Stream of Consciousness: Community Service

Great Web sites are a collaboration between site owners and audience. The very best Web sites acknowledge this from the beginning, by empowering their audiences to lead key parts of content development. What would eBay be without its auctions, or Amazon without its reader reviews? But you don’t have to be an e-commerce portal to take advantage of community applications. Some variation of the user-generated content strategy has been applied successfully to nearly every kind of Web site, with every kind of audience, from enterprise applications all the way to entertainment portals.

Newgrounds.com , a community-based Flash animation site with practically no budget and no marketing staff, often outshines the multi-million-dollar entertainment portal AtomShockwave.com, according to third-party metrics. On the enterprise front, consider the advantages of "expert forums" and videoconferences that allow customers and/or employees to hash out difficult issues together, or simply to get to know one another. If done correctly, community empowerment causes all kinds of goodness to happen, with the grand prize being the creation of a highly motivated group of individuals, inside and outside your organization, who actively participate in the growth of your site and your company.

In addition to driving traffic and creating more committed customers, community applications can tell you what your audience actually wants, far better (and less expensively) than any number of focus groups or marketing consultants can. Here’s the scenario: You launch what you consider to be the world’s best streaming media content site about pheasant hunting, only to find your message boards and mailing lists choked with conversation about grouse hunting. You would do well to revisit your content strategy, to appeal even more directly to the grouse hunters. After all, if grouse hunters have commandeered your site, they must represent an underserved market that is burning to have a place to congregate (and possibly spend money).Even unsuccessful community applications can help you hone your offering. What does it mean if you have millions of visitors and no entries on your message boards? It probably means that your audience’s interest in your Web site is fairly low. Perhaps you’re getting a lot of one-time visitors. Maybe you should spend less time, energy and money on marketing, and more on the creation of engaging content.

Or it might mean you haven’t built your community applications correctly. When contemplating any launch of community services, ask yourself: "What kind of people come to my site? Why do they come? What are they hoping to accomplish? What can’t they get from the site today?" Chances are that your site’s already-existing content serves only a part of your audience’s needs, and that there are other needs you’re not equipped to handle. Build community applications to round out the picture.

For example, people come to streamingmedia.com to learn about streaming media (obviously). We have the best and most timely journalism, business analysis, and technical tutorials on the subject, period. But from time to time, I get phone calls from people with very specific questions, wanting very immediate one-on-one consultation. ("How do I get my DVCPro to talk to Windows NT?" or "What VCs should I send my business plan to?") Private consultation isn’t our business. But we do have 16 discussion lists, with over 10,000 active, helpful, and experienced members who are chomping at the bit to answer those kinds of questions. Why do they do it? To show off to their peers, of course, and perhaps to establish themselves as experts, improving their own employability, or gaining clients for their own companies. Whatever the reason, it works beautifully, for everyone involved. The audience provides itself with its own one-on-one consulting solution.

But that’s just our site. Yours is different. Building a community isn’t like building a house: You can’t follow any blueprint, nor can you depend too much on work that other people have done. There is one simple rule, though: Make your community applications meaningfully useful to participants. Do that, and you’ve practically guaranteed a long and profitable future for your Web business.