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Announcing ReviewMyCommunity.net

by | Dec 8, 2016 | Community Industry News, Community Products, Twitter

It’s in a pre-launch phase, but I’m excited to tell you about ReviewMyCommunity.net, a review site dedicated to online community software. I love the concept. Most of us won’t go to a new restaurant and spend $25 on a decent meal without checking out reviews first. Why isn’t there a site — laser focused on online community — for organizations to give and read reviews on community software, which is such a huge investment? Well, now there is! Maggie McGary, a social media manager at the American Psychological Association, is a brilliant community manager and the Founder of ReviewMyCommunity.net. In full disclosure, Online Community Results is a Founding Sponsor, and I’ve partnered with Maggie to bring the site to fruition. Here’s the high-level overview: As of today, you can write a review on the online community software that you’re using, and in return, receive a lifetime subscription to the site, which will allow you to read reviews about other community software products. You can also purchase a lifetime subscription if you don’t have community software to review. During the pre-launch phase, a lifetime subscription is half-off. The website goes live in early 2017, and a critical mass of 100 reviews needs to be built up before launch. As someone who helps organizations select an online community platform for their needs, I’m excited about the potential to see what actual users think about their software. But the website is only as good as the reviews, so I’m encouraging my clients and readers to give a review. Will you take 10 minutes to help out present and future community managers make an informed online community buying decision? Leave a review at...

Facebook launches private community platform. Can you trust it?

by | Oct 17, 2016 | Community Industry News, Community Products, Twitter

Last week, Facebook publicly announced its foray into private community platforms, launching Workplace, a product geared towards helping coworkers collaborate better. Remember when you couldn’t use Facebook at work? Well, now there’s a Facebook for work. Let’s review the good, the bad, and the ugly about this development. THE GOOD: It is Facebook for work. There are groups, messaging, chats, video calling, events. Everything you love (or hate) about Facebook is in Workplace. And it has the same user experience, so it’s instantly recognizable and intuitive for anyone who uses Facebook. And that number stands at… like, everyone. My favorite feature is the pricing. You only pay per monthly active user (MAU), defined as anyone who has engaged in the past month, which is the standard community management best practice. I love this model because it’s so transparent. The community manager still needs to hold up the organization’s side of the bargain, doing things to encourage engagement, but the vendor assumes risk for not providing an engaging platform. I actually predicted a few years ago that vendors would start pricing this way. So far, to the best of my knowledge, Slack and Workplace do. Continuing on pricing, it’s relatively inexpensive. The cheapest version of Slack is $8 per MAU per month. The most expensive pricing level for Workplace is $3 per MAU per month. It’s secure. One of the reasons that Workplace is so late to the party is that it had to be vetted by security minded experts, as a key market for Workplace is government agencies. The government of Singapore is already using Workspace. You can invite non-employees to collaborate. So your freelance...

Community is a key component of member value

by | Sep 6, 2016 | Community Management, Community Strategy, Community Tactics, Community Theory, Twitter

Co-founder of The Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe, writes about the value of online communities in that holy grail of business publications, Harvard Business Review. Calculating the ROI of Customer Engagement makes a great case for the concrete value of online communities… a case which also happens to dovetail with a lot of my own thoughts on the ROI of online community for associations. Her article focuses on customer engagement, which also happens to be central to associations, except in the association world we call it member engagement. In her article she says, about engagement (emphasis mine): “We know that customer engagement matters. Yet much of our thinking about engagement remains simplistic. Most current definitions of engagement are bimodal – someone is either engaged or they’re not. But this is a limited view that hampers our ability to manage engagement in meaningful ways. A more sophisticated understanding of engagement allows community managers to effectively influence and change it, and even to calculate an ROI for engagement.” Engagement is a word that is used a lot in the association sector yet all to often it’s used in the abstract, as in it’s something you definitely want members to be but let’s not focus too much on what it actually means because… well, we’re not entirely sure on that part. Engagement, for associations, is often correlated with transactions–did members attend an event, or purchase a product, or participate in a webinar? Or maybe it’s less transactional but still tied to an action, like serving on a volunteer committee or following the association on social media channels. As Rachel points out, engagement isn’t just...

Facebook algorithm changes infuriate engagement pros for 587th time

by | Jul 5, 2016 | Community Industry News, Community Products, Community Strategy, Community Tactics, Twitter

Interesting piece in Associations Now, “Time to Declare Independence from Social Media?” about yet another round of algorithm changes at Facebook which has engagement professionals up in arms. But when will they ever learn? Facebook exists to turn a profit, not to hand out free advertising. I wanted to share my comment on the article here, because I was particularly struck by this line in the article: “Facebook no longer cares about a return on investment for companies that use its platform—unless they’re willing to cut a check and pay for the right to be on your feed.” Is the idea that Facebook was ever motivated by anything other than profit? Like any business, Facebook will adjust their processes to maximize their profits. Facebook makes the rules, they can change the rules, and the changes are intended to boost the bottom line. That’s the reality, right or wrong. I’ve written and spoken about this dozens of times for years now: When an association “rents” its social presence on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, or whatever, the association is beholden to their rules, which can be changed on a whim. And your members’ engagement on those sites ultimately benefits the social network company’s shareholders. The public social networks capture value from your members’ engagement and monetize it. Again, that’s the reality. I don’t pass judgment on it; I simply acknowledge it and use the facts to inform my decision making. But when an association “owns” its social presence on a private community platform, it can capture more value from the system. You get a better view of a member’s engagement level, you...

Starting an Association Online Community? Five Tips for Building a Strong Foundation

by | May 16, 2016 | Community Management, Community Strategy, Community Tactics, Community Theory, Twitter

Recently, Ernie Smith wrote a good piece on about starting online communities in Associations Now. In the article, he referred back to the Reddit volunteer moderator revolt I wrote about last August, and offered some tips for organizations just beginning to build online communities. For associations looking to build strong online communities from the ground up, I’d build upon Ernie’s tips a bit, as follows: DON’T JUST BUILD FOR YOURSELF–BRING EVERYONE ELSE ON BOARD. For many associations, the first step in building an online community is purchasing software. While software is the foundation on which your community will live, there are important steps to take before you start building. Start developing relationships and creating a shared vision for what the community can become early on, before you buy any software or even start the selection process. Consider creating a community steering committee who will ultimately become your community champions. The more personal the interactions you establish before the community is built, the more buy-in you’ll have before the community is even up and running–and the easier it will be have those champions begin cultivating a strong community once it’s up and running. BUILD A COMMUNITY FROM AN EXISTING BOND. This is where associations have a distinct advantage over brands looking to build online communities–association members already have an existing bond, which is baked into the association. However, far from being a slam-dunk, in my experience, this is often a loose bond. Yes, your association represents an industry or a profession, but while that bond does already exist, you may see better success building a community around a smaller segment of...

How do you define an “engaged” community member?

by | Feb 10, 2016 | Community Theory, Twitter

I came across an interesting listserve discussion where this was the topic.  How do you define a member of your community as engaged or not engaged? The particular question came from a community manager whose community had auto-subscribed all of their members – meaning they had a fair amount of lurkers or “observers”, but few commenters posting and replying.  They can see that folks are clicking through from email links, but not doing anything else. So the question was, “Of course we want to up our number of posts/discussions, but how do we measure engagement now?  Do we count those people who are actively signing in and poking around, but not contributing?  Should we track our emails about the community and somehow count the open rate as engagement – or is that really pushing it?” Many community managers, including myself, consider people who have logged in in the last month to be active. Others believe that lurkers are very valuable to a community, not just because they consume community information, but because they often share that knowledge to their other networks (who may or may not have access to the community). So I’d love to know – how do you define an engaged member?  And is that the same as an active member, for you? ———- (photo...
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