Online communities, what’s luck got to do with?

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Tom

A recent post from Matt Rhodes at Freshnetworks caught my attention.  In it Matt describes how an online community he created suddenly took off thanks to word-of-mouth from one (or some) or its members.  This must sounds like music in the ears of everyone trying to launch an online community.  But I was concerned that luck was a too important factor.  Because the success of your community depends on actions someone MIGHT take.  That just seemed like a big IF to me, in a statistical point-of-view.

Though luck is an important and present factor in te launch of an online community, I think there’s less risk of it being too big to become a concern. 

online_commOnline communities are ‘us-places’, contrary to social media that are ‘me-places’.  Matt’s got a good definition of both, check them out.  I’m trying to avoid the ‘what came first’-story, but it’s explains in a way why luck isn’t that important as you first should think.  The growing success of these ‘me-places’ can be seen as a result of the growing need for people to become unique individuals.  Everybody seems to want to become ‘the’ person, not ‘a’ person.  As a result, we can target these individuals more precisely because we know more about them. 

BUT the growing need to become ‘the’ person means the need to be acknowledge by people as ‘the’ person, preferably your peers.  They give your unique ‘you’ a place in this world.  Define, in part, who you are (to them).  And that’s where there the luck factor kicks in.  Online communities are a more global way to find those peers who can give you a place in this world.  As a result, joining an online community means there’s already an interest in what it’s there for (to help you), other than an ordinary shop (to help themselves).  So it’s easier to reach them, grab them and make them promote the online community for you.  ‘The’ person has only to gain by seeing more of his peers joining the community.  The more there are, the more he feels himself acknowledged as ‘the’ person.

By using the need of ‘a’ person to become ‘the’ person they should be able to generate positive word-of-mouth.  But how much luck is it still involved to become a massive success?

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  • Hi Tom,

    I'm afraid I'm not sure luck was a factor, at least not the over-riding one. Whilst it's true that you can't (and indeed shouldn't) control the actions people take when spreading word of mouth, you can create and environment and encourage behaviours which are more conducive to this happening.

    Within an online community environment, you often want to create a space that people realise is part of a larger online ecosystem. They know that they don't come to your community alone to discuss a brand or issue, but they might also be part of discussions on a similar theme in Facebook or other social networks, forums or blogs. Of course, your community strategy needs to establish exactly why people would come to your space and what they would do when they're there, but it's also important to work out how you will work with and benefit from the other communities in the ecosystem.

    When the online community is running it is the role of community management to continue to take advantage of this positioning. This works both ways - a planned and strategic process of outreach, working in these other forums and places online to benefit the community. But equally it is important to establish when it is right for people to go elsewhere. Maybe they're discussing a topic that doesn't really have a place on your community or want information you can't give (medical advice perhaps) in these cases it's about actively pointing people to other sites and places online.

    You design and build a community specifically to fit as part of an ecosystem rather than isolated from it. And then you manage your community so that it really behaves in this way.

    If you get this right I'm not sure that any word of mouth you generate is chance. I think it a realisation of a plan, community members doing what you've designed your approach for them to do and indeed copying the behaviours exemplified by the community management.

    So whilst the actual instance of somebody spreading word of mouth may be chance; the actual causes of it aren't

    Matt
    FreshNetworks
  • Hey Matt,

    Thanks for the reply, I really like reading your posts about online communities. It's incredibly interesting reading from a mostly analytical point-of-view because that's something I'm not able to do (but really should)

    While the definition of what a person is used to be created by a lot of social factors, online communities not being one of them, there are more possibilities now. More ways for people to define themselves and find likeminded people. So I'm trying to push 'luck' in as a less important factor (other than what most people think at first) because all the surrounding factors are more specified, more defined for people to identify themselves with it. And just because they're so defined, it's easier to trigger word-of-mouth when everything comes together. Online communities are in a way better defined than other historical communities/businesses where luck was/is a more dominant factor. (f.e. convincing customers to walk into a shop and buy something).

    So trying to create a community without proper analysis of your target demographic and without proper management to define and control it (where possible), it MIGHT work, chances are slim though compared to a setting where everything falls into place. The 'luck'-factor diminishes because people tend to have a better understanding of who they are and what they want (the 'me' vs. 'us' or 'social networks' vs. 'online communities').

    grtz,
    Tom
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