The rapid adoption of the social web, especially around social networks, has given marketers a unique opportunity to build vibrant online communities around a product, service, brand, or organization. The process of turning that community into a self-sustaining and growing business asset remains the key challenge. To meet this challenge, marketers must learn to strike a balance between so-called 'Engineered' vs. 'Organic' community development. It is essential that a community have a clearly defined purpose and a number of goals to set the tone for the overall content strategy and member discussion. Community managers must also work to enforce rules within the community to ensure that user generated content, discussions, and posts all meet an agreed upon terms of use. The delicate balance exists when a community manager or marketing strategist begins to see the community take on a life of its own. If all goes accordingly, the 'engineered' strategy may lead members of the community to interact and contribute as planned, but may only lead to slow and steady adoption. Community managers must then question whether there is a enough 'organic' growth within the community to really achieve critical mass. Creating a community that lacks a defined structure and purpose can lead to rapid adoption and growth. This type of community platform has a lot potential (Twitter for example), but if an organization were to try and brand this sort of community, they would surely lose control.
Organizations and brands considering creating an online community need to understand how to orient the tools, content, and purpose of a community to establish both 'engineered' and 'organic' growth. Most organizations choose to establish communities on easy-to-manage social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. Using these tools, organizations can achieve solid organic growth with already existing user bases, a number of unique features/functionalities, and limited financial commitment. So how does one implement some sort of 'engineered' growth mechanism into these already established networks? One way would be to integrate Open ID technology within a branded URL. This allows a brand or an organization to utilize the existing user base of social networks, such as Facebook, while also allowing the business to form the community around a centralized purpose.
As an example I will use an interesting travel site, whereivebeen.com. This is an excellent social travel site giving users the ability to pin-point places they've traveled on a map, share those experiences with friends, read reviews of destinations, and much more. The site is completely integrated with Facebook Connect allowing users to share via the existing social network. As the site continues to gain momentum, something interesting has occurred within the community. Much of the user generated content on whereivebeen.com generally serves as a travel log or diary for individuals, citing interesting things that happened to them in a location or with people they met along the way. The site organizes these thoughts as travel reviews, but most of the time the comments do not actually review the location. So why does this disconnect exist between their 'engineered' community strategy and the 'organic' growth its sustaining?
Users generally consider Facebook as a personal network of friends providing information on personal experiences. Clearly this association and integration with Facebook has caused the user base to utilize whereivebeen.com as a part of their very personal social network experience. This is a good example of a community which has really taken on a life of its own. It also serves as an important lesson for marketers considering building a community. Marketers need to consider how people use networks such as Facebook or Twitter in their every day lives. They must also consider the existing user base of networks like Linkedin, MySpace, and Facebook. Building communities that embrace their intended use and audience, will most likely lead to rapid adoption. The 'If you build it, they will come' mentality is quickly fading as more online communities continue to take shape and users begin to expect certain features/functionalities. It will be those businesses who understand how to successfully engineer and organically grow their online communities that will be able to deliver on the true value of online community.