SocialMedia404

In Decmber of 2007, I first blogged about the Community eXperience (CX), over on a personal site I had set up, CXMatters.com. It was back in the days when SocialMedia404 was just a twinkle in the eye.

I’m conducting a client workshop in the morning, talking about social media, and community. Many mistakenly consider these things the same thing, but the latter does not necessarily follow the former.

Building community is both an art and a skill; the longstanding concepts of the Community eXperience still remain valid. Further, with the growing onslaught of tools and functions, the fundamentals of CX are more important than ever.

The Community eXperience is essentially framed by this Venn diagram:

As a starting point, there are 3 basic questions to answer, which are crucial to guiding the deployment of your community:

(1) What do you want your citizens to do? This question helps you define purpose. What is this community-thing all about, and why are we doing it?

(2) What will your citizens want to do? This question helps you define audience. What levels of membership/participation/leadership do we want/can we expect?

(3) What are you willing to do? This is likely the toughest question. Decision will need to be made regarding what tools or widgets are needed, what leaders or experts need to be recruited, what time and money is required to seed and nurture the community. It takes an on-going commitment on your part to not only make sure your community has a heartbeat, but is vibrant and alive.

These questions will also help you understand the relationships that will exist in your community. Here are some of the slides I’ll be using to frame the CX discussion, around the intersection of social media and community:

Since then, we’ve developed OASIS(cc) as our process to guide the creation of your social media-driven community. Clients love it, because it really works.

To read the original post, click over to CXMatters.