The Great Good Place. Just started this book by Ray Oldenburg. Looking forward to leveraging real life places with what can be done in online communities.
John Norris
Opinion leaders, Group Identity, or Shared Values – What Drives Participation?
At first glance having strong community leaders might seem like a good way to get people to participate. However, T Zhou finds* that far stronger determinates are when an individual feels they belong to a group and that it shares their values.
For community managers:
- Heighten the sense of belonging to a group, perhaps with events or other shared activities.
- Be sure what the group is all about, its values, is well known.
- Less effort can be directed at getting people to participate via leaders.
Ideas on Handling Large Groups, or why you may not want them.
B Butler found* that large, active, groups were able to attract more members. However, they also lost more. While more activity helped retain members, it was not as powerful as group size.
For a Community manager, my takeaways were:
- Spend your energy not in helping large groups communicate but breaking them down to smaller sizes.
- If you are looking to have a large churn of members, then you want to go big. A more long term membership would stay small.
Five ways to get replies to your posts.
What sorts of posts elicit replies?
1. Not being a newcomer.
2. Post on topic.
3. Use first person, I, and convey what you are thinking and feeling.
4. Ask a question.
5. Use simple language.
Members, Benefits, Sustaining, and Getting Work Done
When Dr. Brian Butler, et al, surveyed about 3000 listserv members about who does what work in a community, their found they correlate to the benefits individuals get from the community. This knowledge can be a big help to Community Managers.
Five findings that struck me and what they may prescribe-
Owners spent more time creating content than reading it. Knowing this a CM should be aware of this potential blind spot and be sure to keep up with what the community is saying.
