Loyalty often based on creating a community of users, here's an article about virtual communities, from design to promotion.
A virtual community is a group of people who communicate through mail, Internet, mail, telephone, for professional, social, educational or otherwise.
The word virtual is used to signify that they are not face to face communication (as in a classic association). This community can use various tools to shape the internet, simply forum like Yahoo Answers, the real-time 3D world as SecondLife.com.
The concept of community also includes many types of content, whether forums as mutual www.commentcamarche.com, sites doctissimo.com of information, sharing sites like www.scoopeo.com of links, interest groups on Facebook.com ...
The virtual community is a multifaceted tool that allows you to federate about a subject or a specific need, to earn money by placing advertising on the pages, identify influencers in a sector of activity (and thus lock in the market) ...
The interactivity of this community is of course set by its creator, which will define the content: discussion between members or publications unilateral communication between the various members ...
1 - The community should be based on the needs of (future) members and not a tool or technology.
In fact, the most common error when trying to create a community on the Internet is to spend too much time on the choice of the tool or the desire to make the "Web 2.0" ...
It is better to spend more time analyzing the needs and expectations of future members to identify what will come and participate in this community.
Always ask yourself the question: What is it? Why a person should be on my group? What does it brings? What is that these users are looking for?
If necessary remember the Maslow pyramid, with the classification of the different needs of individuals.
You must offer your members at least 1 of these elements, possibly the most basic. For example, for security advice is to use the product in case of trouble, the other considers it to be recognized as an expert in the field with a ranking of the Top users ...
It should be noted that generally the users of a community are looking for one or two major functions, and all your ancillary functions will be little used or not ... We need to focus and do what your visitors are focusing (to have the visibility, find tips, communicate with each other, ask questions ...).
A perfect example of technological unpacking is unnecessary Digg Like Blogasty.com offering very many functions, but where 99% of users use only the publication of links, then there are functions "unnecessary "but who have taken much time to its author (mapping of the members listed on a map of France, xview a square in the news, groups with thematic live un ... like Twitter).
Warning: usually works for a community must be a part of users enjoy the benefits of membership of the community and lead by their dynamism remaining members ... This may be to offer free advice to land expert in then to sell their services to attract visitors to a website ...
It is difficult to find at the outset of users entirely voluntary as is the case on large forums www.Commentcamarche.com.
Among your members, you have to distinguish different people have different motivations (the new, experts, users, resellers of products ...).
These populations can sometimes enter into conflict with each other or even among themselves (eg if there are several retailers of different products or different websites). You must determine the rules from the outset, even if it means excluding certain types of messages or populations (or limited to certain parts of the forum).
To do this you must, of course, moderate the forum, but also delegate this task to the most active users and more "transparent". These "super users" should be identified as such in order not to generate misunderstandings with other users (color, title ...).
Remember that there are different types of members (see below), and you have to identify contributors and creators to be the real engine of your virtual community.
Attention against to keep control of your community, or you may not be the master! Always be involved (or at least informed) of the various events and developments, otherwise you may become a victim of your community ... Indeed one of your competitors may infiltrate the community and use it against you (false rumors ...).
3 - Promote your community.
It is illusory to think that a community naturally attract your customers and prospects. You must plan a launch in order to recruit members.
As for your customers you should notify by email, possibly automatically include this community, save the information in your email signature, offer exclusive events or preview in this space (eg pre-launch VIP) , establish a newsletter containing the best articles ...
For prospects, the community may be the first step towards the brand by offering a community theme not exclusively related to your brand. This community will be more general, the more it will attract a wide audience.
We must not forget your influencers (bloggers, prescribers ...) that must also be included in the project long term, as they contribute to sustain over the long term your community.
4 - Encourage members to return.
A community that does not live (message, issues, events ...) is a community that died ... it means that you realize your own content, but you plan to let users generate content by themselves (questions, debates , competitions, votes ...).
The content must be updated regularly, and communication should be sent to members (at least every month). If you start a new community you will have to provide from the outset with a lot of content in a regular line to "make the sauce, and very often intervene to create life.
5 - Measure the success of your community.
Like any marketing tool is not directly related to the sale, a community tend to be quickly abandoned if it does not prove its relevance in the generation of revenue (sales, benefits and services ...).
You must clearly identify what is the turnover generated via a dashboard that allows you to justify the maintenance of a tool that is sometimes cumbersome.
For against do not limit yourself to just the margin generated: You must also take into account the improvement of the quality of services, sales of new services (eg the forum may be an additional service to technical support) ...
Finally time to leave your community to set up: it takes several weeks or months to see a community come alive. You must allow time to time.
How to start your community?
The start of the community can be very long (several weeks or months ...), should therefore follow a few rules to expand its virtual community:
- Highlight from the home page how to register and how to participate in the community, and simplify the procedure (to write a comment and only then nominate, do not ask to fill in forms too long ...) .
- Attract influencers of other topics close to yours. We just have to intervene in the communities and meet competitors by adding links to your own community or find blogs with issues close to yours.
- Produce at the outset content very high quality and high value added. This can be quickly respond to highly technical issues, post records practices ...
- Give visibility to new contributors (image of the member of days on the home page as in ClubMarketing.fr), and make sure that when you click on their profile the number of reading is recorded and that the links are clicked well tracked as coming from your site through Google Analytics so that your visitors contributor shows that you are responsible. It also give importance to your best contributors, creating a "private club", such as the Circle of Experts in Marketing www.marketing-etudiant.fr.
- Animate your community by organizing competitions and challenges, such as a contest of those who post the most information as regularly Doc-etudiant.fr.
- Be registered by Google to attract traffic via natural search. Indeed there are many communities whose content is not searchable by Google as protected by a password (eg communities Viadeo).
- Relay the contents of your community through a newsletter and / or a blog to promote the best content of the communities and make it your sounding board. In fact most members of a community that rarely do consult it, it must give them reasons to return. You can follow the example of Eric Dupin Citron.net-Press, which publishes every week a Top Hebdo links clicked most of Fuzz.fr.
- Explicitly ask your members to participate, it is enough to send a message to its members asking them to respond on a topic (survey, news ...) to give a boost to its community!
- Put some real in the virtual world: organize meetings physical, video-conference ... in order to forge stronger ties with your members.
To know what are the most important forums, you can download the map forums Francophone leaders.
There are many tools to create its virtual community. It is possible to create communities on private social networks like viadeo.com / Ning.com / Facebook.com / ... making it possible to capitalize on the pool of thousands of members who are already in these communities.
The interest is that these sites offer the most to create a community ready to use free! This means you do not need to manage all the technical aspect and you can focus on content. However please note that these sites are not designed for that purpose at the base and so you arrive very quickly to the limits ...
For example, in communities Viadeo.com it is not possible to add images, easily create dozens of categories ... In return, Viadeo has a very large community of professionals that you can attract and encourage them to join your network.
So there are more traditional tools to create free Forums turnkey such www.forumactif.com. The interest of these solutions is that they are perfectly suited for the management of a forum, and it is possible to shift from free (with a display of Adsense ads Print Engine Forums ), the model where you pay your own display advertising.
There are also solutions for creating communities such as thematic Pligg.com or Reddit to create its own Digg-Like. The value of these tools is to federate users around a specific topic and generate content by its users. For example www.fuzz.fr Digg Like the Press-Citron.net, Digg Like our www.conseilscreateur.com for entrepreneurs ...
The interest of these solutions is that it takes less than 2 hours to set up a site with minimum customizations (logo, translated into French ...).
To create communities beyond the sharing of links, it is also possible to use tools like Joomla, elgg.org (see example Vibstar) and Drupal.
It is also possible to create Twitter-Like its communities to create micro-blogging, use engines like http://twingr.com/et Laconica. As against these communities are very limited, because it is possible to publish messages about 140 characters ... without pictures or monitoring reactions or other frills! However this tool can be very interesting to create temporary communities (at a salon for his comments, students ...). It is also a way to involve its readers in the generation of content and enhance the membership of a group, such www.koodji.com of caledosphere.com.
It is also possible to use Wordpress to create a community, through the construction of a collaborative blog like LeJournalDublog.com or blog Safety Orange Business Services.
If you want a more personalized there are also fully customizable solutions, here is a list based on that Blog Dion Hinchcliffe, with favorites such as Joomla, Drupal and DotNetNuke (nb: the list is not ranked by order preferably you to choose according to your ambitions).
1. Joomla (free)
2. Drupal (free)
3. PHP-Nuke (free)
4. Zikula (free)
5. Sharepoint (Microsoft)
6. Lithium
7. DotNetNuke (Free)
8. Community Server
9. KickApps
10. Jive Software
11. Mambo
12. Lotus SameTime
13. OneSite
14. BoonEx
15. Crowdvine
16. Facebook Open Platform
17. Mzinga
18. Leverage Software
19. HiveLive
20. SocialGo
21. IglooSoftware
22. GroupSwim
23. SocialCast
24. Tomoye
25. Pinax
27. BlueKiwi (Start up French - Fee)
28. MediaWiki (toolbox used by Wikipedia)
29. elgg.org (free - allows you to create communities)
30. Typolight (free, an equivalent of Drupal)
31. Plone (Free)
32. Dolphin
33. PhpBB
34. shoutem.com (micro blogging free)
To go further visit the french version of this article.
What is a virtual community?
A virtual community is a group of people who communicate through mail, Internet, mail, telephone, for professional, social, educational or otherwise.
The word virtual is used to signify that they are not face to face communication (as in a classic association). This community can use various tools to shape the internet, simply forum like Yahoo Answers, the real-time 3D world as SecondLife.com.
The concept of community also includes many types of content, whether forums as mutual www.commentcamarche.com, sites doctissimo.com of information, sharing sites like www.scoopeo.com of links, interest groups on Facebook.com ...
The virtual community is a multifaceted tool that allows you to federate about a subject or a specific need, to earn money by placing advertising on the pages, identify influencers in a sector of activity (and thus lock in the market) ...
The interactivity of this community is of course set by its creator, which will define the content: discussion between members or publications unilateral communication between the various members ...
5 key factors for successful virtual community!
1 - The community should be based on the needs of (future) members and not a tool or technology.
In fact, the most common error when trying to create a community on the Internet is to spend too much time on the choice of the tool or the desire to make the "Web 2.0" ...
It is better to spend more time analyzing the needs and expectations of future members to identify what will come and participate in this community.
Always ask yourself the question: What is it? Why a person should be on my group? What does it brings? What is that these users are looking for?
If necessary remember the Maslow pyramid, with the classification of the different needs of individuals.
You must offer your members at least 1 of these elements, possibly the most basic. For example, for security advice is to use the product in case of trouble, the other considers it to be recognized as an expert in the field with a ranking of the Top users ...
It should be noted that generally the users of a community are looking for one or two major functions, and all your ancillary functions will be little used or not ... We need to focus and do what your visitors are focusing (to have the visibility, find tips, communicate with each other, ask questions ...).
A perfect example of technological unpacking is unnecessary Digg Like Blogasty.com offering very many functions, but where 99% of users use only the publication of links, then there are functions "unnecessary "but who have taken much time to its author (mapping of the members listed on a map of France, xview a square in the news, groups with thematic live un ... like Twitter).
Warning: usually works for a community must be a part of users enjoy the benefits of membership of the community and lead by their dynamism remaining members ... This may be to offer free advice to land expert in then to sell their services to attract visitors to a website ...
It is difficult to find at the outset of users entirely voluntary as is the case on large forums www.Commentcamarche.com.
2 - Watch out for conflicts of interests among different populations.
Among your members, you have to distinguish different people have different motivations (the new, experts, users, resellers of products ...).
These populations can sometimes enter into conflict with each other or even among themselves (eg if there are several retailers of different products or different websites). You must determine the rules from the outset, even if it means excluding certain types of messages or populations (or limited to certain parts of the forum).
To do this you must, of course, moderate the forum, but also delegate this task to the most active users and more "transparent". These "super users" should be identified as such in order not to generate misunderstandings with other users (color, title ...).
Remember that there are different types of members (see below), and you have to identify contributors and creators to be the real engine of your virtual community.
Attention against to keep control of your community, or you may not be the master! Always be involved (or at least informed) of the various events and developments, otherwise you may become a victim of your community ... Indeed one of your competitors may infiltrate the community and use it against you (false rumors ...).
3 - Promote your community.
It is illusory to think that a community naturally attract your customers and prospects. You must plan a launch in order to recruit members.
As for your customers you should notify by email, possibly automatically include this community, save the information in your email signature, offer exclusive events or preview in this space (eg pre-launch VIP) , establish a newsletter containing the best articles ...
For prospects, the community may be the first step towards the brand by offering a community theme not exclusively related to your brand. This community will be more general, the more it will attract a wide audience.
We must not forget your influencers (bloggers, prescribers ...) that must also be included in the project long term, as they contribute to sustain over the long term your community.
4 - Encourage members to return.
A community that does not live (message, issues, events ...) is a community that died ... it means that you realize your own content, but you plan to let users generate content by themselves (questions, debates , competitions, votes ...).
The content must be updated regularly, and communication should be sent to members (at least every month). If you start a new community you will have to provide from the outset with a lot of content in a regular line to "make the sauce, and very often intervene to create life.
5 - Measure the success of your community.
Like any marketing tool is not directly related to the sale, a community tend to be quickly abandoned if it does not prove its relevance in the generation of revenue (sales, benefits and services ...).
You must clearly identify what is the turnover generated via a dashboard that allows you to justify the maintenance of a tool that is sometimes cumbersome.
For against do not limit yourself to just the margin generated: You must also take into account the improvement of the quality of services, sales of new services (eg the forum may be an additional service to technical support) ...
Finally time to leave your community to set up: it takes several weeks or months to see a community come alive. You must allow time to time.
How to start your community?
The start of the community can be very long (several weeks or months ...), should therefore follow a few rules to expand its virtual community:
- Highlight from the home page how to register and how to participate in the community, and simplify the procedure (to write a comment and only then nominate, do not ask to fill in forms too long ...) .
- Attract influencers of other topics close to yours. We just have to intervene in the communities and meet competitors by adding links to your own community or find blogs with issues close to yours.
- Produce at the outset content very high quality and high value added. This can be quickly respond to highly technical issues, post records practices ...
- Give visibility to new contributors (image of the member of days on the home page as in ClubMarketing.fr), and make sure that when you click on their profile the number of reading is recorded and that the links are clicked well tracked as coming from your site through Google Analytics so that your visitors contributor shows that you are responsible. It also give importance to your best contributors, creating a "private club", such as the Circle of Experts in Marketing www.marketing-etudiant.fr.
- Animate your community by organizing competitions and challenges, such as a contest of those who post the most information as regularly Doc-etudiant.fr.
- Be registered by Google to attract traffic via natural search. Indeed there are many communities whose content is not searchable by Google as protected by a password (eg communities Viadeo).
- Relay the contents of your community through a newsletter and / or a blog to promote the best content of the communities and make it your sounding board. In fact most members of a community that rarely do consult it, it must give them reasons to return. You can follow the example of Eric Dupin Citron.net-Press, which publishes every week a Top Hebdo links clicked most of Fuzz.fr.
- Explicitly ask your members to participate, it is enough to send a message to its members asking them to respond on a topic (survey, news ...) to give a boost to its community!
- Put some real in the virtual world: organize meetings physical, video-conference ... in order to forge stronger ties with your members.
To know what are the most important forums, you can download the map forums Francophone leaders.
What solution to create the Virtual Community?
There are many tools to create its virtual community. It is possible to create communities on private social networks like viadeo.com / Ning.com / Facebook.com / ... making it possible to capitalize on the pool of thousands of members who are already in these communities.
The interest is that these sites offer the most to create a community ready to use free! This means you do not need to manage all the technical aspect and you can focus on content. However please note that these sites are not designed for that purpose at the base and so you arrive very quickly to the limits ...
For example, in communities Viadeo.com it is not possible to add images, easily create dozens of categories ... In return, Viadeo has a very large community of professionals that you can attract and encourage them to join your network.
So there are more traditional tools to create free Forums turnkey such www.forumactif.com. The interest of these solutions is that they are perfectly suited for the management of a forum, and it is possible to shift from free (with a display of Adsense ads Print Engine Forums ), the model where you pay your own display advertising.
There are also solutions for creating communities such as thematic Pligg.com or Reddit to create its own Digg-Like. The value of these tools is to federate users around a specific topic and generate content by its users. For example www.fuzz.fr Digg Like the Press-Citron.net, Digg Like our www.conseilscreateur.com for entrepreneurs ...
The interest of these solutions is that it takes less than 2 hours to set up a site with minimum customizations (logo, translated into French ...).
To create communities beyond the sharing of links, it is also possible to use tools like Joomla, elgg.org (see example Vibstar) and Drupal.
It is also possible to create Twitter-Like its communities to create micro-blogging, use engines like http://twingr.com/et Laconica. As against these communities are very limited, because it is possible to publish messages about 140 characters ... without pictures or monitoring reactions or other frills! However this tool can be very interesting to create temporary communities (at a salon for his comments, students ...). It is also a way to involve its readers in the generation of content and enhance the membership of a group, such www.koodji.com of caledosphere.com.
It is also possible to use Wordpress to create a community, through the construction of a collaborative blog like LeJournalDublog.com or blog Safety Orange Business Services.
If you want a more personalized there are also fully customizable solutions, here is a list based on that Blog Dion Hinchcliffe, with favorites such as Joomla, Drupal and DotNetNuke (nb: the list is not ranked by order preferably you to choose according to your ambitions).
1. Joomla (free)
2. Drupal (free)
3. PHP-Nuke (free)
4. Zikula (free)
5. Sharepoint (Microsoft)
6. Lithium
7. DotNetNuke (Free)
8. Community Server
9. KickApps
10. Jive Software
11. Mambo
12. Lotus SameTime
13. OneSite
14. BoonEx
15. Crowdvine
16. Facebook Open Platform
17. Mzinga
18. Leverage Software
19. HiveLive
20. SocialGo
21. IglooSoftware
22. GroupSwim
23. SocialCast
24. Tomoye
25. Pinax
27. BlueKiwi (Start up French - Fee)
28. MediaWiki (toolbox used by Wikipedia)
29. elgg.org (free - allows you to create communities)
30. Typolight (free, an equivalent of Drupal)
31. Plone (Free)
32. Dolphin
33. PhpBB
34. shoutem.com (micro blogging free)
To go further visit the french version of this article.
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