The fol­low­ing are notes I took dur­ing the Com­mu­ni­tyNext con­fer­ence held at the Annen­berg Audi­to­rium at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity in Palo Alto on Feb­ru­ary 10^th, 2007.

Pre­sen­ta­tion by Tara Hunt, founder of Cit­i­zen Agency, on “Com­po­nents of Build­ing a Com­mu­nity: the rules of engagement”

From her
expe­ri­ence, every­body in a small town knows one another and new­com­ers are
watched very care­fully by every­one to keep it a safe and healthy com­mu­nity.
This means com­mu­nity inter­ac­tions are rich, com­plex and steeped in his­tory. So,
the idea that you might cre­ate an online com­mu­nity around, say, orange juice,
doesn’t mesh with what it means to live in real-world communities.

The idea of
com­mu­nity mar­ket­ing is not about tap­ping into a com­mu­nity or even build­ing a
com­mu­nity. It’s really about how a busi­ness can learn from a community.

And
com­mu­nity is not your mar­ket­ing strat­egy! The phrase “we’re using a com­mu­nity
mar­ket­ing strat­egy” is not accu­rate. The Clue­train Man­i­festo famously says that mar­kets are con­ver­sa­tions. This doesn not
mean busi­nesses should join in on these con­ver­sa­tions; rather, they should
lis­ten and learn form what’s being said about them and their products.

Because
com­mu­nity is about work­ing towards a col­lec­tive, com­mon pur­pose. 

So how does
this work for your business?

Think like
a cus­tomer! Here are 10 ways to shift your thinking:

-        
Become
a com­mu­nity evan­ge­list: Guy Kawasaki was an evan­ge­list for Apple and took Apple out into the
wider web com­mu­nity. Being a com­mu­nity evan­ge­list means doing the reverse. It
means tak­ing the feed­back, pas­sions, needs, hopes and angers of the com­mu­nity
back into the com­pany. So instead of going out, you bring it back in

-        
Shift
your mea­sures of suc­cess. For exam­ple, GDP mea­sure­ment was an unbal­anced mea­sure of suc­cess and
so the GPI (Gen­uine Progress Indi­ca­tor) was
devel­oped by econ­o­mists:. Trans­ac­tions that cre­ate value are plused and those
that cre­ate costs for the soci­ety and its well-being are minused. For exam­ple,
over the past 20 years, the US GDP grows but the GPI drops. Sim­i­larly, Yahoo!
Pho­tos has 10X the pho­tos of Flickr, but Flickr has an incred­i­ble com­mu­nity and
good­will going on.

-        
Embrace
the chaos. For
exam­ple, Bar­Camp was orga­nized in just 6 days
and drew 300 par­tic­i­pants. The atti­tude of the orga­niz­ers was: “you know what,
even if it’s just us 6 sit­ting in our liv­ing room, let’s do it!”.

-        
Find
your higher pur­pose.
For exam­ple, look at Jimbo Wales’ objec­tive with Wikipedia of mak­ing knowl­edge
acces­si­ble to everyone.

-        
Under­stand
who you are build­ing that appli­ca­tion for. Who do we serve? Has to be a very spe­cific
group. And answer the ques­tion: why would they give a damn?

-        
INreach,
not out­reach. A lot
of time peo­ple speak about push­ing out to the masses to get the effect of a lot
of signups. The prob­lem with this tech­nique is that lots of peo­ple will come
and then leave. On the other hand, with Flickr, Cate­rina and George greeted all
new­com­ers to the ser­vice. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant in the begin­ning of
the ser­vice. If you help your cus­tomers and your employ­ees kick ass, this will
hap­pen. Another exam­ple of this is Twit­ter. Also, Plazes, with their con­test,
or Flickr with col­or­ing con­test, or Fire­fox with their mem­ber kit.

-        
Design
to delight. As an
end user, you know there are cer­tain sites that delight and oth­ers that fall
flat. What is it that makes cer­tain sites addic­tive? Read “Flow: The Psy­chol­ogy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence”. Also “Defen­sive Design for the Web”

-        
Be
part of the com­mu­nity you serve: Get out into the com­mu­nity, sit down with them, go to Mee­tups,
under­stand them.

-        
Mar­ket­ing
is not an after­thought and includes the envi­ron­ment you’re in. Design, prod­uct, communication.

-        
Have
patience. These
things don’t hap­pen overnight. For exam­ple, it took Pan­dora 5 years to break
even.

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