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Online Community Governance: The Project BriefThursday, August 14. 2008
One of the biggest challenges for those leading the community efforts for large organizations (or really, orgs of most sizes) is ensuring that the hosted community efforts of the organization are appropriate, valuable (both to the org and to the member / customer) and sustainable.
First, a little context. I worked at Autodesk for 6 years as the Online Experience Manager (basically a chief IA). The internal web team was structured as an agency within the company, and each division was a "client". This approach has pros and cons that I won't go in to now, but for the purposes of the conversation today, the effect was that we had oversight over most online activities, including any hosted community activity. One of the tools we used to ensure a quality online experience was to have our clients fill out a simple project brief describing their vision for the community. Specifically, the brief covered:
I'm attaching a heavily modified version of the brief I used, updated with the benefit of a bit of hindsight. I'd really love feedback on this, and would love to hear if you actually find it of use in your day to day practice. You can download the brief template here:  oncomm_project_brief_v1
Online Community Engagement: Recent ResearchFriday, July 18. 2008 We conducted the Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement research study in May of this year, as part of the continuing efforts of the Online Community Research Network. Our goal was to gain insight into how people are measuring engagement in their online communities and to understand how many organizations were using an elite / influencer program, and how those programs were structured. One of the most interesting findings was around the concept of member engagement. Both the definition as well as the process of measuring engagement varied across the respondent organizations. Highlights From the Report: Most people determine the level of engagement based on the amount of activity and the amount of content created (forum posts, reviews, discussions, diggs, links added, comments and content, etc.). They also look at the amount of time spent on the site as one of the main measurements of engagement. Another important dimension, which only a few respondents mentioned is the number and quality of connections that a member has with the host organization (in some cases brand) and other community members. Leading Indicators A few respondents were using a set of "Leading indicators" to benchmark and track engagement: • "1) Logged in/accessed the site; 2) Posted comments to the site; 3) Posted substantive content (e.g. conversation-starting forum topic) to the site; 4) Completed profile/member survey" • "Engagement encompasses not only logins to the site, but activity: Digging/burying stories, submitting content and engaging in discussions on specific stories." An ideal Engagement Metric Based on aggregate responses, the following metrics would be ideal for rolling up into an engagement metric. • Amount of activity on site: page views, logins, searches, feature usage • Number and type of content items created: discussion posts, tags, shared content, etc. • Number of connections / relationships created: friends added to network, or inferred via frequent discussion exchanges • Time on site: Total time per month • Frequency of visits: / per month • Recommendations: Members referring new community members, passing along community content outside of community, blogging about / promoting community A perspective on member engagement: One Fortune 100 Financial Services firm that responded to the survey uses the following definition / measurements of “Engagement”:
Fostering Engagement All of the responses to the question about fostering engagement raise the point that as community host, you have responsibility for half of the conversation with community members. Themes of regular communication, active listening, strong moderation, fostering discussion and recognition emerged in the responses. The most popular ways to improve member engagement include: • Regular and easy communications: “Send email – ones that are targeted and provide interesting news. We found over our 500 or so communities that those who send regular (monthly) email to members have 7x engagement numbers compared to those who did it less than once every other month.” • Skilled moderation: “Keep the forums on topic and firm but fair moderation. “ • Keep content fresh. • Fostering discussion: “Encouraging conversation. Sometimes, this means highlighting a potentially divisive, opinionated comment and inviting response. Sometimes, this means asking questions that everyone has an answer to, and nobody minds sharing.” • Listening to participants: “Seek member feedback and perspective, build meaningful connections” • Recognizing members who participate: “Create a sense of value to their participation.” The full report is available to Online Community Research Network members. If you are interested in this report (and others), please consider joining the Network. Details are available here: http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com
Online Community Expert Interview: Mario Anima, CurrentWednesday, July 16. 2008
This month's Expert Interview is with Mario Anima, Director of Online Community at Current. Mario was kind enough to spend time answering a few questions about Current, the unique community that he helps manage, and the intersection of traditional, new and social media.
 Mario Anima Director, Online Community Current "I’m obsessed with online communities, products, and technology. I love when these three things converge, but i’m also a huge film geek, avid reader, and have been known to enjoy video games and music." photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Current? A: Current is a television station wrapped up in an online social media site at Current.com. Essentially, our community submits videos, news stories, blog posts, and anything else they find around the web (or create themselves) to Current.com, and then our community votes on the submitted stories to help collaboratively determine what gets made into TV segments (called pods) and aired on Current TV. We also have a full swing production team that produces regular programs like infoMania and Vanguard. Q: What has surprised you most about managing a community of newgatherers and newsmakers? A: Everyone involved in a social online community has a dedicated interest, and these interests range from the constructive to the destructive depending on who they are. Seems obvious enough. On Current, however, things can be uniquely rewarding and difficult. Diffusing situations is commonplace in communities, but more often than not, our team finds themselves diffusing dustups between community members who are undergoing an ideological clash of greater proportions. It’s both rewarding and challenging to be caught in between two people who really are committed to being informative, but are on the polar opposite sides of the spectrum ideologically. Q: What has been one (or some) of the most difficult issues to manage in your community? How did you handle? A: Censorship. We are largely a social news site, so issues with the censorship crop up frequently. It’s an ongoing issue, but one that we are trying to manage this with transparency and openness. We have a group of online programmers who help facilitate the transition of content from the Internet to TV. Things crop up, sometimes sources are not credible, other times we don’t have the rights to use video that our community really found compelling. We are trying to get better at messaging these decisions in a way that doesn’t leave the community scratching their heads. Q: What advice would you give to someone interested in becoming a community manager? A: You really, really, really have to love being online, being socially active in online communities, and being willing to jump into just about any situation as called for. In addition to that, you also need to have a keen eye and understanding of when and when not to dive in. It takes dedication and patience, but those are two of the most commonly shared attributes I’ve found amongst other community managers. Q: What online community and social networking trends do you see on the horizon that are the most interesting to you? A: Well, the whole micro-blogging thing is extremely powerful, although it’s been talked to death lately. I really think aggregation of social content/profiles still has a way to go, but there are some opportunities there. I think overall, media as we know it will continue to evolve thanks to the Internet and the social networks that continue to crop up. I’m very excited about the mobility and portability of identity and content.
Online Community Unconference 2008: Wiki Now OpenTuesday, July 8. 2008 The wiki for the Online Community Unconference 2008 is now open to all for reading / commenting. Of particular value are the session notes. The wiki can be found here: http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2008 Selected session notes include: Worst Case Scenerios - What to do when things go terribly wrong Cross Networking Madness - How are niche communities using data portability Building the Collaboration Ecosystem - All components for community building success Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world Managing communities across multiple sites - Twitter, FB, MySpace, etc... Community Year One - Phases, Activities, Successes The platforms for community are SH*T. Discuss Managing Entitlement - wrangling with the elite & noisy There were over 40 sessions, and most have some level of documentation on the wiki. Enjoy!
Online Community Unconference 2008: It's a WrapFriday, June 20. 2008
The Online Community Unconference was held this Wednesday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
How was it? In a word? AWESOME. We had 250 participants from a diverse range of organizations, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Linden Lab, SeeqPod, Flickr, LinkedIn, Cisco, Sun and Current TV. We had a jam packed day (started @ 8:30 and ran until 5:30). The energy was palpable. Check out the short video I shot below of folks reviewing the session grid shortly before session 1. Over the course of the day, participants held over 50 sessions about community strategy, UX, management, member engagement and technology. Session topics included:
My observations: It's 2 days later, and I have to admit my head is still spinning. The quality of content and conversation was high, and there is still a lo of processing I need to do. My genreal impressions were: This was the "Community Community" coming together. This was not an event where a few talking heads lectured the masses. This was a gathering of the tribes for those who manage communities and set community strategy on a daily basis. The conversation has matured. There were far fewer folks that wanted to talk about community 101 this year as compared with last year's Unconference. Topics were fairly sophisticated and most of the direct feedback I got was that participants were pleased to discover the level of experience represented by the other participants. The lack of standards is REALLY starting to hurt. Focus is (finally) beginning to shift from islands of communities to the larger community ecosystem. A general lack of standards around nomenclature, metrics, data schemas (including profile structure), profile accessibility and community UX (to raise just a few issues) is starting to come up as a real issue more often. I think we are finally mature enough as an industry to have the discussions as a body of practice (and contribute to and help direct discussions on tactical problems, like Data Portability). The best resource about online communities is the community of practice. This statement is actually a common thread in all of Forum One Network's activities. We believe the best and most valuable source of information about building and growing healthy online communities is the body of practitioners. We will be opening up the Unconference wiki in about a week, and will post highlights of the session notes. In the meantime, lot's of folks were twittering and blogging. I've posted highlights below. Other Unconference highlights: http://twemes.com/ocu2008 http://summize.com/search?q=ocu2008 http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008 http://www.grimwell.com/?p=211 http://talk.lithium.com/lithium/blog/article?blog.id=lithium&message.id=139#M139 PS: Tasty Snacks = Accomplished! 
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