Online Communities in Business
- Invest in the means, not the end.
- Focus relentlessly on the needs of the members.
- Resist the temptation to control.
- Don’t assume the community will become self-sustaining.
- Consider environmental factors.
- Extend community-building beyond the discussion space.
- Seek out and support members who take on informal roles.
Scott Burkett geeft op basis van het onderzoeksrapport een aantal aanvullende suggesties:
- Follow the 7 principles laid out above (even though the results of the Andersen study were published in 1999, they ring true even today).
- Give your members a way to communicate openly.
- Strive for “mass stickyness” in the form of the targeted “killer app”.
- “Collaboration” should be an over-arching theme.
- Establish a captivating backstory.
- Foster a sense of trust.
- Mitigate security and privacy concerns.
- Facilitate “relationship conversions” whenever possible (online-to-offline, offline-to-online).
- Be persistent, but don’t force things.
- Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself from time to time.
- Don’t toss out those ideas that don’t initially work!