Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

In our support community, the ratio of passive to active users seems to be too high (i.e. too many 'lurkers' not enough users posting).

Does anyone have any specific advice on how to improve the participation rate?

The guidance seems to be to 'promote, promote, promote'....but any examples of specific promotions that have worked well would be great!

Thanks

~chughes

[#2]

Hi Caroline - thanks for your post. I'd be interested in what your specific goals are here around participation. The question you posed sounded straightforward enough -- we want more participation -- but what number would you consider success to be at? 0.5%, 1%, 10%

When is a rule not a rule?

You have probably heard mention of the '90.9.1 rule' - which basically states 90% of your audience will never register or post, they just lurk. The remaining 10% is made up of registered users who a) post minimally - maybe once or twice, and these make around 9% and b) the 1% of your super user/contributor base. ScottD wrote a great article on 90.9.1 in July, which if you haven't read is worth a browse.

Now the thing that we'll all say is that even though 90.9.1 is called a Rule... it's actually more of a social observation. These ratios will differ based on type of community, the topics, etc. What still holds true is that the overwhelming majority of users will be lurkers, a small percentage of that number will be registered and an even smaller percentage will contribute. But don't fall into the trap of trying to hit 90.9.1 - you'll just be disappointed.

Moving the dial

So how do you get more participation? In my experience from running a large enterprise networking community, we found that there were a number of things you could do.

• Create and publicise a clear ranking/reputation model that ties posting, kudos and accepted solutions together. Tell people what activities boost their level, not to the n'th degree, but let them know what it could take to move the first few ranks.

• Recognize and encourage positive behaviours. There are great examples from companies that thank their superusers with either public leaderboards or a post every month, or even a simple thank you note in the mail (talking real envelope and stamp here). There are documented case studies from Microsoft that claim a 30% increase in contribution following a 'thank you activity'. Here's a simple example from Juniper, but i have seen people be quite elaborate with their recognition too.

• Promotion. I have seen communitiy managers run banners, posts (and blog about it) and even run a leaderboard style competition for the top kudo'd authors in the early days of this feature being launched. I saw that your mods are kudoing people who get accepted solutions, and that certainly helps build awareness.  Another promotional technique is to interview superusers and get them to talk about why they find this useful, how they rate posts and how they give kudos as a cue for other people.

I hope that helps, and I hope it stirs up some conversation. I'd be really interested to hear what other community managers have done to help promote engagement in their groups.

[#3]

I'll just add to what Paul said by focusing on specific factors that affect conversion from passive to active participation - in particular, we've found 3 things in a community that seem to have the greatest impact on conversion rates:

Visible Activity: is there recent activity in the community that shows the user this is a healthy and vibrant site? This appeals to desire that if the user posts a question there will be someone there to answer it.

Visible Volume of Content: is there sufficient content in the community that it feels healthy? Users will forgive lower volume if the community is new and activity is recent, but the more the users can see how much content is in your community the better.

Complete Content Taxonomy: can a user quickly see what the scope of the community is and what the main topics are, at a high level? Be sure to make it easy for the users to quickly determine that this community has what they need.

There are other factors, of course, that are far more subjective (tone of the community posts, their sense of identification with existing community members, the specific need of the user and their comfort level with a community interaction, etc.) but the above are a good starting place, that you can affect quickly.

Just remember, a sizeable majority of users within any time period will tend to be passive participants. Does this mean these users will always be so? No, the composition of the 9% in 90-9-1 changes over time, as members come upon questions they need help solving.

And finally, be sure you aren't undervaluing of the so-called lurkers/spectators in your community. Though they are not posting, they are viewing and being influenced by the community. Case studies have shown that these users are also positively influenced to either purchase more or avoid contacting support just by being members.

Hope that helps!

[#4]

PaulGi and ScottD - many thanks for your responses! Both posts gave me some useful info as did Scott's article (which I had somehow missed!).

I think  I was in danger of  starting to stray slightly, but feel I'm back on track now!

Thanks again,

~chughes

[#5]

chughes,

Obviously Paul and Scott have a ton of experience and provided some sound advice that holds true across just about any community.  

What do you notice about the kinds of discussions going on in your community?

Do you have some long running discussions that many users tend to pile on to over time?   I find that those types of discussions in our community, spring up around common experience points that everyone shares - a sales experience, a delivery experience,  or some kind of operational experience point.  

If you don't have some of those, maybe you might start some of them and float them to the top of the appropriate boards?   These may become "beacons" drawing in new members from outside who find the discussion threads through the major search engines, join the community, comment, and a portion will wind up staying.

Or maybe you want to start some topics that are deliberately provocative to draw people out?   If you browse some of the topics which are most passionately discussed in your community or others, what common factors do you see?  

What does your community thread to post ratio look like?  Our community averages about 4.5 posts per thread, which tells me that many of our members are comfortable starting conversations.   But not all the topics raised are going to be provocative or valuable to large numbers of members in the community, so the response rate might be lower than one might expect.  Would I like to see a ratio more like 10:1 ?   I don't know...  I'll bet there are communities that have numbers more like that.

If I wanted to change this dynamic, I might analyze some of the more successful conversations to see how they were titled (thinking SEO), and see if many of those posting had very low (new member) post counts, which might suggest the community was drawing in new members who joined and wanted to comment.  Conversely, are the deeper discussions found to be amongst more experienced members who already have a high post count and are working out an issue or actively debating some point?  Do the dynamics of these discussions make themselves inviting?  Are those who interject ignored, talked over, or welcomed? 

How do the actions of the moderation team affect this dynamic? 

Best regards,

Mark

[#6]

Until recently, our moderators & admins have pretty much stayed in the background - trying to make the forum all about peer-to-peer discussion. However, we really weren't getting as high a rate of posting as I thought we should have.

About a month ago, we changed tactics. All of our Mods & Admins now have photo avatars (the only ones who do), and the moderators started taking a much more active role in the community - publicly welcoming all new members, thanking them for posts and making suggestions (not tech support - other reps do that), and generally setting a warm, welcoming, and conversational tone.

As a result, our rates for posting have tripled - both with new users asking more questions and with seasoned users providing more answers/follow up! Hard to pin it to any one stimulus, but I'm betting that this effort to set the tone played a big role.

[#7]

That's wonderful to hear Mike! A postive tone and outreach goes a long way!

I remeber hearing at a conference (but lack a citation, sry) that the single factor with the highest correlation among repeat posters was a response to their first post. It didn't matter if the response was an answer to their question or not, users were more likely to post again if their first post was replied to. Welcoming committees are a very good way to make this happen.

Thanks Mike! Glad that is working so well for you!