Online Communities:
The Social Web
dave vogler, sparkhouse
3 Questions:
What? Why?
How?
...is social media?
...is a social network?
...is this important?
...bother?
...do you build a community?
...do you keep it alive?
What is Social Media?
• a platform for interaction and relationships
• conversation empowered by technology
What is a social network?
• A group of interdependent people
• United by a common interest or cause
What is a social network service?
• an online space where a group convenes
• a conversation enabled by internet technologies
a little history... Four Major Landmarks in Human Communication:
Printing Press
Pictures/Movies
Telegraph/Telephone
Radio/Television
The Internet
• Delivers all media types
• text
• images
• audio
• video
• Native support for conversation
• it took 35 years to figure this out
Media Model
Thenone tomany
Media Model
Thenone tomany
and back
Media Model
Noweveryone
talks
Why does this matter?
• 75% of North Americans use the internet
• 96% of Gen Y reports joining a social network
• Age 35+ is fastest growing demographic on facebook.com
Why does this matter?
50 million users:
Radio TV
FacebookInternet
4 years
38 years 13 years
3 years
Why does this matter?
• Facebook now has 300 million users
• the last 50 million since July
• that’s almost as big as the United States
Why does this matter?
• YouTube: 1,000,000 viewers each month
• 15 hours of video uploaded per minute
• Wikipedia: 14 million articles
• 200 million blogs online
Why does this matter?
• Pieces of content shared on Facebook in a single week:
2 Billion
Why does this matter?
• By the end of 2008, social networks have surpassed email in popularity
• Social media is now mainstream
• Technological value becomes social value
Types of social networks
• Extension of existing community
• Entirely new community
• Geographically independent
• Local to certain area
Building a Community
• What do prospective members need?
• What are perceived communication gaps?
• Survey, poll, interview, gauge enthusiasm
• Benchmark similar sites
• Look for niche if needed
Research
Building a Community
• Content strategy
• Engagement strategy
• Governance
• Feature list
• User experience
• Technology
Action Plans
Content Strategy
• Authors, guest authors
• User-generated content (UGC)
• Aggregators
• Licensed content
Where will content come from?
Engagement Strategy
• perceived value to new user
• flywheel:
• zero inertia at start
• participation attracts more participation
• incentivise participation
• avoid ‘ghost town’... keep size ‘just right’
UGC Drives Growth
Engagement Strategy
• Face to face events
• Email newsletters
• Traditional promotion, word of mouth
• Your users become your evangelists
Governance
• Convene your community, not control it.
• Community guidelines are key
• Moderation tools
• Community manager
• Listen well (both on and off site)
• Easily accessible feedback process
Features
• Member database
• Blogs / Articles
• Article comments
• Discussion Forums
• Event Calendar
• News ticker
• Links to other
• Ranking/voting/polling
• Moderation control
• Photo galleries
• Video galleries
• File sharing
• “Mysite” customization
• Newsletters
User Experience
• Good user experience= good impression
• Well designed interface delights users
• Verify workflows are reasonable
• Usability testing is cheap with big payback
Technology
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Domain registrar
• Reliable hosting & database support
• Scalable hosting as traffic grows
• Service provider or custom- built
Services
• groupsite.com
• socialgo.com
• ning.com
• blogger.com
Custom Built
• Drupal
• Joomla
• ExpressionEngine
• MODx
• Elgg
• Proprietary
thank you
sparkhouse.com
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