Capable Networks wants to help you build the most compelling community for your company's target audience. In many cases, this is your first touch point with your users and constituents and it is vital to get off to a good start. Once you get past the design and basic publishing of content to the site, it is common to ask "What's Next?". Do I just sit back and watch the customers flood in? Or do I need to do more?
In our experience, the initial launch is a critical phase with so many variables in play and so much at stake. We offer a Community Launch consulting service where we can share our own best practices and guide you through the steps to get your site off to a great start.
Overview of Service Offering
The Community Launch consulting service is organized into discrete tasks. Although we recommend coverage on all areas, tasks may be scheduled independently based on your own team's specific needs and timeframe.
Setup & Configuration - There is a small list of foundational steps that are required before you open the doors for business. Our experts will guide you through reviewing legal language, guides, and the various site policies; configuring analytics, key administrative roles, and advertising; and assigning the default email accounts.
Site Taxonomy & Forum Structure - All content should be tagged appropriately so that users may find it easily. To enable this, your team must think through the best categories and forum topics for the various types of content that will exist. Our experts will draw from their own experiences to help you optimize these key organization structures.
User Interface - It is hard to accurately predict what will click with a new community. The Capable Community Platform is loaded with features that are easy to configure and make available to your visitors. This task is focused on showing your team how to find the primary knobs and levers that let you build a compelling user experience.
User Administration - As managers of our own network of online communities, our Editors have seen it all and have developed templates and policies to help address the most prevalent user scenarios. Our experts will show you the tools that exist to help you identify and properly respond to virtually any user problem.
Editing and Moderating Content - In a healthy community, the site's visitors, who will be contributing the bulk of the new content, will likely overshadow your own publishing efforts. Let our team help familiarize you with the features of the platform that let you stay on top of the content as well as some tips for keeping content fresh.
Reporting & Analytics - With all the excitement of a new community launch, it can be hard to stay focused on what matters. We can walk through the tools that we use to keep the pulse of the site day to day.
Promotional Ideas - None of these other features will be useful unless you have traffic on your site. We will brainstorm ideas to promote your site externally and many of the techniques that we use to get your site visible in other places. This can include simple link building techniques to more advanced SEO optimizations.
Moderation Tips and Techniques - What do you do if someone spams your site? Do you take down a negative review? Do you ban them from the site? In this discussion, we will go through many of the different scenarios that can come up when your site gets going to make sure that you are prepared to answer them accordingly.
Strategic Topics - If you need help with items not on this list, send us your topics in advance of the meeting so that we can be prepared to discuss them. Other topics we could discuss include public vs. private forums, membership requirements, company contributions to the community, etc.
Team and Deliverables
Capable's team of community experts are here to help you. On a typical engagement, the Capable team will consist of two expert resources to be determined based on the topics selected for the engagement that will match up with our skill sets. A very fluid, interactive session results that can go as deep as you would like into any topic. At the end of each session, Capable will summarize the recommendations and what was learned to make sure that the information was captured. After the session is over, any unanswered questions and other follow-up items will be completed within a week following the engagement completion.
Pricing and Timelines
Capable's services and pricing are delivered based on ½ day sessions consisting of 4 hours each. In general, it is recommended that no more than 2 or 3 of the topics above be covered in each session to get into as much detail as you would like on any given topic. In a full-day session, we can cover most of the topics at a high level.