Managing Online Communities - Understanding Your Audience

What country has the oldest continuously used national flag?

Denmark

Continuously in use since 1625

What is the most popular social network in the world?

What did Facebook change its mission to?

How can you define an Online Community?

What are some of the main platforms where online communities have been established?

What are the reasons businesses set up online communities?

Go to the site below and read the article

https://medium.com/honeycommb/5-reasons-why-people-join-participate-in-online-communities-c37a3d9b5271

What are some of the reasons?

The Social Mind

Pew Research study carried out to find out why people join and interact within communities online.

It Found...

Two levels for motivations to join

Pew Research (2018)

Functional

Emotional

Functional Drivers

To assist them on getting a job done - researchers

Coaching - Business or abstinance groups i.e. alchoholism

Getting technical support - Sky, phone companies etc.

Freebies - Discounts, coupons etc.

Emotional Drivers

Altruism - desire to help others

Ego boost - to demonstrate knowledge/expertise

Place to belong - self identification

To be

entertained

Emotional Drivers - Psychological Needs

The Science Behind Using Online Communities to Change Behaviour - TechCrunch

Need to feel Empowered

Need to Fit in

Need to Trust

Need to be Rewarded

Grattitude for offering advice, points, gamification

Sense of belonging

Sharing common interests

Seen

as 'expert' in community

So now we know why people join online communities....great! So how do we get these people to join our online communities?

We need to take a step back

First Decision

What are our communities going to be about?

First Decision - Hints

2 ways to decide community topic

Research

Personal hobby/area of interest

A topical area currently popular

Research

Research is Key

Is your hobby area sufficiently popular?

What areas are sufficiently popular?

Research

Research Tools

Hashtagify

Google Trends

Quora

Facebook

(Groups)

All

Hashtag

Activity

One-by-one let's use Google Trends, Quora, Hashtagify, Facebook and All Hashtag to either:

- Check your chosen topic is sufficiently popular

- Find sufficiently popular topic

Could create spreadsheet/word doc of results

Guidelines

https://www.facebook.com/policies_center/pages_groups_events

You Won't Be Marked On It But...

You should aim to get as many members as possible

You will be required to meet targets in industry

More Research...Yay!

Targets

Research

Facebook

How many members do similar groups have, over what time?

Get Yourself A Good Old Spreadsheet

We'll cover this later in module

Use your gathered research to set total first, then split as you wish

We'll go through in next week's seminar

Note

The targets spreadsheet is NOT required as part of your assignment BUT it is useful to complete as professional practice

Part 1 - Idea Research

Using the earlier research from Google Trends, Hashtagify, Quora and Facebook, enter the most popular topics or your own areas of interest into keyhole.co and use the tool to analyse the topics in more detail - this should hopefully help you solidify your choice of topic.

Look for:

- Number of posts

- Number of users

- From what platform?

- Where in the world?

Part 2 - Content Calendars

Let's move over to Canvas