Community 2.0

Last week I attended the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas. Here are some of my takeaways.

1. Meet in person
   Over time both online and in-person interactions are important for the health of an online community. Face to face meetings deepen the connections between people and they give people a chance to think together – online interactions are usually about sharing information, not innovative thinking.

2. Invest in people
   Tools and infrastructure are secondary. Having the right people nurturing your community is primary. Talent is scarce. Some of the new skills that will be necessary to manage a community include moderating, archiving community contributed content, analyzing metrics, attracting people to your community (different from traditional intercept marketing).

3. Be authentic
   The company needs to be up-front about what they are hoping to gain from the community and the values of the company should be clear and evident from their action (or non-action) in the community.

4. Get to know your community
   Analytics are critical to determining what is going on in the community and giving more value to your participants. Metrics will help you determine the health of your community and whether it is a success (based on your predetermined business goals).

5. Give recognition to your active participants
   One key motivation for people to join a community is to receive recognition for work that they do or ideas that they have. Find ways to highlight your active participants and give them the recognition they seek.

6. Change mindsets
   * Focus on the participant and then the vendor
   * Focus on long-term value and then short-term performance
   * Let the community gain control from the bottom up rather than trying to sustain top-down organizational control