Andrew Brooks

Building NewWorld communities

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So what have I learned this week?

I have read two books: Trademark 2.0 by R Todd Stephens, and The Complete Leader by Dr Eddie Obeng. Both of these books have made me, stop and think, experience that cold shiver as I move to that uncomfortable feeling of ‘conscious incompetence’ and then enjoy those motivational moments of thinking and planning the steps I need to take to get to move to ‘unconscious competence’ - as quickly as possible!

These are indeed interesting times…

The NewWorld (and for the techies who like to use terminology the rest of us don’t understand, the ‘world of 2.0’) is a place where the rules have changed. Learning about the differences between the OldWorld and the NewWorld, understanding the NewRules and then applying the learning, and adapting to this NewWorld, is difficult and at times very painful. On the other hand, Failing to learn and adapt is likely to be more painful and difficult – Choose your route!

Whilst many don’t exactly know where to head, or what to focus on next, there clearly is a growing realisation that doing nothing is not an option for them. The huge growth in personal blogs and the clamour to be ‘heard’ on the web backs up the premise in Trademark 2.0 that we need to create our personal online trademark.

The message is clear – you need to learn the ‘New Rules for the New World’ and get to grips with how you manage your visibility/trademark in the growing levels of online ‘noise’…

This leads me on to an enjoyable and timely catch up call with Dylan Jones (IQ Solutions) yesterday. Dylan is a good example of ‘the harder I work (in the NewWorld), the luckier I get’.

Dylan has put in an extraordinary amount of effort in to getting his Data Migration Pro portal/community idea off the ground, and it looks like that effort is starting to pay off.

According the portal, "Data Migration Pro is the first/only dedicated online community for all things ‘Data Migration’." In a short space of time it has reached 350+ members, looks like it’s been around longer than others, and includes new ideas and features which will no doubt become the norm in the online community portal space.

The relevance of this should be profound.

As more and more people start working out that in order to have a presence or a trademark in the NewWorld, they are going to have to find time to become an active online contributor. If you don’t contribute to the NewWorld, you don’t exist. It’s as simple as that.

What’s more, most of what you contribute has to be given away free (to begin with anyway). If it’s good it will be used by others, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get positive feedback, credited with the original idea, more ‘traffic’ and more ‘visibility’. If what you contribute is seen as ‘poor’ it could be ridiculed and will quickly damage the professional image, trademark or ‘virtual value’ you are trying to build. If you let someone down and they have a good web presence, you could be hit hard – be warned!

This is why we are seeing a significant growth in the number of blogs and the setup and participation in online communities. People want and need to develop their online voice, or their NewWorld trademark/persona…

I believe the ‘free’ to participate communities will surge ahead. As more and more people participate, the value to join will grow, and community closure, or possibly consolidation will occur where the cost of subscription outweighs the value gained.

I guess there is a danger of letting all this 'contributing online' consume your life - there is a balance to be found (says he typing this at 1630 on a Saturday afternoon!). Clearly, not contributing is not an option, but contributing and making money and having a life, are of equal importance (I think it’s appropriate to plug another of Eddie’s books here without fear of negative feedback ;-) Money Making Machines, you need to understand and follow these rules!).

As someone who has had a go at setting up, and has been a member of online communities, I have not yet come across a technology solution that ‘hits the spot’. After my chat with Dylan, I reflected on my own online community experience and what will be needed to satisfy the NewWorld community the owners, contributors, participants, and sponsors…

Sure, you can get message board hosting, wiki’s and blogs – all separately. A google search for ‘online community hosting’ provides you with a clear picture of the opportunity here – either I’m looking in the wrong places or no one is building NewWorld online community suites? Hopefully some very cleaver people have already seen this opportunity and are gluing together 2.0 things as I write! (I know Dylan has had to build his own…)

So what would the online community platform provide the non-techie entrepreneur with a great idea? Obviously they need that all important ‘landing page’. Even if for now we don’t make this customisable by the participant, it needs to provide the basics and lots of dynamic content to tempt the viewer to explore deeper and deeper. The obvious examples being rss aggregators from the communities blogs and wiki’s. The top x podcasts, offers to complete a 60 second survey, etc.

You need to be able to manage advertising space and revenue collection, manage CRM activities which provide customised alerts that meet the preferences of the individual member, provides easy surveying capabilities, news feeds and aggregators both from across the community tools (e.g. from it’s own blogs, the blogs of members, from specific and relevant blogs/news sites outside the community, etc.

Creating mailing lists is also a must have, as well as creating branded html emails is a must. And of course, keeping the history of all member interactions, visits, contributions, purchases, etc. goes without saying…

Simple online catalogue/shopping facilities are also a must for those with a money making machine hat on!

Why we are at it, why not provide ‘me’ an alert when someone on my linkedIn network or my list of ‘who to look out for’ (including those I think are competitors) posts a blog, comment, adds content to a wiki, etc.

Everything within this community needs to be rateable – Like rating books on Amazon and buyers and sellers on eBay, the weasels need to be highlighted and their reputations crushed.

Let’s also kill the current situation where friends of vendors give great ratings to things they have never really tried… Let’s track and make visible by individual the ratings, comments and contributions within the community – the patterns will speak for themselves – you’ve been warned 

Given job sites like Jobserve now seem to be 99% ‘noise’, as these online communities of expertise become larger communities of ‘trust’, we need NewWorld capabilities that enable community members to bring work opportunities to the community and to get a kick-back for doing so. A trusted win-win situation needs to be created. Being an active participant in the community brings you benefits whether you’re a learner, contributor or opportunity seeker.

Some will try and build communities, others will join them. Like the bricks and mortar world where consolidation takes place, the same will happen in the online community world. I think the ones that set off first to make money will probably be the ones that fail. The authentic ones, the ones that work hard to understand the NewRules will be the ones that the community contributors and participants (counting members is probably as pointless as counting and quoting that OldWorld dot com measure ‘hits’) will help to ensure success.

Management Information covering all of the above needs to be comprehensive yet simple to analyse, (especially if we are ambitions with the customisation of information delivery, and want to be more than a flash in the pan!). Being able to see what is really interesting participants, by their roles/category, etc. will be invaluable. I’d also want to be able to analyse patterns – what ‘things’ trigger ‘what’ responses with ‘who’ (individuals and groups)…

As well as providing the community owner the info they need to continuously improve information design of the portal, they need to be able to provide the ability to provide feedback and advice to the key contributors (those who want to be the leaders) and this information could be paid for? Also, vendors will be interested in viewings, levels of activity, ratings, survey results, click through, etc. and again will pay for this information…

Good luck Dylan!