This is the third and final part in a mini series of posts on using a community forum to exchange ideas with your users.

Part I: Why and when should I start my own community forum?
Part II: Setting up your forum: Top tips for using Get Satisfaction
Part III: Making the most of user feedback

In the first part, we looked at the right time and right way to get started with a community forum. As we picked Get Satisfaction as our platform of choice, I then outlined a few top tips for it. Today, we’re looking at what happens once you’ve successfully created a place for conversation and the users begin to trickle in.

If you thought that once the community existed, you could kick back and relax, think again! Now comes the best part: Finally interacting with your users. You’ll meet the most wonderful people, as well as the occasional user who seems to relish being your daily pain in the backside.

So how can you deal with vast amounts of feedback, good and bad, yet retain your sanity?

Directing feedback

Once your forum is open for participation, ensure areas are signposted. For example, features are fun things to add in the future, bugs are critical issues that must be resolved and need to be addressed first. Draw a clear line between the two to ensure bugs don’t disappear under mountains of feature requests.

You may also have an FAQ area which you want to encourage users to read before asking a question so point them in that direction first.

Outside of the forum, put clear links in the product itself, alongside your contact details on the web and in emails to users who still use old channels. Stick to your guns and invite users who email feature requests to go share them in the forum.

Stay focused

Personally, I’m still struggling with this aspect of dealing with feedback; I want to drop what I’m doing to respond immediately to every user who gets in touch. As a result, productivity in other areas (like writing this blog post) inevitably suffer from my “ooh, shiny new email!” syndrome.

This is particularly important when the same person or small team handles development and support. Between Twitter, emails, website stats and forum, it’s easy to get distracted. Lunchtime rolls around and the developer might find that they still haven’t made any genuine progress.

Experienced customer care people know that for most small products or services, responding in batches twice a day is probably the most efficient way to deal with feedback/questions. Use an internal wiki or FAQ to keep answers to commonly asked questions, consider a tool like TextExpander to cut down on typing time and make peace with your forum, inbox and Twitter stream twice a day.

Of course, if you’re responsible for your site’s uptime and availability, pay close attention at all times. Generally, however, users can wait a few hours to get a response to their burning questions. Meanwhile, you’ll be able to get on uninterrupted with moving your product forward with focused development time.

Don’t get overwhelmed

In Rework, 37Signals suggests not to write down user suggestions, saying that the most common requests will crop up often enough that you won’t be able to forget them. On this point, I disagree; sometimes a single brilliant user will make a valuable suggestion, while 10 users may make the same request for a feature that you won’t implement for a very valid reason. Be ruthless when choosing the features you DO implement.

As a good friend once said about web design clients, “Don’t ask them what features they want, ask them what the objective for their website is”. This applies to software features as well. They might ask for a very fancy widget to do some very niche action, when in reality there may be a better, more widely applicable solution.

For example, when we first launched Alfred, we included a variety of default searches for the web, including Google, Twitter, Amazon, IMDB and so on. We started getting requests to add tons of other niche sites but instead of trying to satisfy every request directly, we created a custom search system. This gave users the flexibility to add very creative and useful custom searches of their own.

Typical users, atypical care

Most users you’ll encounter will be inquisitive and interested in your product. Yet, sometimes their tone might rub you the wrong way. English is a second language to many web users. As a result, friendly suggestions can come through as bossy marching orders! Don’t snap back or get defensive. Get your zen on and, only then, respond.

Here are a few of the user types you’re likely to encounter:

• The super keen user: This user can be your best friend by helping other users and answering questions. A double-edged sword, he can also be the most eager user, almost impatient while waiting for the next features. Your product matters a lot to this user, so take care of him well.
• The passer-by: A commonly seen casual user, he’s happy to see progress but probably won’t be up to date on the latest. A little nudge towards your latest blog post usually fills him in on the details.
• The user with misplaced enthusiasm: This user’s heart is in the right place and might try to help others. Unfortunately, when the blind is leading the blind, it’s easy for both to fall off a cliff. Keep a close eye on both users and shimmy them in the right direction without hurting any feelings.
• The troll: Larger than life, the troll is surprisingly easy to take with a grain of salt. Trolls are the pantomime of the web: A little bit can be funny, a lot of it will get annoying! Nip it in the bud with a clear message encouraging a more appropriate behaviour.
• The jaded user: This user has seen it all before and obviously knows better than you do. Probably the most likely to make your blood pressure rise, it’s best to take a breather before responding.

Beware of becoming permanently frustrated and automatically angry towards users. It saddens me when I hear business owners talk about how “thick and useless” their users are. Granted, the majority of those who get in touch are looking for help, but they mean well (usually).

What it all boils down to is this: You are dealing with human beings who have questions, ideas, moments of distraction and great passion. Talk to them like people and avoid churning out machine-like answers.

Have a bit of fun

Don’t underestimate this final point.

It’s easy to take life very seriously when working hard towards building a great product. Sometimes, it’s important to let your hair down and enjoy the ride. Our users help us keep a sense of humour by posting some great, laugh-out-loud tweets that make us smile and remind us why we’re doing this.

Laugh every day, love what you do and your community will feel like home.

Still a little bit overwhelmed at the thought of launching your own community? Want a hand in unearthing the best way to work with your audience? I can help. Pepsmedia is a social media and digital marketing agency I co-founded. Contact me if you’d like to work together on building up your own community channels.

[Photo credit: Sierra Romeo on Flickr]

Recently, I started a short series of blog post on using a community forum to exchange with your users. In this second part, we’ll look at why we chose a particular platform and how we’ve used it since launch.

Part I: Why and when should I start my own community forum?
Part II: Setting up your forum: Top tips for using Get Satisfaction
Part III: Making the most of user feedback

Why we chose Get Satisfaction

From the first time I came across Get Satisfaction in 2007, I’ve been looking for a suitable context in which to use it but the opportunity never came until now.

In the early days, what struck me about it was that there was a natural positive aura to the service. Users weren’t simply encouraged to post questions and problems, they also were prompted to praise the product when applicable!

I’ll admit I was also swayed by the cupcake images that are used as default icons for new users. As co-founder Amy Muller said in a 2009 interview with Ciara Byrne, “we felt that cupcakes were associated with satisfaction and happiness. What’s not to love about a cupcake?” Indeed, what’s not to love about a cupcake?

Get Satisfaction is by no means the only option out there. Some companies may prefer to create their own forum platform, use popular off-the-shelf discussion board software like phpBB or Vanilla, or sign up to web-based community forums like Ning.

In my limited experience with phpBB, more time was spent managing spammers than talking to users. In addition, these forums aren’t oriented towards customer care and conversations are more likely to veer off topic. As we wanted to spend any available time on improving the product, we wanted a forum that allowed us to be fairly focused; Get Satisfaction felt like a perfect match.

While I’m also a big fan of UserVoice, it didn’t feel right in this context as we were looking for more than purely feature requests from users.

Getting started

Two weeks ago, we launched the forum at http://getsatisfaction.com/alfredapp on the Start plan at a manageable $19. We started with a company update and invited users in through Twitter. As the usual email feature requests trickled in, we encouraged these people (in particular those with feature suggestions, rather than bugs) to share their ideas in the forum.

What happened instantly?

• Immediately, some of the top feature requests (1Password integration, Things support) became quantifiable.
• Users were able to share their super clever use of Custom Searches with each other.
• A few commonly asked questions were tackled, giving us a solution to send other users to.
• We received the most blush-inducing praise from a few very happy fans.

Within two weeks of launch, we now have over 185 participants, nearly 110 posted topics and a ton of extremely useful feedback. To me, one of the best aspects is just how freeing it is to finally be able to respond in more than 140 characters!

Tips to make the most of your forum

1. Formulate questions clearly

This may seem obvious and doesn’t have a huge impact in the early days of the forum. However, when a topic is titled “Feature request”, 3 months down the line, it’s not very helpful. As a moderator, I can rename it to “Del.icio.us Bookmarks integration”, making everyone’s life much easier later on.

2. Label post types correctly

Get Satisfaction offers users 4 post types: Questions, Ideas, Problems and Praise. By categorising these accurately, ideas can be marked as “Under investigation”, “Planned”, “Implemented” or “Not planned” as the case may be. It makes it easy to return to an old entry later on and let users know that the feature has been implemented, making them happy that their ideas were heard!

3. Use tags

We love tags, they help us organise content without having to worry about pigeon holing them. Add a few extra tags when users missed important keywords. For example, by tagging all requests for third party integration with “3rd party”, I can easily dig them all out when our plugin API becomes public. I’d then be able to let super keen users know that they can develop their own plugins for the more niche services we may not create an official one for.

4. Pre-populate with FAQs

There is no formal FAQ section on a Get Satisfaction forum but it’s possible to create an account within a company that is “Company FAQ”. This account would be used solely to create FAQ items, publishing and answering commonly asked questions. The profile page could then feasibly be used as an FAQ.

It’s a bit of a hack and, regardless, the Highlights tab forms its own summary of most frequent questions so it isn’t strictly necessary.

Tips to make the most of user participation

1. Encourage customer champions

Over time, you’ll find that your community has a few superstars who love and know your product well. You can engage with them and, when the right people crop up, make them customer Champions. This enables them to respond to others as themselves, but with the added credibility you lend them. You can then focus your efforts on answering the tough, new or unusual questions, leaving your champions to answer to pick the low-hanging fruit.

Champions may come and go, and you can’t ask too much of them as they’re doing it out of kindness but, while it lasts, they can give a helping hand to their fellow users.

2. Ask them questions

Take the time to quiz your users every so often. Sometimes for useful purposes, other times just for fun. Everyone has an opinion and we all love sharing it.

Some of our most popular questions were the simplest. For example, when we needed to set the default Alfred colour scheme in the early days, we asked users whether they used the light or dark theme the most. Within minutes, we had over a hundred answers, helping us make a choice.

If you’re actively using forums, do you also have tips to share?

In the third and final post of this series, we’ll look at making the most of user feedback once they take the time to share it.

Note: I’m in no way associated with Get Satisfaction, other than as a happy customer, using GS daily since I set it up. We experienced a slight hiccup in the first week, but the bug was tackled quickly. I’ll revisit this post in a few months to see whether my opinion remains the same as Alfred and my understanding of Get Satisfaction evolve.

[Photo credit: Sierra Romeo on Flickr]

A week ago, we launched a community forum for Alfred and I couldn’t be happier to have done so.

This series of post covers why we chose to start a forum, as well as some tips for setting up and running your own successful community forum.

Part I: Why and when should I start my own community forum?
Part II: Setting up your forum: Top tips for using Get Satisfaction
Part III: Making the most of user feedback

Don’t forget to sign up to the RSS feed if you don’t want to miss the rest of the series!

Why choose a forum

When we launched Alfred, our main means of support for users was Twitter. When we needed more than 140 characters, we’d swap over to email.

As our community grew, once we found ourselves with a few thousand users reading our tweets (gasp!), yet many asked the same question frequently (eg. Will you be adding x feature?) because they hadn’t seen the older answer to it.

Let’s face it: Twitter is today’s news but tomorrow’s virtual chip paper. It was time to look for a new way to provide answers. That isn’t to say we’ve entirely dropped email; on the contrary, we’re now able to focus email responses on those who really need one-on-one answers.

We chose a forum because it allowed us to answer publicly, leaving longer-lasting, more valuable answers which could be revisited the product evolved. So is a forum right for everyone?

Red Light: Not Now

There are a few key pieces of the puzzle needed to start a forum on the right foot. Here are a few hints that the time might not be quite right.

1. It’s quiet in here!

Too few active users in your forum give newcomers the impression that nobody uses the app and that it might not be actively developed. One-on-one emails with users or a private beta testers’ space can help you get more in-depth feedback, allowing you to improve quickly until you have enough buzz to warrant a public forum.

2. Starting in a time of crisis

If your users are up in arms about something that’s wrong or bad with your product, it may be challenging to change the tone of the forum once the problem is resolved. Try to start your forum in a time of peace and positivity so that the first few exchanges set the tone for constructive, helpful communication.

3. Changing behaviour

If you’ve encouraged the same behaviour for a long time – for example, emailing you for support – you’ll need to signpost your forum well to direct users to the new home for discussions. This isn’t so much a problem as a change of routine, both for yourself and for users who’ve gotten used to emailing you at their every whim.

Green Light: Let’s Go!

On the other hand, what are the hints that it’s time to stop, collaborate and listen and change the way you interact with your users.

1. You’ve answered the same question more than three times

Sounds familiar? If you’ve had to email users back with the same answer a few times, your product is probably ripe for a forum environment or, at the very least, a clear FAQ.

Tip: For common answers or short snippets you find yourself typing often, consider a tool like TextExpander to save your fingers and your sanity.

2. You must make time

Can you afford a few minutes a day to review the comments you’ve received and respond to them? Usually, that’s all it takes; a quick sweep of the latest questions, a few replies and thank you’s. It’s easy to forget or let it get deprioritised but you should do it as regularly as brushing your teeth – twice a day.

When releasing new features, for example, you need to plan to spend a bit longer listening and answering as you’ll get a burst of interest.

3. Your users can help

In every community, there are a few super-helpful users. Talk to them and see how you can turn them into customer champions. Encourage them to answer questions and thank them profusely and publicly. Sometimes, that’s all the recognition they need!

4. You can take action on feedback

By this, I don’t mean that you’ll take every suggestion and implement it right away. (In fact, we’ll look in Part III at why this is a bad idea!) You simply need to be able to show users that bug fixes are taken seriously and that at least some of the sensible and suitable feature requests are considered.

Get started now

That said, it’s never too early to talk to your users. While a forum may not be right for your product yet, even the smallest seedling of a community should be nurtured.

I’ll never forget the first handful of Alfred users who bravely downloaded an app no one had ever heard of, the first donators or the bloggers who first took the time to write about us. Without these early adopters, a product goes nowhere. Thank these people often and be genuine about it.

Think you’re ready to launch your own forum? In the next post, we’ll talk about choosing the right forum and why we decided to adopt Get Satisfaction. I’ll also share the tips and tricks I’ve discovered since we launched our own.

Need help getting in touch with your community and finding the right communication channels for your product or service?

Pepsmedia, the company I co-founded, offers these services. We can help you build better relationships with your users and discover who your own fans are, so get in touch!

[Photo credit: Sierra Romeo on Flickr]

On Monday morning, my arms, legs and brain felt like jelly. There was a sleeping bag and some schwag strewn across the living room. And I couldn’t stop smiling. Must’ve been the morning after a BarCamp!

For those who don’t know, the past few months have been spent organising BarCamb with a few other volunteers. The aim of BarCamp events is to bring people from a variety of fields of interests together to do short talks, exchange experiences and generally geek about. For more on this, I’ve written a BarCamp Virgin’s guide last year.

Since this weekend, I’ve recovered so I thought I’d gather my thoughts and write a wrap-up post before my goldfish brain forgets all the best bits.

This weekend included:

• 54 presentations
• 10 sponsors
• 26 trays of sandwiches
• 45 litres of fizzy drinks
• 30 pizzas
• 100 BarCamb mugs & tshirts
• 1 episode of Doctor Who on the big screen
• 2 knackered organisers & some sleepy volunteers
• half a dozen games of Werewolf
• a few months of preparation
• 80 or so people who hopefully had a great time!

As an organiser, I attended more sessions this time than with the previous two BarCamps I organised. Probably mainly due to having a fantastic co-organiser, Lee, and a brilliant venue provided by Red Gate in the Cambridge Business Park.

When we kicked off the event, I asked for a show of hands to see how many newbies we had – I was both thrilled and worried that we had nearly 50% newbies. Why worried? Because usually newbies are a bit nervous of presenting and leave the board looking a bit bare for the first day. I couldn’t have been any more wrong because as soon as I invited people to put their topics up on the board, it was like the IKEA stampede and I had to flee the area!

Saturday went by like a blur, attending a few good sessions, feeding over 70 ravenous BarCampers at lunch, more sessions in the afternoon including my own on baked-in virality. As we stretched into the evening, it was comedy to see a group huddle into one of the rooms to religiously watch Doctor Who over pizza and beer.

As all good BarCamps must do, the evening turned into a night of Werewolves, Settlers and the occasional snorer in the corner…

On Sunday, the turnout was smaller but the sessions were still great. We finished mid-afternoon, cleared up the Red Gate office and many of the survivors headed to the pub. (I was pooped, I went straight home!)

You can find a few of the presentations of the weekend on Slideshare, with more coming soon, I’m sure. Some of the presentations topics are listed here, and we’ll aim to add the full list in the near future. There are also some great (and some not so great) photos in the BarCamb Flickr group.

A few attendees asked whether Cambridge Geek Nights were being revived and, in the light of how much interest there is, I suppose we might just have to do that! Beers, geekery and chatting coming soon to a Cambridge pub near you.

[Photo credit: Networking through the day, photo by Martin88, All rights reserved]

After meeting a few other company bloggers, customer care people and other community folks at South by SouthWest this week, we thought we’d arrange a little informal gathering before the week ends. It’ll give community managers who work for companies, big and small, a chance to meet others who play that role.

Join us (Ros Hodgekiss, Kelly Rusk and myself) on Tuesday 16th March at 3:30pm at Iron Cactus on 6th Street for a drink and a chat.

Hope you’ll join us there!

[Note: It's TUESDAY, not Monday as I've stupidly been tweeting all afternoon!]

Recently, I seem to have had this conversation time and time again with businesses, individuals and consultants who are beginning to take Facebook seriously as a place to peddle their wares, so I thought I’d immortalise it here for future reference.

Facebook started as a way to network students of a single college together, with a firmly teen-to-early-20′s audience. In recent years, my mom (and probably yours too) has joined and the average age of Facebook user is on a steady increase. It can no longer be dismissed as “kids’ stuff” by businesses who have a direct to consumer audience, hence the many discussions about creating fan pages.

The problem with creating a fan page for your business is that, unless your brand is incredibly sexy & fun, nobody wants to be a fan of it. I’m lucky to have a great local baker & cake maker, but would I really want to be a fan of her business on Facebook? And what good would come out of me becoming a passive fan?

Facebook can facilitate something much greater than just the digital equivalent of a bumper sticker promoting someone’s business.

Facebook gives these business owners the opportunity to be an authority on something they’re passionate about. Taking the example of the cake maker, she would no doubt get much more participation from her customers if the fan page was for cake lovers, for example.

Lead the conversation

Encourage fans to talk about the best cakes they’ve eaten, the cutest cupcakes they’ve seen, the failed homebaking attempts (we all have them, don’t we!?) and the healthy alternatives for those weeks where we need to eat a bit lighter.

Share recipes and tips

Realistically, no skilled baker will lose business over this, as we’re all too busy or lacking the skill to make the kind of cakes we’d buy from a real cake artist!

Listen to hardcore cake fans

What do they want? What occasions do they buy cakes for? Even if the fans aren’t local, this is a goldmine of information which can help a perceptive business owner plan future promotions.

Bonus: You’ll have more fun

Best of all, taking this approach will make content creation much easier and enjoyable than trying to keep it solely focused on your business. You’ll be recognised as a cake-baking authority (or whatever your business may be) yet not be known as the navel gazer who only talks about your own products!

By celebrating a shared passion rather than simply asking people to be a fan for the sake of accumulating numbers, you’ll find that your Facebook fan page will have much more interaction and that people far beyond your existing customer base will join. Go out, have fun and talk about things you’re passionate about.

[Photo credit: Super Mario Brothers Nintendo Cupcakes by clevercupcakes on Flickr, Creative Commons license]

The next “Blogs & Social Media in Business” introductory workshop day is next week, on Thursday 19th November, at Wallacespace St Pancras in London and due to a change of plans with one company (who have now opted for an in-house training course for their whole team), all of a sudden, I have 8 places available on the course.

In order to fill the course and have enough participants to make the course interesting, I’m offering these places at cost, only £95, instead of the usual £395!

If you secretly wish you understood why people use hashtags on Twitter, how to work social media tools into your existing marketing plan, need to manage online relationships or just wonder how to approach bloggers in your industry, then this one is for you. We tackle all the jargon that flies around the web, and make it make sense.

Complete this form and mention the blog post to get the course at the awesome low-cost of £95 + VAT (I feel like Billy Mays in an infomercial, help!) for a full day of training, as well as tasty breakfast, lunch and snacks throughout the day.  

In the past, we’ve had attendees from a range of industries – solicitors, travel & tourism marketers, luxury fashion retailers and small business owners – all of whom said they thoroughly enjoyed the course and learned a lot.

Grab the workshop brochure here for more details, and join me next Thursday for a fun and insightful day on social media.

Members of your community do a lot. You rely on them to make the community a success. You can influence the direction of your community, you can influence its content and you even have an influence over the type of members you want in the community. However, when it comes down to whether your community is going to be successful, your members are all that matter. You need to not only attract members that will help your community grow and continue to develop, but you need to keep them. You can do this by making sure they feel special.

via communityspark.com

Community Spark has turned out to be a real gem in explaining how community building works and why community management is such an art.

The best thing a company can do to its community management efforts is to put a passionate and dedicated person in charge, and give them the *time* to do their job well.