More and more we hear that building a brand is about engaging the hearts, minds and souls of your audience. It is about building a relationship. Because the Internet offers tremendous reach to many organizations, more and more are looking online as the place where brands can be extended through the development of a community of relationships. There continues to be a move toward exploring how the values and promise of a brand can be delivered online by creating relationships between brand supporters, who ultimately create a community around your brand.
Many look to successful communities such as U.S.-based moveon.org, where millions of people are engaged in political and civic actions. The brand values of this organization are seamlessly embedded in this community. But it is not as easy as “build it and they will come”, whether online or offline. Creating a community is initially about bringing people together with shared interests, similar values, common perspectives or questions. Subsequently, others can be drawn into this community and it is this inclusiveness that can spark much of a community’s dynamic nature and relevance.
“The goal of good community design is to bring out the community’s own internal direction, character and energy…what makes them successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members…nothing can substitute for this sense of aliveness.”
(Cultivating Communities of Practice, 2002)
Imagine the powerful role a successfully designed online community could bring to your organization’s brand. As your brand reflects your organization’s values, personality, and ultimately your mission, imagine the power of creating, nurturing and sustaining a broad community around your brand.
There continues to be much discussion and experimentation around designing and developing online communities. An online community, if it is to work, needs to bring together people with shared interests and values and engage them in an ongoing discourse. It is this engagement and member participation that results in a dynamic and lively community. What we have learned is that these online communities cannot be created solely by technology or by content alone. To be lively, these online communities need to tap into existing groups of people with common values and shared interests and provide space for participation and evolution. The approach of designing an online community needs to parallel those principles that have been successful in building successful offline communities where membership is voluntary.
These elements include:
- Design for evolution
- Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives
- Invite different levels of participation
- Focus on value
- Combine the familiar and excitement
Each of these elements plays a role in cultivating a lively community and each poses unique challenges and opportunities when building a community online. These elements have been adapted from Cultivating Communities of Practice, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
Design for Evolution
As we know, communities are organic. Every aspect of developing an online community can act as a catalyst for a community’s natural evolution.
Open dialogue between inside and outside perspectives
To create a dynamic community inside and outside voices need to construct the tone of the dialogue and experience. Strong community design encompasses an insider’s perspective to articulate what the community is all about. Outside perspectives can mirror back assumptions held by the community, can reflect what community can achieve, and can come to the community offering vibrant fresh insights.
Invite different levels of participation
Online communities that last offer members evolving opportunities to participate. Although communities are built upon shared interests, individual members will participate in ways that best meet their needs and reflect their identity. Ideally, the community members themselves will construct these opportunities to participate.
Focus on Value
It’s all about value. Communities thrive when value is inherent in the experience of members. Without value participation will quickly fizzle. The full value of a community is often not apparent when it is first formed and is often driven by the participation of members.
Combine the familiar and excitement
Vibrant communities often contain divergent opinions. Routine events such as e-newsletters, postings and uploading photos provide stability for relationship building connections, while at the same time producing lively debate and irregular events. Impassioned voices on the site will provide a common sense of adventure.
Creating an online community is not for the faint of heart however. When inviting this kind of dynamic participation into your organization’s programs or mission it is important to be prepared for the dynamic nature of the self-authored experiences that shape vibrant communities. In the end, engaging online communities are not part of, nor driven by an organization’s bureaucratic culture. Rather, they reflect the culture of the people who make up the community.
Online communities hold tremendous potential for building engaging brands that support the collective nature and the individualism in their members.
Pattie LaCroix has directed marketing and communications programs for nonprofits for over ten years. As vice president of Communicopia, she is passionate about creating online communications strategies for nonprofits that engage their audience and build support for their work. You can contact Pattie through www.communicopia.net.
