Communities, by definition, need to be valuable to all its participants. Enterprises in many cases only deal with the ‘What’s in it for me’ question from their own perspective. They often fail to truly address this question from the participants perspective.

If it isn’t clear to an employee how he or she will benefit from collaborating with others on an internal community, most will simply not engage. Add to that the fear of asking a ‘stupid question’, not giving the ‘right answer’, or being ignored when asking a question and internal communities often quickly grind to a halt.

We use a simple slogan when we help enterprises set up communities: ‘People Doing Things Together.’ When setting up a community, you need to go into a great level of detail defining this and make sure they valuable. The definitions can be generalizations or actual examples. The more focused, the easier it will be to show potential users ‘what’s in it for them’ and get them engaged.

Some examples:

• Product managers ask for available market research for a new concept they have.
• Marketeers test a new proposition amongst peers.
• R&D tests the market potential of a new application with marketing and sales colleagues all over the world.
• Controllers share and discuss their annual budgeting spreadsheets to get best practices for next years budgeting rounds.
• HR searches the community for a person suitable for a certain role based on expertise and experience shown in peoples’ community activities.
• A product manager wants to make a manufacturing investment but his market will not give him sufficient revenue to justify the investment. He asks product managers in other markets for their potential revenue. Their combined markets may justify the investment.
• An insurance product manager in Belgium asks his colleagues in The Netherlands if they have implemented a specific coverage in their insurance, and if they have how it was done and what the result was.
• Before testing his new campaign in an expensive survey, a marketeer tests the campaign, at no costs, in his own organization.