Taking care of your community

Look after your community and they will look after you. Cherish the people who are using your tools and engaging with you, even if they aren’t your main target audience. Serve your community well and they will help you reach the people who matter.

Investment in relationships, training and emotional support, is more important than investment in technology. Teach people the skills they need, and show them that they are important to you, and they will make allowances for the imperfections in what you offer them. Identify and support the emerging leaders too. They may not be the obvious choices. Savvy Chavvy found the offline community leaders and the online leaders were very different people – and it was important to connect with both at different stages of the project.

You can’t predict what people will want to talk about. Talk2Croydon wasn’t created to help kids discuss their homework, but at least they’re there, talking and listening. Savvy Chavvy wasn’t built to promote flirting and socialising, but these activities serve to strengthen the community and make it easier for people to discuss serious issues. Respect people’s ‘misuse’ of your platform, and their need to socialise to form good online relationships.

The best way to influence the community is to be part of it. Get stuck in, create content, use the tools and join the conversations. Condition the space by your behaviour in it. You can also tell stories from the community to reinforce what you want it to be. Promote the people and activities that you want to encourage and show that you are listening (this is also important in growing your community).

Customer service is crucial: if users know there are real people who care at the end of the phone or e-mail, they will trust you and your platform so much more. Don’t create an impersonal relationship between them and your platform; make yourself easy to reach, and talk to your users all the time. They’ll tell you what they need anyway and save you a lot of time prioritising your work. And remember, every time two people complain about something, that probably means there are 50 people who feel the same but didn’t want to mention it.

Above all, build good relationships with your users, get to know their needs, listen to what they say, and watch what they are doing. You should always know who your most active users are, and they should know you too, and feel they can talk to you; take their suggestions seriously and be as responsive as possible. Make your users part of the team.