Social media nirvana usually includes some kind of expectation around getting to a 'hockey stick' adoption curve. For online services in general it is immensely hard to predict if and when that curve will happen. But communities are slightly different - especially enterprise communities. Here's why:
- There is a known addressable audience
- It is easier to gauge where there are passionate, engaged individuals
- There is strong existing affinities - even if unevenly distributed
- The topic and scope of discussion is more obvious
Which leads to the question - are there standard models for growth (i.e. slow, moderate, aggressive) given how much content and marketing is injected into the community over time? I think that there are....I'm just not sure exactly how to build them yet.
Some factors that I believe affect community velocity:
- Size of the total potential user audience
- Jump starting connections by analyzing email and IM transactions and, based on that, recommending 'friends' to new users
- Jump starting profile pages by pulling directory, location, and reporting/team structures from existing enterprise information
- Allowing individuals to customize their profile with their pictures, links to external accounts (Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Upcoming, etc.), and other media
- Profiling users for contributing content - Social Media Today does this very well. Replicate this offline or in other venues as well
- Providing online recognition for volume or quality of entries (who doesn't want to be a grand puba?)
- Providing a few compelling ways to 'converse' initially rather than overwhelming users with too much functionality
- Seeding plenty of content so people always get something new
- Provide some structured ways to participate with specific fields/questions so to make people comfortable with expectations - i.e. an idea form with specific questions.
- Email alerts
- Marketing and awareness campaigns
- Make it fun - be tongue and cheek, include some games, ask odd profile questions...
What do you think affects the velocity of community ramp?
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