Aug

Getting Online Communities Going by Francine Hardaway

I’ve been involved with Democrasoft for a while now (the founder has been a friend of mine for thirty years and his daughter sang at my daughter’s wedding), and we’ve come to the conclusion that most online communities don’t succeed because they do not have good moderators/managers. Community management is still a new field, most of the people in it have been self-trained by trial and error or come naturally to the task, and the best practices are vague and difficult to find.

I believe that’s a problem for all collaboration platforms, because not all of them can run themselves. And unless they have good team leaders, community managers, moderators, or whatever other name you want to give these pivotal people, communities can die even if they are built on a very strong common interest.

Some of the most active communities are in health care, where participants are united by a common illness. I’m thinking of some of the early Health 2.0 communities that have grown quickly: Diabetes Mine, Patients Like Me, and EmpowHer. In the beginning, each of these was driven by a single person with a huge need to reach out, draw others in, and provide mutual value to the community.That person, driven by a need for further information about his/her condition, brought a passion and energy to the community that caused it to grow beyond a single moderator/manager.

That’s difficult to replicate if your online community is about less than life or death: if it’s around a brand, or a political candidate, or even a church. I have a pretty good view into a number of collaboration platforms, all the way back to GroveSite from ten years ago (still in business) and they generally grow more slowly than their founders would wish. After years of working in silence or in separate offices, people can’t train themselves to collaborate overnight. Putting yourself out there can be scary.

Some of Democrasoft’s most successful communities, however, turn out to be in schools. Because classroom teachers are — no surprise – trained community managers. The best teachers encourage discussions, engage their communities and students, and actually can have lifelong influence as a result. We are trying to figure out how to replicate the kind of job the best teachers do for kids in more adult situations. This has led to a study of how to train and engage moderators, and to the development of a site we’re giving to the community, called We Moderate. Please join us there to talk about this critical topic. And any other resources you know of would really be appreciated. You will be paid in social currency:-)

Francine’s Bio: Francine Hardaway is currently the CEO/co-founder of Stealthmode Partners, a virtual accelerator for high growth companies since 1998. Prior to co-founding Stealthmode Partners, Francine was Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Innovative Environmental Products, and Manager of Worldwide Press Relations at Intel’s Computing Enhancement Group, where she supported the entrance of the intelligent I/O server chip into the OEM market and created the public relations plans for digital imaging, in-car computing, USB, and home networking. As an entrepreneur, Francine built the largest marketing/public relations firm in Phoenix, Arizona before leaving to join Intel. Francine also blogs and consults on social media strategy.