There's a common notion according to Joe Shepley, vice president at Doculabs Inc, that when it comes to online communities, if you build them, employees will magically flock to them. But Shepley, presenting at AIIM/info360 last week, says it turns out that in reality it's not quite as simple as that. In fact, building a successful online community, whether internal or external, takes a substantial amount of upfront planning to succeed.

Shepley explained that employees tend to take the path of least resistance when it comes to collaboration and that usually means email. Even though email tends to be a clogged communications channel and grossly inefficient, employees will continue to use it even when presented with a collaboration tool such as a community if it's perceived as too hard (which could mean simply having to open another program to do their work).

When faced with that kind of inertia, you have to think carefully before you create your online communities, yet you can't over-plan. It's a fine line you have to walk. In some ways, you want to leave the room for spontaneity in your community, but you don't want the shell to be so empty that people don't know where to start.

Shepley suggests segmenting your users into logical categories. Since most companies are divided up this way anyway, that shouldn't be that hard to do. Further, he suggests developing a use case for each group, and only then finding the technology that meets the needs of most users in the majority of use cases. Finally, and he says this is what always tends to get left behind, make sure you leave room for communication and training.

Now it may seem that most employees in the Facebook era won't need a lot of training, you still need to lead the employees to the water and show them how it works on a broad level. Most won't need much more than that.

There was some discussion that participation breaks along generational patterns, but I don't personally believe that. People will simply use the tools that help them do their jobs. If employees find that they have to fight the tool to make it work, chances are they will go back to email because it's easier--warts and all.

That's why it's important to plan as carefully as you can, understand your user base and find the best solution. Don't assume that because you build it, they will come, because experience has shown, that's often not the case.

Related Articles:
Locking down external social media could be counter-productive 
The indelible impact of cloud, mobile, social 
Lessons learned from Deloitte's collaboration 2.0 deployment