Feeding the Five Thousand: Keeping Online Communities Alive
At The Hyde Group, they've started an online community for residents and staff of this large, widely-geographically-dispersed housing association.
It's called the Hyde 5000.
It's working pretty well.
In the six months I spent there, membership was steadily increasing to respectable levels - if still some way below the five-thousand members they hope eventually to engage.
But what's the point of having an online community? Is it right for your group? And how does any such community keep things rolling in that will be of interest to its members over time? To decide the first two of these questions, you need to ask whether there's actually any need for an online community amongst the people you hope to attract to your group.
How many are in the group? Where do they live? Does the group have a clear goal or raison d'être? Do the people you hope to gather together actually use the Internet, and use it easily? What advantages will online communication have over other ways this group might share experiences and information? To decide the third issue - how to keep things going - you need to think about two things: content, and functionality.
You read a lot about the importance of content in blogs and websites of all kinds.
Advice abounds about the need for "quality content" at all times.
Sometimes this advice is really a short-hand for "well-written, literate articles" with decent spelling and proofreading.
There's nothing that puts people off a site - or reduces its credibility - faster than spelling and grammatical errors, even in our post-literate age.
But the need for "quality content" goes well beyond this.
For a community to thrive, the content needs to be relevant - to relate to some lively issue of immediate concern to visitors - and it needs to be current, or at least frequently-updated.
And this is where issues of functionality arise - because if only one or two people are contributing to the site, other members will never feel a sense of ownership about the site, and most will soon get bored.
We've all been members - or avoided being members - of groups or committees where one two or three people do all the work and all the others just complain about it.
Is this actually fun for anyone? Or is this just some kind of therapy or martyr-trip for those at the centre? The real brilliance of Facebook and other social networking sites lies in understanding that most of us long to be heard, loved and understood.
It's the Karaoke principle, applied to online thinking.
People don't want to be passive receptacles of websites any more than they want to sit all night watching other people sing when they themselves have a secret yen to be a pop star, And remember - pop stars themselves are no longer gods but - mercilessly visible thanks to 24-hour media coverage - just guys and gals like us.
So the functionality of your site has to allow easy-to-post contributions from anyone involved.
That will give a sense of satisfaction, and pride of ownership.
Other point to consider in a design:
But in making these decisions, please don't ignore the character of the real people you want to serve - and the real possibilities that exist within the amazing online communities we have already.
It's called the Hyde 5000.
It's working pretty well.
In the six months I spent there, membership was steadily increasing to respectable levels - if still some way below the five-thousand members they hope eventually to engage.
But what's the point of having an online community? Is it right for your group? And how does any such community keep things rolling in that will be of interest to its members over time? To decide the first two of these questions, you need to ask whether there's actually any need for an online community amongst the people you hope to attract to your group.
How many are in the group? Where do they live? Does the group have a clear goal or raison d'être? Do the people you hope to gather together actually use the Internet, and use it easily? What advantages will online communication have over other ways this group might share experiences and information? To decide the third issue - how to keep things going - you need to think about two things: content, and functionality.
You read a lot about the importance of content in blogs and websites of all kinds.
Advice abounds about the need for "quality content" at all times.
Sometimes this advice is really a short-hand for "well-written, literate articles" with decent spelling and proofreading.
There's nothing that puts people off a site - or reduces its credibility - faster than spelling and grammatical errors, even in our post-literate age.
But the need for "quality content" goes well beyond this.
For a community to thrive, the content needs to be relevant - to relate to some lively issue of immediate concern to visitors - and it needs to be current, or at least frequently-updated.
And this is where issues of functionality arise - because if only one or two people are contributing to the site, other members will never feel a sense of ownership about the site, and most will soon get bored.
We've all been members - or avoided being members - of groups or committees where one two or three people do all the work and all the others just complain about it.
Is this actually fun for anyone? Or is this just some kind of therapy or martyr-trip for those at the centre? The real brilliance of Facebook and other social networking sites lies in understanding that most of us long to be heard, loved and understood.
It's the Karaoke principle, applied to online thinking.
People don't want to be passive receptacles of websites any more than they want to sit all night watching other people sing when they themselves have a secret yen to be a pop star, And remember - pop stars themselves are no longer gods but - mercilessly visible thanks to 24-hour media coverage - just guys and gals like us.
So the functionality of your site has to allow easy-to-post contributions from anyone involved.
That will give a sense of satisfaction, and pride of ownership.
Other point to consider in a design:
- How are articles and submissions organised? Is there a 'search' facility with a familiar interface - or will visitors need to trawl through lists of dates and titles for what they want to find? (they won't, you know!!)
- Are there easy-to-follow submissions guidelines, so that people wanting to upload and exchange ideas can do so with minimal fuss?
- Who is going to "web-master" the site? If there's nobody available to perform this important function - keeping an eye on whether the elements of the site are functioning as they should - things will soon become chaotic, and visitors will feel reluctant to put their time in.
- Would an e-mail group or Facebook sub-site - or a Google Blog site - do just as well for your group as a dedicated website? For many of us, such a group - which can be organised around any topic that meets basic requirements of the server for decency, copyright and respect - will do just fine.
As a bonus it will have the hot functionality that spending zillions of dollars on web development brings.
But in making these decisions, please don't ignore the character of the real people you want to serve - and the real possibilities that exist within the amazing online communities we have already.