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1. Independent forum around a place or common interest

2. Platform set up by an organisation, to which it invites customers, stakeholders, staff etc for marketing, customer support or research purposes

3. Discussion by people on the web, generally

Online community, eh?

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The variety of formats makes it hard to estimate the scale of usage of online communities. In terms of general take-up of social networking:• 40% of UK adults now use social networking

sites at home. Nearly 25m access Facebook, up 31% in a year

Source: Ofcom Communications Market Report 2010

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The views of peers online – even those not personally known – consistently emerge as amongst the most highly trusted

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Why do communities form?

•Interest: Communities of people who share the same interest or passion. •Action: Communities of people trying to bring about change.•Place: Communities of people brought together by geographic boundaries.•Practice: Communities of people in the same profession or undertake the same activities.•Circumstance: Communities of people brought together by external events/situations.

Source: http://www.feverbee.com/2010/11/different-types-of-communities.html

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Community of interest

Source: http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/forums/

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Community of action

Source: http://fairtradetowns.ning.com/

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Community of place

Source: http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/

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Community of practice

Source: http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk

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Community of circumstance

Source: http://www.tripadvisor.com/

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and also: Community of innovation?

Source: http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/

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Types of online community

Led by individuals

Led by organisations

Content oriented

Conversation oriented

Magazine off-shoots

Fanforums Hyperlocal

sites

Customerforums

Communityblogs

Campaigncommunities

Big groupforums

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Types of online community

Led by individuals

Led by organisations

Content oriented

Conversation oriented

http://www.kumb.com/forum/

http://www.nme.com/boards/

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/

http://en.community.dell.com/

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Goals for community engagement

Listening

Audience insight, understanding views

Buzz generation

Stimulating discussion, encouraging sharing

Discussion & Response

Driving take-up, asking for feedback

Co-production

Working with a community to produce

a resource

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Identifying relevant communities

• Define a list of keywords and potential synonyms, including slang or casual terms

• Use Google search adding ‘+chat’ or ‘+forum’ to find communities on that topic:

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Identifying relevant communities

Try dedicated forum or social media search tools Omgili: http://omgili.comSocialMention: http://socialmention.comAlexa toolbar (sense of site traffic/popularity): http://alexa.com

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Five things to look for:

•Number of topics and posts • not just the number of views

•Date of last post in the main threads• is the forum dormant? are only some threads active?

•Structure & management• introductory threads for new members, FAQ etc?

•Contact details for owner/moderator•Member list

• can give a sense of scale, but many might be inactive/spam

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2.8m uniques/month27,000 forum posts/day50 volunteer moderators

82,000 pageviews150+ case studies900 posts/month

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• What’s been your experience of finding and working with online communities?

• What are the pros and cons of partnering with vs building communities?

• Who is (or should be) doing the liaison with external online communities?