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- Online Communities
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My Communities
Building a new community: Choosing a niche
This is the first article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently purchasing a domain name for a new community and will detail the development of the site on this blog. As I have said before, I think [...]
A quick way to attract more forum members
One of the most frequent questions I get asked from readers is how to attract new members. To be honest, there are loads of ways to do this but the most effective way is through the quality of your content. If you are already creating masses of fantastic unique content on a daily basis and [...]
Coming Up: Building communities from scratch
I was browsing through the archives here at Community Spark this morning and noticed that I have made very few posts about how to build a successful online community from scratch. All this is about to change.
A real life case study
I will soon be setting up a brand new online community and will blog about [...]
5 early warning signs that your forum is failing
Nobody likes to see a huge crack appear in their home - it is a sign of weakness and acts as a warning: if you do not invest in the property it will soon crumble and end up as nothing more than a pile of rubble. The same thing can happen to an online forum. [...]
What everyone ought to know about forums
Ah, you own a successful forum - doesn’t that feel great? It does - and so it should. However, there is a problem with that great feeling - a successful forum isn’t really yours. Sure, you technically own the site but for a community to be successful its members need to enjoy a sense of shared ownership. You [...]
Never miss another community building article!
Never miss another article published here at Community Spark - now you can not only subscribe to new articles in the traditional way (via RSS), but you can also have every new article delivered directly to your email inbox.
To receive new articles direct to your inbox, simply enter your email address in the box that [...]
The lazy but effective way to promote your site
We don’t need to promote our sites by rushing out to buy megaphones like the guy in the photo above - whilst this could be a great way of attracting attention, you would still need to get out of bed! In this article I will tell you how to effectively promote your site without ever [...]
Give me 5 minutes and I’ll show you innovation
I have written before about the importance of making your community different from the competition. If your community offers nothing new, how can you expect people to take the time to register and get involved? People will not submit comments to a blog that posts articles on subjects that everyone is else writing about. People [...]
Get rid of idleness once and for all
I’ve written before about the importance of keeping an eye on the competition. If you struggle to get motivated or find that the development of your site is stuck in a rut, you may benefit from imagining that you have an aggressive competitor.
Adopt real world strategies in the online world
Many developed economies have long since [...]
Should you add a forum to your blog?
I have been seeing many blog owners of late publicly debating whether to add additional community features such as forums to boost their site’s popularity and value proposition. In this article I will write about the potential pitfalls of adding a forum to a blog and tell you why you should only take the plunge [...]