Group Members International Enterprise Hosted Social Networking Community Platforms

WHY?

1. What business problem are you trying to fix? What’s broken? What does success look like (without mentioning features)
2. There are different tools for different problems, Are you sure a Social Networking site will fix this?
3. Where are your community/market/users currently?
4. Have you considered joining that community before creating your own? Trying to recreate MySpace doesn’t make sense because it already exists.
5. How open/closed to you want your community? Think about long term, does it scale?
6. What incentive are you creating with this network that will drive users to your site and share?
7. How do you plan to kick start your community, you know that just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.
8. Have you considered and researched a revenue model?
9. Can you pay the operational and setup cost of the network until your revenue model hits sustainability.

WHO?

1. People follow the direction of champions, leaders and key players within an online community / social network. Can you identify who will fulfill these roles for your community? If not, do you have a plan for identifying and nurturing community members into these roles?
2. Are there any internal / external events or influencers that could impede your organization’s planned social networking / online community presence?
3. Have you evaluated your competitors’ online community / social media strategies?
4. Have you determined what metrics you will use to measure ROI? Do you have a plan to encourage adoption of the new community by your target audience?

HOW?

1. What is your plan to manage / moderate the community’s activities assuming a large community arises?
2. What terms of service / acceptable behavior guidelines will you rely on, and how will they be enforced / cultivated?
3. How will you involve people outside your organization but from within the target community?
4. What will you do to actively recruit, encourage, and even potentially incent “good” user behavior from your target community?