Open Community Case Study: GoPlow

This post is part of our regular series of Open Community case studies, in which intrepid association blogger and freelance writer Deirdre Reid will be digging into associations (and other kinds of organizations when relevant) who are living and breathing their open communities in the ways we describe in the book. If you have a case study to share, from the angle of any of the “big ideas” in our little book, please contact us.

Community: GoPlow

GoPlow is the Snow & Ice Management Association‘s (SIMA) online community. SIMA is the trade association for the snow and ice management and removal industry.

Champion: Brian Birch, Assistant Executive Director

Big Idea: Collaborating with a purpose and a strategy

Concepts:

• Build your strategy around the sweet spots.
• Work through the secret tug of war.
• Start small and good.
• Measure what matters.

Their Story:

The first goal in SIMA’s vision statement is to be the ‘go-to’ resource in their industry. Brian believed they couldn’t do that until they had a open community website generating solid content. Their goals for the first phase of GoPlow are aligned with their strategic plan:

• Foster information sharing and relationship-building.
• Deliver expert opinions via blogs.
• Manage educational content in more meaningful ways, deliver training for specific technical programs and increase the potential for active learning.

Having this clarity at the outset was helpful because it drove their decision to work with a platform that not only delivered the functionality they needed initially but is also highly flexible for developing needs – open source Joomla.

GoPlow is not only the center of their online community-building efforts, but an already profitable revenue center too. Taking the place of their magazine website, it houses archived and current issues, beefing up community content and helping with SEO. They use OpenX to serve ads – Brian does the setup and says it isn’t too challenging.

But they didn’t do it alone. Brian recommends building a partnership since the costs and risks can be high for a small association. They partnered with a media company that owns another site in their niche, PlowSite.com. They publish the magazine together but manage their websites separately.

“We knew some of our members were on PlowSite, which was (and is) the largest online community by far. Some of our members love that site, many hate it. We built our site not to replicate or compete, but to be completely different.”

SIMA wanted to reach the entire industry, as only a public site would. Plus their advertisers needed the traffic that a public site would bring. Brian initially got resistance from some association leaders about having an open community, but he says,

“We have to show leadership in our associations, and lead our members to these things. We can’t expect to have closed communities in a more open global environment. I think the openness of these sites only serves to contrast and illustrate the value of membership more. I can have a much better conversation with someone about membership when they don’t hear me first say, “You have to pay to play.’”

They listened to feedback but “kept in mind that our members are not marketing or web experts, we needed to start filling that role. We have a pretty strong strategic process when it comes to educational needs and outcomes; it drives everything we do, including content at GoPlow.”

They seeded the site with 12 issues of magazine content and repurposed webinar clips. GoPlow’s budget includes 20 hours/month for the magazine editor to create and collect content for it. Another staffer helps upload and manage content and a third is learning to create videos for the site. They cross-post content to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The staff leverages their personal interest in specific platforms, working on the ones where they like to spend time. Two of them manage Facebook, two manage LinkedIn (including the ED), two manage Twitter (mostly Brian and the ED), and the three of them plus the editor manage day-to-day GoPlow activity. Brian is involved in all of them – “You need a person who knows what’s happening in each of these areas.” Brian also frequents PlowSite, mainly to post responses to “uninformed criticism” of SIMA.

“Once you have a system set up, it doesn’t take much time. I probably spend 15-30 minutes a day on this stuff, much less for our staff. This doesn’t include content creation for GoPlow, which I view as separate and more of a publishing/educational function.”

Brian selects metrics that matter. “In terms of community metrics, I don’t track that info at this point. I really feel we’d be missing the boat if we focused on how many times people say things/rate things, instead of what they are saying.” They do have weekly goals for the number of new pieces of content so the site stays fresh, and he watches traffic numbers. Since they have revenue tied to GoPlow, he tracks that rate of return in comparison to their other programs and products.

They’ve had some successful community-building activities:

• Staff and members participated in a GoPlow prediction video about winter weather expectations and the Superbowl.
• Members submitted videos telling why they should be on the magazine cover for the Greatest Story Never Told contest. It generated a lot of traffic and allowed SIMA to tell a great story that no one would have heard otherwise.
• In the current Big Shots competition people take a fun or creative photo with the magazine. The community will vote on a winner who will get VIP treatment and $500 cash at their annual event.

The community is relatively small now but they’re happy with the contributions its members have made. He plans to focus more on member engagement in the next six months. They have a number of non-members frequenting the site, so another goal is to set up a path to membership for them. Brian sees GoPlow as always being “in a constant state of becoming.”

Forward Failure:

“(We didn’t) set up a solid set of role definitions between our editor and our staff lead for content, and (we didn’t do enough research) on how to manage a community long term. I’m satisfied with where we are, but I think long term we have to find ways to grow the community.”

Proud Moment:

“My proudest moment was probably in September. We launched the site in June at our annual symposium. At first the traffic was pretty strong but over the summer it dropped significantly. Then it began to come back and hit what I consider to be a sustainable level. After that, I knew we had a strong community that we could continue to grow over time.”

Check them out:

• GoPlow Community
• Facebook
• Twitter

How does your association collaborate strategically?