Communicate
The communication plan to be drawn up (or at least the conscious thinking about the communication) uses the first learning experiences of the start-up phase. Communicating often means transmitting. Thinking and advising about how your organization can use the community, instead of telling about it, is at least as valuable. By that I mean investigating whether the community can play a role in existing discussions. Map out what is going on in the organization in terms of topics that relate to your theme and create a connection between the community manager and the organization.
To organize
No matter how easy and user-friendly a platform is in your eyes, support for (some of the employees) latvia phone number list who have to do something with the community is a point of attention. Think of training and sharing usage rules. Right behind that comes thinking about who does what in the management of the community. Because nothing happens by itself.
Step 3: Within the community
Once the community is up and running, how do you organize the different parties?
Interventions; linking to the goal
If it all goes well, the trick is to keep it alive. Much has been written about this. At the beginning of the article I advocate linking the characteristics of a community to the goal. The same applies to the interventions you can make once the community is up and running.
The image above shows which interventions can contribute most to your goal. For example, structuring content, for example by linking content to themes, and distinguishing between what is on-topic and off-topic, is a logical choice if your goal is to share knowledge or create a database.
Step 4: Maintaining the community
One of the driving forces behind a community are the ambassadors. They play an important role in connecting in and around the community.
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Actively rewarding and activating ambassadors (e.g. setting up a superuser program) ensures continuous activity. If the community really gets big, moderators are needed. They monitor and evaluate functionality and content and improve it constantly.
I have undoubtedly mentioned a number of open doors (and hopefully eye-openers). And yet, just check with the communities you are part of or want to set up, whether the doors are really that open.