Putting in place good social intranet technology is not enough to kick start a vibrant community on your intranet. Most of the factors that will really make a difference are human ones.

1. © 2014 Content Formula Ltd
Critical success factors for kick starting
a community on your intranet

2. Online communities: critical success factors
 Communities form and thrive because of people who share a common interest. The
technology that supports them is secondary.
 Successful communities have a leader and/or a team of champions who are actively
interested in sharing knowledge with others. Merely having an interest in a topic is not
enough.
 The community leaders form the base of the community and post the content that
kicks off the community and draws in interested people.
 The leaders will ideally invite their existing offline network to the community.
 Community members can be segmented onto a ‘ladder’:
 Content contributors
 Commenters
 Taggers, likers and sharers
 Content consumers who are mostly silent and don’t contribute
 As a very rough rule of thumb 10-20% of community members will fall into the content
contributor segment.
© 2015 Content Formula Ltd

3. Online communities: critical success factors
 Some communities have a community coordinator who is not a subject matter expert
but whose role is to encourage contributions from members. They do this through
direct contact with members.
 The community coordinator will never ask a member, ‘have you got any content to
post’. They will ask them to contribute something specific that they know the member
has an interest in.
 The community coordinator will be aware of who belongs within the different
segments of the community and will try to move people up the ladder.
 Other techniques to drive contributions include gamification and analytics which give
contributors an idea of numbers of people reading and interacting with their posts.
 Themed events and topic sessions drive contributions through providing a focus.
 Live events such as video webcasts also drive interest and contributions
 Technology should be easy to use and intuitive.
 Avoid creating too many topics, places or ways to contribute at the start as this
makes the community feel empty and inactive. It also confuses would-be contributors.
 Unless necessary for compliance reasons, avoid placing the community behind a
login as people don’t like to register and lose their passwords.
© 2015 Content Formula Ltd

4. How we can help
 We can help you set up and implement your community strategy and governance
 We can help design, build and run state-of-the-art community websites, intranets or
extranets that are easy to use and engaging for the user
 We can provide experienced online community coordinators and managers
 We can help you set up and run online live events such as video webcasts and
webinars

5. Our clients
© 2017 Content Formula Ltd

6. © 2014 Content Formula Ltd
Thank you
Dan Hawtrey
dhawtrey@contentformula.com
+44 7973 757610
+44 207 471 8500
www.contentformula.com