A community with high levels of activity and a lot of members might appear a great success.

But in perspective, it can be a big failure.

For example, imagine you've been hired by Apple to build their official community. You gradually build the community to 15,000 active members. Would you consider that a success?

Apple has a HUGE audience of incredibly passionate fans. The total market size is massive, the passion is high, only 15,000 active members doesn't cut...

One of our engagement masterclass participants asks an important question, what if you don't have access to data?

Much of what we discuss is redundant. 

I'd suggest that if you're using a platform that doesn't give you the data you need (or at the very least let you use Google Analytics), you should find a platform that does. 

Without data you're working in the dark. It's the community equivalent of judging climate change by...

I've enjoyed following Premier Farnell's Element14 community for a while. It's an example of how a great online community can be done.

I'm often surprised by how rarely organizations developing their own community fail to use successful examples. Here are some practical tips:

1) Make the community about your members

Many organizations make the community about...

Once a community has achieved critical mass, you enter the establishment phase. 

There are some key things you need to do here:

1) Shift the amount of time gradually from micro to macro level interactions.

2) Begin preparing for a BIG online community.

3) Introducing sense of community elements. 

Each of these deserves...

Last week I posed a problem to community managers. 

It read like this: 

You're running a community that's been around for 18 months. The number of registered members is rising by about 250 per month. 

The level of activity appears relatively constant. The number of discussions is rising, but the number of responses to each discussion has...

Moderation is a powerful tool to boost participation in your community.

Once people have completed the registration process, you rely upon the troika of moderation, events/activities, and content to sustain high levels of participations.

The communities that struggle to keep people engaged, are failing at one or more of the above tasks. The most common is...

This post always bugged me.

It summarized a lot of bad job descriptions into a widely-linked article. 

There are four tenets to professional community management, but it's not what you might imagine. 

1. Data: Data tells you where you are now. It tells you how you're doing, whether the community is producing the...

As part of our week-long preview of The Pillar Summit's Professional Community Management course, we've published our first free lesson.

Click here to watch: http://pillarsummit.com/convertingnewcomers/

You can also access the comprehensive reading...

People join a community for a reason.

That reason is a benefit. It's something members consciously want. It's aligned with their goals and motivations. 

The common mistake is to only identify the interest. e.g. 'If members are interested in roasting their own coffee, let's make the community about coffee roasting. We will tell members to join if they want to learn about coffee roasting.'

This leads to content-driven...

Optimizing the platform (the user experience) is part of the community manager's role which tends to get overlooked. Once it's developed, most people leave it. 

It should be an ongoing process. The goal is to increase the number of interactions which take place in the platform. This is a process which can be continually refined. 

There are some guiding principles for this:

Guiding principles for optimizing the user experience...