>8 Questions to Answer Before you Start a Health Community

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Online community building require planning all your activities much before you launch it on the web. Here is the list of 8 questions you should answer before you actually start building a community::

(1)Who is responsible for managing the community. One person who has ultimate authority for managing your online community. Pick this person before you launch. What are the limits of their authority. What can/can’t they do without you? What are their responsibilities and deliverables?

(2)The first people that you’re going to approach. Building an online community needs a very focussed approach. So before you venture into any such project, have a clear target audience profile. You should know their demographics, habits and attitudes. You should have a list of people, but start with the best 20 to 50 consumers to join in the beginning

(3)What you’re going to tell them. Based upon your research, you should know what you’re going to tell a member that will get them to join. We believe it is best to draw up a plan for publishing content according to a table -of -contents and in a timely fashion.

(4)How you will convert newcomers into regulars. What will members do in your community for the first few weeks? You need a clear process that will take a newcomer to the community past the usual 3-week mark into a regular. This means a combination of constant prods asking for opinions/recommendations etc.

(6)How you will grow the community. Will you continue to use direct invites? Will you use referrals? If so what will you do to gain those referrals? Will you go for promotion/mentions in top media outlets. If so, what will you tell them to get those mentions? In our opinion, it is better to grow physician communities via referrals and recruiting health consumers via direct invitation, social media marketing and Google adwords.

(7)What platform you will use. Hot topic, but what platform will you use for your community (should be very clear about why). The default should be forums/mailing list/newsgroups until you outgrow it.

(8)What you are measuring. What metrics matter to you? This should also include how you will react to these metrics. How will these metrics change your actions?
(via Feverbee)


Related articles

• 6 Great Ways to Kick start Your Health Community. (medical-communication.blogspot.com)
• Welcoming New Members To Your Online Community (lockergnome.com)
• How To Build An Online Community (customerthink.com)
• Online communities get stronger when managers learn to delegate (communityspark.com)