Question

Topic: Social Media

How Long Before An Online Community Can Succeed?

Posted by tech_marketer on 2/15/2011 at 2:05 PM ET 300 Points
Hello, we're considering starting an online community and wanted to ask what's a common time frame before we MEASURE if the community is succeeding or not (and decide whether or not to continue putting in resources).

I'm sure this depends on our goals of the community, which we haven't really agreed on, but I imagine they would be:
(1) Brand awareness - authority on the subject
(2) Customer retention - increase loyalty of current customers
(3) Product requirements - a resource for customer requirements for future product development
(4) lead generation - very wary of making this a goal but our marketing team may want it

I would think metrics would be
(1) number of members, views, and posts (for awareness)
(2) quality of posts and how they relate to some of the goals mentioned above.

Assuming the goals and metrics are more or less what I outlined above, what's a reasonable time frame to expect success? and any examples from other companies of how they defined success?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 2/16/2011 at 9:23 AM Accepted
    I'd start by looking at two variables - the number of people and the (weekly) trendline. That will give you an idea of vibrancy - the number of people who are active and if more people continue to be active each week.

    I'd assume that until you get a critical mass (of people / information / content) that you're going to have to "pump up the value" of the community. Without critical mass (or a reason to be there), people won't stick. So you need to make the community to be "the place" where you do business.

    You could start with either a stick or carrot approach. You could offer your wealth of information online for free and charge for extra customer support (stick). You could have a contest to find information online (carrot).

    But the thing you've got to understand is how involved is the community likely to be in your business? How often do they need to find out what you're saying/offering/selling to solve their problems? What's their buying cycle? Where has been the frustration in dealing with your business in the past, and how will this make things much better (a little better won't change behaviors)?
  • Posted by tech_marketer on 2/16/2011 at 1:04 PM Author
    we're a B2B company that sells CAD tools ... customers are interested in methodology ... so there's need for good content, tips, tricks, etc.

    can someone give me an example of time frames assuming we use a "carrot approach" (essentially, just draw them based on really useful content... hopefully not sounding promotional) -

    I essentially need to propose to my team how long we should wait before we seriously evaluate whether we should continue with the effort (since it takes resources from our technical team)

  • Posted by tech_marketer on 2/18/2011 at 8:49 PM Author
    Can someone answer please?
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