Your company wants to build an online community? – Key things to consider!

This magic word – community! Suddenly all the problems will be solved! Your company just needs to create an online community – right?

Here is a list of questions you need to address first:

Why your company is building a community? – Business goals.

Do you have resources to grow and manage it? – Community is a long term commitment.

Do you have processes on how to analyze and act upon different type of events happening in communities? – integration with back end processes: sales; support, product management, legal, etc..

Did you consider potential legal implications? Do you need to create an agreement for members to sign?

Did you create a set of rules/guidelines for the members of the community to follow?

How are you going to measure the success of the community? – very important to come up with the set of metrics and be able to measure.

What technology/tool are you going to use to build and manage your community?

We will be talking more about communities at this upcoming event: Social Media In HiTech Conference. Please send me your questions and I will make sure to ask them during our panel discussions!