Get the full archive here!

Some of the highlights discussed for engaging your community included:

• In terms of participation from community, we welcome posts and mentions with positive affirmations. Thank you’s and encouragement.
• It is also important to not the difference between goals and norms of participating. The trick is in trying to keep them synced up.
• @FNHC is doing it with their hub initiates, in my opinion anyways. Its messier and more time consuming but worth in in end
• I find that its critical to step back and help the community let itself emerge. Even the language used to enage has to be carefully crafted to avoid priming and group think
• I think that every community needs goals. Yes, think about the Starbucks communities. You know they want to sell coffee at the end of the day but they do much more than that.

Read the full transcript from the June event, and check out previous CommBuild Chats – hope to have you participate and share next month!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, July 21st
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in July!

Get the full archive here!

Some of the tools discussed include:

• Hootsuite
• Bit.ly
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Owly and htly
• Tweetdeck
• TweetWhen
• and so many more!

Read the full transcript from the April event, and check out previous CommBuild Chats – hope to have you participate and share next month!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, May 19th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in April!

Get the chat archive!

The conversation in this month’s chat focused on these questions:

1. How to best stay motivated and motivate your community team. It’s important and not always discussed. The result is often community managers having to motivate themselves AND their community. Not a small feat. from @vrhinesmith
2. Question 2: How do we lower the barriers to entry for participation in our (our = whatever your community is) community? from Anna McDonnell
3. What are the best strategies for when your client/manager/boss doesn’t understand social media, or you have a different opinion about how to use it? from @kg

This month’s chat had so many great examples shared and here are just a few:

Laura Kimball: In regards to internal motivation – I try to recognize someone’s success — like share a screen shot of a comment they left that drove positive engagement, results, etc — to show what other people have done, their success, etc. Almost like an internal leader board to say “good job” and inspire someone else to do something similar.

kristy @kg: Saw this today/thought good way to encourage participation, while recognizing others >> Replied to comments from @calipidder @dubid0 & @mtsquirrel on my post about flow http://bit.ly/e8U9d0#climbing #sports #banfffilmfestival

Rabia @realize_ink: We’ve highlighted rockstar community members by creating a FB tab dedicated to them. Kind of like the posters we all made for child of the week in kindergarten. It was fun and done with their friends + fam, so it was a surprise for them, too. Great response from the community.

Sue_Anne: We also share “success stories” on our site and are trying to find ways to do this more — even little things community members are doing in their local area.

Debra Askanase: I know that my blogger colleague W. Ching Ya has a “member of the month” that she highlights on a custom FB tab. Here it is: http://www.facebook.com/#!/SocialBloggingTracker?sk=app_4949752878. Think it’s along @realize_ink’s idea

Claire Sale: When I worked for the Red Cross, we did a daily social media update to the comms dept, senior leadership, and anyone else who wanted to receive the info. The update included all of the social media mentions about the Red Cross (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that were relevant to our work. It really caught people’s eyes.

Get the chat archive!

The conversation in this month’s chat focused on these questions:

1. What are the best mechanisms for connecting online & offline communities? from @BonnieKoenig
2. How much communication with your online community is too much? from @ehon
3. our community has a handful of active posters creating most of the content – how do we encourage quieter members to contribute? from @anotheremma

Some of the highlights for me during our chat were the great, real examples shared of conversation starters and how to encourage new community members to engage. Are you looking for some new ideas to get conversation started with your community? Here are just a few of the ideas shared on the chat yesterday:

Kristy Graves @kg: Great one on Matador Travel’s facebook page, madlibs style: People should do more ____ and less _____.

@sueontheweb: Example of conversation starter: I shared one of my thanksgiving traditions with my cmty and asked members to share their traditions.

Claire Sale: I’ve seen some really great conversation starters by my local animal shelter – when the weather is good they ask “how do you get your pet to go out in the rain” and when the weather is good they ask “what is your favorite local place to take your pet out on a long walk” they also don’t hesitate to ask the same question twice (on two rainy days for instance)… not sure I’ve seen that before.

Get the chat archive!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, February 24th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

Recap: October

Get the October Chat archive.

Some of the examples and recommendations from this month’s chat included:

• UN Food&Ag Org (FAO) has done a great job with their Share Fairs – sharing the discussions and training on and offline. You can look at #sfaddis to see what they did recently from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia
• TechSoup Global has an upcoming Digital Story Telling contest, getting orgs to put together 60 second vid’s about what they do/who they are. We’re leading up to it providing webinars and chats, but will be hosting an awards mixed reality event in February. Second Life and IRL at TechSoup HQ in SF.
• The Community Organizers Handbook available as a public resource, you can certainly refer there for information/feedback/best practices on offline organizing: http://organizershandbook.wikispaces.com
• Video is such an inclusive medium. I personally love how it presents the opportunity to be involved in a community, sometimes in a real-time format, from a distance.
• The League of Women Voters of SF has found that making 1-3 minute (no longer than 5 min) videos gets much better pick-up online
• The Alliance for Climate Education makes presentations about climate change to high schools around the US. At the end of every presentation, they put up a slide where students can either 1) join their cause on Facebook or 2) text them to sign up. It works really well
• I recently watched Bioneers and some TEDx’s being streamed from a satellite location with local people – becoming my preferred way to participate. Smaller setting, still get the information, lower cost. Here’s a writeup on the talk Charles Baker from Meetup.com did last week @ TechSoup, might be helpful – http://blog.techsoup.org/node/1483
• I have also found that giving people specific roles is successful – empowering for them
• After meet ups online communication generally takes precedence and thats why its so important that both communities are connected
• I also think the immediacy of that communication is key, as well as presenting opportunities to get involved. I usually note the names of specific people who had interest or were good leadership candidates.
• and much more!

If you missed the chat or want to revisit it, access the full chat archive here.

Upcoming: November

The next chat will be in November. If you have a question or topic you’d like to discuss, be sure to leave a comment here so we can ensure it’s covered. The chat is just an hour long so be sure to submit your questions in advance!

Details:

• Date: Thursday, November 18th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the Community Builder Chat

These monthly chats part of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!  Hope to have you join us next time!

• Date: October 28th (I’ll be presenting at the Blackbaud Conference on the 21st so will move it to the 4th Thursday of the month)
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Chat: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the Community Builder Chat

These monthly chats part of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!  Hope to have you join us next time

(Photo credit: ToastyKen)

Get the full transcript here!

Question 1: asked about migrating a community from one tool to another, specifically from listservs to a website/forum.

Some of the responses highlighted the need to understand what was currently working for the listserv conversations and what would be a valuable hook to move people to the forums, and especially who within the community (not the org) may be the most influential in a successful migration.  There are a lot of best practices surrounding incentives (try giving promotion and value and not actual rewards) that were shared; but many people felt that the key would be in creating value on the new space that wasn’t possible or wasn’t the same in the listservs.

Question 2: asked how to build a loop between on and offline engagement.

Most agreed that it is harder to move from online to offline, where engagement may be strong because of the access or timing that can’t be accomplished with the physical world. There are also some great ways to help make offline action visible online like sharing actions or highlighting content like videos and photos from events online (try pulling content from across the web together on your website via Yahoo! Pipes).  When talking about moving people from online to offline, it’s important to think about what the purpose is – if it is just to meet and network, many may not see the value in that if the connections and value are already being met online.  Christina shared a great example about finding opportunities to support the community in coming together by listening to online conversations and helping members find events of interest to the organization’s mission and their location.

Matthew also shared an idea for an application creating print-on-demand materials for supporters – you can see his notes in the transcript, or you can catch him on Twitter @mw for more!

Get the full transcript here!

October Community Builder Chat

I’m already looking forward to the next opportunity to connect with others working to build community and explore ideas and examples.  The next monthly chat will be:

• Date: October 28th (I’ll be presenting at the Blackbaud Conference on the 21st so will move it to the 4th Thursday of the month)
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Chat: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the Community Builder Chat

These monthly chats part of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!  Hope to have you join us next time

When:

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

Topics:

Thanks to the rich conversation in last month’s chat, we have our main questions selected already. But, you can still add thoughts ahead of time, or share more questions that we may get to or save for another upcoming chat. This time we will be addressing:

• Migrating a community from one platform to another
• Building a loop between online and offline community activities

Share your ideas ahead of time in the comments below, or on twitter using #4change and/or #commbuild – have an idea for a better hashtag for this chat? Please leave a comment with your idea!

Did you miss last month’s chat? That’s okay – you can still see the full transcript here!

August 2010 – Community Builder Chat Wrap Up

Last night’s chat had a good turn out for being the very first one – thanks to everyone who lurked, joined in, and shared! The two main questions explored were:

• Why build online communities?
• How to increase engagement when dealing with limited functionality rights granted to members and members who are new to online media?

Get the full transcript from the chat here: Launch August Chat Transcript

September 2010 – Community Builder Chat Details

We already have two questions selected for the September chat generated in the August chat. (Thanks!) This time we’ll explore 1. migrating communities from one platform to another, and 2. tools and tactics that build a loop between offline and online activities.

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

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If you couldn’t join the chat last night, you can still contribute! Share your ideas or responses in the comments here to keep the conversation going until the next chat. If you have any questions, feel free to post those as well. Looking forward to the 16th already!