Things to consider when building your online community
Communities require nurturing
Ok, so you’ve launched your community. You did your due diligence and researched your target users, established your objectives, spent a week developing your strategy and doing risk assessment exercises, and hired a developer to build and launch your community. There’s only one thing left - getting people there.
A community without people is worthless. So how do you get them there?
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet or secret sauce to attracting hordes of people. So I’m going to share a couple of method for attracting members. BUT, before I do, you have to realize the following - Getting people to your site and building up your community will most likely be a loooong grind. Once you start down the road of community, you have to have patience and you MUST stick with it. Just ask Gary Vaynerchuk. Once you have people to your site, you also have to keep them coming back. Losing community members as fast as you gain them nets you nothing. Preventing this is simple - Provide engaging content, but more importantly respect their voice and care enough to respond to it. This will earn their trust, respect and loyalty.
So what are a couple of ways to initially attract visitors?
* Do a media buy or SEM campaign. It cost’s money, but can get you visitors. The quality of these visitors, however, is debatable. Expect lower conversion rates.
* Join other communities and make new friends. This should be done in a non-spammy and non-intrusive way. You want to make genuine connections with people and they’ll take an interest in you and ultimately in your community. The quality of these visitors and the expected conversion rates will be high.
Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Feb. 27, 2009