photo credit: SmithGreg

I recently had a member on one of my communities start a thread to review a book, which he criticized. Most of his review was fair, but there were some parts that I felt were a little harsh. Still, it was appropriate for our community.

As an author, I do sympathize with other authors because when you really invest of yourself to write a book that means something to you, there is a vulnerability in that. I also don’t want our community to be known for unfairly harsh reviews so while the review itself was OK, I went ahead and replied to steer the topic toward productive discussion.

The next thing I did was to invite the author of the book to the community. I told him about the discussion that was occurring on the community and made clear what was being said. I explained what our community was about – that it is a friendly, respectful community – and encouraged him to join to offer his thoughts.

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photo credit: ornello_pics

Josh Barraza asked if I would talk about how you can revive a “dead” online community. That’s a great suggestion.

Before we talk about the how, there are a couple of simple truths that we need to keep in mind.

The definition of “dead” will vary by person, by community and by person running the community. You may look at something as “dead” when someone else sees it as fine.

If you are running the community and you consider it dead, then that is one thing. But, otherwise, be careful how you view, and judge, other communities. They aren’t always intended to have regular activity or to grow on an activity basis. Everyone has different goals.

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photo credit:
erin_everlasting

There are a number of ways to tackle the index page of your community. It’s about showcasing your content and your members and that can be pretty flexible. Different approaches have different benefits and work well, depending on your audience and situation.

The traditional list of forums can work well. Another popular one is showing some of the recent topics or some featured topics. That can work, too. Options are a good thing and I’d love to see activity streams become an option for more platforms, either as a default feature that you can turn on or off or as a hack or add-on.

By an activity stream, what I meant is a stream of popular or relevant content, tailored to the individual viewing it based on numerous factors, including the popularity of the content within the community, based on views, replies and likes or some other measurement and content that has been interacted with by community members that they have chosen to “friend” or “follow.”

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Back in June, I wrote about Turntable.fm, the social DJ service and music community. Since then, I have spent countless hours playing music on Turntable.fm and have accumulated a good number of points and fans. 1,550 and 137, respectively.

According to ttDashboard, a site that tracks some interactions with the site, that places me 1,756th and 345th in those categories overall. From my time spent on the site, I know I have an abnormally high number of fans for my point total. I’ve seen DJs with double my points that don’t have half my fans.

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photo credit: mary_gaston22

Shopmaster asked: “What are some good things you can do to get people to post or reply to topics in your articles?”

Thank you, Shopmaster. The act of simply getting people to reply to you, whether it be to topics you start in your forums or articles you write on your blog or elsewhere, is a common challenge that people face.

Sadly, there is no golden secret that ensures success. But, there are some things that you can do.

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photo credit: rutlo

My friend Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, who I co-host the Copyright 2.0 Show with, asked me to write about the following topic:

One thing I’d be very interested in, something I don’t think you’ve covered here, is an article about how to get a community started.

If a community is like a fire that you have to cultivate and maintain, I want to know how to light the spark so to speak including getting the first members, encouraging the start of the conversation and so forth.

If you are thinking about launching a community on a given topic, there is a good chance that you know some people who are also interested in the topic. That is a good place to start. Reach out to them individually, tell them about your community and ask them if they would like to help you get it started.

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photo credit: the euskadi 11

Sometimes, people get caught up in thoughts that are very limiting, due to their own jealousy, insecurities, a lack of understanding or something else.

One great example of this is a comment I once heard someone make. It was about a celebrity, I forget who. The person said that the celebrity didn’t “deserve” their followers.

The implication being that this person had been on Twitter for a long time, had “worked hard” for their followers and now this celebrity just showed up and in a day or so, they have tens of thousands of followers. This is bad, petty thinking.

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In May, at WordCamp Raleigh, I ran into Ray Mitchell, a Winston Salem, North Carolina-based web designer, who I had met previously. SixFour Web Design is his company.

Mr. Mitchell recently shared a blog post request for me Twitter: “Special tips for managing LinkedIn Groups to build real community vs. self-promotion.” Thank you for the suggestion.

Upfront, I have to say that my experience with LinkedIn Groups is somewhat limited. I am currently a member of 10 groups (make that 8 as I just left two of them while working on this article) and I don’t actively participate in, or even read, any of them. But, at the same time – a platform is a platform and LinkedIn Groups is not dissimilar from other platforms. Much of what applies to building community on LinkedIn Groups will also apply to building on other platforms, as well.

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photo credit: Justin Sternberg

I have grown to become very careful about my usage of the word “friend,” when I am talking about other people. A lot of people have really diluted this term to the point where, for some, it means “person that I once had a pleasant conversation with” or “someone I paid to do something for me” or “person who helped me that time.”

Though I do slip up once in a while, when I call someone my friend, believe me when I say that. There are differing levels of friendship and I have friends who I am closer to than others and who I trust with more than others, but if I call someone my friend, I’ve established some form of a meaningful relationship with them, in public and/or in private.

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photo credit: joelogon

Last month, I wrote about the 10th anniversary celebration over at phpBBHacks.com, a site that I launched on April 6, 2001. In brief summary, this is what we did to celebrate:

• Launched a special, dedicated section of our website, with an RSS feed and added a special section to our forums (for a limited time).
• Celebrated over a 10 day period, in honor of it being the 10th anniversary.
• I wrote a series of 34 text articles, 3 of which including substantial writing from other people and more than half of which included interviews that I conducted with people.

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