First 15 minutes to convert a prospect in a customer community

People decide to join a brand's community quite quickly.

They hear about the community, see that they can ask questions, browse a few posts, look at something they want to participate in, then register.

The moment they register, you have someone's attention. They're waiting and expecting messages from you. They're open to information from you. Every second that goes by, they become less receptive, and you keep losing out on opportunity to have them interested in your products, your brand's story and talking to happy customers.

Don't waste these precious minutes.

 / Instantly get someone participating in a self-disclosure discussion. In the confirmation/welcome e-mail, guide someone to participating in a topical, self-disclosure, discussion. Update this discussion each week. Skip the profile for now, engage them in an active discussion so they enter the notification cycle.

 / Ensure interaction between members. Have volunteer customers to respond quickly to people who have made their first contribution in the community. Again, this is a short window. Every minute that ticks by is a minute that we're less open to responses. Ensure the response contains personal information and a further question to prompt a response.

 / Introduce to relevant members. If there are other members a newcomer should know, make the introduction. It doesn't have to be via the site. A relationship can flourish and bring future people into the group.

 / Prompt to ask questions. Establish a trigger/prompt that will get people to ask questions about the topics they're struggling with. This might be a simple e-mail or a discussion thread that asks people what questions they're struggling with.

 / Use your auto-responders. Link activity (or inactivity) to automated autoresponders. If a member hasn't logged in since they registered, has made 5 or more contributions, has only made one contribution, send them an e-mail with something new and relevant in the community they should participate in.

For most of the customer communities we work on at Vinfotech, increasing the newcomer (information seeker, prospect) to regular (fan, customer) participation ration is the single, biggest, quickest, win we can have.

We can do a much better job here.