I am a massive geek and I love technology. There I said it. I just wanted to go ahead and get that out of the way up front because I’m about to use a geeky analogy. Don’t worry though; this isn’t a post about geeky things, it’s about marketing (which I also love). So, with that out of the way, let’s get started.
A few days ago, our local “Biz Ninja” talked to us about choosing our marketing channels well. I’m going to extend that topic a little more today. We’re going to chat about a few ways to measure the effectiveness of various channels for community building. There are a lot of valid reasons to choose any particular tool to build your channel, but let’s assume you want to build a community around your project, product or company. Which tools should you use?
The Geeky Analogy
So, here’s a quick geek quiz. What is the fastest way to transport thousands of terabytes of data from New York to California? Well, you could run your own dedicated network connection for about a billion dollars. Or you could lease an OC-3 circuit (a fancy and fast internet connection that can transmit 155 megabits per second). But that would still cost a lot and take days.
If you said ship a few boxes of DVDs full of data via FedEx, you’ve probably got the fastest and lowest cost answer. If you said, “OC-who’s-a-what-now?” then I’ll spare you the rest of the geek talk and get straight to the point.
You have a lot of choices about how to transmit data from one computer to another. You also have a lot of choices about how to transmit information from one human to another. A large part of building a community is about trading ideas and communicating information. To be effective, you need to think about what tools you’re going to use to create your community-building channels.
Each tool has its own pros and cons. (For example it’s hard to communicate a complex idea on twitter. But it’s also hard to get your complex idea distributed in a book.) So, I’ve put together a list of thirteen measurements you can use when building your community’s channels.
You ready? Read on.
Presence
Think of this as the ability to ask the question, “Are you there?” …and get an answer. Forming a community involves two-way communication. And while it’s certainly possible to communicate with someone who isn’t present, right now, (like through e-mail) sometimes its nice to see who is actively involved in the conversation in real-time. Understanding that there is someone listening to you helps facilitate two-way communication. You can get immediate feedback. You can ask questions and modify your message in real time. So, our first important metric involves knowing whether or not there is anyone on the other end of the line, so to speak. How easy is it to detect the presence of another person on your channel in real-time?
Complexity
Behind every simple tag line and brand there are many more complex ideas that you might want to get across. Some channels allow you to go deep with your thoughts and ideas, such as a book. Others don’t allow for much complexity at all, such as twitter. If some of the ideas you need to get across require a lot of explanation, choose a tool that fits this need. How easy is it to communicate a complex idea?
Broadcast-ability
In order to cast your net as widely as possible, you want to be able to broadcast your messages to a large number of people at one time. Think of it this way, talking lets you be heard by a few people. A bullhorn lets you be heard by more. A webcast increases those numbers even more. Don’t limit yourself to digital channels. A widely published magazine or book can be an effective way to broadcast a message. So, when creating your channels, ask yourself, “How easy is it to use this channel to broadcast to a wide audience?”
Permanence
One way that you can increase your ability to continue to reach out to your community even when you aren’t there physically is to use a channel that makes your message stick around for while. Think of it this way. If you stand in front of people and talk to then, those words are done into the ether as soon as they are said. If you give them notes about what you said, the message becomes a little more permanent. Blogging or writing a book makes your message stick around even longer. If you have a lot of good resources for your community, making the messages more permanent helps everyone in your community get better access to your messages. How permanent is the information in your channel?
Interactivity
Ok, so I’m not sure if “interactivity” is technically a word, but hopefully it conveys the idea that any channel you might want to use for community building should allow for complex interactions between the members of your community. At one extreme, a book allows very little interactivity. All of the communication is one way. At the other extreme, a face to face meeting allows for incredibly complex person to person interactions. There is lot of ground in between those two extremes. May digital channels allow for varying levels of interaction through either time-shifted or real-time commenting or chatting. How easy is it for your community to interact with each other on your channel?
Accessibility
This is like the old question about a tree falling in the forest. If you have the best content in the world, but its not available to anyone, does it really matter? In order to get your message out and allow for your community to interact with each other, you have to have a channel that is easily accessible to the members of your community. A face to face meeting is a great way to interact with your community, but if you are trying to include people on the other side of the globe in your community, it’s not very accessible. So, an important measure of a channel is its accessibility.
Timeliness
Sometimes its important to talk about things that are happening “right now”. In that case, you need a way to make sure the tools you use have the ability to be updated regularly and quickly. Tools like blogs or Twitter are great for this for example, but its much more difficult to publish a book about current events. If trending topics are at all important for your community, make sure you have a channel that supports timely updates.
Searchable
As your community grows, the content it generates grows with it. At some point it becomes difficult to find what your members need by just browsing. So, you need a way to allow your members to easily find the information they need. This doesn’t always have to be a fancy indexed search system (thought that’s always a good idea too). You could also organize your information into topics and present it in a variety of ways that help people find what they need. However you decide to do it, making your content searchable is an important part of any community-building channel.
Usability
When you are trying to build a community, the last thing you want to do is fight with the tools you use to support the community’s interaction. Find tools that make it easy for both you (as the manager of your community) and your community members to use. Don’t make anyone jump through hoops to interact. Would you like to know the statistics of communities that use complex tools vs those that use simple tools? Me too, but guess what? There aren’t any because every real community with a large and diverse membership uses simple tools. The more intuitive a tool is to use, the better it will work for you.
Find members
To form a community, you need to get access to potential members. So you need to find out where the birds of your feather already flock. Facebook fan pages and Linked groups are both examples of some great tools to help you find people who are interested in specific topics. The ability to make contact with large numbers of people who have pre-selected themselves to be interested whatever your community is about is a huge plus. Where will you be able to make contact with the people who might be interested in joining in the conversations?
Cost and effort
If you have a lot of time and money, your options of tools for expanding your community are pretty large. If, however, you are like me (not rich and busy), you need to think about the expense required to gain access to your community. For example, you could drop leaflets from airplanes across the entire world filled with information about your community. You could write a book. You could hold free conferences across the nation. On the other end of the spectrum, you could start a blog, reach out on twitter, start working the LinkedIn groups and making comments on appropriate Facebook fan pages. Some tools just cost more in terms of money or effort than others. It’s not a bad thing. You just have to take that into account when you are choosing your community building tools.
Market penetration
I sort of hate that term. It sounds too formal, but it is important to find out how much the tools you choose are actually used by your target community members. Do they feel more comfortable listening to a conference keynote or watching a You Tube video? Would they rather subscribe to a blog feed or read a magazine article? You get the point. Don’t spend your time teaching your comunity to use your tools. Choose the tools your audience already uses.
Spreadability
Finally, think about making it easy to one member to invite another. The easier it is for your members to share your channels with others, the more spreadable it is. If a member knows ten other people who might be interested, is it easy for him to invite them all to join in the conversation?
What are your favorite tools and why did you choose them? I’d love to know. Spend a few minutes, take the poll and see others’ answers.
Photo credit, JanneM
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