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What Is An Online Community And How Is It Relevant To My Business?
Wikipedia says:
An online community is a virtual community that exists online whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership rituals (Amy Jo Kim, 2000). An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as Weblogs. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.
As you can tell from this definition, online communities have been around for a long time. In more recent years they have developed into a significant influence on business. Once companies began to realise how much of an impact their customers comments and opinions have on their marketplace they started to develop their own communities.
The significant players have been involved with online communities for a long time and include social networks in their long-term marketing strategy. The likes of IBM and Nike have a strong presence in Second Life the virtual 3D user-created community, whilst Dell, Starbucks and Zappos have significant Twitter and Facebook campaigns. The need for a strong, reliable business to business community has seen the rise of sites such as LinkeIn and Ecademy.
How do I keep my community involved and vibrant?Many companies decide to develop their own community, particularly for customer or employee engagement.
Whether you decide to develop your own community or become involved in an existing one you need to understand the life-cycle of user involvement. Without this understanding your community or following will falter and die.
Lave and Wenger have developed a model that illustrates a cycle of how users become involved in virtual communities. They suggest there are five types of participation trajectory amongst a learning community:
What is an online community and how is it relevant to my business?Wikipedia says:
An online community is a virtual community that exists online whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership rituals (Amy Jo Kim, 2000). An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as Weblogs. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.
As you can tell from this definition, online communities have been around for a long time. In more recent years they have developed into a significant influence on business. Once companies began to realise how much of an impact their customers comments and opinions have on their marketplace they started to develop their own communities.
The significant players have been involved with online communities for a long time and include social networks in their long-term marketing strategy. The likes of IBM and Nike have a strong presence in Second Life the virtual 3D user-created community, whilst Dell, Starbucks and Zappos have significant Twitter and Facebook campaigns. The need for a strong, reliable business to business community has seen the rise of sites such as LinkeIn and Ecademy.
How do I keep my community involved and vibrant?Many companies decide to develop their own community, particularly for customer or employee engagement.
Whether you decide to develop your own community or become involved in an existing one you need to understand the life-cycle of user involvement. Without this understanding your community or following will falter and die.
Lave and Wenger have developed a model that illustrates a cycle of how users become involved in virtual communities. They suggest there are five types of participation trajectory amongst a learning community:
1.Peripheral (i.e. Lurker) This is someone who views content but does not add to the content or discussion. For example, a user who is directed to a video on YouTube as a one-time only viewer.
2.Inbound (i.e. Novice) This is someone new to the community who may add a little bit of content and interacts in a few discussions relevant to their area of interest.
3.Insider (i.e. Regular) This type of user is fully committed to the community and regularly posts content as well as interacting with other users.
4.Boundary (i.e. Leader) These leaders influence the community by brokering interactions, connecting with regulars and making comments and references to other members content.
5.Outbound (i.e. Elder) Eventually a user may leave the community for a variety of reasons. This may happen if the community moves in a new direction or an outside influence such as a new relationship or job takes up so much time that the user cannot maintain a constant presence.
Remember that you need to keep fresh and engaging content to maintain a healthy community or following. You must consider the needs of all your users, allowing for the various stages of the lifecycle of involvement. If you do this you are more likely to keep building and achieve your aims for originally starting (or joining) your community.
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