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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April Fools Day gives me an opportunity to have a little fun with the communities that I manage. For some of them, it’s a bit of a tradition because I have been doing it for so long. Let’s break down what I did this year.

As I mentioned in my last post, we are currently celebrating 10 years of phpBBHacks.com. It just so happened that our 10 days of celebration fell during April Fools Day. So, of course, we had to do something related.

I announced that, after looking through some old documents and e-mails, I had discovered that the site was actually 11 years old and that it predated phpBB itself. In other words, I was saying that phpBBHacks.com, the largest unofficial resource for phpBB, launched before development had even begun on phpBB.

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phpBBHacks.com, the largest unofficial resource for the phpBB forum software and a website and community that I have managed since day one, will turn 10 years old on April 6.

This is an incredible moment, one that seems absolutely amazing and insane, when considering the passage of time and one that is also emotional and personal to me.

This is a special site and a special community and one that has helped so many people. I could never estimate, but we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even getting over the seven figure mark. I faced tremendous challenges in growing the community, obstacles that the average community will not face, and emerged with the help of others to reach a place I am proud of.

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photo credit: Etsy Ketsy

Have you ever thought that, when you thank someone, you are building community? Well, you are.

Appreciation is one of the strongest ways that you can build community, online or off. Whether you are talking about customers, audience or registered members, retention – getting people to come back – is crucial to building community.

Why do people come back? One of the main reasons people come back is because they feel like their presence and their contributions are appreciated. People who feel unappreciated will be more likely to look to some other resource.

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