Starting out on the community journey

Khoros compiled tips from the following experts from a session at Khoros Engage.

John DeRose — VP Professional Services, Khoros
Brian Oblinger — VP, CX + Global Community, DataRobot
Traci Cappiello — Program Manager, Community, Google

What You Need to Know About Starting on the Community Journey

Whether you’re a long-time community user or brand new to the platform, there’s much to learn in that critical first year. Here are six great tips from experts at Khoros Engage to help your brand create a successful, engaging community in year one:

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1. Start small

Many community teams begin with huge ambitions for their launch — but the more realistic approach is to start with a baseline and work toward that ambition in the next two years. Community visions may change once users start using your community — so starting small allows you to scale your vision and strategy in tandem.
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2. Set your community purpose

Your community purpose is the foundation of your community and needs to be supported by your business and your users.
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3. Define your goals

As you plan your community, define how your community will help achieve business goals. When thinking about your goals, look to your users: What value will they find in your community? How will they interact with your brand and their peers? Once you define your business goals and user personas, you can take that information to build out your community strategy with goals and measurements for success.
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4. Scale over time

As you start to launch a community, work with your customer advocacy groups internally to find users that may be passionate about posting in community. Once you start to gain users, encourage discourse. Seed discussions from employees and top advocates of your product. While encouraging conversation, be sure to promote your community and keep
the momentum and growth going. When measuring the impact of these promotions, expect that it will take some time to reach critical mass. It can be a rocky start, but don’t be discouraged: activity spikes will lead to more stable activity after the first six months.
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5. Don’t dismiss negative feedback

Negative feedback is an opportunity to see how your users feel, even if it isn’t constructive.
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6. Promote the community

Promotion across your website, social channels, and integration into your product can be wildly effective in driving new registrations and engagement.

About Khoros Engage

Khoros Engage brings together digital customer engagement leaders. Attendees hear from thought leaders inspiring them to bring their business to the next level, gain insights from brands and industry leaders on digital care, community, and marketing topics, and build a network of other digital leaders. 

Read our whitepaper: How Online Communities Improve Every Stage of the Customer Journey.

Download this tipsheet