Online Community Stages, and a Counter Argument
Posted: February 17, 2008 • Filed under: Social Media MarketingIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest posts, Thanks for visiting! If you want to link to me or this post please read how to link to me
Jeremiah Owyang (Sr. Analyst at Forrester) has a great post on his blog about online community best practices. He also discusses some of the stages that some of the most successful online communities go through. Jeremiah is a senior analyst at Forrester Research and focuses on social computing.
The executive summary (also found on his blog) is pasted below:
The stages that these communities go through, in order are:
- Brainstorming
- Strategy
- Research
- Launch
- Kick-Start
- Growth
- Ongoing Management
- Customer communication and feedback
- Continual Improvement
I would have added brainstorming before strategy and would have also included a section for customer communication and feedback before continual improvements (listed above in bold). The report is a hefty $379 and can be found here. But before you go ahead and dish out the money, you may want to consider if this chart makes any logical sense.
In the words of Nick O’ Neil, “Do social networks follow the traditional business cycle?” He makes a valid argument, once the company reaches the maturity stage, why would it keep on growing?
The main Forrester site along with all of their paid and free resources can be found here, I highly recommend that everyone visit the site.
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