Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #006 of 6 lessons
Released: Monday, March 17, 2014
Category: EasySocial Profiles - Themes and Community Planning
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

USING DIFFERENT THEMES IN EASYSOCIAL PROFILE TYPES TO CREATE A UNIQUE MEMBER COMMUNITY

Before we get into the Lesson Guide for today, let's talk about the early stages of your member community development. I believe that I should provide not only a lesson on the features within EasySocial, but where you might use the feature, or modification etc. Too often, there is not enough attention paid to why a feature should be used in making a community all it can be. All the features in the world won't make your community a success. To be a success, you have to conceptualize and plan your community, before you add features.

ROLE OF THE ADMINISTRATOR/COMMUNITY MANAGER
As an Administrator, or the Community Manager, you are typically in charge of planning, designing, conceptualizing, and performing all the tasks in the community management framework to develop the community for members to participate. Your goal is obviously to make the community as successful as possible. Too often we neglect planning before we start developing a network for members to participate in to make sure it has the best chance of growing into a successful community.

COMMUNITY CONCEPTUALIZATION & PLANNING
When you set up EasySocial as an Administrator, you have considerable control over the features that you can add to your social network or community. This requires planning of the network.
As the Administrator, you have many options available to you in EasySocial to develop the network - you will do this using the Administrator Dashboard features in EasySocial. By planning your site and the roles of each member within a specific role group using features within the Profiles can be a good strategy to grow your community and activity in the community. Besides inviting people to join the site network, have members create content that is of interest to the community, and initiate and sustain discussions to build relationships with top members, the administrator has to plan ahead. As the community develops, the roles for members splits and evolves. First, usually, some members will evolve into coordinator-type roles, and then into a full fledged Member Coordinator, or Manager, or Strategist. Over time, if you are building a CONTENT FOCUSED NETWORK, you might have entire teams of Community Editors, Event Organizers, Member Managers, Topic Strategists, Advocates, and Content Developers, and each is responsible for their own area of the community.

What is important in the network or site conceptualization phase?
It is very important to decide the audience of people that you are targeting to encourage them to become members of your new community. You must establish what the community will be about, what type of community it will be for the members to get them to engage in activities and discussions, and how you will develop your site network and get it going.

Get the Community Concept Right First
It is very important to get the community concept right, otherwise all the development work you do will be for NOT. When you get the community concept or focus wrong, nothing else you do matters. A community of new members can't overcome a terrible community concept. Make sure your Community has a really strong interest, otherwise it will be almost possibly to succeed. Whatever you do, DO NOT MAKE YOUR COMMUNITY for an organization or for customers solely about talking about a product or products.

CREATING A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY TAKES TIME
It takes time to properly conceptualization a community that will grow. It's a process...and it takes time. Designing, and testing, and creating a successful community is based on constant decisions to be made as you develop the community. It can't be made in a meeting, or in one or two days. It's takes a steady process of adding features that are available to you as the Administrator, and constant testing of ideas. You have to analyze the audience of members you are targeting, and understand everything you can about the social community, or the member ecosystem. Many large organizations make their community about the company brands, or products, or a service - and instead, the goal should be to focus on making the community about the audience of members, to focus on a strong area of common interest that the members can engage in daily, weekly, rather than in an "maybe I will participate - maybe I won't" fashion. In order for a community to grow members have to be engaged - in a common interest.

Just like this Discussion Thread - I know that it takes time to establish a common interest to engage members. My focus is to create a Community for people to Learn how to create member communities. This is why I am testing and testing in the StackIdeas forums. To see what engages members most. People come here to learn what they can about EasySocial.

CREATE A COMMUNITY OF COMMON INTEREST

Identify the target audience for your community. - understand the area of common interest to members.
During this phase of community conceptualization, you should have a very good understanding about the strong common interest for your members.

Determine what type of community you want to create for your members. - Will you community be about a place, practice, interest, action, or circumstance?

What is the Positioning of your community? - Ask yourself this question. Does a community like the one I am planning to develop already exist? It is important to come up with the type of community, but what about your community gives it a flair, or a unique tone of voice, or unique goal or unique benefit to engage members to join and keep participating in the growth of the community?

REMEMBER: The positioning of your community can't be solved by the technology in social networking builder tools like EasySocial, or any other tool for that matter. No matter what features you add to your community, people will not join the community because it offers numerous cool features found in EasySocial, such as photo-sharing, or album sharing, or Groups, or any other features. Having a all the features to utilize in your network doesn't help much if you get your network concept wrong. You want to focus your attention to social-related change, and target your membership towards unique groups of people. If you focus on being exclusive, and provide a unique tone of voice or add some personality to you new community, the chances are much better that your community will succeed, rather than just add in all the features that EasySocial has to offer without thinking about who your target members will be and what they will do to engage them to participate in the community on a regular basis.

What are the Benefits of the Community to it's Members? - Why do people want to participate in your community? What will be the benefits to people for participating in the community? Will members learn about a topic, such as a new Lesson Guide plan each week? Will members become an experts if they participate in the community? Will members receive attention or praise for their expertise? (think about using the EasySocial POINTS & BADGES to your advantage here) Focus on creating rewards or benefits for those interested most in self-interest related benefits, as these far better than making your community about connecting, making friends, and sharing of photos, and albums, or knowledge, or other statements often too overused in social networks. That last thing the world needs is another Facebook type site. Be unique and create a compelling reason for your members to join your community.

SUGGESTION: The only way to understand the benefit a community needs is to understand your target audience of members, and ask the members directly what turns their crank to remain members that will be engaged in the community. Don't avoid asking your members what they want.

Create a Unique environment for your Members - This is where the Lesson Guide comes into play.

CREATE A UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT you should take the time to learn about what you can do with EasySocial Profile Types. You need to use the resources available to you in EasySocial to configure an exclusive environment for your members. One way to do this is to create UNIQUE PROFILE TYPES and give the Profile types different Themes. This will mean that one Profile type will get certain benefits, such as exclusive news, unique information, lesson plans, or having SPECIAL GUESTS participating in the community. Remember, the new version of EasySocial 1.2 has GROUPS, and Groups can be Public, Private, or Invite Only and this opens up a world of possibilities for making your community unique for your members.

What will your members do in your community? - What topics will community members talk about? What are the major topics to build discussions, events, activities, relationships, and growth around? Gather data on your audience's current habits and from other trade press to identify the major topics here.

WHAT THEMES will be used in each of your Member PROFILES? Have a very clear idea of what the general member UI themes are going to be used in the opening stages of the community, and a plan for testing and refining of what works best for each unique member PROFILE.

DISPLAYING THE UNIQUE PROFILE TYPES
When a new user Registers for ChamberAnswers network, they can choose one of the available 3 Profile Types.

In my own site, ChamberAnswers.com - I am starting with 3 Profile types for my target members.

Registered Members (people that small business owners, or are members or non-members of a chamber - this is something I am constantly evolving, on how to encourage people to join the network)
Chamber of Commerce (Staff, employees, volunteers, Board Members)
Professionals (Vendors, Professional Service Providers, etc)



Each of the Profile Types in the network could have different Themes. In my site I am setting the Registered Members to start with the Wireframe Theme. This is the Basic Membership, and I could just use one Profile Theme for all my membership types, but since I want to reward my Chamber of Commerce Members, I have decided to just give the Registered Members of my site the basic theme or the Wireframe Theme and I will give my next level of Memberships the much more robust and flexible them that comes with v1.2 of EasySocial - the Frosty Theme. At any time, as the Administrator, you can change the Member Profile Type Theme.



The Chamber of Commerce Profile Type members are given more features within the ChamberAnswers network so I am giving them the Frosty Theme. This new Theme as of v 1.2 is much more flexible for members creating and working in Groups etc.



For the Professional Profile Type members I can decide to set this Profile Type to use either the Frosty Theme or the Wireframe Theme. When new Themes become available for EasySocial, it will make the choice of Themes more flexible for different Membership types (Profile Types),. Down the road there may be Themes that are created that are designed for those Members that are into the features of the Groups, or a Theme specifically designed for Bloggers. This is the beauty and flexibility of the way the StackIdeas Team has taken great care and attention when designing the features for EasySocial. The EasySocial features in the Administrator section are vast, and they are flexible, and as the Community Manager or Administrator you can use these features to reward your Members by designing different or unique Profile Types that have different features.

As they say, Membership has it's privileges.

STEPS TO CHANGE MEMBER PROFILE TYPE THEMES
EASYSOCIAL - Episode #006: USING DIFFERENT THEMES IN EASYSOCIAL PROFILE TYPES TO CREATE A UNIQUE MEMBER COMMUNITY
Monday, March 17, 2014

OVERVIEW VIDEO How to Set a Different Default Theme for Each Profile Type in EasySocial




Lesson Guide Steps



Open EasySocial in the Joomla Administrator.
Go to the Dashboard, and select PROFILES> and Open the Profiles Types to display the available Profile Types in your site.
In the default state if you just installed EasySocial, you will have one Profile Type or the Registered Users.

Create a NEW Profile Type by clicking NEW at the top left of the Profile Type page.

You are allowed to have different configuration setup for each of your profile types.

Let's say that you network is focused on writers or content producers like my ChamberAnswers network. You want to create a different Profile Type than the standard or default Registered User, so maybe you will set the new profile type to Writer or Blogger.

Fill out your General information. Enter in the Profile title, (the alias will be defaulted based on what you type for a title), then enter a Description for the Profile Type.

Set the Published Status to Yes, the Default Profile to NO, and you can set the Account Deletion to whatever you choose. Either NO or YES.

Specify the Group user level for this Profile Type. Specify the default user groups for users who registers under this profile type. You might set the user Group to Editor rather than the default Registered user.

Set LAYOUT to: Frosty - this will use the Frosty theme each time a user from this Profile Type logs into the network.



After you have changed the General settings for this Member Profile Type, click SAVE.

You can change all the Profile Types to use the Theme of your choice.

FROSTY THEME FOR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE MEMBERS
In this example, the Profile Type is set to use the new Frosty Theme in EasySocial v 1.2. I have set my Chamber of Commerce Member Profile Type to use this new Theme.



WIREFRAME THEME FOR REGISTERED USER MEMBERS
In this example, the Profile Type is set to use the new Wireframe Theme in that came as default theme EasySocial v 1.1. I have set my Basic Level Registered Member Profile Type to use this basic Theme.



You can set each of your Member Profile Types to have the Theme of your choice.

We all look forward to new Themes being created for EasySocial, and it would be good to follow up this Lesson Guide with some ideas on new themes. If you have any ideas, please post below in the replies.



What do I have planned for the next LESSON GUIDE for EasySocial for Tuesday, March 18, 2014. I plan to continue with Profile Types to show those users that are just starting how to add field types. For each profile type, you can assign a different registration work flow for the user. All you need to do is to add the fields or steps that you want into the form.

Wow, thanks for sharing this Randall

Mark wrote:

Wow, thanks for sharing this Randall

Thanks Mark,

I was working on another Lesson Plan today and got stuck as it is complex to teach something I haven't done before. Changing colors for the theme toolbar and the icons. This got me to thinking, what other lesson can I create today that is based on themes, that I can relay some knowledge I have learned to others. I firmly believe the success of EasySocial is not only based on the cool features that can be added, but the lessons and knowledge that can be shared about creating successful communities. This is just scratching the surface of some of the lessons I have planned for the near future.

I want to show people where they can use the features to their advantage when creating a community with EasySocial, rather than just show them how to add the features into their site. The more successful the communities become, the better the SHOWCASE for EasySocial.

Randall

The Lesson Guide for Monday, March 17, 2014 is now complete. The Lesson Guide for Tuesday, March 18, 2014 will focus on Profile Types again. I should have it posted before 12:00 noon MST tomorrow.

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #007 Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 of this Guide continues on March 19, 2014)
Released: Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Category: EasySocial Profiles - Themes and Community Planning
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

How to Create a New Member Profile Type and Set the General, Privacy, and Access Settings in EasySocial

In Part 1 of the Lesson Guide for today, we are going to step through the process of creating a New Member Profile Type using the General settings, and then we will step through the Privacy settings and Access level settings for features within the community to personalize the user experience for this type of member profile. View Part 1 and Part 2 Videos below.

How to Create and add Member Profile Type Custom Fields in EasySocial

In Part 2 of the Lesson Guide, we are going to step through the process of how to add custom fields to the new Profile Type to help personalize the user experience for members of your community. View Part 1.

The basic process of how people join a community and become a member by joining a member community is far more complex than just signing up to a website to receive updates. The process for people joining a Member based community is a personal experience for each new member and goes something like this:

Potential Member hears about your Community.
Potential Member visits and browses the information you have made available in your Community.
Potential Member identifies something that they want to participate in and decides to join the the Community.
Potential Member registers, and becomes a Member of the Community.
Member participates in the Community.
Member returns to the Community to see what the results are from previous participation.
Member gradually builds relationships and continues to return to the Community.

It is in Stage 4, where you will give the new Member a choice of Member Profile Types to choose from to join and become a member of your community.

CREATING A NEW MEMBER PROFILE
As an Administrator, or the Community Manager, you have access to many features within EasySocial to create new Profile Types in your community. Besides giving your Community Profile Types names to identify the Member Types you can give members a number of profile fields to fill out and customize or personalize their Member profile.

The goal of creating a Member Profile Type is to give the member profile the information fields that it needs to allow the member to have influence. Members who join your community do so mainly because they want to feel they can have influence in the community. And this is important, because if your members do not feel they can influence the group, their participation in the group will decline.

This is where some decisions can be made as the Administrator to do the following:

Provide your members with the opportunities to have influence in the community.

Showcase the influence that members have had previous to joining the community.

This is where your choice of Custom Fields is important. The first step is to ensure that every member does have the opportunity to have influence and you can give each member the opportunities.

OVERVIEW VIDEOs

Part 1 - How to Create a New Member Profile Type and Set the General, Privacy, and Access Settings in EasySocial



To complete this Lesson Guide go to PART 2 of the LESSON GUIDE below - March 19, 2014.

This is Lesson Guide PART 2 continued from - March 19, 2014 - Part 1 of the Lesson Guide can be viewed above in the Lesson Guide for March 18, 2014



Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #007 Part 2
Released: Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Category: EasySocial Profiles - Themes and Community Planning
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator


In Part 2 of the Lesson Guide, we are going to step through the process of how to add custom fields to the new Profile Type to help personalize the user experience for members of your community. View Part 1 above and Part 2 Video below.

Part 2 - How to Create and add Member Profile Type Custom Fields in EasySocial



This concludes the basics of creating of Creating Profile Types for your community. There is many custom fields that you can use in your community member Profiles, and the best way to learn and tweek your community to best fit your target audience is to try different things to see what works best for your community members.



What do I have planned for the next LESSON GUIDE for EasySocial for Thursday, March 20, 2014?

Thanks for sharing Randall

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #008 - NO LESSON GUIDE TODAY!
There is No Lesson Guide for Thursday, March 20, 2014

Why? I have a good reason!

I am busy today (March 20, 2014) installing, and playing around with the awesome new EasySocial v1.2.2 and I will be adding a new Lesson Guide for Friday, March 21, 2014.

Randall

Guide: Randall - ChamberAnswers.com
Guide Number: #009
Released: Friday, March 21, 2014
Category: EasySocial Applications - Checking and Settings Applications
Level: Beginner EasySocial Administrator

How to Check and Set Application Settings in EasySocial - Some administrators want all Applications to be pre-installed in the Community for members to use, without requiring the members to install the Applications.

Members login to the Community.
Member can't find the Applications in the left sidebar of the Dashboard or Groups that are supposed to be available to Members in your Community.
As an Administrator, you have a choice to allow Members to Install the Applications, or you can set all Applications as default pre-installed for all Members.
As an Administrator, or the Community Manager, you have access to many features within EasySocial, and setting and defaulting Applications for Members is one that you should get used to real quick. The real power and future of EasySocial is Applications.

The goal of a Member based community is to make things as easy as possible for Members, or participation in the community will decline.


This is where some decisions can be made as the Administrator to do the following:

Allow members to Install the applications that are available in the community. This has a few drawbacks. It makes the assumption that all members will know what to do and how to install the applications. Don't leave things up to chance. I highly recommend going to the next and best alternative.

As the Administrator, you can pre-install the Applications for all Members who join the community. This makes sure all Members have all the Applications to gain the most benefit of the community. The other benefit is that your community will not have all the stream notifications appearing each time a member installs an Application(s) if you were to let Members do the installations.

Use the KISS method. Keep It Simple S....

In this video I will step through the importance of checking your EasySocial Application Settings and also checking the settings and Discover feature for User Points, Badges, Alerts, and Access to make sure that everything is up to date after installing a new update to EasySocial.

OVERVIEW VIDEO



This concludes the basics of the importance of checking your EasySocial Application Settings and also checking the settings and Discover feature for User Points, Badges, Alerts, and Access. There are many ways to Administrate and tweek your EasySocial Powered community to best fit your target audience, and the best way to learn is to try different things to see what works best for your community members.



What do I have planned for the next LESSON GUIDE for EasySocial for Monday, March 24, 2014? I plan to create some new Guides based on the new features of EasySocial Groups. Stay tuned!

If you have any questions about Administration of EasySocial please ask here and I will do my best to answer your questions. If you would like a Lesson Guide to be created for EasySocial, please let me know below.

I am still working on finding the best way to create an EasySocial Template Theme Override and I will be adding the lesson Guide as soon as it is completed.

I hope these Lesson Guides help you learn more about how to Administrate your EasySocial community installation.

Starting next week, March 23 to 28, 2014, I will be only creating and Adding 3 Lesson Guides. One on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This gives me more time to plan and create the Guides, and also leaves me time to get my own work done. Too bad there wasn't 48 hours in a day!

Randall

EASYSOCIAL LESSON GUIDES - LINKS to GUIDES

March 10 to March 14, 2014 - Lesson Guides #001, #002, #003, #004, #005
http://stackideas.com/forums/what-did-you-learn-about-easysocial-today-learn-share-repeat

March 17 to March 21, 2014 - Lesson Guides #006, #007 Pt 1, #007 Pt 2, #No GUIDE, #009
http://stackideas.com/forums/what-did-you-learn-about-easysocial-today-lesson-guides-for-march-17-21-2014

NEW LESSON GUIDE FORMAT STARTING MARCH 23, 2014

Look for 3 new Lesson Guides Each Week - Starting the Week of March 24, 2014, there will be 3 guides per week instead of 5 per week, to make it easier for me to research, plan and create the Lesson Guides. I am having a blast creating them, but I do have to work on my own community and find some time to start hiking and biking soon and do all the other things in life to keep everyone else happy. Winter is almost over here!

I will also be adding the Lesson Guides into the EASYOCIAL > Tips and Tricks and Tutorials sub-sections as Individual Guides (One Discussion per lesson Guide) rather than including the 3 Guides in one Discussion. This will make it easier to find the Lesson Guide and easier to load the guide, without having to load all the other guides.

I appreciate the kudos and the feedback on the lessons and format.

Randall