The following is a result of Jive Strategic Consulting Practice’s extensive work with many large clients who have deployed Jive Social Business Software. It is Part 3 of a four-part series.
In Part 1, we explained how to use Barry’s Community Flower to determine the top three characteristics of your community.
In Part 2, we discussed the importance of identifying community members’ wants.
Express it!
Now that you have your top three characteristics identified in Part 1, and list of member wants from Part 2, let’s put them together to create your community’s overall expression. Once you do this, you’ll have successfully defined the boundaries of your community design!
Define the following elements:
- Purpose: “What’s this site all about in two seconds or less? Because that’s how much time you have my attention before I split.”
- Calls to Action: “OK, I’m here. What do you want me to do? Use clickable verbs to make it obvious.”
- Motivation: “What’s in it for me if I answer your calls to action? Is it what I want?”
- Example: “What behavior do you want me to model? Give me an example.”
This example of expressive elements is based on the top three characteristics of Relationships, Sharing, and Groups. It is for a public community.
How do you design Jive SBS based on all of this?
Finally, we start talking about the technology.
Expression elements can help you decide the following:
- Which out-of-box widgets to put on your landing pages
i.e., All Content, Your View, or any space or group Overview tab - What custom widgets, if any, are needed
e.g., giant green button with a call to action, like on Bank of America Small Business Stories, or the I Want To widget on the PayPal Developer Network landing page - What customizations, if any, are needed to make an element more prominent
e.g., the Superstars area on CNN iReport People page - What modules are needed
e.g., if members want to socialize Microsoft SharePoint documents, you’ll want Jive’s SharePoint Connector - How to express these elements in your theme
e.g., the calls to action in the banner on Arcsight’s Protect 724 community, or the purpose statement in Medco’s banner - What the main spaces should be in your space taxonomy
e.g., one Jive customer’s top characteristics were expressed as “lobby” spaces: About Groups (groups/collaborating), About Profiles (relationships/connecting), About Blogs (sharing)
Example
Nutshell
Your community’s Top Three Characteristics, member wants, and expressive elements can make it easier to design your site’s overall identity, and keep the design scope from creeping out of control.
If it doesn’t fit with your characteristics, member wants, or expressive elements, it doesn’t belong in your community.
What’s next?
In part 4, we’ll discuss how to map all this design goodness to Jive SBS capabilities.
