General Assembly Community Development Strategy

We usedGeneral Assembly Community Development Stategies General Assemby Community DevelopmentYour Values are your promise to the community — they establish trust — and your job is to deliver on those Values.

Your Vision, how you want to change the world, identifies your allies and your enemies. Without this, your brand stands for nothing and nobody will stand with you.

YOUR PEOPLE ARE YOUR SEEDS

» Give your people the stage - don’t communicate as a logo.

» Remember: Google is moving toward high rewards for author-attributed content.

» The first community is the one already inside your business — expose it.

FOLLOW THE INFLUENCERS

Your community will overlap with influencer communities. Study how influencers in your space have encouraged community development on their sites:

» Do they reward involvement?

» Do they share the spotlight with top contributors?

COMMUNITY IS PORTABLE

Study your audience’s haunt. Your site won’t be the only place where your community exists.

THE FIRST STEPS TO BUILDING A COMMUNITY

1. Invite guest writers

• Works with even a small initial audience

• Establishes a sense of investment in the guest writer

• Attracts their audience to your site

• Influencers who know them will begin to know you

2. Interview influencers

• Great way to “borrow” their audience for a moment

• Outside of the most popular influencers, most are happy to answer a few questions

• Remember consistency bias — helping out makes us want to help out again

• Instant credibility for pitching up the chain

3. Hold contests

• People love free stuff

• Make it compelling and a challenge — tie it to your brand

• If you provide small business services, partner with some friends to offer a business package as the reward

4. Publish case studies

• Customers can make your most supportive community members

• Present them in a favorable light, and they’ll be proud of the case study

• Helps sell your products / services with storytelling (not pure self-promotion)

5. Make a “best of” list post

• Point readers to the best resources on a topic

• Let the content producers know you’ve done it

• Ego and reciprocity prevail

MAKE COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION A GAME

» Point systems build rewards into community engagement

» One company, moz.com, nailed this with their “thumb” system

» SocialMediaExaminer.com similarly created a “top contributors” board, based

on points awarded by other community members for comments

CUSTOMER REVIEWS

» A report published by Search Engine Land in 2012 found that 72% of online consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations

» Reviews also increase the level of relevant content on the page (SEO)

UGC EVOLUTION

Use these forms of UGC in early days:

» Guest blog posts (by invite)

» Group interviews

» Surveys

» Embedded Twitter discussions

The possibility for these opens up once you have a robust community:

» Forums (Webmaster World)

» Dedicated UGC blogs (see Moz.com’s YOUmoz)

» Regular guest writers and editors

BEWARE: UGC CAN GO WRONG

Even blog comment threads can get out of hand

» Set some ground rules

» It is your job to police the comments

KEEPING IT CLEAN

Establish clear rules about what kind of comments you will tolerate and what will get people’s comments removed or get them banned.

» Encourage the users who:

• Add value to the conversation in a respectable way

• Challenge the arguments of the post or another commenter in a respectful way

You are not legally responsible for blog comments but you have the right (and the responsibility) to police them

SELECT COMMUNITY MANAGERS

Look for community managers with the following qualities:

» Natural affinity for socializing online

» Time!

» Advocate for users

» Ready to take it offline

Once your brand has some recognition watch for social mentions and reward your community managers and ambassadors.

LISTENING IN SOCIAL

Listen for social mentions

» Give a quick thanks for a positive brand mention

» For negative mentions, provide a quick apology with an offer to discuss issues further

» If you are listening by topic, be extremely cautious about sounding “pitchy” when engaging

» Timing is key!

Look at SocialMention.com and use TweetDeck for custom Twitter search columns

DRAW INSIGHT FROM COMMENT THREADS

» Read. The. Comments.

» One comment can turn into an entire blog post

» Don’t limit this to your own blog

PRE-DELIVERING CONTENT IDEAS FOR FEEDBACK

Have an idea for a big, research-driven piece of content?

» Reach out to influencers first (aim low / mid-tier) and pitch them on it

» Ask for their feedback on the idea

» Interview them and incorporate if it makes sense

» The piece gets better, and they will be likely to link to and promote the piece upon launch