No you do not want a customer portal!

Oh how many times must I tell prospect? How many bloody ways are there to inform a potential client that a website is not a community and a community is not the instant way to gain and keep users ? Loads!

In the past I've used the 'Field of Dreams' analogy when clients and prospects have wanted to build a community site. The expectation back then was that users will just arrive automatically once the site was delivered. But this was sorely not the case and a lot of white elephants got built and subsequently junked.

Move forward a few years to the present and the Field of Dreams analogy is as relevant as always and still basically sums up my approach. Building a community is not just about designing and developing a website... It's about what you do to create & maintain visitors and their engagement.

If you do not plan to keep the community healthy and give them a reason to return... and this means a commitment of effort (time and / or budget), then don't even bother starting one in the first place!

Building branded communities... why not?

I'm still pleasantly suprised that the "buy or build" conversation comes up so much in relation to social media web functionality. But, I guess its good that potential clients are still asking what's involved in developing their own offering, despite the availability of so many white cost-effective white-label and hosted solutions.

But what do you do when you build it and they don't come? What if there is no Field of Dreams?

I had this recently when a start-up I know built a community part of its website and nobody used it. My first question to ask is "what were you expecting?". You wouldn't produce a product and not advertise it. Somehow they thought that a site would instantly create evangelic users who would encourage thousands of others, whilst instantly appearing top in Google of all keywords. (How I laughed... when I walked out of the room)

Then there's the case that visitors come, look around and disappear. Why? Well they don't find anything of interest! Either your navigation or search doesn't let them find what they want.. or worse still... your community isn't.. errrr... communicating correctly.

The worst thing happens is when brands ignore existing communities and try to set up their own in competition. .Partly through ignorance and partly from arrogance, this is commerical madness and will potentially see companies throw money at something they need not do. It may also create confusion and fragment conversations, making tracking & measurement harder.

So next time your CMO walks over and says something like "we need to build a community", forget what you see in films.

Barriers to UGC adoption

I've been speak ing with a company about a potential UGC site and accompanying marketing campaign. One of the concerns is the potential lack of popularity of the service. They are well aware of the motto from the film Field of Dreams

"if you build it, they will come"

... and that this doesn't work for the web unless you have some mystic force supporting you.

Brian Oberkirch's post on 'Really, We Don’t Want to Join Your Social Network' puts forward the case (and well made it is is) for not building your own Social Network, especially when there's so many of them going up all the time.
With the bar to build a compelling community site rising all the time, its becomming very difficult now to stand-out from the crowd and its all looking a bit 'Me Too' isn't it?.

So has the door shut on this opportunity now?