The First 500 Community Members Set the Tone
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Sep 16, 2008
At the Internet Marketing Conference 2008, William Azaroff of Vancity (Canada's largest credit union) gave a great presentation entitled Engage Community With Your Brand. His three main points:
- All social media is inherently authentic
- The first 500 community members set the tone
- Think of community engagement - not social media.
TechVibes.com has a good summary of his presentation. A key point, for those of us building feedback communities:
In general, the first 500 members of your online community will set the tone and mood. If the first 500 registered users are yelling, being rude and creating havoc, then the people you really want to participate aren't going to feel welcome. Fortunately the opposite is also true. If you personally choose your pioneer users and have them pass along the URL to like minded peers, you will being to attract more people who get what you're trying to achieve. Once you hit this milestone and the masses get hold of it, the foundation will be set and it'll be far easier to monitor and moderate. In fact, you may find that you don't have to moderate comments much at all, which is what the case has been with ChangeEverything.ca.