Comments on: Community building: Getting members active and addicted

By: Martin Reed - Community Manager

Martin Reed - Community Manager — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:41:13 +0000

Sean – The value you place on lurkers depends on the aims and goals of your community; for example, if you’ve developed a support community to reduce your costs and someone visits the community, gets the answer they were looking for and then leaves – that’s still providing you with value.

I can’t say what the problem was with the site you mentioned – perhaps the topic isn’t interesting enough; if people aren’t passionate about the subject (or don’t see what’s in it for them), they won’t contribute.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:37:03 +0000

How valuable is a visitor that visits but does not comment? In a previous site I worked for dealing with the green industry, we use to get a lot of visitors but were unable to get commentators. Alot of the people visiting the site would sign-up but never, ever comment. What do you think the problem was?

By: Martin Reed - Community Manager

Martin Reed - Community Manager — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:44:02 +0000

Doyen – Sure, send them an email. Ask them if everything is OK and whether they need any help using the site. If possible, see if you can get some feedback.

If they don’t reply, try putting yourself in their shoes – why would you join the site, but then not get involved? Is the content compelling enough? Is the community fun enough? You might need to work on making the site more interesting, exciting and addictive.

The best way to do that is knowing why members aren’t currently active and involved – so by all means, ask them!

By: Doyen

Doyen — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:54:47 +0000

Question:
I have a large handful of members who registered, but never bothered to post or even log back in a second time. Should I send them an email saying “Hey how are you? The above made it sound like that was more for members who have been inactive for a short while, or may sign on but not post. What about those members who just never came back again?

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:57:22 +0000

The best approach I’ve seen is having a really prominent “Introductions” thread where, like you said, people actually engage the new poster and ask questions. The forum that did this had a very active userbase.

By: Martin Reed - Community Manager

Martin Reed - Community Manager — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:30:15 +0000

Brent – Have you considered asking your existing members what they want? Do they want to see new members come exclusively from a college amateur radio background? Let your members influence the evolution of your community.

By: Brent Salmi

Brent Salmi — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:09:43 +0000

Thanks for the great article! I have read through a lot of your articles and they really did take much of the guess work out of launching my community/resource based website for college amateur radio clubs (We refer to it as CollegeARC). I’m in a tough spot though, although I don’t really have any competition out there for the target audience that I am going for, it is a really small group (About 100 people) and I’ve sorta reached a good number of the college amateur radio people out there that I know about. The hope is to get as many of these current operators on the website as possible and grow the community itself, on and off the internet.

The hardest part I’ve found is trying to target such a specific audience and how to keep the college amateur radio and electronics feel to it while allowing an open access. So far we’ve only required people to show that they have a past association with a college club or are currently involved in one but we’d like to open it more. I am worried that the website may lose focus over time if I open membership up more but it’s as always a catch 22, any suggestions? We’ve been really dedicated to getting a few “Community Reps” and with good success although it seems that they still are hesitant to send welcome messages and such. We’re targeting a very unique audience with amateur radio that is at the moment dominated by an older demographic, we hope to change that.

Any suggestions to take your comments in the article and apply it to a situation such as this? How tightly should membership be held to retain this focus in a hobby that has a very large non-college members?

Thanks,
-Brent, KB1LQD
-CollegeARC Co-Founder

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:57:21 +0000

If you can get involved, make your community exciting, and keep growing, many people will start to get addicted to your community. They will be on everyday and be posting constantly.

These members are very valuable to have!

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:03:57 +0000

“Don’t lose this trust.” — Absolutely. I had a member earlier this year question me publicly in the forum (the founder of a community) if I sold his email address to someone else. Of course, I didn’t, and other members turned up in my defense as well. The person backed down and realized that he made a mistake, and we “laughed it off” publicly on the forum post. Since the post was public, ending it on an upbeat note while showing no trust was lost was beneficial.

By: Lisa Udy

Lisa Udy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:55:01 +0000

One of the biggest things to get people to register is to have an easy and clear way to do it. It’s funny how so many websites owners don’t put clear and prominent calls to action.