Creating Online Communities - Government

More governments are setting up online forums, and areas where citizens can interact with government, and with each other. While it's not always clear how creating those communities fits with the role of government, on the surface, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor, even though there are few resources available to operate these kinds of communities.

The Catch: Operating Communities For Citizens No Easy Task

We're well past the point where one can "build it and they will come" when it comes to online communities. It's naive to think that all that's needed is to thorw oup some software, or use something like Facebook or Twitter. Far more is required to operate forums and platforms that actually engage citizens, and attract people interested in more than spamming, or being negative about government.

In this section, you'll find information, hints and advice about the practice of creating communiites that work well, and serve a purpose for government.

Available Help About: Customer Service - Government and Public Sector : Customer Communities

Building online communities for business: 10 Rules For Online Community Success - by Vanessa DiMauro
Short and sweet with bullet points, and still useful. As social is an emerging trend, many have put down their soapboxes to talk about online communities. Consequently, there is some good (and lots of just OK) advice "out there" on building online customer communities -- yielding a great deal of information to sort through and parse. While theory is interesting, there is a practical side to us all - especially when endeavoring to act. And, human nature craves rules; rules to be examined, adapted and applied. Having built award-winning online communities for 20 years, I am boiling my journey down to a simple set of 10 implementable actions for online community best practice in hopes that it accelerates your community successes. (Views So Far 272 )

Creating Passionate Users: User Community and ROI - by na
Every time I give a talk, someone always asks, "That's all good and nice that helping users learn is the key to creating passionate users... but who's going to do all that extra work? Who's going to make the extra tutorials and better docs?" Answer: your user community. Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas. And that's not including any extra sales you might make on community/tribe items like t-shirts, stickers, and other gear. Some decent tips, but a lot of claims with no documentation (Views So Far 154 )

Building online communities for business: Designing Metrics for Online Customer Communities - by Vanessa DiMauro
Recommended because of its strong analytic approach: Useful, usable and engaging, these are the qualities that successful online customer communities are made of. But, while all good community leaders within an organization hold these core values close, when business stakeholders start asking for hard ROI metrics, most community teams get a little nervous about how to prove value and define success. So, when the "what has community done for me lately" question get launched, panic sets in and people start to make dashboards and spreadsheets and charts galore. Community managers send reports off to leadership with fingers crossed and a heavy heart because they know the data isn't truly indicative. But they don't know a better way to communicate outcomes. Consequently, and not surprisingly, the documents submitted rarely satisfy leadership's key questions. (Views So Far 249 )

Building a Listening Post Online For Customers %u2014 Pragmatic Marketing, world's most popular product management training - by Sherri Dorfman
Good. We have a fear of not being relevant any more to our customers. Three months ago, we set up an online community to listen and leverage customer insight in our product design and in our marketing strategies. We need to better understand the patient experience in order to drive innovation, explains the VP of Marketing for a healthcare technology company. In their book Groundswell, Forrester Research shares many examples of companies using online communities to listen to customers discuss their products and engage them for more information. Businesses use their online communities to harness the collective wisdom which guides their strategic and tactical product and marketing decisions. In the process of co-creating with the customers, companies build and strengthen customer relationships and business. (Views So Far 235 )

Why most online communities fail - More Commentary - by MRoc
Additional commentary on WSJ article and Deloitte study on the failure of online communities. (Views So Far 318 )

Twelve best practices for online customer communities - by Dion Hinchcliffe
What then is the secret formula for building successful communities for your customers? Certainly there are well known success stories to examine for clues. One good example is Dell's online community which it famously used for a corporate image turnaround last year and remains one of the most highly regarded and highly trafficked customer community properties. Another is SAP's various customer communities, with over a million registered business and technical users and a high degree of participation.""What can we learn from these success stories and a rapidly emerging set of business practices? (Views So Far 517 )

Why Lurkers Are Valuable To Your Online Community � Farland Group | Blog: Voice of the Customer - by Farland Group
Lurkers are those members who log in to your community, read blogs and discussions, and don't contribute to discussions. These community members are often dismissed as not valuable or at least significantly less valuable than your contributing community members. I think part of the reason that's the case is because it is much easier to determine the value that your active contributors are providing to your community and your business. What is often more difficult is determining what value your lurkers have on your community. (Views So Far 233 )

71 Top Online Customer Communities: The Big List� - by Vanessa DiMauro
I'd take these with a grain of salt, subject to your own verification. Excerpt: Online customer communities are everywhere -- you just have to look for them -- sometimes in unlikely places. Because they are dedicated to serving customers, often they are not evangelized to the general public or consumer audiences. But they are alive, well and thriving within many enterprises."By way of definition, when we say "online customer communities," we mean an interactive, often gated, website that a company sets up for customers to collaborate on topics of mutual interest."And, we are NOT including customer service websites; e-commerce sites where goods and services are bought and sold; online customer panels that focus on customer research; online publications that let readers comment on articles; or blogs, twitter and general use of social media broadcast tools. These styles of interactive interplay are an important aspect of the evolving web 2.0 world, but are not, by definition, online customer communities. (Views So Far 353 )

Building a Business Case for Customer Community - by Caroline Dangson
Good Stuff. Excerpt: One of the biggest issues we see today with branded customer communities in the enterprise is the creation of digital islands failing to foster an engaged community. We often find this issue is due to lack of careful planning that accurately illustrates the level of commitment required to build and sustain the community. Many companies dive right into building a community before realizing just how time- and budget-consuming such an initiative will be. Building a branded community ain't cheap, ain't easy and ain't fast. Take the time to plan for success and build a detailed business case for community. (Views So Far 344 )

Why online communities fail and how many succeed - by Emergence Marketing
The 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that was released last week led a lot of people to conclude that online communities do not work and that companies are spending too much money on making them happen.""Well - there is some of that and then there is a whole other side to the story that we uncovered as part of the study. (Views So Far 313 )

Designing a Thriving B2B Online Community: A Discussion with Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks | The Bloom Group - by Vanessa DiMauro
Interview regarding use of online communities from the perspective of business to business. (Views So Far 285 )

4 Reasons Your Brand Needs a Community Manager - by Amber Rinehard
Addresses the question: Does my company need a dedicated community manager for its online presence? (Views So Far 274 )

5 Tips for Building a Community Management Strategy - by Janet Aronica
Are you looking to build a community management strategy for your business? Here are five ways to get started building an effective community management strategy. Social media allows great opportunity for building relationships and communicating directly with customers. To facilitate these relationships, the role of community manager is becoming increasingly important for all types of businesses. Usually, community managers are the social media voices of their brands, fulfilling multiple roles including social media strategists, customer service managers, content creators, product managers and evangelists. (Views So Far 351 )

12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement - by Lauren Drell
If you manage an online community or run a customer service community check this out: 12 top community managers share their thoughts and ideas. (Views So Far 333 )

Giving Customer Service a Pink Slip: Community Management and the New User Experience - by Kelly McDonald
Nice take on the new position: Community Manager, and what the job entails. Excerpt: successful community management is a combination of being both proactive (by scheduling tweets and blog posts and reaching out to users) and being reactive so you can promptly respond to users. Trish Fontanilla, Community Manager for Vsnap, says that “We wear so many hats as community managers and don’t always have the focus that other jobs have on just one thing.” I couldn’t agree more. It can seem like a big job for one just person, but there are tons of tools out there that can help you. (Views So Far 294 )

12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement - by Lauren Drell
If you manage an online community or run a customer service community check this out: 12 top community managers share their thoughts and ideas. (Views So Far 294 )

Community Managers: Don't Try To Do It All On Your Own - by na
Great tips and ideas for customer service community managers on how to manage the process. Identifies some common mistakes made by community managers (Views So Far 401 )

Evolving the Role of the Community Manager - by AMBER RINEHARD
When fully integrated, successful community management can touch nearly every other business function in an organization – from product development, to customer service, marketing, HR and communications. And the role continues to evolve to become more strategic, in many cases incorporating some components traditionally handled by social media managers – things like content creation, measurement, or more “big picture” strategy for social media platforms . While community management “purists” argue that these two roles need to remain separate, I think there’s an evolution happening that is forcing the roles to blend whether we like it or not – especially for businesses that may not have the means to hire for two separate roles. Bearing in mind the evolving role of the community manager as a more strategic function and, in my opinion, the glue of a social business, there are three things I see becoming increasingly more important for the role. (Views So Far 290 )

8 Online Community Management Tips to Increase Customer Engagement - by Joshua Paul
Pretty cool. Some nice graphics and thinking in terms of improving your online community as a customer service tool. (Views So Far 267 )

8 Online Community Management Tips to Increase Customer Engagement - by Joshua Paul
Pretty cool. Some nice graphics and thinking in terms of improving your online community as a customer service tool. (Views So Far 312 )

Community Managers as Customer Advocates - by na
I'm not sure I agree that customer advocacy should be in the realm of community managers, but that's the point of this article. (Views So Far 309 )

Online Customer Communities: Critical to Most Organizations - by Patricia Seybold
There's a Catch-22 in deciding whether or not to invest in trying to nurture one or more online customer communities. The biggest issue in my mind is not, "will customers say bad things about us?" The answer to that question is, "Of course, some customers will be critical, but other customers will be complimentary. It's better to have at least some control over the conversation by hosting it, than it is to be at the mercy of the discussions customers are having elsewhere on the Internet."""The more important question, to my mind, is "will the community take hold?" Why would your customers or prospects want to converse with one another in and around your products or services? The answer is that they really don't want to talk about you or your products. They want to talk about themselves: What they are trying to do; what they care about; and, also many of them actually enjoy helping others who share similar jobs, interests and passions, it's kind of a quid pro quo. "I'll help/encourage you. You or someone else will help/encourage me." (Views So Far 393 )

Driving Customer Engagement Through Online Communities - by na
An online community is an interactive group of members joined together by a common interest. An online community can be one of the most powerful tools a marketer can deploy for retention, word of mouth marketing, and market insight. To host a successful community it is important to focus on objectives, chart a road map, assemble the right team, and plan to be flexible. Then launch the community with the backing of your most enthusiastic customers and stay engaged as the community grows. Above all, all successful communities are aware that control is in the hands of the members, so it is vital to put their needs first, build trust, and become an active part of the community. The host needs to learn to be a host and not a policeman."Over the past decade many companies have launched online communities. There is good reason for this. Online community members visited Web sites nine times as often, stayed five times as long, and represented 65% of sales, according to a recent McKinsey and Company survey. A 2006 survey of midsize and large companies suggested that 89% of them had adopted at least one of six community-building tools.. (Views So Far 500 )

Twelve best practices for online customer communities | ZDNet - by Dion Hinchcliffe
One of the more significant Web 2.0 trends in business this year has been the advent of the Web-based customer community, where groups of like-minded individuals focus around a brand or a set of product and services come together and interact online. Far from the cynical marketing ploy that it can sometimes seem, customer communities often sprout up on the initiative of passionate customers. Successful examples of this include XMFan around XM Radio, HDTalking for Harley-Davidson, and IKEAFANS on IKEA products.""It's imporant to note that the communities above are vibrant, active, and absolutely not affiliated with the businesses that the communities are focused on. As a result, business are increasingly realizing they can reap benefits by attempting to foster these communities themselves, rather than hoping that a group of users will do it on their own. While this can be a risky proposition -- garnering an active community of users successfully is still more art than science at the moment -- the rewards are increasingly clear for those that are successful. (Views So Far 436 )

Why (most) online communities fail - by Laurent Haug
After portal, Cextranet or web2.0, community became the favorite buzzword of web agencies sales teams, a sesame to convince clients to sign for expensive developments based on the magic user generated content formula. Give a toolkit to your clients and they will do the work for you they say.""Unfortunately reality is very different. In a world saturated with solicitations where people have less and less attention available, most communities fail because they bypassed a few important questions, like what are we offering users?, what is differentiating us from other communities?, etc""This phenomena is finally getting noticed and studied:""Wall Street Journal:Why Most Online Communities Fail (via LOIP)""One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community. (Views So Far 367 )

Community Model - Communities, Web, Online, Customers, Business, and Customer - by na
The community model is a method of developing an online presence in which several individuals or groups are encouraged to join and participate in ongoing interaction designed around a common purpose. Web communities, or virtual communities, were not only a way for like-minded people to come together online, they also were an increasingly important element of business plans. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the cropping up of countless new Web communities facilitating one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many lines of communication and cooperation. (Views So Far 460 )

CRM News: Customer Loyalty: If You Build a Branded Online Community, Will Customers Come? - by Jeff Zabin
User groups take on a new meaning with the advent of social networking technologies, which provide the means for sharply heightened communication and collaboration. However, even with the best toolkit, the onus remains on the company to offer a value proposition that will make customers eager to participate. (Views So Far 364 )

Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds - by Marshall Kirkpatrick
According to Wall St. Journal coverage of Moran's study, "Thirty-five percent of the [corporate] online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members - despite the fact that close to 60% of these businesses have spent over $1 million on their community projects." That means some of those $1 million parties probably had less than 100 attendees. Somebody got fired for that, right? (Views So Far 415 )

10 Things About Building an Online Community That May Surprise You | CustomerThink - by Joshua Paul
Linking a private social network to your website is straightforward. However, creating a successful online customer community or member community can be difficult. It takes an abundance of customers, an understanding of your audience, staff resources, a solid strategy, and the right social technology. As with any enterprise business challenge, this complexity leads to various levels of understanding and expertise in the marketplace.""To help corporations and membership organizations dig beyond surface level guidance and gain an understanding how to create a thriving private online community for your customer or members, I have laid out 10 rarely talked about tips that executives should internalize as they develop their customer or member engagement strategies: (Views So Far 215 )

Designing Metrics for Online Customer Communities | CustomerThink - by Vanessa DiMauro
Useful, usable and engaging, these are the qualities that successful online customer communities are made of. But, while all good community leaders within an organization hold these core values close, when business stakeholders start asking for hard ROI metrics, most community teams get a little nervous about how to prove value and define success. So, when the "what has community done for me lately" question get launched, panic sets in and people start to make dashboards and spreadsheets and charts galore. Community managers send reports off to leadership with fingers crossed and a heavy heart because they know the data isn't truly indicative. But they don't know a better way to communicate outcomes. (Views So Far 328 )

Reality check: Branded online communities outperform Facebook in consumer buying decisions - by Bob Thompson
Which is better for business? Facebook, or third party branded online communities like getsatisfaction. Here's some research findings that suggest the winner is NOT Facebook, but mind the fact this is a single "study" and not definitive. (Views So Far 280 )

Start Your Community With Role Models, Not Influencers - by Steve Radick
If what we're doing is truly building online communities, shouldn't we first recruit the people who will actually be you know, building that sense of community and modeling the behaviors you want to see from all members? (Views So Far 269 )

Online Customer Communities: 5 Ways to Increase Customer Lifetime Value - by Joshua Paul
The author provides 5 reasons to build and take advantage of an online customer community. I find the title misleading, but there's some good thinking here on lifetime customer value, and how to use information from your customer community to increase customer retention and engagement. (Views So Far 228 )

More Don't Miss Resources On Customer Service

How To Lower Your Costs

Ways to Fit Our Defusing Angry Customer Training Into Your Tight Budget

The Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook For Government Staff

Seminars and Services

Train The Trainer - Cost Cutting and Self-Sufficiency

Violence In The Government Workplace And Related Resources

Creating Online Communities - Government

The Catch: Operating Communities For Citizens No Easy Task

Available Help About: Customer Service - Government and Public Sector : Customer Communities

More Don't Miss Resources On Customer Service

How To Lower Your Costs

About Company

Our Related Sites

Philosophy

Get in Touch