ECM Briefs

Creating a Corporate Community: Lessons Learned

This week we’ve been talking about the importance of creating online communities within the walls of your enterprise content management system. I discussed in a podcast we just posted that users need an outlet to ask opinions, share ideas with their peers and generally get a sense that someone cares about what they’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis with their deployments – thus creating a sense of “community.”

Now, you might think that just because you’ve got the software installed, your users will have instant access to a world of utopian kinship, however it might not be that easy. We’ve learned from creating our own community that you have to put a lot of thought behind what it is you really want to accomplish before users begin chatting away and sharing information. Here are a few of the lessons we’ve learned to help you out:

Business user support communities must have clear and unique goals and objectives, and should be specifically designed and managed to address them.

Most users look for materials that help them do their jobs, but very few users contribute. This phenomenon is well recognized for consumer sites on the web, but seems to be even truer for business sites that people access during their working hours.

Support communities must have critical mass. Anecdotally, more than a thousand members are required to create any sense of visible activity to casual participants.

Resist the temptation to create specialty, topic-based communities if these cannot quickly achieve critical mass and/or they will duplicate other communities.

Given the membership volumes required, automated membership (adding new members and providing password reminders), as well as rights and roles administration is essential for cost-effective operation and timely response to user requests.

Up-to-date content, such as documents and videos, have the most value in driving user satisfaction and return visits.

Collaborative tools are initially less important as most users may read forums, blogs, and discussion groups, but only a very small portion will contribute. It’s important to note however, that over time these tools will build up a useful base of searchable knowledge, even if there are relatively few contributors.

Forum and blog authors naturally look for feedback as validation of their efforts and are generally disappointed by the low participation rates. Be sure to show authors audit logs that often indicate that dozens users are reading their posts, even though no one posted a response or gave a rating.

Users will only read and subscribe to a limited number of forums, blogs, and discussion groups. Resist the temptation to create many forums on a range of specific topics. Instead, create one primary or general forum initially and then branch off once volumes increase for specific subjects.