Monetizing Online Community

Monetizing online communities

View more presentations from Jessica Lowry

How to Create an Online Network, part 2

It is always vital to conduct extensive market research prior to getting started. Within the early planning stage internal research and analysis needs to occur in conjunction with external research - all users including: moderators, admins and members will need to be thought through in terms of their unique perspective. Then decisions can 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 is the host of the community. This role requires a person who is able to rally online members to take action, complete their profile information, create their own content, and comment on other members’ content. The goal is not for the community manager to control member behaviour, but to teach them how to use the networks functionality.

Collecting feedback and observing how the members interact is vital for future enhancements and improvements to the functionality. The majority of testing should occur during a soft launch 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. The aim is for members to take initiative in submitting feedback, but because the need for feedback is so high during the early stages the community manager will solicit feedback on a regular basis. Surveys should also be conducted using SurveyMonkey and Google Documents.

Recognise & Reward

Upon first arrival to the network a new user should become instantly aware that this is no ordinary network, but a community with a pulse. Before registering, a user will be presented to a barrage of positive examples for registering- most of these examples will be seen through a reward system; this could be both a financial incentive and a recognition incentive.

Each new member should receive a personalised email from the community manager welcoming them to network. Receiving some form of acknowledgement is the single most important factor in determining if someone returns or not. During the soft launch, the community manager never stops being the host for new members uncertain about how to participate.

The goal for every network is to be a vibrant and highly active community of content creators and content consumers. During the early stages, all of the rewards will likely be appointed by the community manager. These rewards are to recognise preferred behaviour and encourage members to participate on a regular basis.

Other benefits to encouraging members to take a personal interest in their fellow members is building brand advocacy. Members should develop a sense of ownership by submitting their opinions and sharing their time. This emotional investment translates into self-moderation. Self organisation will reduce the pressure on the Community Manager to be as highly active and visibly involved.

Online activities should always be transparent to the whole community; the rewards given for those activities need to be similarly transparent as well. Never act like Big Brother.

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.

Collaborate or Perish: An Introduction to Social Media

Yesterday was an incredibly long day for me. On top of my regular non-stop schedule I presented an introduction to social media seminar to a few of our existing clients. You can check out the presentation on Slideshare.

For those who have read some of my earlier posts, you’ll know that I moved from Toronto to Melbourne last year, and I had a really hard time figuring out how to market myself to potential employers. The job titles I had at home aren’t traditional and aren’t seen as roles within a corporate organization. Titles such as: Online Community Specialist and Online Community Moderator, are roles that fit into online gaming or user management on platforms, but not traditional company’s, right?

Wrong.

After 9 months I realize that the roles I had do fit into Australian businesses, but it’s a lack of connection between the marketing strategies and the business objectives. I believe there is a disconnect and the people who are meant to be initiating these activities are not receiving the right kind of guidance.

To me, the main reason company’s should engage in social media is to create a dialogue. And not a always a literal dialogue where you create a group and lamely ask random questions to a disinterested audience. A dialogue can be a lot of things. The narrative is in assembling all of the communication to create a message.

If you look at a platform, such as Twitter, you can assess the functionality and use it to create your communication strategy. Twitter is a great way to extend your customer service and find ideas for customer-centric solutions. Facebook is a great place to conduct surveys and solicit feedback based on opt-in offers. It also allows you to conduct research to a broader audience. LinkedIn helps you generate leads and find potential partners.

The point of these examples is that you can extract metrics of measurement to build business strategies that are future-proof. Your services can identify solve problems in a more timely manner then traditional reviews. All of this data and information needs to be disseminated by someone within your organization. It doesn’t need to be only one person’s job to manage and communicate, but there should be someone collecting and reporting on the information. Teams should have access to this information to form the basis for the day to day practices of your business.

Interestingly, at the end of the presentation a woman asked me about privacy. She said, “how are company’s supposed to control what their employees say to people online?” This is a classic response and something I expected to hear. My response to this is that employees should sign confidentiality agreements that clearly stipulate what they are permitted to share with others outside of the company. If you are a car manufacturer, you might not want your employees leaking information about a product soon to come to market, but it would be ok for your employees to solicit information about people’s favorite car or the story of how they bought their first car. Or even what types of software they’d love to have in a car if they were able to design their own. Alternatively, if a car designer wants to find out whether people like 2 door or 4 on a particular model – why not ask people? Isn’t it better to find out what people want before launching a product that may or may not satisfy the demand? No one is suggesting that employees give away the secret sauce, but the world is full of great ideas and specialists. If you turn your back on the crowd you will surely find yourself out of business sooner than you think.You need to relinquish control.