photo credit: mboperator

I have a fun idea. As you know if you’ve read ManagingCommunities.com for any measurable amount of time, I like to sometimes share the funny or absurd things that my members have told me. Whether that’s being called Hitler or people who are both wrong and rude, I share it in small doses.

Sometimes, we get gold from commenters of the blog. One example that comes to mind immediately is this comment by MsMod:

One of my favorite attacks ended with, “no doubt Hitler would embrace and adopt you as one of his own.”

Earlier today, the new music video for “Play Your Part” by Wale featuring Rick Ross, Meek Mill and D.A. Wallach of Chester French premiered on MTV.com. I really like this record and like the music video just as much – you can pick up a free download of the mixtape that the song is from at Ross’ website.

At last year’s Blog World Expo, I developed a panel featuring D.A. alongside rapper Asher Roth, my friend Wayne Sutton and myself. D.A. is a really cool guy – very nice, talented and smart – who has a great understanding of building community.

Anyway, in the new video, which I have embedded below, D.A. sings, “you think you’re using me, like this game’s new to me, but you ain’t confusing me … we’ll be cool as long as you just play your part.” So, today, I want to talk about how important it is that all members of your community play their respective parts.

photo credit: kastner

I’m a fan of both Jason Calacanis and Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason recently had Gary on his show, This Week in Startups. It’s an hour long, but if you are an entrepreneur or if believe in social business or online community, put aside some time. The clip is embedded below (warning: expletives).

A lot of what Gary discusses is related to online community and the business of building community. At one point, he discussed the ROI of caring and of doing good things – what a business will likely be doing if they are building online community and doing it well.

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.

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.

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.

photo credit: reegmo

In just the last couple of months, I have run across three new or relatively new community platforms that have really let me down. Not in their feature set or technology, but in how they talk (read: market) and how they are choosing to spread the word about their products.

I’ve been managing online communities for nearly 11 years and this is my passion and my profession. I want to meet people who are new to this space and also want to help them however I can. But, there is a flip side to that. There is a personal requirement that I have. The flip is that if you are going to be a professional in this space, I expect you to act like it, to treat it with respect and to know how to engage respectfully.

photo credit:
HikingArtist.com

Forums are great. Forums can develop into great communities. They can generate a lot of traffic from search engines. Traffic can equal money. This is not a secret.

What this means, though, is that people will try to take advantage of “forums” in order to generate poor quality websites that they hope will rank well in search engines, which will lead to traffic and, yes, money. And so, we have Auto Forum Poster (no follow).

Recently, I received an e-mail from someone, introducing this product to me as a means of automatically generating content on a phpBB forum. They were interested in buying advertising from me on phpBBHacks.com and also mentioned that they had an affiliate program offering 50% commissions for each sale. The basic product costs $47, while there is an “up-sell” that could take that up to $97 and, he said, 33% of people take the up-sell.

photo credit: dougtone

No matter the size of your community, you will have the opportunity to celebrate milestones or some other form of success.

Milestones tend to be number based: 5 years online, 1,000 posts, 20,000 members and 100,000 threads. But, success and notoriety can come in many forms. For example, being mentioned in a book, a major publication or on television might be a noteworthy achievement and exciting for the community.

Instead of simply letting these moments pass, seize them as opportunities to share an accomplishment with your community and to thank people who have helped you earn it.

Yesterday, I delivered my presentation at South by Southwest Interactive 2011, titled “27 (Fun!) Ways to Kill Your Online Community.”

The premise was simple: I have spent the last 11 years or so building my reputation in this space as part of a simple, but brilliant plan: I want to kill online community. Once and for all.

People think I’m passionate about online community. They think that because that is the image I’ve cultivated. But, it’s all a ploy. Online community is disgusting and without worth and I want it to end.