I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility — I was very definitely in violation, and since I can be kind of… unmotivated when it comes to fixing things around the house, the letter was pretty much what I needed to finally goad me into action.

Now, most people have a love/hate relationship with HOAs. On the one hand, they handle administrative functions and help maintain property values by enforcing standards. On the other hand, you do give up certain rights, and people often chafe under what they consider overly restrictive, inflexible, legalistic covenants (that they’ve voluntarily agreed to abide by, remember).

Anyway, the point of this isn’t to rehash the HOA debate. Instead, I want to look at ways that HOAs might be able to use social media tools to help modify people’s behavior, as well as provide some concrete benefits that might make compliance less of a pain.

Reporting Violations: Snitching vs. Civic Duty

At the beginning of the process lies reporting and notification: Someone needs to spot the transgression, and tell the homeowner. Sure, you could do any variety of anonymous / identifiable, public / private reporting systems, but context matters, especially when you’re talking about your neighbors. A nifty e-government / Gov 2.0 citizen problem reporting tool (like mySociety’s FixMyStreet in the UK) probably wouldn’t go over so well in the HOA context, since you’re basically ratting out your neighbors (you have to live next to these people, remember), even if it is ultimately for everyone’s benefit.

Relying on social shaming (say, via a public violations bulletin board) is counterproductive: We’re talking about stuff that’s out in public (so it’s redundant — people can already see violations); private reporting is open to abuse; public reporting would probably be seen as nagging and might lead to retaliation.

This is probably one of the reasons HOAs and property management companies are popular — the nasty task of reporting violations is farmed out to a faceless entity who everyone can blame: “Hey, I don’t care that your fence is falling apart, but those nasty so-and-so’s at the management company…”

Turning Sticks into Carrots

On the other hand, maybe social collaboration tools could come into play when it’s time to fix stuff. Say a HOA does quarterly checks — the folks who document the violations could offer people a way to opt-in to partner up with other folks with similar problems. For example, do-it-yourselfers could pool resources (say, buying paint, or sharing tools), so instead of everybody individually buying stuff and having leftovers that go to waste, collaborating on a group buy so people end up paying for just what they need.

Alternately, people could band together to negotiate a group discount on repair services for stuff they can’t or don’t want to handle (say, tree services).

Nothing prevents people from doing this now, of course, but online tools make collaboration and resource-sharing a lot easier, in a way that’s more neutral and that doesn’t require anyone to stand out and call attention to themselves as a violator.

Anyway, depending on where you live, HOAs seem to be a natural target for social media-enabled services — there’s a built-in constituency based on geography and common interest; there’s an acknowledged authority to deal with that (bonus) has mechanisms for enforcement; and each HOA aggregates potential consumer demand for local services.

If you’re a small business that’s tried targeting HOAs, or have a HOA experience you’d like to share (a positive one, please — I think we’re up to our eyeballs in HOA horror stories), please leave a comment.

Steve: What are the components in an “Instant Intranet”?
Navin: All companies need to manage information, brainstorm on ideas, do basic calendar management, track projects and milestones and have freeform discussions to collaborate on all types of things. The problem is that most people live in “e-mail limbo” where things should be put online and tracked for management and future reference.

If you look at it as having a single intranet that represents your business’ offline and online needs you can do a lot for very little cost and time to get up and running quickly.

Steve: What products/services do you recommend to accomplish all these things?
Navin: There are a ton of solutions out there. Now there are a slew of free applications like Google Sites® that can help a company set up a basic shared calendar, e-mail and document management system. Another good example and you ok with paying a little bit of money is using Microsoft® SharePoint™ that allows you to do document management, Microsoft Exchange integration, customer management and server along with widgets and plug-ins that you can add for free to create a single tool to meet the needs of your business out of the box. This means no programming on the business’ part, which is critical to get running with out costly customization and configuration.

Steve: How can you leverage what we provide at Network Solutions?
Navin: With the focus of Network solutions to providing business services online, the thought process is this – you have a domain, you have a site, you are getting leads through the site – now what? Our strategy is to think along those lines and offer “what’s next”. …

Steve: Have you seen companies that have implemented this and seen a dramatic improvement in productivity?
Navin: Yes, but even more compelling, many new small business are starting off utilizing this philosophy. It enables oversight over and collaboration across virtual teams and allows rapid business growth without the corresponding investment in infrastructure – offices etc.

Steve: With the move for companies to “be more green” and the push for virtual teams, can this help even the smallest of businesses accomplish this?
Navin: Absolutely. Real Estate agents are a good example of a small team, maybe just two, that need to be able to collaborate virtually. There is a great deal of inherent, almost viral “green-ness” in this approach. Not only do you save on unnecessary printing, it makes meetings more efficient and sometimes unnecessary since all content is online.

Steve: How does someone get started and who should they look to for help when there is a problem?
Navin: There are many options available ranging from free to low-cost. A simle search for “groupware” will unearth many options such as Google Sites, Zoho, Intranets etc. The right choice will depend on the level of simplicity and the amount of support you might need. Free solutions rely on you to spend quite a bit of time upfront defining and configuring it for your business operations. Others, especially solutions customized for your line of business may offer extensive hand-holding. And, of course, very soon, we would like you to consider Network Solutions as a provider of these services.

Steve: This has been some great advice for our readers. Thanks for the time today.
Navin: No problem. I hope entrepreneurs all get the chance to implement these types of solutions. There is no doubt in my mind that they will see immediately benefit to their businesses.