Why Most Online Communities Fail
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.
That’s according to Ed Moran, a Deloitte consultant who just completed a study of more than 100 businesses with online communities. Not surprisingly, these sites failed to gain traction with customers. Thirty-five percent of the 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
6% of these businesses spent over $1 million on their community projects. “A disturbingly high number of these sites fail,” Moran tells us.
Businesses launching online communities repeat a series of blunders. First, they have a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology. Moran suggests that businesses spend resources identifying and reaching out to potential community members instead of investing in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology.
Moran also recommends that businesses put someone who has experience running an online community in charge of the project. This doesn’t sound particularly earth-shattering, but consider that about 30% of the businesses Deloitte studied have only one part-time worker in charge of their communities. Most other businesses put a single marketing pro in charge of their sites.
The third problem with online communities is how businesses go about measuring the success of their communities. Businesses say that their primary objectives are generating word-of-mouth marketing and increasing customer loyalty. Yet the metric that businesses use most often to measure success is the number of visits to the site. Moran points out that there isn’t much of a connection between what businesses want and what they’re measuring. Better metrics might be rankings in Google or the number of inbound links.
Update: If you read through the comments you’ll find a couple people who say that 6% not 60% of businesses spend more than $1 million on their online communities — and a comment where we defend the number in the original post. But enough people challenged the number that we asked Deloitte about it. Turns out there was a rather large typo in the slide they sent us. It is 6% and the post is now corrected.
This doesn’t change the fact that most of online communities fail. But at least they’re less expensive failures.
-Ben Worthen
Image: Andrew Dunn via Wikipedia
Ben, this is 100% correct. At Oracle, we’ve found that a strong dose of old-fashioned customer advocacy/evangelism, combined with a just a bit of Web 2.0 technology, to be the most effective approach. Too many others, IMO, fall much too easily into the technology-centric trap.
Justin Kestelyn
Oracle Technology Network
Everything you cover in this article is completely accurate. All too often businesses see online communities as just another part of their overall business strategy and overspend in order to ‘force’ results.
Unfortunately, money cannot buy human relationships - which is what successful online communities rely on.
- Martin Reed
Online communities are not for everyone. Communities represent a dramatic departure from standard push model of communications and require a skill set not often found in today’s companies. If you don’t have the time to do the planning and management needed to create a vibrant and passionate community- and don’t want to pay a company to do it for you- then we recommend choosing another channel for customer engagement. If you do invest the time and effort to create a successful community you will find that there is no better ROI for customer acquisition and retention.
No matter how much money you throw at it or how fancy the technology, an online community is only as relevant as the people involved. To ensure success, the stewardship of that community has to come from a person whom the audience can identify with and who is probably the most fervent evangelist of the subject matter. Companies who are merely using the facility as a vehicle to gague customer opinion rather than as a platform for passionate debate (good or bad) are likely to be disappointed. Any good CEO should be a daily contributor as opposed to a passive observer and if they can’t do that then they should save their money.
Wow, what a scary survey…I guess we need to hire Deloitte to put things right.
Amen! These are great points. This happens with the hype cycle on every new tech: I’ve seen the same thing firsthand most recently with CRM and BI adoption. Once the technology is installed, then the hard part starts. It’s easy to set up an online community but that’s just like seeding a lawn — there’s a lot of watering and fertilizing that has to happen next.
Regarding the specific recommendations, we often advise clients to start small and add the bells and whistles later. When looking for good internal candidates to manage the community, we recommend looking for employees who have developed skills blogging and using wikis in their leisure time; such workers become passionate community managers who are excited to use their “hobby” professionally. For metrics, retention broken out by community participation is an excellent number to track.
The thing that shocked me the absolute MOST? “about 30% of the businesses Deloitte studied have only one part-time worker in charge of their communities” - this number shows that the businesses don’t truly value these communities that they have thrown a ton of money into. There needs to be someone at the head of the community who truly “gets it” and the members can relate to - this equates a full-time position filled by an experienced social media consumer.
There’s also a significant difference between a company creating and managing their own online community versus having a community manager who monitors customers’ activities and actively participates themselves in more general online communities. Technologically building and managing your own community is a ridiculous waste of time and effort; having dedicated staff to engage customers in other communities can be a tremendous benefit. Check out @comcastcares on Twitter for one great example of this.
In the 1980s, People who were interested in a product signed up for newsletters that were plain text, that offered product news and updated. In 2008, all that information is a click away on the internet. Brands have little need for online communities, especially when consumers know they are only going to be bombarded with junk emails and have their contact information sold to 3rd parties. It’s a bad idea for companies to invest in this.
This is a very insightful article. Such communities needs to be people focused not product focused.
Great article, thank you.
The first line sums up not just a problem with business online communities but the use of social media as a whole by businesses.
Yes, most businesses are catching on that creating their own community is important. Another handful are beginning to understand that there is a huge opportunity to create a connection with their customers in other communities as well. For example, Twitter, Facebook and even Linkedin.
The problem is that even if businesses recognize the opportunity these communities provide, they keep going on and using them to talk AT constituents rather than WITH them. They continue to approach such opportunities as ways to only push their own messages rather than connect and build relationships with customers. Savvy customers know the difference and you have one chance – the first time you connect with them in these communities – to make the right impression. If you do, you can gleam fantastic feedback and information from your customers who can ultimately help you build a better, stronger, smarter business. But you have to listen.
I can personally attest to the power of joining the conversation - not just in your own community but in any community where your customers are. We’ve been able to secure more coverage for clients, receive early versions of important analyst reports and even close multiple new clients as a result of our participation in such communities. Not because we are touting our own attributes but because we’re simply….participating.
Thanks again,
Christine Perkett
President & Founder
PerkettPR, Inc.
www.perkettprsuasion.com
www.twitter.com/missusP
www.twitter.com/PerkettPR
Ben, this is a very interesting read. Community is still so new to a lot of companies, that many don’t know where to begin. Some throw too much money and too many resources without a plan, while others don’t put enough weight behind them. There is definitely a balance, and one we think we’ve found for our ConnectUp! community at Constant Contact http://community.constantcontact.com/. We started out with our customers in mind – we felt that creating a successful community was about making customers feel like a stakeholder in our company. We launched with our original community with the intent of letting the members tell us how to grow it bigger and better, not us guessing what they might want. Now we have a thriving community of more than 18,000 active members! It’s a great example of how community members can really help each other solve real business problems and share insights without intervention or oversight from the company. Plus, they also share their ideas for product or service enhancements, which is invaluable feedback for any growing company.
Maureen Royal
Director of Customer Experience, Constant Contact
http://community.constantcontact.com/
The reason online communities fail are the same for any other business endeavor…
- Insufficient funding.
- No quantifiable ROI.
- No specific focus on measurable goals tied to corporate mission.
By contrast, The Cisco I-Prize community generated 3 new business proposals with 20 billion+ market potential.
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/ts_071408.html
True, technology is not a silver bullet, and creating communities is fraught with entirely new challenges…That said, ignoring social media is simply not an option for most companies.
Matt
Ben, thanks for addressing – you are right on the money. As Chairman of Mzinga, a business social media company, I’ve witnessed thousands of large corporations embark upon community initiatives. We’ve found that the online communities that have the highest success rates are those that are well planned, have their community strategy aligned with their corporate strategy, are managed properly and have the buy-in of the C-Level executives prior to implementing any specific technology. I frequently speak at events where I discuss the benefits of businesses building communities. If youre interested in hearing about what additional advice I offer, you can see a clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gapdV8RIo0.
Thanks again for the good post.
-BL
An interesting article and an interesting report. At FreshNetworks we build online communities for brands and have seen and been involved in a fair number of successful online communities (as well as seeing those that fail).
The reasons for failure seem to be simple to me and it would be interesting to see if the Deloitte report has data to back this up. Successful communities are built on solid strategies. They have a core business aim that links to an internal strategy. The communities are set-up specifically with this strategy in mind and are professionally managed. This is a critical role that needs experience. If you get it right the results are outstanding; if you get it wrong disappointing.
I wrote more about this on our blog if anybody is interested:
http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2008/07/do-branded-online-communities-fail/
Matt Rhodes
www.freshnetworks.com
http://blog.freshnetworks.com
It’s surely a worry if organisations are surprised by any of these findings. Sustainable communities are those that evolve because the community want it. As evidenced by this article, there are plenty of beautiful sites where ‘no one is home’…still, it’s cost-effective to learn from the mistakes of others!
I’m Julie Wittes Schlack from Communispace Corporation, and I think that both the Deloitte study and many of those people who have already commented make some excellent points. Just as there is no single type of community, there is also no single metric for assessing the success of an online community, as the success measures must be tied to the objectives of the community. For example, if your goal is to provide peer-to-peer customer support, having a small number of uber members whose postings are useful to the vast majority of site visitors — even if those visitors don’t post themselves – then a community with a high lurker rate can still be a successful one.
This example underscores what I think is the most important point of the article, which is that a community must provide mutual benefit to the sponsoring company and to the members. At Communispace, we run small, private, branded communities where the primary objective is to generate insights and enable companies to hardwire the voice of their customers into their business. In these communities, brands listen and learn from their customers, both through direct questioning and through active participation in member-generated conversations. Members support and learn from one another, and have the deep and durable satisfaction of knowing that their input is shaping the products and services that populate their lives. And in our communities, not only is the up-front financial investment significantly less than a million dollars, but the participation rate among members is significantly higher, with an average lurker rate of only 14% vs. the 90-99% that is standard at most public community sites.
While the number of members in private communities tends to be small, measuring in the hundreds rather than the thousands, the impact that those members have on the brand is enormous. Customers feel heard, and their input results in better products getting to market faster, with more targeted and effective messaging.
As I think companies that have created listening-oriented communities – whether with us, our competitors, or through their own home-grown and staffed solutions — can testify, any social media offering that can make (and deliver on!) a claim like that constitutes a success by almost any measure.
No surprise that a million dollars went down the gurgler. Social networking is not about technology, it’s the people, stupid! I can’t believe there are still big corporations out there in 2008 that have no idea about social networking and no idea how to run a social networking strategy. Aren’t these companies supposed to be run by bright people?
I read this article and the responses with great interest as our non-profit organization just received a challenge grant to create an online community for an interactive comic book game reaching kids and teens ages 7-19. I’m writing in hopes that industry leaders will have insight and ideas to share with us as we move forward in our project.
My Comix is an interactive comic book game for kids with life threatening illnesses In the game, the kids and their families can combine super heroes and other comic book characters, personal writing and graphics to make their own interactive Comic Book and Super Hero Postcard. The Super Hero Postcards feature lets kids send a voice activated message using an animated character, to friends.
My Comix is sponsored by a 501 c 3 non-profit organization. We now have the potential to reach over 1 million families, and are looking for a sponsor to fund the online portion of the game.
The game offers a great marketing tool to a company wanting to reach this demographic. As part of this grant, we have an opportunity to present My Comix to an audience of 10,000 industry leaders in November.
We are seeking corporate sponsorship to complete the game’s functionality and provide the leadership needed to make the online community a success. We would be pleased to work with companies to provide the best branding position possible for your sponsorship. These benefits may include product placement within the game; clothing designs or beverage choices for comic book characters; special sound effects associated with a brand; company logo prominently displayed on the website and on collateral materials such as printed comic books.
For more information, or to see a demo of the game, please visit mycomix dot org, or contact me directly at deborah at mycomix dot org.
Man, oh, man I love these stats. Thanks!
But this is no new news. So many companies have tactic-itis. They just throw up a social community, blog or other technology do-dads because everyone else is, too.
We’ve written about it several times at the Brains on Fire blog:
http://brainsonfire.com/blog/2008/04/15/why-social-communities-will-fail/
http://brainsonfire.com/blog/2008/06/23/a-key-to-successful-social-communities/
http://brainsonfire.com/blog/2008/06/26/another-key-to-successful-communities-shared-passion/
Ed and Ben, have you been reading our blog?!?!?
The real issue here is not that most communities ‘fail’ (which is debatable). What’s truly shocking is that 30% of these businesses have only one part-time worker in charge. If you’re going to spend upward of $1 million on a new project like a community, what do you honestly expect to happen if you don’t devote adequate resources in terms of personnel and time?
Online communities *do* work. There’s plenty proof of that. Case studies exist in abundance that show how an online community — yes, even one started by a corporation — can bring together passionate fans, advocates, and customers together. You can’t tell me that doesn’t produce bountiful ROI when a community is called to action in a time of crisis.
Let’s not discredit a fantastic word of mouth tool simply for lack of appropriate resources.
I am a GasPedal employee, and this is my opinion.
Great post Ben. Would love to hear the definition of fail. One company’s failure might be another company’s success based on what the goals are. My issue is that because “online community” is such a broad definition you aren’t comparing apples to apples. I
As part of our efforts with the Online Community Research Network over the last 2 years we have done research with over a thousand organizations all over the world.
I’ve yet to encounter a case of an organization spending a million dollars and attracting less than 100 members.
Ed is correct in stating that too many community projects:
- start with a technology-oriented approach;
- use inexperienced, outsourced, or no community managers
= have no real idea of goals, metrics, or return
Another issue is that many community projects tend to be funded by marketing, which is plagued by a campaign-driven world view. Another issue with MArketing is that senior staff tends to turn over relatively quickly, so support for a community initiative can be swept away with the latest regime change.
My organization has studied many of these issues, including the relationship between metrics and ROI extensively, and you can find some of our published findings here:
http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com/
Great post! Good comments Bill – your Online Community Research Network is a good resource. Can you really “build” community though? Communities have a way of forming automatically among individuals with similar preferences, passions and interests. Money can’t build community. It seems that companies would be better off spending their million dollars on buying an existing community and nurturing it. User groups like those referenced above are great examples but the community was only formed well after a critical mass of users was formed who sought assistance from each other. iNET Interactive (http://www.iNETinteractive.com) operates a number of large, online communities including WebHostingTalk.com with over 180,000 members. I recommend searching on a site like BoardTracker http://www.boardtracker.com/ and finding an existing online community where you can insert your brand through joining the conversation. Offer value, help solve problems, and focus on the community’s goals. It takes time – thus ROI is tough to measure short-term. Like with all social media, it’s the relationship that develops over the long-term through nurturing, support and dialogue that generates the real value.
And all these become good lessons to learn and try again!
I don’t disagree with the basic facts. I only hope that readers don’t see this as a blanket condemnation of all things community for your business.
The key lesson is that technology is NOT the main ingredient for success. Many commenters have listed many of the other factors.
In our experience, we do find that there is now greater awareness that besides technology, a successful community needs resources to participate and engage with members of the community created. Many prospects and customers are begining to add headcount into their 2009 budget for these efforts. Many have delayed projects until they can get the resources on board.
Also don’t overlook other small-medium sized communities within your organizations as a place to start to build your competency adn requires less effort. Look at distributors, franchisees and key customers as much smaller scale efforts to start. This is where a community of 100 or 1,000 actually is a good community! No more than the size of a typical golf or country club which is also a social organization! But the effort and adoption of technology is a learning curve for both the community manager and members.
There is a lot to learn. But the prize is worth it! Many widely adopted technologies today follow the same journey to success! Just start small if that is necessary to get started!
Hello. I completely agree with this article. One of the biggest issues that I see with corporations is that they relied heavily on their traditional marketing that was done before 2000. And now, they are waking up discovering many small businesses who have started in someone’s garage or bedroom, get listed at the top of the search engines, and they are now trying to play catchup.
They need to look at online marketing from a grassroots approach. I have helped businesses understand this model.
Kimberly Kimbrough
SEO Expert
http://kimberlykimbrough.com
http://showmedaily.com/coolestguyontheplanet/
I just read a great article by Pandemic Labs from a session I missed at PodCampBoston 3, called “Social Marketing is not evil,” which contains three principles for success in this arena: http://pandemiclabs.com/pandemicblog/2008/07/social-media-marketing-session-at-podcamp-3/
Great post. Technology is never the solution. What is the solution is finding out what your audience actually wants to do and where. If you have an audience of Sr. Citizens that love to tell stories over games, then online communities ain’t going to work.
Do the hard work to find out what your customers want, not what you think they want or what the Sr. VP of Blah Blah Blah thinks is cool because she heard about it at the latest conference she attended.
I’ve found that you need to have a product / service / cause that people actually give a crap about.
You can not build it and they will come. People need to be passionate about what it is that you do.
Online technology is just a tool, not a replacement for having a “remarkable” (Seth Godin) product.
Regards,
Shaun Dakin
CEO
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
http://www.stoppoliticalcalls.org/index.php
Update: I just received access to the report, and the budget numbers in the report say that 6% spent over $1mm (slide 21), not 60, as stated above.
So, either I’m looking at incomplete data, or that is a pretty important typo.
Hi Bill. I just double checked this when I saw this comment come across. The slide they sent me, which may not have been included in the original report because they sent it to me separate, says that almost 60% spend more than $1 million annually and another 25% or so spend between $500,000 and $1 million.
To couple the points above, even if you have $1m + FT employees, building an online community to serve co-design and co-marketing purposes is a totally different game than just building an idea thread and embedding a customer loyalty survey to a web page. The first will require methodology + technology to build the infrastructure, maintain consistency, reliability and create momentum w/o cannibalizing every single established marketing research and statistical rule that exists out there. The second can be done for a fraction of the cost and the budgets of $500k and $1m represent to the largest extent hyped expectations. We have clearly seen blunders all over the place, with some big brands leading (don’t make me disclose them - it will be embarrassing), and I am confident we have not seen all of it yet. There is more to come. My prediction is that branded communities will eclipse slowly slowly and, in consequence, big players will turn into third party communities with required resources (methodology, strategy, technology, know-how, people, etc.) to run community-based exercises. I will give it 1-2 years at most. And some of the smartest end-users are not necessarily your customers b/c your product/service does not meet their needs. And the smartest end-users will never disclose their best ideas for nothing, especially to be rated based on plain-vanilla star-rating system from just whoever happened to be member of the community. And the smartest people will need to be seriously incented to go out there and tell everybody how good your products/services are. Third-party developers of online communities will just have to close shop and move on or seriously discount their offerings and decide to figure out how to add real value before tagging millions to their services. Best, Stamatios
Yes, Ben, those numbers are completely different than the ones in the public report. Maybe your data is for a segment rather than for the whole sample? Perhaps they did a segment for you of only the customer-facing communities? (21% of respondents were from internal, non-customer facing communities.) But your membership numbers seems to relate to the entire sample, so perhaps that’s not it.
I was part of the study and it was 6%, not 60% that spent over $1M. I can sent you the deck if you’d like and also take you through a more detailed analysis of the study.
I also wrote some comments about what transpired so far at http://tinyurl.com/6rf2ny.
Hi Ben - the url I incorporated in the last post did not seem to work, so here is the long version of it:
http://www.emergencemarketing.com/2008/07/21/why-online-communities-fail-and-how-many-succeed/
Bill, Joe, Francois, see the update.
Ben - thank you very much…
Cool - thanks, Ben.
Ben - Thanks for the update.
I’m sorry, but the sentiment of this piece “most online communities fail” is still a little hard to swallow.
Your piece (and the study) seems to be missing context. A few points, based on the “public” release of the study that Francois shared:
Only 140 companies were interviewed. This doesn’t feel like a large enough representative sample to base a sweeping statement about the inevitable failure of most online communities.
The direct question: “do you (your org) consider your community a success” was not asked. Where in the research is the sentiment that a community is a failure discussed?
Most (54%) of the participants had a community that was less than a year old. This seems like an awfully short timeline to make a decision about success or failure.
96% of the respondents said they would invest as much or more over the next 12 months, with 52% saying they would invest more. It’s seems counter intuitive to me that the majority of respondents would continue to invest in a failing strategy?
The question I have for you / Deloitte is: based on the available data, how did you reach the conclusion that most online communities fail?
Again, between our ongoing research efforts and our conferences, I interact with thousands of global businesses and non-profits. Are there occasional failures or course corrections with strategy? Of course. However, very few consider their online communities failures.
Actually, your comments make sense. If the point of a “community” is for a company to blather over yet another channel, it’s not a community… and it’s going to fail. It’s just like real life. Talk all the time and don’t listen, or pretend to listen but do nothing with what you learn, and that’s a non-starter in any world–real or online.
Working with Apple’s first online communities from 1985 until 1990, and with countless other tech and membership online groups in the years since then, I can tell you that when it is truly a community, with give and take, real conversation, and an authentic intent coming from all parties…online communities thrive, and deliver value to the vast majority of the engaged participants.
Ellen Petry Leanse
Silicon Valley, CA
http://chep2m.wordpress.com
Bill, failure might be inferred by the small number of “active members,” but the inference probably isn’t warranted. 43% of respondents are B2B companies, meaning that mere hundreds or thousands of users may in fact represent their entire customer base. B2B companies typically do not have the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of members typically found in consumer communities. But in B2B, the large dollar value of each customer makes up for the small overall population and justifies expenditures.
The results might also be confounded by the fact that 21% of respondents represent internal communities, which also skew smaller.
It should be said that the chance of failure is always higher when the target audience is small. But we don’t in fact know how many of the respondent communities in fact failed, or are perceived as failures.
We host over 600 online communities with over 12 million members. Some of these communities have been online over four years. The bottom line, successful communities are part of a larger engagement plan that includes long-term commitment, push email, event/donation registration and other participatory features relevant to potential visitors. Our clients have raised (not spent) millions of dollars for their causes using online communities. Yes some are underutilized but many have yielded exceptional results.
Ben,
Well, seems like you have hit a nerve. I would say there are some successful online communities. (Did you pick that headline to create your own ‘buzz’.) Anyway, check out several of Intuit’s Community websites, such as www.quickbooksgroup.com, www.quickencommunity.com, www.jumpup.com
They seem to be thriving…
Scott
PS: Disclaimer. I work at Intuit.
Completely agree and great to see people being held accountable. Reminds me of the early days of desktop publishing where people had to use all the fonts they had… because they had them.
I see client specs that simply pile in every cool thing they have seen.
I also think a lot of theses communities can be “saved” with a renewed purpose and a community manager to herd the cats until the site has its own momentum.
I go a little deeper in a post I wrote on it. http://carter.awarenessnetworks.com/default.asp?item=2239467&mode=
Great article!
At Helpstream, we believe there are a lot of different kinds of communities. Just like retaillers, some are “destination” communities and others have to rely on traffic generated for other reasons.
As with all web things, you have to give customers a reason to come to your community. One great on ramp for communities is Customer Service, and we’ve written a blog post that talks about exactly that approach:
Cheers,
BW
I really like what you had to say here. I think another important point when talking about having your company participate in the online community is that many try to achieve the bare minimum and call themselves social networkers. An RSS feed here and a Podcast there and like magic they are apart of the conversation. But unless they can offer something original through their site, no one has a reason to go there. Many people that I’ve mentioned this to have said it’s a daunting task, but really, that’s the truth for any functioning business strategy, why is it different for the web?
Hi Ben:
Boy, you sure got the industry stirred up with this one. There is a fortune being made pushing the “if you build it they will come” community strategy.
Truth: people go where they want to go, and if you community does not serve their needs, interests and motivations it will fail.
TO’B
MotiveQuest LLC
It seems so fundamental, but many organizations still don’t have well-defined approaches for why they need a community. Take a hard look at what business problems you’re trying solving and spend time with folks that would be likely candidates to participate. You’ll find the dissenters or naysayers may actually provide the best insight.
George Dearing | Telligent >>> makers of CommunityServer
While not all wikis are communities, many are. We’ve tried to distill our recommended best practices for making a community work into our “Four Keys to Driving Adoption,” none of which have anything to do with technology.
These are:
* Structure your introduction
* Provide ample educational resources
* Weave the community into existing workflows
* Find ways to reward participation (hint: Many rewards don’t cost a thing)
The full details are here:
http://drivingadoption.pbwiki.com/
It’s definitely a challenge to figure out how best to “promote” your online community - because obviously you want people to know about it - without it becoming just another form of traditional advertising or spam. In our case, at http://www.needish.com , our community is our product (we are a social network where you can share what you need and offer and receive help), so it’s even more important to get the word out than it might be for another company that’s just creating a community as a fun aside to its other business. The one advantage that websites like us do have is that money that goes into improving the community is, by definition, improving our product, as opposed to other companies that have a community as an additional expense.
First off, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that most failed communities failed because of lack of management. I tell my clients that a community is like a garden, launching the platform is like plowing the field, but to reap a harvest you need to weed wand water the garden daily.
I think part of the problem is that online communities require both a tech solution and a people solution, and practically all of the players in the market are tech providers only. My company, Nattergalen, provides outsource community management and development services, and I am almost always the only person my clients have talked to who even discusses poat launch management with them, much less offers it as a service.
I’d like to add that I think lack of the people component is also due to the nascent nature of community management as a profession.
Most will need to develop the skills internally. And we suggest to our clients/prospects that the best way to learn is to practice, practice, practice by experimenting with something smaller scope (e.g focus groups, distributors, internal initiatives) before expanding the scope of their goals. Plenty of low cost community platforms to use, even for small-medium businesses.
C.H.Low, CEO, http://www.orbius.com
Great article Ben; it’s all too true from my observations. The success of online communities is directly related to the passion of the participants, not the money invested by the underwriter. At iRise we funded an online community for business analysts and user experience professionals (http://www.catalyze.org/) and have blown by 4,000 members in the first year. We’ve taken the attitude that iRise is just one member of the larger community; we have a voice, but we have not worried about control. We may be an exception, but in our case it’s working well.
I agree with much of what you are reporting here. The only thing we should be careful not pretend that things like social media, online communities and other strong trends - have arrived with any maturity. I think we are in the bleeding edge when it comes to realizing planned success in these areas. In marketing we talk about “accountable spending” which is a another way of saying ROI. Well when we look at online communities we know there is great promise there but its not mature enough for companies to follow best practices that will assure good results.
My services are aimed at helping companies grow their social media and online community programs. Optimism must be balanced with a pragmatic expectations.
Yes, it’s true and I am completely agree. Great article Ben! Thanks.
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Yes, it’s true and I am completely agree. Great article Ben! Thanks.
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Surprisingly, in the language learning industry, the online communities proved to be a very important and very necessary part of the overall marketing and product strategy. They are the best platform to launch new brands in this industry and to reach the young customers that are so hard to reach with traditional advertising. I don’t know what the companies outside the language learning industry are doing wrong but in language learning we have many examples of thriving communities with hundreds of thousands of young members.
Nice to see you short blog created a wave of responses. Need ideas on how to build a community so people come? Download the white paper, 6 P’s of online community building. at www.internetdough.NET
A big problem we see time and again is that “traditional” businesses view online communities as a marketing activity that has a start and end date, and projected response rates. Successful communities have to be designed and funded to have no end date; buy-in and real participation from marketing, customer service, product management and other areas; and, support from top management.
As others have said, customers will quickly sense the difference between a real community, and a marketing exercise.
Good article - Thanks
Blogged abouy it at http://www.bioteams.com/2008/09/03/why_most_online.html#more
ken thompson
http://www.bioteams.com
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Totally agree. At WebWise Solutions we have seen this time and time again — companies want the benefits of a community without ponying up the content and attention that will deliver the core value to community members. We consider it a challenge similar to running a restaurant. Much harder than throwing a big party. Yet companies sometimes treat it as a one-time effort they can celebrate and then abandon. Our best clients understand the scope of the commitment, and provide the necessary long-term nurturing that will make it a success.
Check out my blog about it here http://www.webwiseone.com/node/280/why+online+communities+often+fail
WSJ.com's business-technology blog focuses on the technology that businesses use -- the hardware, software, services and know-how that can make or break a business -- and on the people who deploy that technology. The lead writer is Ben Worthen, who joined The Wall Street Journal from CIO Magazine. The blog also includes contributions from other reporters and editors at the Journal, WSJ.com and Dow Jones Newswires. Have a comment? Write to 