Motribe is a platform for <a>building mobile social networks</a> and in this presentation Vincent Maher shares some lessons about community building

1. Tactics and opportunities for
building mobile communities
Some practical insights and experiences

2. campaign
Garden-variety mobile campaign using the following mechanics:
competition entry, downloads, content

3. community
Much higher levels of initial activity, increased opportunities for 2nd and 3rd day
interaction

4. building community
Define the common identity
Planning and preparation
Launch window tactics
Common management problems and solutions
Maturity stage and the up-side

5. common identity
The common identity is a combination of
attributes that all users can identify with
Common interest
Age range
Location
Language

11. common identity
Common interest
Age range
Location
Language
Emo style
13 – 20
US, UK
English
ICP
15 – 35
US
English
Football
18 – 35
Nigeria
English

12. identity challenges
Dialects and languages, location can trigger prejudice and erode
the sense of belonging
Large age variations and sexual predators
Teen age perception is much more granular (18 and 14 are very
different)
Being inside a crowd of people with the chosen common interest
must evoke a strong emotion (e.g. comfort, euphoria, inspiration)
No easy way to speak to your group via your channels

13. planning and preparation
- Does the community need content?
- If so, who creates it? where does it come from? how often does
it get updated?
- What is the identity of the administrator?
- What are your marketing channels?
- What time are your users online?

14. launch window tactics
- The launch window is the first 30 days
- Goal: establish enough alpha members (leaders)
- What is enough? 100 – 200 (5% of the total)
- Establish the rules, internalize them in the alpha members
- Start generating organic and search traffic
- Establish your best-case CPA

15. launch fail
If your users vs. activity graph looks like this:
Instead of this:

16. launch window
- Gender plays an important role in the way a community
functions
- Communities struggle when there are less than 20% female
members and thrive when there are more than 35%
- The typical African profile is 70 – 90% male and the same for
countries that have a strong Islamic tradition
- Situations where women are significantly out-numbered may
become self-perpetuating
- The counter-measure to this problem is to take a stronger hand
in protecting women’s interests while establishing the alpha
users

17. launch window
- It sucks being the first person on a community site
- On launch, you need 20 – 40 people online at all times for the
first 24 hours
- To achieve this you need to use a blind network that can quickly
adjust the rate of spend and make sure that you are pushing
enough traffic onto the landing page
- Often an ad with a high CTR is an indication that your ad has too
broad an appeal (on blind networks)
- If the common interest of the community is very niche then
search advertising may be a good way to drive a slow stream of
new users. Do not use this for launch as you can’t easily burst
search traffic.

18. management fun
- Users uploading bad content
- Users harassing other users
- Users posting spam messages and outbound links
- Users impersonating other users
- The solution:
- Empower the alpha users to suspend other users and their
content
- Create the sense of constant surveillance by announcing
your presence at random times
- Eradicate bad apples early

19. the up-side
External media spend gradually decreases
Internal media value grows over time

20. the up-side
The difference can be seen as a saving or added value on top of existing spend
This works for the site owners because they are building value
Agencies can redirect some of the savings to higher-margin activities like community
management

21. other up-sides
- Continued exposure for the brand
- A new channel for identifying brand champions
- Significantly better ROI on media campaigns
- etc

22. Thank you and
questions
vincent@motribe.com
@vincent_maher