GroupBuzz

Being able to ask questions and share ideas with a list of peers to get some help is one of the biggest benefits of joining a community. So you've decided to give your community of hard-working professionals a home for online discussions so they can network, share knowledge, and strengthen relationships even when they're not in the same room.

But your community members — the busy professionals that they are — don't spend time refreshing online forums. How do you expect them to post and comment on each others messages? If they use Facebook, that's where they go for family and close friends...not professional discussions.

"What discussion? I didn't see that post." If you have a message board that makes someone log in to see if there are new messages, you know that most people forget to log in. Weekly digest emails stack up on top of each other...never to be read. The same people who DO log in post over and over and over, dominating the conversation. And you know, if this keeps up, pretty soon you'll be cleaning cobwebs off the message board between new topics.

The last thing you wanted is to add to the clutter in your members' inboxes and then eventually find that a bunch more people have - sigh - unsubscribed completely. If you set up an email listserv like Google Groups, you've quickly learned how badly people struggle to manage their email inbox. Important emails quickly get buried by the latest spam that fills their screen.