Online Communities: the Social Web

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

• facebook

• twitter

Custom Built

• Drupal

• Joomla

• ExpressionEngine

• MODx

• Elgg

• Proprietary

thank you

sparkhouse.com