Challenges of building an active online community

Martin Reed’s blog post 20 Questions For Managers Of Online Communities touches on several challenges that one faces in creating an active online community. Since he is coming from the standpoint of an online community manager, his 20 questions cover more than mere challenges, but he does pose questions such as “How is your online community unique?” which addresses a major challenge of standing out in a crowd of other online communities. He also brings up the all-too-common challenge of “How do you deal with abusive posts/members?” Regarding this, Reed states that there is a fine line between encouraging interaction and stifling debate through excessive moderation, and stresses having a plan of being fair, neutral and professional. A third challenge posed by Reed is “Do your members trust you?”, which stresses that as manager of the online community, one needs to earn the trust of the members and not abuse that trust.

Touching on similar challenges, Andrew Cohen covers the two sides of making members feel welcomed and yet setting clear ground rules in his blog post Characteristics Of Successful Online Communities. He suggests to “establish community norms that encourage open communication rather than stifling it. Set boundaries for acceptable behavior.” He stresses ruling kindly, but firmly, and “be sure that your community has clear standards for when messages are to be deleted -- such as use of profanity, slander, breach of privacy, copyright violations, or inappropriate promotions.”

Another challenge of building an active online community is simply getting members to contribute. Martin Reed’s blog post Inside The Mind Of A Community Lurker defines a lurker as someone who has registered as a member but hasn’t contributed to the community. Reed notes that “an online community won’t be very successful if your members don’t contribute.” New members may feel intimidated, don’t know where to start, or haven’t found any topics of interest and therefore become lurkers. Ways to get new members to contribute and not become lurkers are to welcome them and ask them to introduce themselves, have a section of the community dedicated to newcomers, contact them individually to find out what topics interest them, and encourage replies and continued threads to boost new members’ confidence and comfort levels with posting. Of course, there will always be those members who simply lurk, but they are not to be underestimated. It is likely they are getting the word out about your brand beyond the confines of the online community, whether they are contributors or lurkers.