photo credit: dotpolka

Back in July, when I asked what you’d like me to write about, Ben asked about lurkers. Specifically, how to convert lurkers to active contributors without changing the forum platform in use.

In Ben’s case, his forum is for a browser based game. 50% of the people who play the game have a forum account and 2% of those members are active on a daily basis. Are those numbers poor? It depends. But, not necessarily. Lurkers will represent a large percentage, usually a big majority, of the traffic for most publicly viewable, successful online communities. Still, it never hurts to consider how you can improve.

Lurkers are a common concern for community managers and a persistent topic when it comes to growing an online community. When it comes to converting lurkers, there are two big areas that you should focus on.

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photo credit: Joybot

Your community is a brand. And it’s a brand worth protecting on third party communities and social platforms, especially the ones that you may one day engage in.

In other words, secure your username. I run KarateForums.com. What is the ideal username, on a platform I don’t control, for KarateForums.com? karateforums. If that isn’t available, then I have to settle for a much, much weaker second one. Try to be consistent on your fallback username.

No matter how great your fall back, people will always first guess that the ideal one is what you have. This impacts you when you go out to build outposts and community outside of your site. On Twitter, for example, they might guess that you are @karateforums, for example. It creates more work (and more missed opportunities) for you if you don’t have it.

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photo credit: WallTea

Last week, photo sharing community Flickr, responding to a member suggestion, enabled code that blocked Pinterest users from pinning photos where the photographer has turned off sharing options or marked a photo as private or adult.

Though VentureBeat reported the story initially, Aaron Hockley has the most concise, accurate run down of the move (which I found through Flickr member Jake Rome).

The code that Flickr integrated was introduced by Pinterest just two days prior to the suggestion being made, in an effort to address dissatisfaction with how the service manages copyright infringement.

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photo credit: Ev0luti0nary

Since the beginning of time (relatively speaking, of course), online forums and communities have held contests and giveaways in an effort to grow their member base.

It gets them some attention. They notice an influx of new members. Then the contest ends. Shortly thereafter, most of the new members they noticed are gone.

It’s a repeating story and if you run a contest or a giveaway, it’ll happen to you. Doesn’t matter how great your community is. It’s nature.

You can do things to mitigate it, certainly. You can tie contests and giveaways to meaningful contributions to your community, giving people an opportunity to fall in love with what you offer and, at the very least even if they leave, you have some great conversation that remains after they are gone.

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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: Gonmi

Treat people as you want to be treated.

I apply the golden rule to a lot of different circumstances, including how I manage my communities, with respect to other communities.

I’ll give you a few examples.

It’s not unheard of that a member of a community, not necessarily mine, but any, would complain about another one that they have joined previously and participated in and/or been banned from.

That community is the worst. The administrator is a jerk and a megalomaniac. This community is so much better.

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photo credit: dakotaduff

Steve Magruder asked: “How [can you] motivate users to see the value of your board when many of them don’t seem to “get it?” I sometimes wonder if my site’s mission is lost on people, even though I have striven to make it as plain as day.”

“… How can I get people to appreciate that they have an open discussion space for discussing local issues (or any subject as it applies to other sites) and the power that lends them? It seems like so many are lost on the power of public discourse.”

Thank you for the question, Mr. Magruder. The truth is that you don’t get a lot of opportunities to communicate the value of your site because that isn’t generally what people are looking for. They judge your community based upon it’s content, features and activity.

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photo credit: K . Chan

Launching a new online community can be daunting. How can I get those first few members? Unfortunately, there is no magic trick. It’s time and hard work.

However, that doesn’t mean that being new is all bad. You would do well to recognize that being new, while in some ways a disadvantage, can also be an advantage, in two key ways.

First, people want to know about new things. That is what media outlets cover. They cover things that are new. If you can come up with an interesting way to pitch it, you might be able to get coverage and attention, simply for being new and well put together. No one wants to know about new and sloppy.

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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: Like_the_Grand_Canyon

One of the more common questions I get asked is how you can grow your community and how you can get more activity. As with most things that require a great deal of work, people are looking for that magic, secret tip. But, that doesn’t exist because that’s not how it works.

Yes, there are some specific things that you can do that are directly related to online communities and may not be applicable in non-community spaces. While not all online communities may consider themselves to be a website (like communities built around a mobile app or a mailing list, for example – this post doesn’t really apply to them), it’s important to remember that, even though an online community is more than a website, it is still a website.

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