Recently I’ve been talking with a group of folks who are starting a community of practice & it’s really taking me back to basics in talking about ‘community’. So this article from HBR Don’t Make These Mistakes with Your Online Brand Community is very timely.

I absolutely agree with the 6 mistakes listed but want to highlight the first one as I think it goes to the core of the other mistakes:

Don’t think you can just plug in and go. Managing communities requires more than technological skills and software; technology is just an enabler. If you don’t have people who understand your business and have the skills to facilitate vibrant discussions without dominating the conversation you won’t generate good insights.

Otherwise known as the build it & they will come illusion.

Like any good product, understanding the people who will be participating in the community is paramount. Why would they want to participate at all? If they’re interested, how do they want to participate? What value do they want?

Technology is just an enabler. Oh yes! Of course understanding the participants will help you choose the best enabler but it seems an awful lot of people don’t know that tech provides an opportunity to build community, it’s not the community itself.

I’ve seen this happen so many times. Case in point, just last nite I was invited to join a new LinkedIn group for a brand. The group description was marketing speak & promoted their new iPhone app. Um, why should I join? What’s in it for me? Furthermore, I don’t see what’s in it for the company (except potential embarrasment of low numbers /activity & dissatisfaction in the group being successful).

Maybe I should join & send them a copy of this article

There was a great post last week which combined 2 of my favourite topics (community & product management) – The Power of Community Support: How Forums Helped Us Manage Customer Conversations on the Pricing Changes.

It’s a fantastic mini case study of a company screwing up in the eyes of their customers, working through the problem via their own forums and making adjustments (see Sorry. We Messed Up). The situation was picked up by TechCrunch (Zendesk Raises Prices, Pisses Off Customers), apparently it was a hot topic on Twitter & I’m sure anyone who decided to evaluate help desk software that day wasn’t putting Zendesk at the top of their list.

(btw, I don’t use the product or have any info on this situation except for reading the online news)

With my product management hat on, Zendesk obviously felt the time was right for a price increase. I hope their product managers talked with existing customers (newbies & old timers, light & heavy users, people paying the bills & the actual users, whatever personas they track) and potential customers (win/loss analysis anyone?) about the changes. And I hope mgmt listened to what their product folks told them.

Talking with your customers to help make your decisions is an essential part of product management (IMO). Questions could have been along the lines of:

• What made sense for the packages – not just the price, but what about invoicing/payment schedule?
• How did it fit the customer’s budget & workflow?
• What sort of reaction did they have to different price points?
• What functionality w/in the packages are they using?
• etc.

That sort of information could have shaped the packages & pricing plus shaped the communication of the changes. It could have prevented this customer revolt which caused them to move from ‘point A to point B’ (quote below from their posting).

But one thing we realized while reflecting on it this week was how integral the forums were in getting us from point A. (introducing the price increase) to point B. (grandfathering all existing customers).

It would be great to have a complete case study on this situation & know how they got to point A in the first place. Was point B was ever discussed? Why wasn’t it part of the new packages? If point B was decided against originally, how did they reconcile moving to it? How much has this customer revolt cost in cancelled contracts & losing new business?

I’m not going to get into the right/wrong of the way the packages changed because I don’t know the market. From a community perspective, the company seems to have been surprised by the reaction they got to the announcement. Or surprised by the passion of the reaction. Or surprised by the level of venom. Or all of the above.

To Zendesk’s credit, they let the venom flow. The (approx 400) comments aren’t nice – people felt betrayed, anger, fearful of telling their management about large $ increases. There’s a facebook group setup to vent, list of competitor products are there, competitor recommendations are made and so on. From the messages I’ve read, it looks like there was no editing, no trying to sweep the problem under the carpet & there was the occasional comment from the CEO to clarify & answer some questions. It looks like they handled this well & that could save some customer relationships.

This is one story I don’t think we’ve heard the end of.

Amy Jo Kim has put together a fantastic slideshare about metagame design.

If you work with social media, online commuities or anything where you’re bringing people together, do an exercise & think about your space in terms of points, feedback/rewards & viral (all described in the deck). You don’t need to be building a game to apply these principals.

you can apply for this role & get more info here.

web producer / editor – sydney, australia

The Cancer Council NSW is seeking a Web Producer/Editor to manage the ‘Cancer Support Online’ website, a new community ‘chat room’ for cancer patients, their families, friends and carers.

This new website is ready to launch. We just need the right person who can build an online community from scratch. Do you have the energy and initiative to generate community interest and participation?

You’ll be responsible for developing a supportive and interactive online cancer community, including: active recruitment of members; daily monitoring of the chat rooms; initiating and stimulating discussion; and monitoring the site’s technical functioning.

You’ll also work closely with Cancer Council staff and volunteers running like-minded projects within the community.

You will have demonstrated web management experience, including an understanding of chat rooms and online content editing skills.

trolls in communities and how to keep your community civil is the subject of cory doctorow’s article How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community (what a great title!)

i absolutely LOVE the disemvowelling idea. this means you remove all the vowels from a post when the writer was being a hostile jerk. it nicely side steps the censorship issue, gets the message out to the writer & rest of the community that this behaviour isn’t acceptable & makes it so hard to read – it’s like throwing water on the fire!