Ok, it’s clear in your mind what you want to achieve with online communities, and you’ve identified the behavior that will signify that your community is a success. Now the next step is to begin.
Yep, go to Facebook and design your site (or Twitter, or Ning, or whatever tool you’re using), keeping your objectives and your audience behaviors in mind. When you've completed the project, you’re ready to do a soft launch—that’s step three.
Repeat these words: SOFT LAUNCH. That doesn’t mean let go of the helium balloons and clink the champagne glasses and invite everybody you know to this wonderful new service. It means, take a lesson from Google’s “Wave” product launch and letting some qualified users try it out first. “Here’s the site,” you say to four or five or ten people. “In a week I’ll call you and we’ll talk about what will make this site better for the average member.”
And you say to Alice Average, “Just hang on, Alice. This new association social networking service is really going to be a benefit to all of us. But we’ve got a few members working on a beta test to make sure everything is absolutely perfect before we release it. We’ll put you on the mailing list, and you’ll be the first to know when you can sign up!”
In the meantime, let the beta testers go full speed ahead. Encourage them to start the discussions, establish special interest groups, post links, sell used office equipment, whatever. When Alice Average finally receives permission to sign up, there will be activity going on already.
And when the your beta testers give you ideas like “we’d like to develop an interface between our Facebook site and the MLS” or “why can’t we have a link where they can click and donate to RPAC right from our site?”, listen to them carefully and act on their suggestions. Remember that their job is not to tell you how good your product is; their job is to find ways to make it better. Once the beta testers are satisfied, you'll have a better product AND a cheerleading section to support your service.
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