Chicken and Egg Problem
The chicken and egg problem is a classic for platforms, and communities respectfully. To be motivated to join the community and thrive, value (e.g. other people answering my questions) has to be derived from the community. Yet, in order to reach a point where such value is created, people have to join the community. The more people join the community, the more network effects are generated, the more answers and problems are solved, and the more value the community offers.
There are tested methods on how to solve the chicken and egg problem in platform organizations (communities being a type of a platform). Based on bleeding edge research (Gassmann, O., 2021, The Platform Playbook) some concrete tested methods to overcome this challenge in the scale phase of a platform can be found in the presentation here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dyaanIf5eLhn4YvI2NO1S3ydTQg_aaEhbJIY3rBa3FA/edit?usp=sharing
Initial outreach good practices
Bootstrap the initial content to show value
Ensure a base of frequently asked questions and helpful answers are present on the community before reaching out to individuals to join. The team (community managers, close peers) ask and answer the questions that would bring the most to the local community. Through the bootstrapping the value of the community is evident before many external users have joined.
Example
🇨🇭 Swiss Community: the initial team created ca. 2000 questions and answers internally to ensure the liveliness and the value for externally entering individuals to join the community.
Partner up
Engage local media
Social media groups integration
get input from there: what questions are most burning within your community that we can cover. Would you be happy to join us? Promote - at specific time and join here
What would be of service to you if you would come to our community? Similar topics discussed here.
What would you need at work? What is the common ground? Offer information and discussions around the common ground.
Local media - engage mass media - difference between outreach and engagement
Interviews
Chicken and egg problem in CH
Work with peers and partner organizations
Get questions from daily life and publish these in the forum
Let EnableMe staff also post questions and answers that are asked via telephone, email or whatsapp.
Partnering up
we have a partnership with the Swiss train company. If there is a question regarding mobility, we ask the swiss train operators to answer the question directly in the community
Then I think these kinds of partnerships are what we need to build to give value to the community that will drive demand. Since we dont have a team that can be online and giving expert responses, utilizing partnerships that can plug in here would boost the community
we have about 100 experts that answer more complex questions. The way forward is to provide access to the community for specific partners. E.g. in Switzerland we are in discussion with a pharmacy that has home care teams that visit people at home. They realise they use a lot of time to answer questions... The pharmacy could use our community to communicate and solve problems online and make them public in order to reduce costs
Two-fold approach
Identify from the community a leader, a person who can galvanize the community and build the capacity of that person (give a position to develop the community in advance)
Icon from the disability sector - DIY solution challenge