22 Jul, 2008
“Why most online communities fail”
Posted by: jonl In: Markets are Conversations| Online Community
Just before I spoke at SEM for SMB last week, Bijoy Goswami sent me a link to a Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Most Online Communities Fail.” I referred to it in my presentation because it reinforced points I was making (I was presenting on the subject of online business communities).
Businesses launching online communities repeat a series of blunders. First, they have a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology. Moran suggests that businesses spend resources identifying and reaching out to potential community members instead of investing in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology.Moran also recommends that businesses put someone who has experience running an online community in charge of the project. This doesn’t sound particularly earth-shattering, but consider that about 30% of the businesses Deloitte studied have only one part-time worker in charge of their communities. Most other businesses put a single marketing pro in charge of their sites.
The article goes on to question community metrics: “Businesses say that their primary objectives are generating word-of-mouth marketing and increasing customer loyalty. Yet the metric that businesses use most often to measure success is the number of visits to the site.” The lack of clarity about metrics reflects inattention to strategy. Many companies have an idea why they want community, but they haven’t taken time for detailed discussion. It’s more “add this and see if it works” without sufficient investment of time, money and energy to ensure that community does, in fact, make sense and “work” to achieve well-considered goals. Prototyping is not a bad idea, but adding community as an experiment is pointless if there’s no commitment to the experiment’s success.
