Online Community Cacophony
Okay, so a long time ago I wrote several blog posts related to Goplow.com, our associations new content+community website, and I promised more...and then I didn't get you anything else because nothing great happened for a while. But I am here with an update as our small association pushes itself hard to build this resource we've created. And I must say that creating and growing an online community is the wild west of the association world; one must stay true to the association's goals and fight through the cacophony of noise that is out there relating to creating and fostering a digital community.
Thanks to great resources at ASAE and some solid colleagues met through the annual meeting, I was emotionally prepared for the initial LAL (lull after launch, just made that up). Since then, we've made some good headway, here are some things we have done:
A Great Story: We launched a video contest for our publication in the fall. Each issue we feature a snow professional on the cover, and it's a great honor, so we created a contest where folks could submit videos explaining why their story should be told. We got a whopping 8 entries, 2 of which didn't qualify, so sounds like a drag, right? I disagree; we got 6 great companies to share their stories with us, and the winner especially had a powerful story that I think will resonate with our magazine readership, and we probably would have never known of it...and we doubled our traffic to the site BTW and people really watched the videos.
Partnering: We forged a new publishing partnership, believe it or not with our main competitor online in our market. We strategically built our site to differentiate it from this site from the start, so together we complement each other and offer better choice for our advertisers and end-users. This allows us to spread our message via email and in print to new audiences, at much higher numbers then previously; we provide quality content links, they feature their diverse community, and both sites drive traffic.
Synergy: In the past year we launched an online marketplace with another partner, linked to our site homepage. In 2011 we hope to take this a step further, pulling the sites closer by creating a sub-domain on our site for the marketplace, which will allow us to leverage the high-SEO potential of a site like the marketplace (tons of links to other sites!), and make it easier to market the sites (instead of separate URL's) to drive traffic, and make it more intuitive for site users.
Constant Review: We just finished a user's survey, and thanks to a very strong financial start for the site in terms of ad sales, we are able to re-invest a portion of that revenue into the site in 2011. Concept is: launch, implement, review, rework, and the process starts all over again.
Would love to hear how others are building their online communities in any function, or if anyone has advice for us as we grow our fledgling community!
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Comments
Hey Brian.
What would you say were your top three challenges with the community? And how are you addressing them?
Also, what do people want when they come to the community? Plow stories... Tips. What attracts them and what keeps them coming back?
Great story BTW.
Posted by: chris uschan | February 16, 2011 9:49 PM
Great information, Brian. Though you said GoPlow is small, you should know that the work we do with online communities for large associations mirrors a lot of what your organization is doing. Growth is going to come from the content you add to your community. Record webinars, blog up a storm, and pull in RSS feed from relevant industry sources to give people a reason to interact and come back. Here are six other tips for launching an successful online community:
1) Before you start, get buy-in from all levels of your organization.
2) Set goals for your online community before you begin implementing (examples: revenue generation, knowledge sharing, legislative action, chapter management, etc.).
3) Identify who will own the online community inside your organization.
4) Clearly map out on which members will have access to which information in your community.
5) Establish who is going to create content.
6) Don’t be afraid to start small.
Chris, one of the most important steps in the implementation process is collecting data on your audience’s needs, expectations, and online communication preferences. Knowing your audience like that will go a long way toward helping you developing the content and features that will engage your specific members from the start.
Having in place a strong promotional plan, content plan, and growth plan before you launch the community will mitigate many of the challenges and lulls organizations often see.
Posted by: Joshua Paul | February 17, 2011 5:51 PM