Are you going to Community Next Viral Conference? Get a free ticket!
Community Next is a conference focused on the growth and development of online websites,its on Saturday July 14th at Palo Alto. You may remember the last one, Guy Kawasaki was a speaker and a host of others.
Noah Kagan and Adam have generously invited me and a guest to attend. That guest could be you, at no charge.
To get the free ticket, simply answer the following in my comments, the best answer wins:
Here’s what you’ve got to do to get a free ticket, leave a comment below, but give me one insightful tip to answer the following:
What’s the best way to get a community kick started? As you know, building a website is easy, but getting users to visit and stay (and then tell their friends) is often a challenge. Give me your best tip!
13 Comments so far
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There’s no guarantee it works, but I’d stick to these rules of thumb:
1. If you have facetime with your target audience, speak to them, tell them about your community plans.
2. Identify key players in the relevant field and politely ask them to contribute. Make sure to show them clearly that you appreciate their efforts, and to include also those who’re active in the field but don’t have the same reputation as the before-mentioned key players. You’ll help them get exposure, and they’ll help you kick-starting your community.
3. Get a community manager. Not necessarily full-time if that’s out of your budget, but do get someone who knows what he/she is doing. If possible, pay him/her.
4. DO NOT pay anyone secretly to post stuff. DO NOT try to get users through some phony competition. DO NOT spam your community.
Which leads straight to point 5, which is probably the most important (even if it’s not really a kick-starter, of course):
5. Respect your community, show your respect, don’t waste their time.
What else?
Very much looking forward to read all the comments: A public brainstorming is a great way to collect & create knowledge…
ps. please note I’m not in for the ticket
Peter, wow, great feedback. I take it you’re not going to be in the area.
Hi Jermiah, thanks (and boy, are you quick in replying!), but yeah: Sadly I won’t be around. Enjoy, though!
I usually start them by sending invitations, which makes it seem “exclusive.” I learned this from Google
I’ve always believed in rewards, which could come in many forms. I think the most successful communities out there answer the question “what’s in it for me?”
LinkedIn — A job. Leads. The more connections you have, the more profiles you can access (sales leads). The more connections you have, people can find you through those connections.
Cambrian House — Glory points. 1 Glory Point for rating an idea. A glory point for adding a friend. A glory point for click throughs from your blog. Glory points for referrals. Glory points for submitting an idea. You get little badges when you get enough points. Now I know I really don’t have much use for those badges (they actually remind me of the stickers I used to give my kids when they were potty-training) but it works. The members also feel like they don’t need great ideas to be part of the community. They can earn them simply by participating.
Jeremiah’s blog — offering free tickets for tips.
Make a strong commitment to publishing exceptional quality content that is different from other sites and/or highly relevant to your community. Communicate your vision in your pages, faqs, slogans and all other ‘touch’ points by constructing messages that have one or more of the following elements: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories.
Building first impressions that remain consistent is vital for positive word-of-mouth by fledgling members and when speaking to potential benefactors, influencers and media.
Transparent and Open: state the value of the site and organize the initial content the way that we humans and the google bot loves. Build only the simplist and clearest value functionality and then publicaly release. In the public release make clear that the value you are offering is in building what your audience helps you define as most valuable from that point forward.
Value: Keep it simple, but do offer something simple but of clear value right off the bat. Give first time visitors a clear path to sign-up and start making people connections around the site’s topic right off the bat. Seed the site with quality content around the topic.
Live it: Focus on discovering the best ways posible to both manifest productive feedback from your users and to incorporate it into the core of your development steps going forward.
Love it: Find organic ways for members to be acknowledged and rewarded based upon their level of participation and the usefulness of their feedback.
get an A-list internet celebrity to be involved with the community?
I’d have to say “Know Thy User.” Why? Because the users build your community. Start from ground zero, put on their thinking cap, live and breathe what your community is. This is probably the most important step, once this is done, you are now part of the community; you understand them and they understand you!
From here, create tools and value adds that benefit them, but tie them in with an overall strategy. Every community, although very informal and loose, must have an underlying strategy. For example, Real Web 2.0 virtual environments (if its your audience) is a great way to 1) create interest, 2) engage your users, 3) have fun.
Just creating a community of forums, blogs, wikis, video, is NOT enough. Each of these tools should have a different purpose, yet still intertwine and meet at some point. Each can be off in their own tangent, but they need to meet and have a central foundation.
So its not just feedback or building something…its knowing your customer, knowing what they really need, what’s lacking in their world, and what will make them say “yes, i believe in you, i trust you, i want to connect with you.” This cannot be done without being part of the community first…you have to LISTEN with passion.
Thats step 1, now step 2 is engaging your customer. But I believe this should start off organically (sort of in beta mode) first. Work out the kinks. Once you have a “perfect” product/service, present it to your community and figure out what’s missing and evolve with them. User Groups, related conference and events are good, but not good enough. You need to work hard for one key sponsor (individual or company) who you can use as a success story. The individual/company must have respect in your community and some sort of voice. This sponsorship will definitely jump start a community program. Although, all of the other pieces described above, MUST come first.
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Your question is tricky in a way, because there’s a lot of little pieces that need to come in place first before you are ready to jump start a program. You have to crawl first before you walk and run the marathon to success!
Thanks for the submissions all, I’m pulling in a guest judge to help me with the final selection!
[…] Saturday is the Community Next Viral conference (Christopher Salazar one the ticket from my contest) […]
[…] he gave me a free ticket to raffle off, so I held a contest, for the community to answer “how do you kick start a community” there were so many great ideas, and eventually I was able to come up with a winner, Chris […]