How do you organize growth and development?
Can you learn and develop in open environments, such as social media? In an Open Space, existing solutions are questioned and new ideas emerge, says Vliex. Because people enter into an open dialogue with each other about an issue. In social media, you can gather a lot of information very quickly and take in many points of view. According to Vliex, social media is, however, an unsafe environment to experiment in. Everything you say can be used against you. In addition, you gain little new knowledge and insights within online social networks. You only follow people and topics that already interest you.
Good reasons to start a community
Extreme loyalty for existing customers.
Collecting ideas: Online communities are the ultimate focus group, according to Millington.
New sources of income: not selling products within your community, but the community can be part of the product (for example a membership when purchasing a product or service), or organizing events from the community.
Recruiting staff: within your community there are people who are so enthusiastic about your organization, products, services, that they are very valuable to your organization. The same goes for knowledge-oriented communities: the people who can answer the most difficult questions have the highest level of knowledge within the group.
Customer service: supporting your customers.
Examples of successful communities, according to Millington, are: Mumsnet for mothers, SK Gaming for game lovers and Backyard Chickens for people who keep chickens. But also co-creation communities such as IdeaStorm from Dell and My Starbucks Idea . Why are they successful?
The secret behind a successful community according to Millington: think like an amateur. According to Millington, an amateur has a much better chance of starting a successful community. They are much more passionate.
How to start a community? Success factors
Look for strong shared interest. You don’t develop a community for your products, but for your target group. Look for a hong kong phone number list broader interest thinking beyond your services and products.
Passion: Community managers should be passionate, like amateurs are.
Use simple technology. The problem with custom platforms is that people don’t know how it works. Use the platform that people understand quickly.
Start small: spend as little money as possible jiangsu mobile phone number list in the start-up phase of a community.
Start good conversations.
View the presentations from CSN Conference 2011
My compliments for the organization of #CSN11: all . Work on building presentations were already industries that deal in high-value products and services available on SlideShare yesterday afternoon .
Floor van Riet wrote this article during his employment at Sabel Communicatie.