Online communities

Tara Hunt, van Citizen Agency gaf een presentatie op de Future of Web Applications. Ze is mede-oprichter van Citizen Agency in 2006 met de missie om haar klanten te leren hoe ze meer effectief kunnen werken met de gemeenschap die ze bedienen. Tara heeft zeven jaren ervaring in niet-traditionele marketing planning. Ze onderhoud haar eigen succesvolle blog Tara Hunt.

Wat maakt een community? Wat zijn de eigenschappen?

• persoonlijk profiel/homepage;
• persoonlijk schrijven van de inhoud;
• de mogelijkheid om te reageren op andermans inhoud;
• de mogelijkheid om vrienden te maken en de inhoud te delen.

Wat zijn de voordelen:

• verhoogde loyaliteit van de klanten;
• self-policing;
• versterkt door mond-tot-mond;
• betere terugkoppeling;
• sterkere en interessantere filters op de inhoud.

Er zijn drie niveaus van communicatie:

1. lightweight social processes (low-barrier social involvement like voting and the recording of personal participation);
2. Collaborative information structures (enhanced by social participation);
3. High end end collaboration (groups using systems to make sense and share complex materials)

Veel voorkomende thema’s:

• sense of fun and play (the founders very publicly have fun, playful messaging and images on the side)
• keeping the dialogue going (“eating their own dogfood” – “it’s amazing how many people don’t use their own product”, answering your own customer support emails, greeting new customers and introducing them to others – “being the host of a party”
• wouldn’t it be awesome if…. (taking an experimental approach to development, throw away the business plan and embrace the chaos, )
• the power of the word of mouth (built-in a variety of ways ot share early on [rss, copy and paste urls etc], adding more on-ramps (email, SMS etc)
• involve community in decisions (listen to your users and be flexible, let the community create the content and make the decisions)
• simple platform to build on (building blocks – tools built be experts but used by non-experts eg. WordPress [users add extensions] Flickr api, focus on one function well
• Compelling stories
• rewarding of community members (feature super users, more privileges)

Er zijn vier eigenschappen van succesvolle communities die ze erkent:

1. Feelings of membership (creation of community boundaries, perception of emotional safety) Personal profile pages, allowing for lots of personal and group expression.
2. Feelings of influence (being able to influence the group, feedback responsiveness, rule enforcement) Include forums, chat, comments etc
3. Integration and fulfillment of needs (feeling of being supported by others, reward of being and member, such as status, shared values, feeling of competence) Karma points etc
4. Shared emotional connection (personal investment of time and resources, high quality, frequent interaction) Add face-to-face opportunities

Conclusie: het opzetten van een community is hard werken en het kan lang duren