Continuing the conversation from the post 'Look back to take your community forward.'
We're looking at Scenario #2, the stagnant community. You launched your community and you had good activity in the beginning. The members were from your target audience and they were coming back to the site on a pretty regular basis.
Then the activity level started to drop off. There were less visits, less conversations and less and less new members joining. What happened?
Again, you need to look back at your planning for the community.• Did you dedicate resources to manage and moderate the community? • Did you identify, recruit and train those that have customer facing roles within your organization to be active in the community? • Are there processes in place to welcome new members and guide them on how to benefit from membership in the community? • Are you recognizing and rewarding member activity? • Is there great content being driven into the community from the company?
The first question I listed is probably the most important. Who is tasked with the overall community management? Who is tasked to engage with the members and are they doing this on a daily basis?
As described in my last post, your community initiative must have a business objective and you must understand your members and what their objective will be for participating in your community.
Then, there has to be a resource dedicated to managing and creating a sustainable community that attains those objectives, both for the company and for the member. This should be a combination of a community manager and moderators that are either staff or members.
At Defakto, we see a growing need for community managers and moderators. Fortunately, we have a great team that can help you, by either providing hands-on management and moderation or providing training for your staff.
The right moderation strategy is one that encompasses your 'community' in a much larger context that delivers a consistent message across all social media. Sounds like a good topic for a blog post. Next time.