Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

Hi

We're in the middle of the community launch planning with about 2-3 weeks before we go live.  Some folks internally are worried that if we don't have enough 'content' preloaded in the community, potential users will visit once and not return.  There won't be enough content to make the community sticky.  Should we load up with our own content: whitepapers, technical tutorials etc? 

I'm concerned that the users will think we are using the community as just another 'marketing' channel.

Neal

[#2]

Neal;

this is literally a lot of people's fears as well: to launch a empty community. I would first get many of family and friends to unofficially jump things off before you go live to the public just to have some content on the site.

It is sort of a problem when people visit and there is not enough content on the site. This can drive away people like you had mentioned. But over time, your community will only grow.

If you think about it, all communities had to start off with one person and they eventually will grow.

[#3]

---

NealRoche wrote: 

Should we load up with our own content: whitepapers, technical tutorials etc? 

I'm concerned that the users will think we are using the community as just another 'marketing' channel.

---

Neal,

Have you identified some of those users to invite in early to help get the community up and running so that it won't be empty when you throw the doors open?

Jane

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Neal,

I'm sure many have had the same concerns... I know I did.   Here are a few things that we did which I think worked out well for our launch.

1) We had been monitoring forums and blogs for some time and understood where a lot of the conversations about our products were already taking place, and what many of the customers were talking about.   This let us anticipate some of the topics likely to be raised by our customers when we opened our official community, and also helped us see some conversations that we might like to start to provide some initial and unique value.

2) We got involved with some of the moderators who were running other communities around our products and invited several of them into our development process, to get their feet wet in the test forum, try out the features and give us feedback on our ranks and permissions, all those small details, along with policies and rules, and the overall appearance that help shape the community experience.

3) Once we released to production, we spent 1-2 weeks in the live version of the forum, starting a few conversations on each board and then the week before our launch, we invited in another group of our customers - some experienced community members from other sites to help us kick things off.  This was not a contrived effort, but an authentic "house warming" as it were.   We then took down the firewall and were live to the world.   This gave us momentum.

I'm sure Lithium will offer you advice on striking the right balance - it's one of the nice things about working with them is being able to tap that collective experience.

Mark

[#5]

---

Mark_Hopkins wrote:

3) Once we released to production, we spent 1-2 weeks in the live version of the forum, starting a few conversations on each board and then the week before our launch, we invited in another group of our customers - some experienced community members from other sites to help us kick things off.  This was not a contrived effort, but an authentic "house warming" as it were.   We then took down the firewall and were live to the world.   This gave us momentum.

---

I think this part worked really well in building up to throwing the doors open.  It seems like during the last couple of weeks before opening Mark loosened the reins gradually so that we were inviting in a few more members almost daily creating a constant stream of new comments and threads.  Once Mark dropped the firewall and we went back to our "home" forums, groups and mailing lists to spread the word, when people started coming to check us out, there were already familiar faces posting in the new forum.

Jane