How Do You Build an Online Community

Do
you belong to any online communities, and if so, what are they and why
do you find them useful? Online communities are not as easy to form as
you would think, although we all hear about Facebook and MySpace and
Twitter as if it took nothing to build one.

As part of Stealthmode's mission, I've been helping some sites
develop their online communities lately, and I've been studying the
issue to try to find out what makes them work. The four sites are
completely different. To give them all a little plug, they are:

Real Self, a beauty site on
which users evaluate beauty products and treatments, mostly having to
do with anti-aging. I love it because the users tell us "what's worth
it" and share their stories.

EmpowHer, a newly launched
health information site for women, where women are encouraged to
exchange information in the hope of receiving better treatment for
conditions such as post-partum depression, heart disease, and thyroid
disorders. I love this one because the founder started it to help other
women avoid things such as unnecessary hysterectomy, which is still
very prevalent in the US.

St. Lukes Health Initiatives, a foundation that is trying to help Arizona better its health care. I am part of a group blog at Arizona Health Futures..
You can become a blogger there too, if you have an interest. SLHI is
also developing an online collaboration among the not-for-profits it
funds. This one I love because it's mission is capacity building for
nonprofits and public health.

The fourth is Earth911.org, a
national database of recycling sites that is fifteen years old and very
successful, but has not had an online community before. We're trying to
launch a year of product stewardship information and idea exchange for
small business as well as individuals.

Now a bit of history. For ten years, I've had a primitive online
community at Yahoo Groups. It's the Stealthmode Group, and it sends one
email a week about what I'm doing to a group that now numbers close to
2000 people. About 1-2% of the recipients write me back, and therefore
I call myself the community manager for this group, which cannot write
to each other (I do that to hold down the number of emails). I would
call this group successful, because people also pass around these
emails to their friends.

Most of the recipients of these emails don't read blogs and don't
understand RSS. They just think my life is interesting enough for a
weekly email.

My business partner also runs an online community that's ten years old. Its called The AZIPA List,
and it consists of an announcement list for Arizona Internet
Professionals Association and related events in the community, and a
discussion list in which people can ask for help with technology
problems. There's a separate jobs list, and a separate local tech
newswire.

This list is also run through YahooGroups.

OK. Now to the buried lede.

Two of the sites I'm now helping are built on Drupal. They are
loaded with features. The other two are built on Wordpress. A little
difficult to manipulate.

Conclusion: what makes a successful online community? A single,
easy-to-use feature. Click here to participate. Do only this one thing.
After you get your participants "addicted," go ahead and add another
thing. Most of us are too busy to learn how to use all the features of
a full-featured online community. For me, an experienced software user,
and a very transparent person, it's still easiest to Twitter. It's easy
to Utter, but it's not so easy to listen to the Utterz of others. Video
adds an entire other layer, although Seesmic is about the simplest video I've found.

I've led you through this entire analysis to make you understand
that it's all about KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). You can always add
when the people are willing to learn because they see the value in the
community.

Hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang and Guy Kawasaki
for the tweets that helped me collate my thoughts this morning. The
Dawn Patrol. These guys are always awake, always aware, always online.