The Power of "Swarm Communities"
21 Aug 2007
Question:
If I have 1000 people then the best way to reach them is one big Swarm – right?
Answer:
It all depends what you are trying to achieve - you might be better with a Swarm Community!
The Power of Swarm Communities to Engage
A single MegaSwarm is just great if you want to broadcast to a large group of people in a single operation and you don’t need them to interact with each other.
However if you want your thousand buddies to really engage with you and with each other then you should consider creating not just one swarm but a Swarm Community.
A Swarm Community is a set of interlinked swarms each addressing different aspects of a shared communities interest.
In the 1000 person scenario this might result in 50 swarms all on a common theme such as Manchester United, Snow Patrol, Harry Potter, Over-50s Snowboarding or whatever.
Each of the swarms in the swarm community deals with the common theme in a different way according to each swarm owners interests.
These swarms are listed in the public tagged swarm directory and members of one swarm can join any other swarm in the swarm community at a single click.
So here is an example of a Swarm Community of Manchester United fans
The Benefits of Swarm Communities
Swarm Communities are just great for large communities with lots of sub-groups or overlapping groups.
These can organised by topic such as special interest groups within a professional organisation.
Alternatively they can be organised by geography such as regional groups of a national organisation.
In these scenarios Swarmteams has the following advantages over other approaches to community enagement:
1. Ability to have a large set of members whilst retaining the engagement that comes with a "small group dynamic"
2. Huge Potential for viral Member Growth (Members invite Members)
3. Distribution of Ownership and Responsibility into the member base swarms
4. Enabling Member-Member Recommendations provide a powerful call to action mechanism
5. The ability to reach an entire user base in a single operation for urgent news or feedback/consultation.
So how do you set up the Swarms?
Its pretty simple – there really are just two steps:
STEP 1. Think about your Swarm objectives.
To help you do this we have devised a graphical Swarm Anatomy template which helps you decide exactly what you want your swarm(s) to do.
For example you can decide which communication channels are available to the swarm , whether all members can broadcast and whether the swarm is invite only or open to subscription. These are all set in the Swarm Settings Screen
STEP 2. Decide if you need one Swarm or a Swarm Community
The example below is a 2-level Music Swarm Community:
- The main swarm (ALPHAS) is a VIP Swarm for Superfans of the Band
- Their is a general NEWS Swarm which is free to anyone to join (great for new member recruitment
- Each Superfan has 2 Swarms (which they own): MYFANS - an invite only Swarm (on the left) and a public Swarm (on the right) called NEWBIES.
- Any messages sent to any Swarm can be instantly forwarded by a single click to any other swarm the member belongs to (subject to permissions and settings)
10 Tips for creating a great Swarm Community
- Do you know your Alpha Members? If you do then allow them to create invite only and public swarms and work through them to reach the other members
- Encourage your Alphas to publish their public swarm names on their blogs, forums and signatures etc. You need to ensure your Alphas know how to use the system!
- You also need to think about how you will motivate your Alphas - for example to take responsibility for helping the other users - whats in it for them
- Decide whether you want to allow the members invited by the Alpha users also to create swarms ie multi-level swarming (usually not initially)
- Create a general open swarm managed by the sponsor for new member recruitment and publicise its name heavily on the web and elsewhere
- Consider creating a pre-populated Swarm Community of Sponsor Open Swarms for new members to join after they sign-up on the general swarm
- If you don’t know your alpha members then you need to think about how to find them in your membership – usually they are your most active messagers
- Always be on the look-out for new Alphas and converting existing members to alphas – for example you can create an open swarm where members who wish to apply to become alphas can register
- The sponsor needs to seed the swarm community with good messages and content to build the community up. There is no substitute for this.
- Finally remember the real power of a Swarm Community is that it is alive and constantly evolves. You can monitor and act as a catalyst to fine tune its design to optimise the results. You can try different Swarm Anatomies. The ones that work really well - do more of them. The ones that dont work so well - try something else
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