Online Communities | Articles

Never forget who is in charge of your online community

For online communities to be successful, members need to feel involved in decision making and the future development of the community. At the same time though, it is important to remember that you are in charge and make the final decisions.

Can you afford not to offer community features?

Website visitors are increasingly demanding community elements in order to satisfy their wants and needs. If you fail to incorporate community features into your site you will struggle to retain your competitive advantage.

Should communities ban the discussion of certain topics?

Controversy encourages interaction within online communities. Should you ban the discussion of certain topics to prevent your community being filled with arguments and abuse or should you encourage them?

Is your online brand consistent?

Ensuring your online brand is consistent is extremely important. You need to ensure that your brand identity and brand perception are as close as possible. Be aware that online communities can influence your brand’s image.

When can online communities be declared a success?

Is your online community successful? All online communities are different and all community developers have different goals. Recognise this and you can determine whether you have a success story on your hands.

Should children be allowed to join online communities?

Do online communities and children mix? Should owners of online communities allow children to register and interact with adults? What obligations do community developers have? This article explores the issues involved.

Make more money from your online community

Some people say you can’t make money from online communities. I say that you can make money from online communities; you just need to experiment and involve your members - this article will explain how.

How to satisfy and convert online community visitors

Visitors to online communities come and go, but if you want your community to be successful you need to convert as many visitors as possible into members. Studying your traffic stats can help you achieve this.

Online communities love to play follow the leader

People love to imitate those they admire and respect. You can use this to your advantage when building an online community; lead by example and watch your members follow your lead.

How much information should community admins share?

Administrators of online communities need to reveal certain amounts of information about themselves if they want to build trust and relationships with their members. Just how much information should be revealed though?

How to compete against larger online communities

Starting a brand new online community is a challenging task, especially when you are competing against communities that are already well established. Forget about competing for revenue or members. Instead, focus on what you can do better.

Can chat rooms still add value to online communities?

With the increasing popularity of social networks, does online chat have a future? I believe it does and that online chat can add fantastic value to an online community. This article will explain why.

The reasons why online communities fail

The majority of online communities fail. This article identifies and explains the most common reasons why, so you can avoid them when developing your own online community. I can give you advice, but success is down to you.

Wanted: Your community building questions and ideas

Unfortunately I missed out on attending the South by SouthWest Interactive Festival this year. Having read more about the event from those that managed to attend, it looks like I missed out on a great opportunity so I’ll be attending next year.

Why your online community is like a beautiful woman

Your may not realise this, but your online community is just like a beautiful woman. This article will explain why. A beautiful woman, just like any other, wants to be treated well…

Develop your online community for long term success

It can take a long time to develop a successful online community - attracting and retaining members can be a challenge. Even when you have reached ‘critical mass’, you still need a long term plan…

Think of your community members as customers

Most online communities are free to use, and free to join. This doesn’t mean that members should be treated any worse than fee-paying customers, though and this article will explain why.

Is your website ready for a chat room?

Many community developers hope to introduce live chat features into their community website at some stage. Online chat rooms can be a fantastic addition to a website if they are well moderated and well used. This article will take you through the steps you need to consider before you add a chat room to your [...]

5 ways to attract members to a social networking site

One of the best ways to attract members for your online community is through the quality of your content. If you have high quality, unique, relevant and up-to-date content then you are far more likely to attract members. The same goes for blogs - if you are writing quality articles, you will naturally attract visitors. [...]

What to consider when starting a new online community

I enjoy answering questions from readers of this blog. Whilst I tend to encourage that these questions be asked within the comments sections of individual articles, at times the question may be unrelated to a specific article and consequently an email is best.
Today I want to answer a question I received by email from a [...]

What is your online community’s added value?

Making a success of a brand new online community is hard work, not least because you are highly likely to be competing against a number of other sites that are already established. The challenge you face is how to attract people to your site when there are others out there that already cater to the [...]

How trigger levels can help you develop an online community

Online communities need care and attention from their developers. Younger communities, just like younger children, need more help whilst older ones may be less demanding. Regardless of the age or development stage of your community, it is important for you to have what I call ‘trigger levels’ that require you to take action when a [...]

Online community safety - My BBC radio interview

The day after I wrote my article on the potential dangers of social networks, I was contacted by the producer of a BBC radio station - they were looking to run a feature discussing the potential safety risks of online communities and wanted to hear my view. I shared my thoughts and opinions with the [...]

Warning: Social networks are a haven for spammers and scammers

Online communities are a hugely important part of the online experience. I have no doubt that their importance will continue to grow as people look to harness the power of the Internet to chat with friends, network and find new people with similar interests. Advertisers will also become more attracted to social networks and other [...]

Should you ever change your domain name?

I was recently contacted by Smiley, a regular Community Spark reader, who asked me the following question:
I’ve bought www.friendlychatrooms.co.uk since I can’t get my hands on friendlychat.co.uk without the hyphen. Would it be more beneficial (search engine wise) to simply forward friendlychatrooms.co.uk to friendly-chat.co.uk or would it be more beneficial to change the site’s [...]

The wrong way to redesign a community website

I have written before about the importance of working with your community members before redesigning your website. By involving your members in any decisions that need to be made over the future direction of your site, you are encouraging their loyalty by making them feel valued.
How one online community failed to involve members
Hot UK Deals [...]

Christmas wishes and feedback

Firstly, I want to wish every single reader of this blog a fantastic Christmas wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Thank you for reading my blog, and thank you even more to all those that regularly get involved and leave comments. Now … onto business!
Every now and then I like to gauge how [...]

Use Christmas to strengthen relationships

I have no doubt that over the past few days or even weeks you have seen a substantial increase in the number of emails you are receiving from online retailers. They depend on your custom over Christmas and use the occasion as an excuse to send you even more messages in the name of goodwill [...]

Do you make these community building mistakes?

Building an online community is hard work. For a forum to be successful it needs content, members and interaction. Without content, you will get no members. Without members, you will not attract members. It’s a viscous cycle and one that is hard to break out of. With hard work though, it is possible to make [...]

Revealed: The ultimate motivational tool

Developing an online community is hard work – you can slave away on the never-ending task of creating content and wonder if it is all worth it when the fruits of your labour bring less than ideal results. One great motivation tool comes from the most important part of your community – its members.
Keep a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Fight like a champion for your forum members

It costs businesses far more to attract a new customer than it does to retain a current one. Of course, this makes perfect sense - once you have a customer, you simply need to keep them happy and meet their needs in order to retain them. Without a customer, you have no sales and have [...]

Here is a method that is helping forums succeed

If you want your online community to be successful, you need to engage with your members and encourage interaction. During your community’s early development, this can be difficult to do - with a low member base you may find there is a lack of interaction. If this continues, you will not attract new members, and [...]

Now you can work less and achieve more

Some of the more observant amongst you would have noticed that the number of articles published on this blog dropped over the past couple of weeks. Don’t worry - I haven’t lost interest in Community Spark, I have simply been enjoying some time off.
A break can help you focus and remain motivated

The reason for the [...]

The little known way to please all your visitors

Everyone knows that for your website to be successful, you need to please your visitors. Your site needs to be easy to use, and must meet the needs and wants of your visitors if you are to retain them. If you make your site too basic though, you risk alienating your regular, long term members.
Keep [...]

Be proactive now or you’ll hate yourself later

As a developer of an online community, it is essential that you are always proactive and thinking about the future. If you don’t watch the competition and think about whether your members will be happy tomorrow, you are only inviting stagnation, decline and the ultimate death of your community.
Always plan for the future
It doesn’t matter [...]

The secret to understanding member feedback

Regular readers of this blog will know that I always talk about the importance of making your community website feedback friendly. If people are afraid to offer suggestions and feedback, your site is missing out on its most effective method of evolution: becoming exactly what its members want it to be.
Inviting and receiving feedback is [...]

5 ways to show your members you love them

If you are developing an online community, it is vital that you convert as many visitors into members as possible. It is no good going to all the effort of converting visitors if you are unable to get them to stick around and contribute, though!
In this article I will describe the five best ways of [...]

Are you frustrating your visitors?

A visitor arrives at your website – great, huh? Well, yes – but if you are frustrating your visitors, they might as well never have arrived in the first place.
Web users are lazy
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: Web users are lazy. If you don’t believe me, think of your own [...]

How traffic stats help you make decisions

I come across many people posting on forums asking questions such as:
- Should I used fixed width or a fluid layout for my website?
- Should I design for a 1024×768 or a 1280×1024 screen resolution?
- Should I go for some great looking Flash, or keep things lean and fast loading?
There really should be no need [...]

Have a forum you can be proud of

By adding a forum to your website you can enjoy enormous benefits but you can also make your site instantly appear amateur. How? By failing to properly integrate the forum into your website.
Integration not segregation
Your site looks professional when all your features are integrated. Visitors do not want new windows to open when they surf [...]

Think of the end result to stay motivated

Developing an online community is tough. Really tough. You need to constantly work hard at creating content and promoting your site. After working for weeks without a break and only seeing a handful of new visitors, you may struggle to remain motivated.
The feel good factor
Your body rewards you for getting things done. Remember the last [...]

Irritating members are not always a bad thing

I have written before about how to deal with abusive users. Before you do that though, you should always consider whether those irritating members who frequent your community are all that bad.
At times, irritating members can inject some humour into your site. At other times, they can create controversy and encourage discussion. Either way, you [...]

Powerful posts 9 September 2007

There are some fantastic resources out there if you know where to look. Here I will share some great articles I have recently come across in my online travels.
Maki from Dosh Dosh wrote an article that will be of interest to most readers of this blog, entitled ‘How to easily get more members for your [...]