Creating a community is hot these days, it serves all kind of purposes and it will add value, if done properly. And exactly the latter is difficult, the creation of a community needs to be thoroughly discussed, planned and executed.

When a community is deployed, it must be sustainable, it should “not end”. If a community is closed after a while, it could have a negative impact towards the brand/company.
During the community brainstorm, take into consideration the following aspects and put them into perspective against your strategy and goals:

*The amount of interaction between people.
My experience: Not all interaction must be of high quality, people are people and also fun or less targeted interaction should be tolerated (unless you state so in the rules of the community), but a certain flow of interaction must be present.

*The amount of quality content/interaction between people.
My experience: too few qualitative posts/etc could not be enough to trigger members to visit periodically the community, ongoing reasons must be given to the members to keep coming back, make absolutely sure content is added (on way or another), if members sense this is not happening, bit by bit they could visit less the community and have a downward spiral effect on the community.

*The amount of people.
My experience: there must be a critical mass of people active, to be sustainable and for the community to act autonomous without interference of the brand / company to keep the stream of interaction ongoing. Invest and keep investing in the visibility of the community and keep attracting people.

*The amount of active people must be big enough, most people are passive, they like to sign up and read, but are not the content/interaction generators.
My experience: the percentage of content generators in a community is a small one. If the active persons are heavy users and are loyal, they can keep the community sustainable, though the passive portion of the community must pick the content up and interact on it amongst other members. People are unpredictable, do not depend on the current small portion of active members.

*The community must be relevant and specific to one or more segments, the more niche, the higher value added, but the fewer people and thus interaction.
My experience: Create a well balanced community between focus and attractiveness to a broad audience. Broad is relative to the critical mass I wrote above. A too narrow focus or specialisation on certain subjects can be deadly to the attractiveness to a broad audience. Choices that can be made are: Broadening the scope of the community or putting more efforts in it to keep in alive.

*People need to make a choice.
My experience: join an extra community and split up Time between X+1 community, or they make the choice to spend extra more time in communities so that they can be present the same amount of time on X+1 communities. The perceived risks or the time- and engagement investment for people can be that high to not try out the new community and its interaction.

These are difficult choices to be made by people and their life and other obligations.

According to eMarketer spent time on communities is growing, this does mean that the presentation, sustainability and quality must be always present, it won’t last long before the wide world knows if your community is worth it or not.

The abovementioned factors are those I encountered and are my experiences, those are factors to think well about and keep constantly in mind. Building a community is a long-term commitment made by a brand / company. When succeeding, the value for the members and the brand / company are immense!

This list is far from complete, please share your experience and knowledge about the pre-conditions and starting up a long-lasting and interactive community?

Also read Reflection: “Introducing the Collaboration Curve” and Reflection: “Three Elements You Need for Successful Creation Spaces” which explain the meta consequences of a community and the three elements to succeed.

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Originally published on the personal blog of Gianluigi Cuccureddu.

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