BestPractices for Community Building in SP

I'm currently working on a project that involves identifying some best practices for community building in SharePoint.

Specifically how do you engage users/members to utilize some of the additional SharePoint features (beyond document libraries) such as discussion boards, surveys, wikis, or create informal groups/teams that cross-cut areas of expertise and organizations?

Does anyone have experience within organizations where the members were very active/engaged that they would be willing to share? What are your thoughts on how to get there?

I'm also open to non-SharePoint bestpractices for community building as well.

Tags: SharePoint, best practices, community building

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Permalink Reply by Jon Juane on February 10, 2011 at 1:36pm

Hey Sandra-

I was involved with a crowd-sourcing project last summer using SharePoint to feed into a marketing to youth strategy and one of our "best practices" I would encourage is having someone/a small group of people to encourage discussion and work at breaking down the barriers employees experience that inhibit engagement.

Basically that means diving into the discussions people bring up in forums, replying to comments with things like "that's a great idea- what do other people think?" ... "that's a great point- what do you think about what Jim said? could that work?" etc...

If people feel like their comments are wanted/important/valued, they will be more likely to keep talking, and other people will find it easier to jump in, especially when they see how everyone's ideas are so strongly welcomed...

Permalink Reply by GovLoop on February 10, 2011 at 1:41pm

Is there a specific type of best practice sharing? HR? IT?

I think the key comes down to community outreach, engagement, and management

From what we've seen on GovLoop and elsewhere, some keys that most people miss are:

-Staffing - how are you staffing community outreach/engagement/management? Most people radically underestimate how much work this takes and how important it is. It's not Field of Dreams - where you build it and they come

-Community Engagement plan - how are you going to keep it alive? Weeky live chats? Blogs? Interview with experts? Podcasts? A featured chat of week?

-Marketing - promote it everywhere from swag (GL has been successful with lanyards/tshirts/buttons to flyers in office) to getting senior leaders to use to putting it in email footer signature

Permalink Reply by Sandra Scarbrough on February 10, 2011 at 4:12pm