Bold (33 page)

2. 
Navigation.
People need to know how to move around easily. They want to know where to go and what they'll find there, and if you can't tell them this information quickly and clearly, there are plenty of other places to visit online. In other words, the navigation bar is not the place to get creative. Take DIY Drones, an online community of UAV enthusiasts. The first thing you see when you land on the site is a big box that reads: “Welcome to DIY Drones” and directions for how to use the site, including the ever-important “I'm new to this—where do I start?” tab, prominently displayed.

3. 
Simple Registration.
If it takes more than thirty seconds to become a member of your community, you're not going to have many members. Similarly, if you want much more than my email address, then I suspect you're secretly planning to make money selling my personal information and I'm not interested. Ask for my email. Tell me exactly what I'm getting in return. Promise me that you're not going to resell my data. And give me an easy way to invite my friends to join as well.

4. 
The Information.
What to post on your platform is much a matter of personal preference, but it's helpful to remember that people join online communities for four main reasons: a sense of belonging, a support network, greater influence, and a way to sate curiosity/explore new ideas. Most everything you choose to put on the site should be designed to meet these needs.

5. 
Recognition.
Whether you create a leaderboard/rating system or make your blog open (anyone can post), be sure to highlight popular content (for example, the right side of the DIY Drone's is devoted to Top Content)—specifically, a short description of the blog post and, more important, a larger picture of the person posting. Remember, this is reputation economics; people want to be celebrated for their contributions.

6. 
Scalability.
Sure, you might think you want a gargantuan membership, but understand that good communities are messy places. This is key. You want some of this mess because it will
generate more new ideas and help accelerate the rate of innovation and make those members who hate top-down authority feel more comfortable, but you also need to be able to steer (not control) the mess. This means you have to give members a way to break into smaller groups. This is why, for example, Facebook is not always the best home for a DIY or exponential community.

No way around it, getting out of the gate is always tough. But you don't actually need many members to have an impact. In fact, as Richard Millington, founder of the community consultancy FeverBee, wrote in his blog: “The bigger a community gets, the less people participate. This creates wastage and makes it impossible for the community manager to identify and work with the top members. Better to extract 1 hour a day from 100 committed members than have 50,000 mostly inactive lurkers. Stay small and extract maximum value from the few, not a little from the many.”
²³

So how many members do you actually need? Again, less than you probably think. Most experts recommend handpicking (see below) your first ten to fifteen members so that when visitors drop by there's something interesting going on. Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mightybell, has found that 150 members is usually the point at which the community itself begins to carry the conversation.

Here's how to get started.

1. 
Be the First Mover.
It seems obvious, but being the first one into any space gives you considerable leverage. If people want to have a conversation and your community is the only place to have it, you're already winning. If you can't be first mover in a space, then the problem you're here to tackle (your MTP) better be significantly different and arguably more visionary than the
competition's.

2. 
Handpick Early Members.
Research shows your early adopters tend to become your most ardent supporters. Get the ball rolling by personally handpicking your first ten to fifteen members. Be sure to engage these folks in the community-building process. Ask for their advice. Integrate their input. Don't waste your time going after big names. As a general rule, these folks are busy with their own communities.

3. 
Establish a Newcomer's Ritual.
You want to give members a way to feel like they belong—but they have to earn it. Create a ritual and tie it to a specific membership milestone. After a new member has their fifth blog post or one of their comments draws ten likes on Facebook, reward that level of participation with a token.

4. 
Listen.
No matter what your core vision is, you can't get anywhere without your members. So pay attention to what they have to say and be prepared to change direction when necessary.

There is no way around the fact that running an online community puts you into the content business. While there are plenty of experts who feel that too much engagement from a community manager is not a good thing, too little is an easy way to increase member drift. Most of the founders we spoke with claimed that they were on the site and taking care of their community constantly, especially over the first six months after launch. In other words, they became content production machines. This goes with the territory. Expect it, plan for it, and execute.

Here's a list of the five basic content categories to draw upon, and below that, a chart breaking down how typical communities spread out this content.

1. 
The Future.
This takes many forms. You can preview an upcoming event or preview an upcoming product launch or preview
the upcoming week (what will be happening on the site over the next seven days) or make predictions about the coming year. Previews are a great way to keep the community informed, while predictions are a great way to start a debate. Both are useful.

2. 
The News.
This can be a news roundup or breaking news or news about just-released products (product reviews). All are commonly used and fairly effective. That said, because plenty of other sites go this route, be sure to find a way to make your news new. Give it an edge. Be funny. More critically, be sure to do a member news section. What is the community doing? Did someone do something amazing or change jobs or bump into a VIP? Using your site as a way to celebrate member achievements is a great way to foster loyalty and enthusiasm.

3. 
The Interview.
The interview is one of the most powerful tools for building engagement. Choose a member of the month and interview him or her. Choose your oldest member and interview him or her. And equally important, do VIP interviews. One quick note of advice on VIP interviews: Unless you have an existing relationship, work your way up to the top. Start by finding VIPs slightly lower down on the totem pole—these folks are interviewed far less than CEOs and are often much more excited to talk to the media.

4. 
Advice.
This can certainly include advice from the founder, as people do like to hear from the fearless leader, but you can also solicit advice from members and do a roundup of general advice from the community or—very underutilized but useful—advice from those in an adjacent field.

5. 
The Guest.
Whether we're talking about op-ed pieces or guest blogs from experts, giving outsiders a forum to communicate with your community can help serve the core and enlarge membership. But it's also worth pointing out that people are busy and many find nothing more intimidating than the blank page—so offer to cowrite pieces as well (though be prepared to do the lion's share of the cowriting).

There are two types of engagement that matter most. The first is low-friction engagement, such as a Facebook like or a re-Tweet. The only reason this type of engagement matters is cosmetic. Many newcomers want social proof that the community they've stumbled upon is the real deal, and having 10,000 or more likes on Facebook will help. That said, a like is not deep engagement. As opposed to low-friction engagement, deep engagement requires building living bridges between members of your community. A living bridge means people are connecting with you and connecting with each other, and in ways that generate real emotions. This is critical. People join communities for the ideas; they stay for the emotions.

Now, clearly there are many ways to generate emotions in your community. We'll examine some of the more powerful below, but the most important thing to know is that deep engagement demands rapid experimentation. Remember the point of these experiments is to get people talking to one another and get them working together. Keep trying different ways to make communication easier and increase chances of collaboration.

Here are five of the most useful engagement strategies.

1. 
Reputation.
We saw with TopCoder how effectively a rating system and leaderboard drove engagement. Consider that there are now dozens and dozens of software companies that won't hire new talent unless they have a TopCoder rating. When an engagement strategy becomes a business fundamental, that's serious leverage. A leaderboard, meanwhile, allows you to add a game-layer to the community. Publically holding people accountable for their performance creates interesting social dynamics. For competitive members, these dynamics inspire them to work harder to improve their spot on the leaderboard. For the less competitive, having a leaderboard is a great way
to identify areas of expertise among community members. Remember that it doesn't always have to be complicated. Simply highlighting members' contributions or achievements also enhances their reputation.

2. 
The Meet-up.
The goal is to generate real emotions, and nothing works better than live bodies in a room together. Even better, if you can figure out how to make these meet-ups self-organizing—such as Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In circles—you are getting all the benefits of deep engagement with far less effort. Of course, if you can't get everybody together physically, get them together virtually, though don't be afraid of hosting a structured discussion. People are busy. Drawing up boundary lines and focusing the conversation is a great way of showing folks that you respect their time.

3. 
The Challenge.
Whether it's an incentive prize (see the next chapter) or a group project or a well-crafted debate, challenging the community can be a great way to foster cohesion. And have challenges within challenges. Use deadlines to keep things interesting. Add rules that require collaboration—for example, a project must be viewed by a specific number of community members before being accepted as a competition entry.

Equally important, challenges are necessary because they help you keep “entitlement” to a minimum. “The goal of every community is to create a sense of belonging,” says Jono Bacon, the Senior Director of Community at XPRIZE. But there's a flip side: the opposite of belonging is ‘entitlement.' Many communities struggle with entitlement, and it can cause them to become stale when entitled members slow down the pace of innovation. All communities are at risk of becoming stale when they don't challenge themselves.”
²⁴

4. 
Visuals.
Whether it's community founder generated how-to videos or user-generated photos or a simple slideshare, ignoring the fact that the web is a visual medium will only hurt you. People expect a certain degree of eye-candy online today. And eye-candy is easy to crowdsource and easy
to share.

5. 
Be a Connector.
As the community organizer, you'll likely have access to information about the interests, activities, and backgrounds of your members. One of the best ways to engage them and create immense value in the group, especially in the early days, is to introduce like-minded members to each other. Make the introduction, suggest that they meet, and give them a topic or agenda to fuel the conversation. Then watch the ripple effect spread.

Communities are messy places. Yet you need to steer the ship no matter how turbulent the storm. There is a cornucopia of steering wisdom around, but here are the five lessons for managing a community that matter most.

1. 
Benign Dictators.
Everyone we talked to said the same thing: The best communities are run by benevolent tyrants. As Local Motors founder Jay Rogers explains, “There are certain times you need to be a benign dictator. For us, we knew we were going to make a car but had to decide which car to make. We could have let the community decide, but it wasn't that clear-cut. We were worried that people would choose a design for intellectual or academic reasons, but the choice would not fit our business model. And we needed to make something that would sell. So we decided to establish parameters and then let our community make suggestions. We also reserved the right to make final decisions. We were transparent about it. We were benign dictators, but we still needed to be dictators.”

2. 
Stay Calm.
Let the kids play. Will it get loud occasionally? You betcha. But a little fighting is a good thing. So is a little meandering. Writing for Mashable, technology commentator Jolie O'Dell explained it like this: “Often, we jump in too quickly
when a conversation we've started might actually need to simmer for a few hours without our intervention. People need to go off topic, trolls need to be smacked down by power users, sidebar chats need to occur, often without direct comment from within the organization. No one likes the idea that they're being monitored all the time.”
²⁵