Reputation systems are limited

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1. Promoting (healthy) relationships
Communities allow people to spend time together in one place, on a regular basis, and also allow for deep interactions, which ultimately leads to healthy relationships.

2. More self-expression through a sense of security
Because you are in a community with like-minded people and everyone understands each other, members dare to express themselves more and to give and receive real feedback. And that is a primary social need.

3. Personalized online experience
Online communities offer their members the ability to fully personalize their social experiences through streams/timelines, customized content, and the choice to join certain groups and events.

That is from the user's perspective. But what are the advantages for the organizations (the owners of the online community)?

1. Lower costs and more business
Some organizations use online communities to help customers directly or even to let customers help each other. This is a clear win-win situation, where on the one hand the costs of customer service decrease, and on the other hand customers are helped quickly with their question.

2. Creation and innovation
Collaborating with others in a shared online space allows knowledge, skills and experience to be easily shared, helping people, organisations and (thereby) even society grow.

3. Contact with customers
Online communities enable customers to participate in the creative process of organizations, providing organizations with direct feedback and insight into the potential of future products and services.

If social technologies are implemented and launched well, the impact and value of these communities is enormous. But what challenges do organizations face? Why are the potential impact and value not or insufficiently utilized?

The 6 Big Challenges of Online Communities
The previously shared McKinsey research above shows that the majority of organizations with an online community are not reaching their full potential. In other words, there is still so much more to be gained. The greatest potential remains hidden or is not stimulated. And this is because people are struggling with these six major challenges (and there are probably more).

1. Lack of member commitment
There is a clear lack of engagement from members. And that engagement is precisely the key to generating value for you as an organization.

2. Too weak stimuli
The existing impulses/incentives are too weak to significantly improve involvement, think of impulses such as gamification .

3. Added value is difficult to measure
It is difficult to measure the added value of social technologies, although this is necessary to justify their use and investment.

Existing reputation systems are limited to individual platforms and are not portable.

5. Reward is often abused
Current forms of reward are often abused because there is no common authority.

6. Resources are not reusable
Finally, there is low economic sustainability, because the resources spent on social technologies are not reusable.

I would like to explain the first two challenges a little more. I think these are the two most important fax lists challenges for online communities.

Huge lack of member involvement
Only 17 percent of members participate. In order to achieve desired behavior from members and to build a sustainable existence, it is essential for communities to stimulate involvement (engagement) of its members.

In short: if a community has members who do not participate, it becomes a no-man's land (in which an organization has probably invested a lot of money). And conversely: if there is a lot of activity and involvement in the community, then value is created and members are encouraged to participate. And that is why that involvement is so important.

But it turns out that online communities have a hard time keeping that engagement high. And understandably so! Typically, a very small group of members drives most of the activity within the community.

For example: Only 1 percent of all Wikipedia members are responsible for almost 80 percent of Wikipedia content. Really ! This 'engagement pyramid' below underlines this. It is based on data from open social communities with tens of