Creating an effective communities plan

Defining your audience will help you focus your efforts. The more detail you know about your members, the better you will be able to reach, and ultimately influence, that people most likely to select your products and services as a solution to their needs. Gathering this information about your membership now will help you expend fewer resources later and eventually generate greater returns:

• Roles: Do your members have a specific role, company or market sector? For example, business owners, nurses, bosses, mothers, scientists, or alumni.
• Small groups: Are there any small groups that need to collaborate? For example, committees or boards.
• Location: Where are your members located?

What does success look like for your organization? Please read through the following possible success scenarios and check off all that apply to your organization. What are your top three, in order of priority?:

• Consolidate and/or standardize information and processes
• Improve organizational efficiency and save staff time
• Promote professional development by pointing members to resources
• Provide a virtual classroom for online training and education
• Become the "go to" place for latest credible information in your field
• Better understand the needs and interests of your members
• Increase communication between organization and members
• Increase communication amongst membership
• Create community and a sense of belonging
• Engage a younger demographic

Success for your organization will be different than success for your members. For example, as an organization you might be interested in increased revenue whereas your members are probably more concerned with getting easy access to helpful information. What does success look like for your members? Please read through the following possible success scenarios and check off all that apply.

• Find members with related interests
• Break out into interest groups
• Collaborate virtually on projects with people in a variety of locations
• Communicate more easily with organizational leadership
• Reach a wider network of colleagues
• Share and access files (videos, PowerPoint, PDFs, docs)
• Inclusion in a safe environment and trusted community of peers
• Gain expertise and access professional development opportunities
• Share expertise and best practices with others in your field
• Access to proprietary resources and knowledge
• Ask for help and receive answers quickly

One of the benefits of iMIS Communities is that they provide a treasure trove of data about how people are interacting inside their community. Many organizations require that data be used to prove whether they are meeting their organizational goals. Although you are at the very beginning of the process of setting up your community, it is a good idea to think about whether you will need metrics, and which metrics might help you measure your success. It is useful to do some initial strategizing about whether, when, and how you will track data to measure the success of your community.

How helpful has data analysis been to measuring the success of your organization’s goals? Choose one of the following:

• Crucial
• Somewhat helpful
• Interesting, but not necessary
• Not helpful
• Other

Is there anyone in your organization who requires you to report the community data? Choose all of the following that apply:

• Board of Directors
• CEO/Executive Director
• Management
• I am not required to report data
• Other

At what stage in the community building process do you imagine you would like to begin looking at the data? Choose one of the following:

• As soon as the community went live to the membership
• Some time after the community launched
  • When?
• I do not plan to review the data
• Other

How often do you plan to review the data? Choose one of the following:

• Weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly
• I won’t look at the data
• Other

What data sources are currently available to reference? Choose all of the following that apply:

• iMIS Engagement Metrics
• Google Analytics
• Other

How will you collect or consolidate the data? (Choose all of the following that apply:

• I will reference the data online without writing it down
• I will consolidate it in a spreadsheet
• I will write it up in a report
• I won’t reference the data
• Other

What metrics do you anticipate might be the most useful and/or interesting to you?

The first step in promoting networking is to gather a core group of people (your “beta team”). It is advisable to have a Beta group of users that provide feedback, discover bugs in the system, or identify final changes that should be put in place prior to a full launch. Your beta team is comprised of three different types of people:

• Administrators are the professionals in your organization who are charged with creating the new community. They have the ability to edit all information.
• Moderators are people who have been given special access to edit particular group information. Moderators are seen as leaders, gatekeepers, or organizers.
• Champions are community members who are passionate about collaborating, using technology, and maintaining and promoting community information.

The best way to identify a potential Moderator or Champion is to look around in your community as it exists right now and identify candidates. You are not required to find Moderators and Champions before you launch the community; you can simply begin with the Administrator team. However, identifying the Moderators and Champions prior to launching will help build community more quickly, especially when new members come in.

Other valuable members of your community you should identify include the following:

• Thought Leaders: Who are your thought leaders? Who has the skill and ability to speak with authority?
• Writers: Who are the writing enthusiasts or people who already write blog posts or newsletter articles?
• Conversationalists: Who are the people who are always participating in conversations, virtual or in-person?
• Tech-Savvy: Which members seem to be the most comfortable with technology?
• Connectors: Which people play a central role in connecting people and energizing the community?
• Question-Answerers: Are there people who enjoy answering forum questions?
• Groups and Committees: Which groups or committees might be interested in being first to use the new community?

Defining your deadlines will help you focus your efforts, set realistic milestones for rolling out your community, and be ready to promote your network at upcoming events. Are there any upcoming conferences or training sessions? Are there any trending topics? New legislation to learn about? Creating a list of deadlines not only makes prioritizing easier, but it also helps you to take advantage of more opportunities to offer value to your users and promote your community. Please read through the following questions and list any upcoming important dates:

• Dates: Do you have important calendar dates that might affect community deployment?
• Conferences: Are there any upcoming conferences?
• Meetings: What regular meetings affect all your members?
• Trainings: Are there any upcoming training sessions?

When setting up a new community, it is a good idea to schedule a six-month review meeting with the team that has been involved in making the community successful -- community administrators, champions, and additional beta team members. At six months you can start to see patterns in how your members are using the network. The purpose of the review is to review these patterns, reflect about whether they match your initial goals, and adjust your strategy as necessary:

1. Goals for organization: Review the top three goals for your organization that are listed in Step 2. Reflect about where you are with each of these goals.
2. Goals for members: Review the top three goals for your members that are listed in Step 2. Reflect about where you are with each of these goals.
3. Overall assessment:
   • What’s going well in your community?
   • What’s not going well?
4. Measuring your success: Review the metrics that you listed on your strategy blueprint. Reflect about what your data reveals about the last six months, and what metrics you would like to collect moving forward:
   • Of the available data, what metrics are most useful and/or interesting to you?
   • What metrics do you wish you could collect, that are not currently available?
   • In what ways have you changed your community strategy based on analysis of the data?
5. Next steps:
   • What do you hope to achieve in your next six months?
   • What are the clear next steps for your organization?