How to Create an Online Network

“A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.” – Walt Whitman

Experts in social media warn against creating a community with no purpose or specific intent. A thriving community needs a purpose and a positive, encouraging leader to evoke a sense of pride in participation. The greatest asset of a community is its members.


Community input offers marketers an intimate — and continuous — understanding of information important to consumers, but only if they’re willing to listen closely to what members have to say. You can use feedback to uncover what consumers really want or to design new enhancements, products and marketing programs. The key is to get the entire team to focus on what's important in a sea of open-ended responses: insights that matter to the business and marketing plans.

Listen, Don’t Control

It will be vital to conduct extensive market research prior to the launch of the community. Within the initial stage internal research and analysis will occur in conjunction with external research. Then decisions will be made as to the appropriate objectives to pursue, whether to keep membership restricted or open, and whether to recruit customers or prospects as moderators or external staff.

The community manager will be the host of the community. This role will require a person who is able to rally online members to take action, complete their profile information, create their own content, and review other members’ content. The goal is not for the community manager to control member behaviour, but to teach them how to use the platforms functionality.

Collecting feedback and observing how the members interact is vital for future enhancements and improvements to the functionality. The majority of testing will occur during the testing stage in order to trial the platform using a wide range of members in real-world scenarios.


Another aspect of the community manager’s role is to conduct real-time surveys by asking members questions about their experience using Meemeep. The aim is for members to take initiative in submitting feedback, but because the need for feedback is so high during the pilot the community manager will solicit feedback on a regular basis. Surveys will also be conducted using SurveyMonkey and Google Documents.