Ask the Expert...with our new Channels and New Media expert, Matt O'Neill.
Q: We're about to launch discussion forums at our organization. What advice do you have to help us get people started?
A: "Build it and they will come," said Kevin Costner in the film Field of Dreams. In the context of discussion forums, I wish it were true, but I'm afraid not!
What you’re talking about is basically the core element of building a successful online community. In order to respond, I need to assume you have clear aims and objectives regarding what the purpose of the forums are.
Seek out the witty
It’s helpful to start by thinking about how a community often starts out. Are you familiar with Pareto’s 80/20 rule? In discussion forum or online community terms, this translates to the majority of the action being stimulated by the minority of people.
Online and offline life has people who attract others by their charisma, intellect, wit, incisiveness and a number of other positive characteristics.
It's these "catalyzers" you should seek to encourage most in order to get the conversations started in discussion forums.
Online, as well as offline life has those people who attract others by their charisma, intellect, wit, incisiveness and a number of other positive characteristics.
Stimulate the "lurkers"
When starting your discussion board, ensure you have sufficient manpower resource to stimulate it.
Users will often "lurk" before saying anything first. This is because they're "feeling their way" before establishing a voice of their own.
While you may have policies dictating what is and isn't up for discussion, a natural etiquette usually needs to emerge before users have confidence to fully participate. Perhaps, like IBM did, you could use a wiki in order to gauge employee suggestions about blogging or discussion forum guidelines, before you go live with the forums?
Use all available channels
When you come to launching the forums, do you have other channels to cross promote them within the organization? Use your intranet homepage, internal newsletter, posters, text messages and all channels at your disposal to highlight their existence.
If the forums are time-specific and aimed to help achieve a specific organizational purpose, what about tying them into offline events?
If the forums are time-specific and aimed to help achieve a specific organizational purpose, what about tying them into offline events in some way? I’ve found it particularly effective to use online community tools as a means of growing debate on a topic amongst a group, then meeting face to face with the conversation already started.
Prepare for development
While it’s boring to get technical here, can your forums scale up if needed? I.e., as conversations become more involved and sophisticated, is it possible for new functionality to be added?
Where possible, show the community they're actually being listened to. For example, if a member of staff proposes a great idea, make sure they're publicly praised for it. Rewarding people for participation will only help increase engagement and make the forums thrive.
Avoid relying on your usual measurement methods
Finally, do you have metrics in place to measure success? Traditional measures of success (number of visitors, repeat visits etc) don’t necessarily apply here. You may need to design new metrics relating to knowledge sharing, network growth etc. Maybe make straight comparisons between the cost of thought generation through offline meetings, surveys etc and the project cost of setting up the forums?
Make straight comparisons between the cost of thought generation through offline meetings, surveys etc and the project cost of setting up the forums.
There’s a lot of literature out there on this subject. I’ve just jotted a few thoughts.
Useful online tips
Incidentally, you're welcome to access a multimedia presentation about online communities. It’s a little out of date, but there are still a few useful pointers in there. It was created as a means of sharing knowledge from a London-based meeting across the world. (N.B. Headphones or speakers needed.)
Matt O'Neill is a director of specialist new media communications consultancy, Cordovan Digital (formerly Imarco Activ-Media) and a part of Cordovan, a sales and marketing consultancy group.
After gaining a first class honors degree in Media and Communication, his career started in the production of live webcasts for major events. During his six-year tenure as director and senior partner with Cordovan Digital, he has been involved in numerous large-scale communications projects with private, public sector and international organizations. These have included simple CD ROM's to aid corporate change communication, through to fully integrated social media projects to bring about wide-scale culture change.
At Cordovan Digital, Matt's clients have included Novartis, Pharmion, First Data, United Nations, British Council, Volvo, ESAB, National Air Traffic Services and GE and more, working strategically with social media and networks, audio and video podcasting, DVD/online video event capturing and online training. Although using digital media, Matt supports the division’s mantra of keeping communications human.