Come Together: Community Musings

"It is not enough to create a flag. You must have a nation willing to follow it."- Patrick Hanlon, Primal Branding

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Good Ideas Salon on community management. There we heard from Matt Stinchcomb of Etsy, Jen Burton of Digg, and Heather Champ of Flickr, moderated by Mia Quagliarello of YouTube.

Much of the conversation reminded me of Hanlon's quote. Matt said that your community may very well be your brand, so you must make it magnetic. Jen of Digg also spoke to this point, noting that the people are the product. As a result, you have to look at all of the different behaviors of your community. For example, visitors to Etsy may be there to shop, browse, sell, or communicate. Visitors to Flickr may be there for inspiration, to learn, or to get help.

There are many online communities (and brands) that could do well to think of reaching out to the folks who participate on their site in some of these different ways. For example, while you can go to a certain artist's page on Etsy, as a browser or purchaser, you can't promote your favorite artists, share your "wishlist," or create a gallery of your purchases. For all practical purposes, these users are outside of the community. Some of your passionate consumers will then try to create the conversation without the brand; Lauren Puglia of Undercurrent recently posted about her purchases from new favorite artists on her blog, but was not able to share that instantly with the Etsy community. While Lauren still helped promote those artists, she wasn't given the platform to have a voice in that community. Matt had mentioned that you must give your community the tools they need to self-organize, and speaking to him after the panel, he did say that personal space on the site, or profiles, are on the list of innovations to come.

So what can your site or brand do to expand the community and grow as a product? Definitely an interesting exercise in self-inventory.

Other great takeaways from the panel:

_ the first 48 hours after a change likely won't be the ultimate feeling of the community, nor their ultimate attitude toward the change, and there will always be people who don't like change (Heather)

_ early adopters are fickle and you have to let them go--it's their nature (Jen)

_ treat your members as ambassadors and invite them to bring their existing communities to your site (Heather)

_ when trying to pave the way for involvement, think about how you can make your community more like a book club than a bar...no one can get anywhere if they try to shout to an entire bar, but they'll want to share and will be more likely to have meaningful conversation at a book club (Jen)