with his ability on their team.

Do you think I’m making that number up?

In the Online Communities Handbook (Anna and Nancy) state that an organization should have 1 moderator per 50,000 comments.

Let’s use this as a proxy figure.

Let’s conservatively say the Huffington Post gets 12m+ comments in one month. That would require a team of 240 moderators.

If a low-level moderator costs around $35k per year, that’s $8.4M in moderator costs.

If Justin can do this with just 17 moderators, then he’s saving potentially $7.8m per year (multiply this by the number of years Justin has been at HuffPo and this figure becomes truly staggering).

These numbers will vary considerably, but we’re on very safe ground to say that a top tier community manager can save an organization millions of dollars.

The right training saves the Huffington Post millions.

Think about that.

Rob Ludlow is brilliant

Rob Ludlow is also brilliant.

He can develop a community in any number of categories and have a clear process for attracting members, generating discussions and scaling it to a stage where it’s hosting millions of posts from hundreds of thousands of members.

An organization would be lucky to have him (you can’t hire him, I tried). He works from a proven process to develop communities.

He doesn’t make the mistakes that most organizations make.

He knows what sort of discussions to initiate when a community begins.

He knows how to reach out to members and persuade them to join.

He knows how to get members to refer others. He knows how to become self-sufficient.

He knows what sort of platform to create.

That process is worth millions.

You can apply it to any number of topics and repeatedly develop an increasing number of communities.

Organizations would kill for this process (and someone with the skills to implement it).

An untrained community manager might work this out eventually, but only at considerable expense to the organization (and only after making every wasteful mistake in the book).

The Incredible Value of Real Community Development Expertise

There are different levels of expertise.

A lot of good community managers can manage a community when things are going well.

They can respond to comments and e-mails. They can write blog posts about things that are going on. They can ban spammers and trolls.

This is all incredibly easy, low-value, work.

At The Pillar Summit, we don’t have much interest in this work. It’s not difficult, nor complicated.

But, there is a very different level of expertise from simply managing an existing community to having the skills, knowledge, and resources, to grow and develop a community.

This is the level of expertise that gets a huge ROI from a community.

You can may be a good community manager, but with the right training, you can deliver huge, huge, value to your organization.

You can avoid costly mistakes, save thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars.

You can work from a process that is proven to deliver results.

You can establish and increase the value the community delivers to your organization.

We’ve been blown away by what former students (all good community managers) can achieve with the right training.

Our former students have communities rapidly progressing through the inception stage, growing through establishment, delivering incredible value in the maturity phase, and famously surging through mitosis.

We know a few of you have been hesitant about asking your boss to take the Pillar Summit Course.

This might clarify the value that a highly trained community manager can offer.

If you’re interested, we hope you will sign up.

I’m about to upset about 30% of you.

Managing social media channels really isn’t that difficult (sorry!).

You write relevant updates using standard content-triggers to stimulate responses.

You remove the bad comments and measure how it’s going.

It’s not hard to grow a big audience, or manage one.

In 9 months at the UN Refuge Agency I grew the @refugees account from 5,000 to 1.3m followers.

At The Global Fund we quickly had over 180,000 fans on our new FB page, 150,000 on Causes).

With the right promotion, content-triggers, and decent moderation, managing social media channels is relatively simple.

And that’s why we’re not doing a social media course – and we never will do.

Social media management is extremely limited, rarely delivers a clear ROI, and will forever be a minor role within an organization.

It’s also a massive waste of potential. This interested audience, whom could very well become an engaged community around your brand, almost certainly never will because they’re restricted to the wrong channels and wrong way of thinking.

Most of your updates wont even be seen by most of your audience.

Much of what passes for community management at the moment is little more than responding to comments on Facebook/Twitter.

Community Management Involves Far More Skill (and delivers a much bigger ROI)

There is a huge, huge, difference between managing audiences on various channels – and managing a community.

The level of skill, complexity, and talent required to develop a genuine sense of community amongst a specific group of people dwarfs what social media managers do.

In social media channels, the audience primarily interacts with you. In a community the audience primarily interacts with each other.

That difference is significant.

A community manager uses a combination of growth, moderation, content, relationships, events, technology and integration with the organization to build a strong sense of community.

They don’t rely upon simplistic triggers, they build their work upon the deep psychological needs of participants.

They make people feel they part of a community, not just act like they have an opinion to express.

Whilst a social media manager is dreaming up an exciting new Facebook update, the community manager is busy building relationships with top members, soliciting volunteers, initiating events to deepen the sense of community amongst members, initiating discusions about emotive topics, subtly influencing members to participate in discussions, optimizing different areas of the platform, interviewing members to increase familiarity etc…

Community managers combine proven theory from social sciences, with data collected from their community, and the skills they have acquired, to grow, manage and develop their communities.

Communities last for decades. They have incredible levels of sustained engagement. They scale, without incurring major costs.

The Pillar Summit Isn’t Suited To Social Media Managers

This is a long way of saying that if you want a social media course, The Pillar Summit DEFINITELY isn’t for you.

If you want a course that goes deep into social sciences, uses a library of proven case studies, coaches in key skills and explains, step-by-step, everything you need to do to develop and manage a community on behalf of an organization – at an advanced level – then the Pillar Summit is perfect for you.

There is a proven, time-honoured, technique for community development.

It’s a technique that stimulates activity, creates content, unites the community, brings in new members and establishes momentum.

It was used by the greats like Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Barack Obama, and many more.

But most community managers ignore it – and we need to change that.

I bet you want to know what it is right? We’ve mentioned it before.

Events

That’s it, events. Time-limited, theme-based, activities which people can participate in together.

We’re just not talking about the offline events here. These are great, but a pain to organize.

We’re talking about online events too.

Most community managers never bother to organize or facilitate any events in their communities at all….ever.

The Super Bowl isn’t just a contest to proven who is the best football team in the USA. It’s an event for America.

It’s an excuse for everyone to get together and share an experience. You can meet with friends to watch it. You can tweet about it. You can update your Facebook status about it. You can feel like a part of something together.

The role of events in communities

Events play an essential role in the growth and development of communities.

They unite audiences and create the social foundations for great things to happen.

Events can make communities more fun and provide a cause for constant activity.

Events give members a reason to visit frequently to see what is happening in the community and provide motivation for lurkers to participate.

Events increase the level familiriarity between members and boost the sense of community.

The key elements of events

Organizing an event is simple enough. Invite a guest speaker to take questions from your audience.

But that misses the key element. The event is just the excuse for people to interact.

You need to provide the means for people to interact.

That means having a concurrent chat channel, live-blogging and accepting comments, Twitter hashtag etc…

Events are less about the attraction and more about the excuse for people to interact with each other.

Online events you can easily organize

Events may be either regular or irregular.

Regular Events

Communities should have online events scheduled on a weekly and monthly basis. These events may include:
Webinars. This is an interactive presentation in which the community manager, a member of the community or an expert on the community’s topic matter delivers a presentation online and answers questions from community members. There is a variety of software which can host such events. The most popular are GoToMeeting and WebEx.
Themed discussion. A community may each week join a live chat room to participate in a themed discussion. This discussion will have a set topic. This topic may have been determined in advance by the community manager, voted on by the community or designated by one or more community members responsible for the discussion. It may also be rotational with different members guiding the discussion each day.
Weekly interview. Similar to the themed discussion is a weekly interview with a VIP in the community’s sector. This VIP will be someone identified in the initial sector analysis. This will include people of power, fame, expertise and those with unique personalities. This list may include managing directors at relevant companies, skilled experts in the sector (such as those designing products or can do something unique within the community), or those whom have a unique and interesting personality. This can be undertaken using a moderated live-chat or via soliciting questions from members in advance.
Competitions/Challenges. The community may host a regular competition or challenge for members to participate in. This can be a quiz, or a skill-based challenge. Some communities, for example, ask members to submit their favourite community-related stories or photos and nominate a winner each week. It might be possible for some communities to find sponsors to support these events with free products/vouchers for the winners.
Newcomer orientation. Once a month, a community may host a day to welcome new arrivals in the community. This can involve regular members introducing themselves, setting up some basics threads for newcomers to participate in and help teach members about the culture of the community. This even can increase the sense of community amongst existing members and help convert newcomers into regular members of the community.
Promotional days. Many communities may also use promotional days as a way to provide access to sponsors and opportunities for community members. These promotional days might include price discounts on products/services, promotions from one member to another (by allowing a day a week for this, self-promotion on other days might be alleviated).
These are all regular events which can be held at frequent intervals. Different events will be suited to different audiences. Some will be looking for traditional entertainment others will be looking for information and tips leading to self-improvement within their topic.

Regular events also encourage frequent activity within a community and build expectations from members to such regular interactions. This frequent activity builds a consistency of interactions between members which leads to trust, a key component of successful relationships within communities.

Irregular Events

In addition to small to mid-sized regular events, communities should host irregular events. These events are designed to celebrate communities achievements, bring audiences together for a specific purpose or promote the community to external audiences.

Awards. A community may host an annual awards ceremony for members. This may include a live channel announcing who wins each award (as voted by members).
Named days. Communities of a certain age may show members recognition and contributions for outstanding contribution by naming days after members in the community. These should, for most communities, be weekdays when activity will be highest. This might involve allowing the member to contribute an opinion post and other members thanking the member for their outstanding contributions to the community.
Elections. A community may host regular elections for key posts within the community. This encourages a high level of activity amongst the group and is a great technique for referrals. These elections should be held at regular intervals (6 to 12 months).
Milestones. The community should celebrate significant milestones achieved. This might be the community’s 10 year anniversary, the 10,000th active member, 50,000 posts in a single months or achievements by the milestone, such as changing something significant in the community eco-system.
Fundraising days. A community may host a fundraising day/week for a set cause. Fundraising has many benefits to a community. It puts action and a clear investment in the successful of a community. It creates a common goal that increases the sense of community and provides a sense of achievement or failure which can significantly improve the community.
Broader victories/celebrations. A community may celebrate something else of relevance in the eco-system. It might be the success of a VIP within the sector, a legal ruling in the community’s favour, the end of something bad happening within the community’s ecosystem, or the success of something good within the ecosystem.
Product-launches. A community might celebrate the launch of a new product or service within that category. This can including building anticipation of the product/service, including a gossips column about possible features of the product/service, introduce a live-blog leading up to the launch and/or initiating threads asking members to submit their views and thoughts on the topic. These threads will be sticky for the day/week.
Member achievements. The community may also celebrate the achievements of a member. This might be the release of a book authored by the member, a birth of a child, gotten married, the launch of a new company or anything the regular member takes a significant amount of proud in.
Hall of fame induction. Some communities have introduced a hall of fame for individuals within their ecosystem. Have your members done something great recently? Induct them into your community’s hall of fame.
Irregular events should be considered special within the community and not as common as irregular events.

There should not be more than one regular event per every two months. This ensures that irregular events are a rare occurrence to generate excitement and intrigue within the community.

These events should be closely integrated with the content and discussions taking place in the community. During these events you might convert relevant discussions into sticky-threads and create content which covers what happens before, during and after the event (wrap up).

If your community is struggling, you should consider hosting an interesting event.