How to Change Your Online Community Software Platform

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Do you know how to switch private community vendors without upsetting your customer or management? Online community software is a staple of modern customer and member engagement strategies. However, over time, your strategies evolve, your community grows, and your online community software vendor goes through changes too. Each week, dozens of organizations want to change or upgrade their private social networking software, but don’t want to lose any of the activity data and engagement they have worked hard to generate. To help businesses and membership organizations learn how to make this transition smoothly, Socious has developed a new educational webinar. View the full webinar-on-demand at: http://web.socious.com/webinar-how-to-switch-online-community-platforms

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HOW TO SWITCH ONLINE COMMUNITY PLATFORMS

WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND OR YOUR JOB

Tech Check

Ask Questions in the Q&A Panel

We ARE Recording!

Twitter: @SociousSoftware

HOUSEKEEPING

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Catherine Davidge Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP)

Paul Schneider Socious

TODAY’S DISCUSSION

1. The Keys to Successfully Changing Your Online Community Platform

2. Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Process Questions

3. Questions You Must Ask Your Old & New Online Community Software Providers

WHY DO ORGANIZATIONS CHANGE ONLINE

COMMUNITY SOFTWARE?

AN ONLINE COMMUNITY STORY

WHY FOLLOW A PROCESS

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL SWITCH

UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE MAKING THE SWITCH

UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE MAKING THE SWITCH

Make a clear case.

Survey and interview customers or members.

UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE MAKING THE SWITCH

Get stakeholder buy-in and let them

serve as champions.

PRO

TIP

UNDERSTAND HOW YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR DATA FROM

YOUR OLD COMMUNITY

UNDERSTAND HOW YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR DATA FROM

YOUR OLD COMMUNITY

How to avoid losing historical activity data.

How to import existing community data into your new platform.

UNDERSTAND HOW YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR DATA FROM YOUR OLD COMMUNITY

Identify data migration experts either internally or

externally.

PRO

TIP

YOUR SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION

YOUR SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION

This is an opportunity for a smarter online community rollout.

Take the time to make a plan.

YOUR SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION

Involve the stakeholder champions.

PRO

TIP

DON’T FORGET THE TRAINING

DON’T FORGET THE TRAINING

How to retain community members during a community

platform change.

Take advantage of webinars.

MAKE IT FUN FOR YOUR COMMUNITY

MEMBERS TO RE-ENGAGE

MAKE IT FUN FOR YOUR COMMUNITY

MEMBERS TO RE-ENGAGE

Get your community excited.

How to creating sustainable online community.

GUIDANCE ON THE MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED

QUESTIONS

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is the best way to evaluate other online community

platforms, so I don’t end up in the same boat again?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is the first step in a transition?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

When should I tell my current provider we are leaving?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Should there be a cost to transfer our existing data to the new

system?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What types of data will I be able to transfer?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What format should my data be in?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Will I lose data in the transition?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What are tips for communicating with the two vendors in this

transition?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do I let my members know we are switching to a new

system?

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

When should I let my members know we are switching systems?

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR NEW AND

OLD VENDORS

ASK YOUR OUTGOING COMMUNITY PROVIDER

Who will be our contact as we make this transition?

#1

ASK YOUR OUTGOING COMMUNITY PROVIDER

What format are you prepared to give us our data in?

#2

ASK YOUR OUTGOING COMMUNITY PROVIDER

Will you give us two loads (a test load & the actual load) or just one?

#3

ASK YOUR OUTGOING COMMUNITY PROVIDER

How much lead time will you need for us to get the data on the date required?

#4

ASK YOUR OUTGOING COMMUNITY PROVIDER

Will there be a cost for the extraction of our data or do we need to pay future months payments upfront to get our community data?

#5

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY PROVIDER

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

What is the lead time you need to do the final load?

#1

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

What formats can you work with to import our data?

#2

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

What data can be imported? #3

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

How much experience do you have importing data from other systems?

#4

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

Since we don’t want to go through this again, can we add the following clause to our contract?

#5

ASK YOUR NEW COMMUNITY PROVIDER

“The data that is shared in the system (blogs, discussions, files, member data, graphics created by Customer) will

always remain the property of the Customer. At no time does ABC Company have rights to this data for its own use other than to administer it through the site. If the Customer should terminate this agreement, ABC Company will work

with Subscriber to give the data back in an acceptable format to the customer.”

TAKEAWAYS

MANAGING CHANGE

FEATURE SELECTION

DATA CONVERSION

TRAINING

QUESTIONS

Catherine Davidge Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) www.amp.org

Paul Schneider Socious @SociousSoftware

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