The term e-community, online community, or virtual community brings together several meanings depending on the context. It can be understood as an interest group where several people or organizations share common topics, information, and concerns; as a fan club where people join an organization’s or brand’s approach by following its news, approving it, or even disseminating it in turn; or as a working group.
In the latter case, community members will circulate information, but also documents on which they will work together, and will be able to move projects forward without the need to meet physically.
If the success of an e-community is based on both its size and its dynamism, these two assets can be turned against the association in the event of a crisis. A lousy buzz will be amplified more quickly if the community is large and active. The loss of control of an e-community can have severe consequences on the association’s e-reputation.
It is therefore essential to know how to manage the time and tone of the response, the ability to act outside the web to defend the association’s image. A content strategy determined at a very early stage will also make it possible not to focus all eyes on the association itself, but to propose an opening on broader areas of interest.
Define a content strategy
Mobilization consists of encouraging Internet users to sign a petition, join a movement (join the association, participate in a demonstration, give of their time), make a donation. In other words, to move from the web to real life. It is essential to create a proper content strategy to achieve this objective.
Monitoring tools exist to do this: the simplest is probably Google Alerts. It allows you to receive articles in your mailbox related to the keywords you have chosen. Another tool like Feedly will enable you to aggregate RSS feeds from different sites. As for Pearltrees, it proposes to organize the contents playfully and visually.
Associations must make them receptive to their actions to make the most of e-communities. It is called engagement. It can be achieved at several levels: the first level of commitment is approval. On social networks, it manifests itself as a like or shared publication. A commitment of this nature is already, in itself, a challenge.
It will be necessary to test different types of publications: information, humor, testimonies, reports of actions, links to more general news, etc. and see which ones work best. Varying the temporality of publications (time of day, week or weekend, frequency) also makes it possible to feel when the e-community is most attentive.
Choose your places of expression
Most media offer Internet users the opportunity to react to the content they are provided by writing comments, but a large part of the exchanges take place mainly on social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram are virtual places where you can enjoy, share information, comment on it, and even complete or contest another user’s comment.
As for working groups, tools have been developed both for the major Internet players (Google) and for free software (Framasoft and its Framalibre suite of free software), which make it possible to create online documents, modify them in multiple and in real time, launch surveys, communicate by videoconference, etc.