3 Tips for Developing User Community Sites

October 9th, 2008 Theresa Shafer

After blogging about how “User Communities are Critical for Complex Products” two days ago I thought I would offer some quick tips on how to get started:

1. Be clear on the benefits to the members. So many social networking groups are very clear on how members bring benefit to a user site, but not very clear on the benefit to the members.
2. Treat it as a conversation, and it’s not just with customers. It’s as important to have a dialogue with non-customers.
3. Don’t forget face-to-face dialogue. They are critical to on-line communities and ecosystems.
   • Blend on-line and face-to-face events in complementary ways: typically a face-to-face kickoff with inject a lot of energy and useful context into ongoing on-line interactions.
   • Consider using on-line content and interact to prepare for a face-to-face event.

Entry Filed under: Customer Development, skmurphy