Building Community: Participation
Friday, December 7th, 2007
In the first article of the building community series we took a look at networking and the part it plays in building a community around your brand. In this article we will be looking at how you participate in your community effects and shapes it.
- Participate
- It may come as a shock to you, but when you build a community you MUST participate in it. I know, I know when I first learned this powerful principle I too was in shock. Trust me though if you don’t participate in your own community no one else is going to either.
- How:
- How you participate will depend on a number of factors.
- Type of community
- The type of community you have developed will have a great influence on how you participate in it. You should ask yourself some questions about the type of community you have. Here are a few examples of questions you should have an answer too.
- Is it self-sustaining or does it require daily interaction from myself?
- If you had to (or wanted) could you take a break from answering comments and posts?
- Could you let a few emails slide without major repercussions if something came up?
- If you disappear for a week or two due to some unforseen circumstance will your community continue to thrive?
- What demographic does your community target?
- What demographic does your community actually cater too?
You’ll notice that I suggest asking yourself what community you are targetting and what community you are actually catering too. This is because often times we “target” one thing, but wind up resonating with a completely different one. It’s not a bad thing, but if you don’t know about it you can’t work it to your advantage.
- Size of the community
- The size of your community will have a great impact on how you participate. A community like Maki’s of DoshDosh will take a far different approach to participation than the one built around this blog. There are several things to consider regarding size. When doing so it is helpful to consider it from a small town/big city perspective.
- Is it a small town or a big city?
- Will people “move in” and intergrate themselves into daily life without help or will they be expecting a more “neighborly” welcome?
- Do people expect personal interaction from me at all times or can I let some comments (for example) go without answering them?
- Has it grown beyond my ability to control, and nurture?
Again, those are just examples of questions you might consider asking yourself. When participating in a project, especially one that we ourselves have launched it can be almost impossible to admit when it has gone beyond our abilities. It is essential to know when to bring the reinforcements in order that it will keep growing and collapse in on itself.
- Age of the community
- By age I don’t mean chronological age, but instead I mean the mental age. The overall maturity level of your community. A well matured community will require you participate in a far different manner than a very young one.
- Where
- Being that we are talking in terms of online communities it might seem that where would be fairly limited, and in some respects it is but you should still give consideration to this piece of the overall puzzle. For best impact you should consider making efforts to expand your “where” beyond one website and even beyond the internet in general.
- Can you intergrate your community into other communities?
- Can you get real life friends and family to participate?
- If you have a business can you get clients involved somehow?
In short don’t assume that where you participate is somehow limited. It is, but the limitation is due more to your abilities and imagination than anything else.
- When
- You should be participating all the time if you want the community to thrive and grow. It won’t always mean the same thing depending on various factors. For example if your community is self-sufficient you might participate more behind the scenes than anywhere else. AAOTracker is a community site for the game America’s Army. When it first started the owner, a German who goes by “Homey” was almost always participating openly. Due to size and some other things he rarely participates openly, but does much of the backend and administrative work. He still comes forward to participate openly, but now he chooses when to do so instead of it being the defacto standard.
- Why
- This is probably the easiest question to answer.
- If your community is too young and you don’t participate it will likely just die out
- If your community is mature and you don’t participate you will likely get disenfranchised and pushed aside
- You lead by example. By participating you encourage others to participate
All in all participation plays a vital part in development of a community. Not only do you as owner/operator need to participate but more importantly you need to convince visitors to participate. Imagine for a moment if no one participated all of a sudden. It would literally kill the community in short order.
In your community how much do you value participation?
