Very true Sam. What I’ve found, is that anyone in this situation has a fairly unique story to tell.
We have a large independent community on Facebook that we would like to reign-in. I’ve had pressure from various orgs to move these customers off of Facebook and onto our new Discourse platform. Because most conversations on our Facebook group were Support-related (How do I…?), I decided instead to focus my efforts on beating the channels that I can influence directly - our phone and chat support lines. If I can provide more insightful (crowdsourced) answers that are as easy and fast to find as calling or chatting in, I feel that I can beat all these channels in the long run…including the popular Facebook group where…[quote=“erlend_sh, post:2, topic:64437”]
conversations are also inherently ephemeral, as there’s no easy way to find/resume old conversations.
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This is a great observation! Here is an excerpt of my original Community Strat Doc that details the problem:
We have a unique opportunity due to the thousands of [people] participating in various ?-themed Facebook groups. Many of the conversations regard sharing knowledge to help each other achieve success in their small business by leveraging tools available within the ? ecosystem. These groups are loosely organized, overlap each other, are difficult to manage, but most importantly do not share a common purpose or cohesive structure. Adding to the problem is the fact that these conversations are ephemeral due to the nature of Facebook - insightful conversations get buried in our timelines never to be seen again.[quote=“dau, post:10, topic:64437”]
I’m thinking we will need to start putting new, original content only on Discourse, as well as the best support people.
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I started by providing community members with direct access to CSRs with the caveat that CSRs need to allow time for other members to contribute in order to grow the community organically…this strategy conflicted with a goal to reduce “time to answer”, but I felt that is was important enough to disregard as we grow the community. That strat is paying off. Pay close attention to the most active organic members and nurture them individually. Remember the 99-9-1 rule and focus on the 1% while you grow your community. I’m also partnering with Customer Marketing to help provide interesting content to drive TOFU.