How It All Went Wrong, A Social Media Love Story

You used to come home and find her so sexy, waiting by the door, her seductress self available for your every whim. Now, you find her to be work. Your experience on Social isn't giving you the same thrill it previously did. What changed?

Do you remember what she wore the first day you joined? She was gloriously nude, a blank page to be written on, then read. She took a little effort, needed a little pursuing, but it was worth it. Part of what made Social so exciting was the thrill of the chase - the hunt for followers and re-posts. Teasing her until she gave up those important things to you was a total rush.

She knows your likes and dislikes now, and anticipates your needs, brings you comfortable topics and people...but the thrill is gone. What changed? 

You changed. 

You're not trying any more. You're tired when you check your feed, disengaged when you read statuses. Your posts are memes and jokes. You're muting people - you don't listen to Social anymore. 

You're bored with Social and are treating her badly. She's as interesting as ever to those of us who spend a little time paying attention to and taking care of her.

Social is not a thrill ride, she's not a hussy, here for a roll in the hay, so long, see ya. Social is a fine lady with a salon full of fascinating people and objet, worth every moment you spend to cultivate her company. Don't blame her if you're not fun anymore. 

Originally posted on Quora

Wibbly-wobbly, Returny-wurny | Lessons on Social Media from Doctor Who

In 1963 a children's show was created in the UK. It was meant to be an educational show, a show that would transport its audience through time to the past to witness the Aztecs or Ancient Rome. It was marginally successful until someone decided that while the characters were traveling through Time, they could also be travelling through Space. The show, Doctor Who, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is more popular than ever. But it wasn't a smooth ride at all.

For the first years of its life, the show was popular with children (and their adults) as a sci-fi show, with evil baddies, ambiguous morality lessons and a charismatic, mercurial lead, The Doctor. In the 1980s the BBC leadership was absolutely dedicated to killing the show, but fan pressure - now global through Public Television support for the show in America and Australia - brought it back from the grave, for a while, until the show was once again cancelled after the 7th Doctor played his last spoon....

...Only Doctor Who didn't die. Bizarrely, it was picked up by an American television network, which of course focused on all the wrong things, and annoyed the British fans no end ("The American Movie" is how the 8th Doctor's tenure is known among fans.) But it did something unheard of. 40 years old and the show hadn't died. Like a Monty Python character, it kept reassuring us "It wasn't dead yet." And fandom hadn't moved on. With a body of episodes in the hundreds, still showing on Public TV, then reluctantly released by the BBC on VHS, the DVD, fandom wasn't dead.

And neither was the show. In 2005 the famous blue box known as the TARDIS landed once again in the UK and it was alive, again. The "new" Doctor Who, which picked up with the 9th Doctor and has now made it to the 11th is more popular, more global  - and more financially lucrative than ever before.

So, what are the lessons we can learn from this story?

Return on Time - Perseverance isn't overrated

In the days before Venture Capital and Y Combinator, sometimes all you had to rely on was Time. Having a good idea five years too early can gut a company. But Apple proves the point - when a good idea takes time, perseverance, passion and a soupcon of delusional belief that you're right, playing the long game can lead to success.

Return on Investment - Throwing money at the problem works too

When the BBC demanded better ratings for the 7th Doctor, and they were competing with Star Trek: Next Generation for share of the TV Sci-fi watching audience, the creators of Doctor Who were in a bind. They scraped up more money and put on the most sophisticated show their budget would allow. In comparison with earlier seasons it was fantastic (despite that, the BBC was grumpy again, and they killed it anyway.) In 2005, the showrunners pulled out the stops and the re-launch of this iconic show was as good as anything else on TV. No plywood hallways, no two-set shows. Doctor Who was a big kid now. When you've strained to the edge of what you can do with Time, Investment pushes you to the next  level.

Return on Social is Wibbly-wobbly, Returny-wurny

The 10th Doctor famously stated, "Time is wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey." If there is a single lesson we can grok from The Doctor and his travels through our airspace and time, it's that Return on Social isn't a matter of simple eyeball formulas or likes or shares. In the days before the Internet, Doctor Who fandom created fanzines, wrote fiction, gathered together with friends on Saturday night to watch the show on Public Television, went to conventions to meet the actors. It has always been a social product. DW fandom were early adapters of online technology, expanding their contacts in fandom globally. When the new show launched, fandom was all ready for it. The network was built, ready and waiting. Virality wasn't an accident, it was 40 years in the making. And that is why the new show is popular. BBC and BBC America have made it more accessible, but the Internet does the rest.

Return on Social means a little push here, a nudge there, circle back and start again. When the formula doesn't work exactly as planned, passion and engagement can carry the project along. Superb execution pushes the boundaries and then back to the beginning yet again. Social is wibbly-wobbly, but if Doctor Who teaches us anything, it's that it can absolutely be returny-wurny.

Community Lifecycle: How to Prevent Evaporative Cooling from Eroding an Online Community

Evaporative Cooling, a termed coined by Eliezer Yudowsky, is the natural loss of user base on a community, tare if you will. Time, crises and change will contribute to Evaporative Cooling. It can't be prevented, but it can be slowed and managed. In response to a question on Quora, I detailed a few steps to identifying, managing and modulating Evaporative Cooling on an online community.

How to Prevent Evaporative Cooling from Eroding an Online Community

1. Acknowledge Community Lifecycle

2. Passion At The Top to Ignite Passion at the Bottom

3. Reward Users With Rewards, Not Rank

4. Architectural Flexibility = Good, Managerial Flexibility  = Better 

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1. Acknowledge Community Lifecycle

There is no way to "prevent" Evaporative Cooling (EC) in an online community completely. 

Your active user base will ebb and flow over time. Incremental growth may or may never lead to an explosion of popularity, but tare will exist with every new generation that joins the community, because people's priorities change and technology changes over time. What is a passionate interest now could become a vague interest later. Technology will change and no matter how innovative a community architecture is right now, at some point it will be old-school or obsolete. Not updating the technology means you'll lose people - updating the technology means you'll lose people. Keeping the group small and intimate means you'll lose people. Opening the community up means you'll lose people.

The key to keeping a community alive has a lot to do with keeping the currently engaged users engaged. In part, this can be achieved by...


2. Passion At The Top to Ignite Passion at the Bottom

I'm speaking here as owner and moderator of 4 concurrent communities, all based around an interest - not a hobby even, merely an interest. Of course people come and go in this interest space and in the more than ten years I've been running these communities, the thing that sustains me - and the communities - is that we all still enjoy the topic. My passion for it communicates to some degree in everything I do on these communities. My communities give warm welcomes to other fans, who find their enthusiasm rewarded.

In communities I haven't run, but have had the pleasure of moderating for, when the passion at the top cools, the community congeals almost instantly. Community builders that choose moderators so they can play with the architecture, cede control to people who don't have their vision or their passion. Moderation becomes a "thing to be done" not a "thing that keeps our community thriving." (1) (See point 3 for more on this.)

To slow one's own EC, one must acknowledge the limits of one's own passion - and energy. Like any community leader, I go through phases of burnout, or if there is simply less to talk about, I let the conversation ebb. Ebb tide is not an irreversible trend on a community, a blog or even in a conversation. When I've been blogging with frequency and intensity, I often take a few days off to let the audience - and myself - have a break. When I come back to it, my readership jumps. The same is true with a community. Short breaks in news/updates allow for a more relaxed approach when one returns - time for chat, personal opinion and other less quantifiable discussions that make up a community. Or a pattern of small news/chit-chat can be excited by big news or broader topics. 

The more passion a leader brings to the community, the more passion the community will generate.


3. Reward Users With Reward, not Rank (2)

I cannot stress enough how critical this point is.

It's time for a story. Two, in fact. In both cases, I was a Admin-level member after rising through the ranks by just being a good contributor and relatively unflappable.

The story is very similar in both cases. In the first case, there was a member of the group who offered to take charge of one of the committees. She was a horrible leader; selfish, mean and lazy. Everything she touched withered and died. She was so bad, that even the people above her left because she was loud and intractable and it just wasn't worth the energy. When the person above her left, invariably she would be given that position. No one at the executive level would be the bad guy and tell her to get lost (in part because this was a volunteer community, in part because of who was chosen to lead.) She rose through the ranks, more quickly as time went on, because the higher she got, the more people had to work with her and more would leave.

Ultimately, in the first case, the person took over the community and - no surprise at all - within a year the community was dead.

In the second case, a top user was rewarded with rank, because she was online so often. The community owners relied on this person for feedback but there were no checks and balances to her intel or actions. Her misinformation was the only information the owners received and like idiots, they relied on that. The problem was that the reason she was online so often was that she was conducting a cyber-affair with another user (who was a major contributor of money, which translated to rank on the community.) The two of them formed a block that abused, harassed and destroyed other users they felt were a threat.

In the first case, rather than dealing with the problem, that person was given power. In the second, the community owners used hours logged as a metric for valuable contributor. In both cases, the community owners set the community up for massive EC as the community members were disengaged and occasionally, active persecuted, by people who unsuited to hold any power at all.

In both cases, I pointed out the fallacies behind the appointment, but The Powers That Be chose to pretend nothing was wrong. I did not stick around long.

How can this problem be rectified? Understand that the #1 value good contributors are making is not their presence, not the hours they log, not their experience. Good contributors contribute good content. Rewarding them by giving them management tasks which will suck away their energy and desire to contribute is the perfect recipe for EC. It's the Peter Principle, online community style.

When I created a reward program for one of my communities, I focused on rewards that reinforced the "team" aspect of user support. Rather than adding on burdensome responsibility, they are rewarded for what they already do, the way they already do it. Time is not an issue. Amount of money spent is not really a major factor. Power is taken out of the equation entirely. The point of a reward is to make someone feel rewarded. (3)

By using Rank as a Reward, you disincentivize your top users to use. Their time on the site becomes unpaid work, their voice becomes the Voice of Authority, so it's harder for them to kick back and have fun. Many sites give rank without power or tools to maintaiin order- a veritable death spiral for online community moderation. Additionally, training for Moderators is poor or non-existent on many communities. The end result is that your best users are too frustrated and tired to contribute. 

There is no faster was to kill a community than by using Rank as a Reward for contribution. It is the major EC generator.



4. Architectural Flexibility = Good, Managerial Flexibility  = Better

In the article quoted, the focus is more on the technology than the people. It is absolutely a benefit to be able to adapt to the times. Adding social sharing and alternate means of communication, providing spaces for digression and dissension (warrens) and open fora for conversation are a fantastic way to slow down EC.

Even better is management that acknowledges mission/scope drift and is as transparent as possible (4) when changes are made or have to happen. "We're adding a new feature because we want to try it out" is something that community builders can (and should) say. Users may or may not try the new feature out - this, and what they have to say about it when they do use it, is valuable feedback. When a new control has to be rolled out, the best way to explain that is to say just that. "We had to do this because...." Engaged users will understand. Don't be coy, "Hey we made new changes that will take away something you liked because we did." Are there so many cases of something that a new rule was warranted? Say that and say it plainly.

Users believe they ought to have some say in a community by virtue of their time and engagement. Management has to make decisions based on the greater good and the bottom line. But surely there's a way to bring these two things together? Harness the insight of new users, casual users and heavy users in regards to community change  - and publish these findings so people can feel as if they were represented, heard and understood. In the volatile start-up world more=better, so it's understandable that changes will be rapid and constant. Can you think of any community anywhere, online or off, that likes change? People get used to what they get used to and they adapt very quickly, but they do not realize this. Every change, no matter how ultimately important, will increase EC...unless you include the community in that change.

It's easy for engineers to tinker with architecture, it's far more important for community managers to tinker with community engagement.


5. Conclusion.

While Evaporative Cooling is a fact of online community life and cannot be prevented or avoided, it can be slowed and managed. Understanding which aspects of community life are the most vulnerable to EC, establishing a rhythm to harness the ebb and flow of community life, maintaining engagement, rewarding contribution, providing tools for moderation and flexibility in management can decrease EC over the long-term. 

More reading:

1. Perils and Pitfalls of Online Community Management by Erica Friedman on 'Splaining: The Bloarg

2.Moderation: Policing, Curation and Shoveling Behind Elephants by Erica Friedman on 'Splaining: The Bloarg

3. When a Reward Program Feels Like a Slap

4The Myth of Transparency in a Community by Erica Friedman on 'Splaining: The Bloarg

Erica Friedman has been managing online communities since the olden days of BBS. She was a moderator on Usenet, and has owned, adminned or moderated about 2 dozen communities online. She currently own and runs 4 communities.

The Myth of Transparency - Why We Don't Really Have a Say

Every few months, it makes the news again - another change in Privacy rules on Facebook , a new agreement at Twitter, Google pulls its access from another platform, a shakeup in management, key employees leaving.... Each time this happens it causes an outbreak of prodding, poking and, in many cases, intrusive questions to dig out the "why" of what happened and all the dirty laundry.

Gossip-mongers, paparazzi, we have words for people like this in the entertainment industry and in everyday life. And yet, in an online communities there seems to be a presumption by the community that they have a right to know why decisions are made and who profits from them.

Clearly this is not the case. All of the leading networking platforms are privately-owned firms and while some of them are publicly traded, none are owned by the users. The privately owned networks have limited legal need to report even so much as executive leadership changes. Publicly traded companies must report changes...but they still have no requirements around explaining the whys and wherefores. Nor is there any moral obligation to explain personal choices by the staff about their own lives.

So why do we demand explanations?  Let me illustrate with a parable, as I so often do.

I am active in an incredibly niche industry. To say that everyone knows everyone else comes very close to the truth. A few years ago a major player in the industry landscape, having pulled itself out of two major business setbacks, packed it in quite suddenly, just as it was doing really well again.

People went ballistic. They raged and ranted about this company, how it had never been well-run, or
that it was a joke. Specifically, the President came under major dissection. He's been higgeldy-piggedly about his business objectives, running the company like a hobby, inconsistent, etc. (In reality, the market had radically altered several times over a decade, and he had merely been attempting to find workable business models, but that was never once acknowledged.)

Recently, that company has made some moves to return as a player in the field. There were positive
and negative reactions, but the weirdest and most inexplicable reaction I encountered was from members of that industry press. Two journalists told me that they were going to contact the people involved and demand details of their contracts. I boggled. Then I asked, "By what right do you demand this knowledge? It's none of your business."

The argument was loud.

A week later one of them contacted me privately to admit that I saved him from embarrassing himself
badly and ruining his credibility.

We use the products. We engage with the communities. Of course we feel as if we have a claim on those companies, but in reality, we have none. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn owe us...nothing. We use their sites for free and in return they sell our data to advertisers. Equally we owe these platforms nothing; no loyalty, no praise. By what right do we demand transparency from these platforms? Because we answer questions and talk with other people?

The Myth is that by participating on a community, we have some kind of ownership of that community. In reality, we have only our own content to leverage. Anything that we have created to make the community a better place is ours, and with some foresight, we'll have made it as portable and flexible as possible. If that content is customized for that site, well then, it's gone.

Change in any community comes with emotional cost, and each time it feels like upheaval but, we are owed no transparency from any platform on which we willingly engage that we do not own. Perhaps some platforms will be more transparent than others, but we have no right to demand answers to questions that are none of our business.

So go ahead and ask your questions, but don't be surprised when no one tells you "why".

Two Things You Can't Fake on Social Media

This week Social Media channels are abuzz with NBC's epic failure to recognize what Social Media is about...and what the Internet is, full stop. While Twitter blazes with reported failures of NBC's streaming channels and inability to access live coverage, NBC executives have taken to the airwaves to explain to the denizens of the Internet how the problems are all their fault.

The above debacle is a massive and public expression of the two things that cannot be faked in Social Media: Cluefulness and Relevance.

Being clueless is, unfortunately for many businesses, quite simple. All you need to do is have no idea of the needs of your audience, or any idea of what social media really is (hint: it's a lot of people talking...).

Being Clueful and Relevant means you know:

Who Your Audience Is (Where they are, When they are on)

What They Want

How They Intend to Get What They Want If You Don't Give It To Them

This last is where NBC really dropped the ball. By insisting on delayed coverage for the Opening Ceremonies, I guess they expected we'd all sit around staring at the clock. Instead, many of us simply found overseas streams and proxy servers, so we could watch the Ceremonies live. It took me, oh, about 15 minutes to find a working overseas stream. When that one cut out, it took me 10 more minutes to find another one.

But I'm not talking about NBC today. I'm talking about another failure to be Clueful or Relevant. A much, much smaller scale of failure, but just as annoying.

Yesterday I received a tweet: Hey @Yuricon! I followed you, you should follow me!

Okay, not the most skilled opening, but maybe sincere. So I popped over to their account and found something that only very tangentially intersected my interests and the interests of my audience. I tweeted back:

"Your topic isn't my topic, but if you say something interesting, I'll share it and follow."

Okay, so far, another day on Twitter. Bear in mind that I am outspoken about media's failure when it comes to women (hyper-sexualization, body image, unequal portrayals of men and women in power, dismissive and judgmental language in regards to women, etc.,). The next tweet showed a massive dose of Cluelessness.

The person/company in question assured me that they understood women, because he (he had identified himself) was publishing a book on self-improvement for women. My response was admittedly very sarcastic, something about how wonderful that was, because more women need more men to tell them how to improve themselves.

Here's my point. NBC execs are taking to Twitter to tell us to stop whining, that the problems are with our computers..., this shows clearly a complete lack of connection with their audience. It's obvious that to NBC and to the IOC, that we are merely a commodity to be bought and sold. NBC cannot fake having a clue, or understanding the least anything about Social Media. This guy was also unable to fake being Clueful or Relevant and instead, just opted to throw his one pitch with "something about women" at me.

The worst part about companies pretending to have a clue or to be relevant, is that it is horribly, painfully evident to anyone looking on.

NBC could have asked their interns, "Hey, if we do a time-delay on the Opening Ceremonies, what would you do?" This guy could have read some of my posts and seen what he does that would be relevant to me and my audience.

Have a clue who you're talking to - about what - and why - and you won't need to fake anything at all.

Old Social Media is Alive and Well - Are You Using All Your Tools?

When you think of "Social Media," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Twitter? GetGlue? Facebook? Gowalla?

As the pace of technology increases, and new social platforms and "solutions" are created and paraded practically every day by marketers and media alike, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the new - and it's easy to be tempted to throw away the old.

What do I mean by "Old Social Media?"

Mailing Lists, Groups (Google Groups are what used to be known as UseNET, Yahoo Groups are Mailing Lists) Forums and Discussion Boards can be just as relevant to your business today as they were ten or fifteen years ago. Remember - the medium isn't the message - the message is the message. Find your audience where they already are and reach out to them there. 

Case in Point: My wife subscribes to a number of extremely niche mailing lists. Yahoo Groups was not and never will be elegant, but it allows for a pretty high level of functionality for a mailing list owner and doesn't require any knowledge of ListServ commands for users. Let's face it, Yahoo Groups is pretty Lowest Common Denominator. Which is exactly why it can be so useful.

Low barriers to entry, exit and management, make Y!Groups a popular platform for old-school mailing lists.

And, as I say, my wife subscribes to several. One of them deals with the topic of Ancient Roman Cooking. This is exactly where a Mailing List excels. When you have a small, rather specific niche, having a mailing list is a great way to keep people who are interested in the topic up to date with events, news, and allow them to have focused conversations.

In this particular case, an author of a book on the topic took the chance to reach out to people who are immersed in this niche and let them know that an event of interest - at which she would be lecturing and dinner based on the famous Roman gourmand, Apicius', recipes would be prepared - was coming up.

Don't believe in the power of Mailing Lists? Too glamorous, tool old-fashioned?

Well, upon hearing about this dinner and lecture, my wife and I decided to fly across the country to attend. How's that for the power of Social Media?

Email marketing, mailing lists, groups all may seem horribly old-fashioned these days, but the the #1 rule of Social Media is "talking with people." Talk to them *wherever* they are. You've got too much to do already - don't ignore the tried and true over the new and shiny. Social Media is talking with the folks who walk in your office door, on your Fan Page, following your Livejournal or on your mailing list. They may not be shiny, but whatever gets you in front of people who care is the right tool for the job.

When planning out your Social Media, don't ignore the tools you already have in your tool belt. That's Good Social Media.

Online Communities 102: Perils and Pitfalls of Community Management

I've recently become involved with Quora, the newest, shiniest professional Q&A community. As with so many things, I seem to get involved *just* before the wave of humanity catches on and the whatever-it-is becomes inundated with new members.

In the case of Quora, the massive amounts of new folks signing up and figuratively walking the halls asking, "What's going on here?" "What is this, anyway?" "What am I missing?"  is forcing Quora to rethink the organized chaos model of community they've been using.

I have been moderating and administrating communities for a pretty long while in Internet time - my first experience was as a moderator of a UseNET group. (If you shuddered, then clearly you too have been around for a long time. ^_^)

There are definitely a few lessons we can learn from the Community Lifecycle. Previously I've discussed how the members' participation shifts over time in Online Communities 101. Today we'll discuss some of the common community management methods - and why they are all always wrong.

Stage 1: Organized Chaos or Hey Kids, let's Build a Group!

The first stage of any online community is an idea. I am interested in a thing and so are you. Let's talk about it over here. You mention how cool that group is to people you like. The group is pretty small, you have some control over who knows about it. The level of signal to nose is high, a few folks - probably the original members - dominate the conversation. In-jokes abound! It's a nice group, everyone has a lot of fun, everyone knows everyone. It's the online version of your local pub.

Positives: This group grew organically. The folks there understand the unwritten rules and maybe don't see the need for written ones. Everyone is helpful when a new person arrives - after all, that person is a friend of a friend.

Negatives: This is a clique, plain and simple. It's cool when you're invited into the clubhouse, but when you bring your kid brother, maybe it's not so cool for everyone else. Unwritten rules are part of the group mind. When you're not quite on the same wavelength, you will feel uncomfortable, like you're missing something and everyone else will feel uncomfortable trying to explain that this is all there is - it's not that you're missing *anything.*

Common negative reactions at this stage: Complain about clique-yness of original members; Try too hard to fit in; Cloak resentment in anthropological terms; Make yourself a nuisance and call yourself "gadfly."


Stage 2: FAQs 

The community has been around a few "cycles" (online cycles last approximately 3 months, with accompanying membership turnover and shift,) and there's some growing pains. What was a group of a few might now be a few dozen. People are joining who "heard of" the group from a friend of a friend, or saw a mention somewhere online. New people are asking the same questions over and over and over and the original members decide that they don't want to have to keep cutting and pasting the same answers. It's time for an FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Postives: FAQs are a simple way to remind folks that whatever urgent thing they need to know right now, has been asked before. There's a resource, a body of knowledge here. This group isn't fly by night. It gives new members a list of community standards, and a feel for what the kinds of thing the group talks about might be.

Negatives:  FAQs immediately depersonalize the group. No longer does everyone reach out a helping hand to a new person - the group may still welcome new members, but there's a sense that  "Here, RTFM, kthnx" seems to be the new welcome message. The original members are more remote, because they aren't touching base with every new member. Conversations will get more formal, less like a group of friends. Discussions of "process" will arise.

Common negative reactions at this stage:  Member churn can begin to accelerate. Discussions about "process" can become acrimonious, as differing ideas about how a group "should" be are aired. Original members are often squeezed out, as new members demand certain behaviors and the original members feel disgusted that their creation has gotten away from them. Original, now senior, members stop posting as moderation duties start to suck the fun out of the group.


Stage 3: Community Quality Initiatives

At some point, the mass influx of new members because of growing popularity and press coverage means that the signal to noise ratio will shift towards noise. Where once upon a time new people were new to "this community" but not new to communities, now new people are new to the concept of a community online. As a result fewer people read the FAQs or the "How to" tutorials or the community standards. They slam up the most basic questions, not realizing or caring that they have been answered a hundred (million) times already. They mistake user forums for professional support. These people aren't bad - they just don't get community life. They are the loud neighbors of your online apartment, leaving garbage on the curb all week, because they can't be bothered to find out when pickup is.

Senior members (one or two original members might remain, but the rest will be second- or third-wave members promoted to positions of seniority) will suggest that it's time to come up with and enforce a certain level of quality. Nothing major - we just want this to be a nice place for everyone.


Postives: A new reward system will be created. People with experience, smarts, stability and time will be given accolades, their efforts recognized. Community members will be able to see that being a good neighbor means being recognized by the Town Council.

Negatives:  The original members will have moved on, will be focused on the technical aspects of the site, or on the marketing, advertising or sale of the site and will in large part be leaving the day-to-day running of the site to the users. This is about as good an idea as it sounds.

Common negative reactions at this stage:  Shouts of "Elitism!" will ring from the online rafters. Trolls and "gadflys" will gather to poke and prod these new community leaders because it *is* easier to destroy than create - and this is the way they have fun. The loudest of these people will decry even the slightest testy response as an example that that leader is not worthy of the honor.


Special Negative at this Level:  This level is especially prone to a truly deadly complication - mistaking "usage" for "knowledge."

Online communities are built by programmers, developers...technical people. They "get" building forums, groups, features, games, etc. People skills may not be their strongest area. When these people need to spend less time moderating, they are often swayed by usage statistics. Jane  and Joe seem to be on the community a lot...hey, let's ask them to moderate! When bad choices are made (even one bad choice can really destroy a community) for senior members,  the community will suffer. In my experience, this is a killing field for a community. I've seen dozens of communities brought down because the biggest ass gadfly got a job as moderator.


 Stage 4: Follow the Money or "Choose Your Own Adventure"

I call this the "Choose Your Own Adventure" stage, because at this stage, the community is at its peak. It can no longer be run on love, it needs to bring in money, for real. Community owners now have to decide what they want to do - go after advertising, IPO, sell the company or...die.

Postives: All that time invested in a hobby - this is your baby, she's all grown up and when you wed her off, you'll get a nice dowry.

Maybe the owners will stick around to continue working on the community, creating new features and new designs. If they do, the community will change, but it will continue on.

Negatives: Or, will you? Will you sell her to a mean old miser who will do unspeakable things to her?

Sure the owners may be around, but their aren't working for themselves anymore - they serve a new master. That new master may have a completely different vision for this community. Ad revenue, membership mining, it could be anything. Or maybe they thought they wanted it...but they don't want to invest in it. By the time they get it, the technology platform may be old, tired, done with. It seemed like a good idea, but...

Common negative reactions at this stage: Sell Out! is the accusation at this stage. Bitching about the owners taking the money and running, leaving members to hang on to the crumbling hulk of what was once a really great community. "I remember when" is heard frequently. Slowly, slowly the rumor starts of this other great community over there....

Stage 5: The Afterlife 

Not every community dies when it dies. Some platforms live on, hosting specialized conversations or niches. LiveJournal is an example I use all the time. It was MySpace before MySpace and by the time MySpace was Facebook, LiveJournal was forgotten. Except for the thousands of people that still use it. Niche communities of many kinds still live and thrive there and while LiveJournal is not on the front page of TechCrunch, it's not dead or even dying. Sometimes the best thing for an online community is for everyone to just leave it alone. ^_^

***

As you can see, there is no way to "win" at online communities. No matter what choices owners/admins make at any level, someone will be unsatisfied. The trick is for administrators to find the best way to annoy the fewest people.

So, here's the homework - think about the online communities you currently participate in. What Stage are they at? What level of participation are you at in that community? What are your reactions to the changes of stage? And last, but not least - are your actions helping to preserve the community, destroy it or grow it?

Let me know your experiences with online communities in the comments!

Sustainable Strategies 101

Among the most overused words in the business world today is "sustainable." Companies claim that their technologies, communications, even their energy sources are sustainable. It's pretty apparent to most of us that this is merely buzzword bingo and has no actual relationship to sustaining anything except profits.

But when we're starting fresh, sustainability is something we can actually bake into a strategy to allow for changes over time. Here are a few broad topics to consider in order to create a truly sustainable strategy.

Everything Changes

You will create your strategy with an eye to the current state of your industry and, perhaps, a recognition of recent past circumstances. You will understand what your competitors are doing and what you are doing that works and doesn't and all of that will be rooted in your *now.*

There is a famous saying to the effect that no military strategy survives the moment it's taken onto the actual battlefield, and the same is totally true of business strategies. Consumers will not react the way you want them to, a natural disaster in a different part of the world will set off a series of events that effect your business, etc, etc.

Take into account the possible changes, both positive and negative, to allow you freedom to move in an ever-changing world.


Your Mileage May Vary

We all weigh all circumstances in the scales of our own experience. It's useful to walk in someone else's shoes in order to understand different impact of that same set of circumstances. It's easy to take a position that your view is correct, but in order to create a sustainable strategy, you should remember that it is correct for you and may in fact not fit all situations.


Only You Can Change Your Mind

A business strategy is remarkably similar to an opinion. You THINK things are this way and, based on your professional opinion, they are likely to turn out that way if these certain things are done or not done. It's true that some arguments have better data to back them up than others, but invalidating other people's sources is tantamount to taking a fixed, inflexible position. The data you're using is as biased as the data they are using. There is really no such thing as truly unbiased data. Step away from your attachment to a particular source and search more widely. Look for dissenting opinions to understand the perspectives of people who disagree that your strategy will work or not to find the weaknesses in your viewpoint. Shoring up the weak points will provide you with a more sustainable position.


So...what's the trick to creating a sustainable strategy? Flexibility.

A strong, sustainable strategy contains the best understanding from every perspective of a situation and options and alternatives for varying circumstances. Allow for dissenting positions, learn from them and see what that new information can bring to your table. A strategy based on an inflexible set of criteria is doomed, as your industry and the industries around it will constantly flux and shift. Knowing what your nay-sayers say and understanding why they are saying it, will be far more useful than simply dismissing them out of hand. Plan for failure when you are succeeding and success when you are failing.

The more flexibility you build into your strategy, the more likely you are to be able to weather the ups and downs of business and the more sustainable your strategy will be.

The Most Important Questions You'll Ever Ask

Hit the Big Time

Make a Difference

Win the Lottery

Target Your Promotion

Action language is compelling. If you read promotional ads for marketing companies, the most natural thing to assume is that success is as easy as flipping a switch. All you need to do is this *one* thing and all of a sudden new leads/customers/revenue will be flowing through your doors.

It's pretty obvious to anyone in business that this is not true. Building a better website, or a blog, or a Facebook page or being on Foursquare can build your business incrementally. For most of us, "incremental growth" is the reality of being in business.

How many times have you read a magazine article on an "easy" way to feel better/lose weight/learn a skill/change your life? And how many of those ideas were sustainable over years?

Today I read a post by Amy Oscar on the unintended stress that "empowerment" places on people. As I read, I realized that the problem is that promotion, marketing, self-help people all set their "solutions" up in this "flip the switch" format.

"Update your website!" they say, like this is one thing, and not a series of 30 things that are interconnected and often out of your control, so the delays and communication issues pile up more stress upon you. Or "Build a following by blogging!" as if this is not a fairly large drain of time and energy that has to be sustained over a long time frame in order to be effective.

In every case, it *seems* like a good idea - it *seems* like it ought to be easy. And in every case, there' questions that aren't asked.

The most important question you'll ever ask is, What's the First Step? And the second most important question is, Why is that Important to me?

Be Empowered? Sure - what's the *first* thing you have to do to make that happen? Is there a first step that's actually doable? "Be Empowered" is not something you can do. It's something you are. Why do you want to be empowered and what, *exactly,* can you do to make that happen? It's not a hypothetical question - it's a cry for guidance and concrete ideas in an area that is saturated with the abstract.

Build a New Website? What is the *first* thing we need to do before that happens? Probably the first thing is to decide if we really want a new website. Why do you want a new website? And if you do, what is the very first thing you can do to make it happen?

Get a Million Followers on Twitter! Why? What reason (other than ego stroking) would you want that? Would you rather have 20 followers that mean something to you or 20,000 that don't?

What's the first step to getting more, being better, changing? Asking the right questions. First, we need to know what, if any, that first step is and then we need to evaluate if that first step is something that has any real meaning or value to us.

Ask the important questions, to get the right answers for you and your business. That's the most important switch you'll ever flip.

Managing Change With(in) Social Media

Change, as I like to say, is the only constant.

Things change fast these days - just as soon as you've adapted to one thing, the circumstances change and you're thrown off...again.

If we look at our business without delusion, we will see that *technology* constantly changes...but solid business strategies don't really change. The key to managing change in your business can be found within Social Media.

Social Media is talking with people.

Social Media is not where or how you talk with people - it's any place or method by which you talk with them. Social Media is the name we choose for the tools we use.

Let's take Facebook as our example today. If you have a Facebook account, you know what I mean about change. It seems like every month they are moving things, changing the look, the functions, the features, everything. And *every* time they make a change, the first thing that happens is someone creates a group calling for a return to the old format!

This post isn't about Facebook as a Social Media tool - it's about Facebook as a teaching tool.

When I joined Facebook, the page was oriented horizontally. They switched that to vertical orientation and people flipped out. Why? The buttons were all still there - they all worked the same way as before. It's really very simple - people are not comfortable with change. Facebook had guides and tutorials for the new format, but the bottom line is - people do not want to bother learning new things...but they will always adapt.

This week, Facebook switched again, offering a "live news feed" and predictably, people flipped out, wondering what it was, and why it was there. Facebook could have made a better effort at explaining what the changes were meant to accomplish. (I would have suggested a popup box upon rollover that had a one-sentence explanation, if they had asked.) The problem isn't really with the specific changes, just that anything changed at all.

The faster things change, the harder people cling to keeping things the way they were.

Now, let's apply this to your business.

If you've been around for longer than a few years, you've seen a LOT of changes. Cel and smart phones, check cards, music players, Internet access, ATMs even. (Remember when you couldn't access your money from Friday night until Monday morning?) Most of these changes have made your business easier - but chances are you resisted those changes at first.

Look at your business honestly. What changes have you made that have expanded your business and what active changes have you made that have not grown your business? My guess is that technology is almost always on the "plus" side. It may not have been your choice at the time, but market pressure made you accept those changes.

Now - go to a website that you feel is "old-fashioned" or "stale." Take a long look at it. What about it makes you feel that way? Is there a lack of interactivity, or no sense of movement or change? Write down three things about that site that make you feel that it is stale.

Then go to a social media platform that has made you feel uncomfortable . It could be a closed community, like a forum you registered for, or Facebook, which changes too often to ever be comfortable. Write three things down that make you feel it's not a comfortable fit.

Take those two lists and apply them to your own business.

Does your site have a sense of change and growth? Do you shift things around in the store too often for people to be comfortable? It doesn't matter if your business is on or offline - people have one set of criteria for change. They hate it. Yes, they will accept it eventually, but you may lose people along the way. Look critically at your business. Do you make it *easy* for people to find what they want when you change things, or do you make changes and leave them to figure it out? Remember how you feel when you visited a site that's changed too much. Apply that to your online site - or your offline store.

Do yourself a favor - get a Facebook account. It can be a personal one, or for your business. It really doesn't matter. The exercise is in accepting and understanding change. Watch what they do when they change things - watch people's reaction to those changes.

Learn to accept and embrace change using Social Media, then apply those lessons to your business.

The tools may change over time, but the lessons and the strategies will always be the same.