Growing a Community is Like Making Risotto

The power of communities is so tantalizing - the idea that a large group of people will all work with you to help make your products better, help other customers, and advocate to all of their friends is too intriguing to pass up. There are enough case studies to show that it is, indeed, possible to do this. A vast number of companies are now looking at some form of community to help with their business and I think that is great. If a company is selling a product and service that does not have some passionate fans, I wonder why they are still in business. However, in the quest to build communities there are a lot of pitfalls.  I shared a number at Social Media Breakfast 15 - The Power & Peril of Online Communities and my slides are here.

I want to cover one peril in particular that I'm seeing more often. People are eager to ramp up their communities quickly. This is completely understandable - large companies cannot even put a dent in their marketing with a 100-person community. They are looking for the promise of community which is a geometric growth and ROI curve that is achieved by some very successful communities and networks, looking something like:

In their effort to get there they front load awareness and recruitment into the community and are successful at getting a lot of early views.  A small percent of those who do this strike gold and everyone starts authoring, friending, and discussing things. That typically happens in smaller market niches where participants know a lot of other people already and there is pent up demand for a discussion outlet or a great deal of isolation. Most companies who try this fast scale model end up with curves looking more like this:

Why? Because when everyone comes to the community, no one knows each other and there is no one to introduce them, show them the ropes, and make them feel comfortable - at least not enough other people to help all the new people at the same time. That leads to a very passive experience that can feel like browsing a website. So people don't come back unless they are looking for specific information that is there. The real risk is that once dis-interested, it is even harder to get someone to come back for a second look.

This is where I get to risotto. Risotto is a rich creamy dish that very few people make at home. Why? Because it requires 30 minutes of dedicated time and attention - you can't do much else while you make it. It seems like it shouldn't be that different from other rice - throw it and some water or chicken stock into a pan and let the heat do the work. But risotto doesn't work that way. The short grain rice cannot absorb a lot of water all at once. You have to add a little at a time, wait until it absorbs and add a little more. Once you've done that for a while, you can start adding more and more water with each cycle but only after you have started small.

It's very much like community. A small community can only absorb a small number of new members at a time. Once it is bigger and there are more people that can welcome and absorb new members in a way that acclimates them, recruitment can ramp up. However, if you overwhelm an emergent community you are very likely to have the activity of the community stall out and it will be much harder to get it going again.

Comments

[Susan Scrupski]

Really helpful advice, Rachel. We've recently seen surge in new members, and I was instinctively thinking we should slow down the on ramp in order to get the newcomers comfortable.

I remember I had a similar reaction to Seesmic (Loic's original video blogging community) when it ramped up so quickly. If you had not been one of the "founding members" you felt awkward in the community and not sure what to do.

[Stuart Foster]

True, but can't this mainly be attributed to not providing enough value for those new members to stay?

Planned community launches around marketing campaigns do tend to have a fall-off rate. But is that the fault of the campaign or shiny object syndrome?

Pretty much every product that launches goes through the hype cycle...a community is no different. The key is being able to identify, engage with, and encourage the core evangelists that become members.

It comes down to the organization behind the community (and who your CM is). Staff and organize your community infrastructure well? Reap the benefits.

I'd also argue that this doesn't hold water for users who are super engaged and interested in developing the community further. (Which is why you should look at what approach to take when launching...slow or fast?)

Thanks for getting me thinking...probably will write about this now.

[Rachel Happe]

Thanks for stopping by Susan - because communities are all about relationships and relationships take time, it is important to make sure new people have an on ramp to get to know others.

Stuart - I actually think that providing too much content and not enough relationship building can cause the huge drop off too. Content is critical to attract people but it is the relationships that will bring them back regularly so while valuable content is indeed critical, it is not sufficient.

[Atul Rai]

Rachel, i didnt know how Risotto is cooked, but now i do. :-) or at least in part. I agree that most communities have a participation curve that you have drawn here, but probably people have high enthusiasm as they are trying something new, so it has their interest, and over a period of time, this fades away. And this is where probably community managers need to play an important role.