Pitfalls and Best Practices for Building Online Communities

Building successful online communities isn’t easy. To help us out, Powered recently held a webinar on the Pitfalls and Best Practices for Building Online Communities. Below is what they had to say.

Just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.

Community: an interactive group of people connected by a common interest.

Marketer’s Sins
* Thinking that you know it all already - Tropicana changed their ‘look’ and didn’t think that they needed to consult with online communities. Result: online backlash.
* Wanting to be something you’re not - Pepperidge Farm tried creating their own online community rather than joining an existing one, but Pepperidge Farm isn’t an online community like FaceBook or MySpace.
* Thinking you’re done once its built - successful communities must by nurtured like a successful cocktail party.
* Assuming more is better - Moms Miami site: there is no common interest so it isn’t sticky for anyone.
* Not planning for anger or responding to it - Motrin example: moms got angry at their ad campaign so Motrin took their site down and went back up with a message saying that they were pulling the ad - did Motrin overreact?
* Wanting what the other guy has - Zune is trying to have what iPod has.
* Wanting it all…and all your way - General Mills’ My Blog Spark asked people not to post anything negative; this was greedy, they wanted to control the message.

51% of online adults are willing to participate in a company’s online community.
Adults across generations will engage in online company forums - they want to be a part of all stages of the marketing mix.

Understand who social media is for: brand enthusiasts who have passion (positive or negative). Get them to market the message for you and make them into brand advocates.

Have a clear objective for your community. Types of objectives include:
* Listening - good for direct customer insight, new product ideas and beta testing.
* Speaking - create an emotional attachment, advertising based on network.
* Energizing - excite your biggest fans, word of mouth.
* Supporting - peer to peer support.
* Embracing - members become contributors, extended workforce.

Focus on customer problems, not your products. Use the community as a way to help members solve their problems. The Axe community helps members solve how to get the girl. This gives Axe insight into their customers to use for more relative marketing.

Ensure the community is ‘heard’ inside of your company; it’s about managing your company to take advantage of what the community can do. Create a process for reporting what you learn from the community.

What keeps members coming back and participating? Hint: it’s not the technology.

Vibrant communities need:
* Sense of ownership
* Shared passions/needs
* Opportunities for self-expression in a variety of ways
* Active facilitation
* A company that demonstrates listening
* Fresh, engaging content

Best practices for creating your own online community
1. Listen - what are your customers saying? Where? Use Google Analytics.
2. Choose - What do you want to use the social community for? Customer research? Sales? Product Innovation?
3. Include - get legal/compliance on board early and often; get them to help you build a social policy.
4. Join - sign up for communities where your customers are (but learn the etiquette first).
5. Engage - thank your customers for telling you what they think; in plain English; ask more questions.
6. Build - if you’ve gotten good at #1-4 consider creating your own community.

Get the full webinar and presentation slides.
Note: You’ll have to give your name, email address and company information to access the video and slides.