1.Plan Your Community Around A Purpose       

We can thank Gartner for amplifying this one. Too many times marketers and brand managers get the GMOOT syndrome ( Get Me One Of Those) when it comes to online communities. Look across your business and identify areas where better communication and engagement with customers and employees could be improved. Many times an external community can serve multiple business units. For example, product marketers gain valuable customer feedback on how to position and develop new offerings while sales can harvest feedback and loop that data into the sales process. And don’t leave out inward-facing communities. There’s real movement from corporations that want to use the intrinsic value of collaboration and community to improve specific internal processes. Many times an organization realizes it’s a heck of a lot easier to pilot things behind the firewall. Another bonus is the bottom-up adoption and visibility you’ll have as you plan your external community.

2. Find The Influencers Or Brand Advocates

Content is again king, but not just content, quality content. We (Telligent) see micro-communities emerging almost daily that address very targeted issues and topics. Marketers needs to be smart about identifying influencers and customer evangelists. Just because someone is a prolific blogger or media creator doesn’t mean they’re best suited to serve your constituencies. Also many marketers overlook off-line participants, in other words, those that may not be digitally savvy or “joiners” as Forrester describes them. Remember, the offline world is where word-of-mouth resides.

3. Consider A Platform To Generate Media & Manage Your Online Programs

It may seem a bit ironic that the “choosing” step is a bit understated since I work for one of the toolset vendors (Telligent),but it’s by design. The platform is the enabling technology so It shouldn’t become the focal point of your community initiative. Don’t let features drive your community strategy.

4. Inventory Your Content Assets

When developing a community strategy, many times marketers and communication professionals realize there’s plenty of content right under their nose. Think about how to rejuvenate customer testimonials in more interactive format. Heck, invite the customer to blog with you. Better yet, film them and video blog it. You might even want to survey your business units and ask them what content is important to the business. After that, think about how to get that content to the web where it can educate prospects and customers, spur conversation and drive brand visibility. Lastly, after the content audit, put a plan in place to sustain the development of future content. Make sure you use the tools during the process. In other words, don’t let users create content in Microsoft Word and email the document. Better yet, have them blog it.

5. Develop a Measurement Approach

If you can’t measure it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. But first decide what you need to measure. It’s much more than page views today. Your community strategy should establish metrics that map directly to your success factors. If your goal is to use social media to nurture the complex enterprise sales cycle, make sure you can track customer touch points between prospects and your sales staff. That may be something as simple as showing the downloads of the latest white paper or views of a recently taped interview with a product evangelist. If your prospects are interacting with your content, there’s a good chance they’re interested in your products or services.

The good news is that there’s plenty of business intelligence and analytics toolsets available to assist you in developing your measurement processes. Picking the right tool will provide you with the data you need. It’s then your job to use that data to drive additional engagement. If your last product release caused your forums to light up with fiery and negative comments, you might want to rally engineering and take a look at your roadmap. Because you measured the earlier feedback in your forums, you’re now armed with the data you need to show angry customers how version 2 will make their lives easier. Lastly, don’t forget about tracking offline interactions and campaigns to your community initiatives. Research shows customers will often start offline and move to digital environments. Have a process in place to greet (and track) your prospects as they enter your community. Some will get there through traditional media (TV,Print,Radio) and other by word-of-mouth. Either way, you need to know the entry points (medium) so specific media investments can be budgeted and prioritized.

We’d love your feedback on what else you’re doing to plan your community efforts.