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Great information, Scott. Very timely for us as we contemplate 'building it.' I have one question. Does SCCE require members to register or only non-members? I assume the latter as the former would be in direct conflict with the first point about autosubscribing your members, but I just want to be clear about the approach they took on opening the content.

Thanks Tracy, One point first off, I don't know if SCCE autosubscribed or not -- Andy was talking about strategies from multiple customers. The point he was making with the SCCE case was that a counterintutive strategy worked very well for them. Generally, an association going for value will close off their community to make it exclusive (that's a perfectly valid strategy). SCCE differed by opening it up for anybody to read, including search engines. They also allowed anybody to participate, providing that they created an account and/or signed in to do so. The result is that they did create a lot of value because the content was so strong that it repeatedly showed in search results and people saw it and wanted to be involved in the discussion.

As I said, I don't know if SCCE autosubscribed its members into the community. I also don't know if they had a unified log-in between the community and their website. I'll see if I can get Andy to clarify.

I could not disagree more with Andy's point about autosubscribing your members. That is a HUGE mistake. Your database is not your community!! The way to grow it is by starting with small test groups who show an interest, and who have an actual reason to be in there (note: "networking" is not, in and of itself, a good enough reason) and by careful nurturing. Small and good can grow into large and good but large and bad = failure.

I don't know Maddie, I don't like such a hard and fast assessment as it's a huge mistake. A directory of members has long been a benefit of associations. The move from print to online made it more accessible and easier to use in a variety of ways. The next step, building communal aspects around that is a natural progression. No where in there does it seem like such a huge violation of privacy or ethics for it to be opt-out instead of opt-in. Maybe a better term to use would be to autopopulate your members, the idea being that they won't have to enter all their information in again. And I'd take it one step further, if your organization has special industry groups, for example, I think it's fine to automatically put them in that group. Now I'd stop at turning on any sort of alerting system automatically. I'd want people to opt-in to that.

I totally agree with you about how to get people to use the communal parts of the system -- start with small groups, and be sure you don't just approach it as an education of the members. It's an education of the organization, too, as they need to learn from the small test groups about how to be better at community building.

Scott: I like your thinking about auto-populating, but that technique benefits me as the user ... saving me time online. While it may not be seen as a big invasion of privacy, auto-registering me for a community places the org. in control of my identity, something I haven't signed up for or given permission to it to manage. Have we really moved beyond the basic tenets of permission marketing/online engagement? I sure hope not.

I'm with Maddie. Auto-subscribing is something I associate with bad retail sites that make it tough to get off their lists/out of their "community." Maybe that stigma is changing, but not completely.

IF someone is going to auto-subscribe me and make it an opt-out community it needs to be done in a very transparent way that reflects a community mindset, not the database mindset Maddie points out as inappropriate. The message about it should be personal and conversational: "We've got a great community online where you can connect with lots of like-minded colleagues and get answers to your questions. If that's not something you want to participate in right now, just uncheck this box."

I think Jeffrey is actually very compelling arguing AGAINST his bias against auto-subscribing. How often do we create new services, promote heavily for their premiere, then largely ignore it & wonder why there's little excitement and nobody new visits or buys after the first burst of publicity? I think this is probably very true for the NFi/HL type platforms, which will be new to the adopting association, and also have the disadvantage of being unfamiliar in nature to 90% of your members. Many of them may understand Facebook & LinkedIn by now, but many still don't equate their 'lobbyist'* or their 'magazine'* with an easy to use online community they should join & participate in.

A nice way to short-circuit this, in effect to tell rather than sell, is to auto-subscribe the member in a digest mode, and to make it extremely easy for them to opt-out. They can get periodic (not frequent) community messages and they won't notice or judge the new community for its lack of content or relevance to them. Obviously, the community doesn't exist on Day 1 of release. Play nice by not auto-subscribing, and it may not exist in two years either ... or it may exist for the 5% who are early adopters. We'd probably judge it a success on having quality but not quantity participation, and we'll have incurred the opportunity cost of not having another 50% of our membership online, at least as lurkers.

*Sadly, common terms I still hear in focus groups and interviews from rank-and-file members describing their trade and individual member associations, respectively.