Developing Community
Note from the editor: These next few days, we will be re-publishing note-worthy content from the Wisdump archive. This particular article was originally posted by Paul Scrivens on August 2nd, 2005.
Developing traffic for your site is one thing, but developing a community is an even harder task. With traffic you can follow a formula that will eventually get you results, but building a community around your site (non-forums) can be a difficult challenge. Here is what I have learned about community from the sites I have had the pleasure of running.
The Guidelines
After you have started to develop some traffic to your site I am sure many people think that it requires luck to get some people to comment. A lot of sites receive traffic yet no one takes the time to comment on the entries. I know I don’t comment on every entry I read, but what makes me stop to take the time to comment on some entries? There are a couple of factors that will be touched upon in this article.
The first and most important rule in helping to foster a sense of community on your site is:
Actively participate.
Nothing is worse than going to a site and taking the time to leave an insightful comment to only have it go unanswered. If someone asks a question on your site you should try to be the first person to answer that question. If nothing else make sure that a comment doesn’t go unresponded if it is a good comment. People are willing to discuss topics online just as much as they are in person if someone is willing to listen to them.
At Business Logs we actively try to be the last persons to comment in an entry. We don’t try to kill an entry, but we do like to make sure that everyone gets a response. Of course some comments don’t warrant a response, but every little bit counts.
Develop Thick Skin
There will be many times in which you won’t agree with what people are saying, but that doesn’t mean they should shutup. The best discussions are the ones where all sides of the issue are brought to the table so everyone can see them. If the discussion is restricted so that it is only one-sided then there will be no discussion at all.
A prime example can be found with our very own Mark Fusco. Many times him and I don’t see eye-to-eye on an issue, but that doesn’t prevent us from trying to understand the other person’s point of view. Admittedly there are times where I grow frustrated and simply wish to end the conversation, but that only goes to show everyone else that I am not willing to discuss differing opinions with them.
Moderate Justly
This sort of goes along with developing thick skin. Some sites and bloggers have a policy of deleting any comment that they do not agree with. There are times where people need to be banned from a site and their comments deleted and there are other times where you need to let things slide because they are not hurting the site as much as they are just hurting your feelings.
At the CSS Vault when I first opened up the comments I envisioned that the discussions would entail designers coming together and discussing the merits of the design displayed. Unfortunately, the comments were simple &ldqup;Great site!!!!” type of comments which did not help to further the discussion. I had to strictly moderate the comments and keep only the ones that added some meaning to the discussion. However, I did not delete the comments that were useless, but replaced the text. I did this because I needed the visitors to see that moderation was happening. If I had simply deleted the comments nobody would know what was going on and the comments would persist.
People Like Controversy
But that doesn’t mean you should try to write something controversial every single time you publish an entry, simply that a controversial entry helps to bring in people (if done correctly) and can spark great discussions. These types of entries must be moderated closely and you must be careful and make sure that their is justification behind your entry and that you are not just looking for your 15 seconds of fame.
Comment On Other Sites
If you go leave a comment on someone else’s site that interests them, then they are likely to visit your site and explore some of the entries. Hopefully the find something they like which will encourage them to comment as well. If they do comment make sure to respond to that comment as quickly as possible. Maybe even email the person with your response so that your site stays fresh on their mind.
I can’t count how many sites I have visited and commented on only to forget that the conversation ever occurred. There are too many sites out there with great discussions for you to think you can sit around idle and magic will just happen.
Give Your Entries Time
Compare Forever Geek to Wisdump and you will see two different sites with completely different results. FG has 3x as many entries as Whitespace yet 1/4 the amount of comments. Why? Time.
If your visitors see that you constantly update then they are less likely to take the time to comment on that entry because they are already reading another one and the discussion is going to fall off the homepage anyways. When I go a couple of days between entries here the discussions usually grow larger than the ones that are quickly replaced a day later by another entry. Sometimes though you get lucky and find just the right topic (note the # of comments) and a great discussion and community within a community evolves.
Write an Entry That Warrants a Discussion
Not every single entry I write is a goldmine for comments. Some of them are either not well received or just don’t need to be commented on. Entries that ask questions and leave them unanswered are good ones for developing discussions, but also ones that require the reader to think a bit. If you can get someone to think about what you wrote for longer than 10 seconds there is a good chance they will leave a comment.
This is probably the second most important rule and the hardest to achieve. The topic of an entry isn’t the only thing that warrants a discussion, but also your reputation and the voice of the writing. Obviously these are parts of the formula that cannot be gained immediately, but take some time to work out.
Not every discussion that occurs on your site will be great, but it’s always a nice feeling to see people taking the time out of their day to respond to your thoughts. Developing a community is not something that can happen overnight. It takes a lot of time and some effort on your part to help it grow, but as you can see there are steps you can take to help foster that growth.
These are some really great tips. I especially agree with the develop thick skin and moderate justly points. I used to manage a band and every once in a while someone would have something really mean and horrible to say on the website. Well, one of the band members got really upset and deleted those comments. It not only made our visitors feel unwelcome, it also left the band members feel unwelcome to post anymore. It was always my philosophy to let the mean and bad comments be so that all of your true fans can stick up for you. Although, nobody likes a flame war.
By Joe Lencioni on August 2, 2005 12:32 pm
I would agree that time of leaving an entry up increases discussion. I am so busy that I find it hard to update my blog in a timely fashion. This leads to more comments, especially about why I haven’t updated my blog. Ha! Is there any type of plugin or easy mod for Wordpress that would allow for me to show the most recent comments say on the right side bar?
By David Martin on August 2, 2005 2:01 pm
Scrivs, I like your point about sending the commenter an email so that they know you’ve responded to them.
I often post comments on other sites but fail (forget) to go back to see what the poster or other commenters have said in response.
I wish that you could subscribe to comments like you do for a thread on a bulletin board, or that something like Dunstan’s comment system was built into Movable Type.
Maybe there is a way to do this and I just haven’t come across it.
By Christian Watson on August 2, 2005 3:09 pm
Great site!!!
Seriously, though, I’ve noticed more blogs with the comments turned off, no email address listed, and no contact form. I guess people want to publish without feedback sometimes too.
Discussion boards are better for actual discussions - it seems to me that on my blogs that commentators discussing things with each other is generally frowned upon. Each comment then becomes about pointing only to the entry, or perhaps replying to a reply from the original entry poster.
By Jough Dempsey on August 2, 2005 5:07 pm
The Notifier plugin for Movable Type lets any commenter subscribe to emails for threads that they’ve commented on.
By Anil on August 3, 2005 4:34 am
Nice entry, Scrivs. Most of the other comments support a lot of the points I agree are key. I really like your last point. It’s the author’s perogative to post whatever he/she wants to, but to get comments back (and build the kind of community you’re writing about) it has to be about something with meat that will want people to respond. That point is one of the main reasons I’ve been reluctant to start a blog on my site at this time.
By Chris K on August 3, 2005 8:44 am
I’d like to see a blog platform that allows threaded conversations and the ability for users to rate posts.
That would allow a site owner to truly act as a moderator, while the community has a more active role in the direction of the site.
Oh wait, I’m about to launch something like that…
By Peter Flaschner on August 3, 2005 9:59 am
I must confess, it never occurred to me to email commenters- that’s a great idea! I think I’ll add a comments RSS link at the bottom of my comments form, too.
By Kevin Kennedy-Spaien on August 3, 2005 12:29 pm
This is just the topic we have been diving into recently. You really pointed out some things we have overlooked. I do have one question- it seems one of the most important aspects of building community is making people to feel important. What are your thoughts on this topic?
By Dustin Robertson on August 3, 2005 1:21 pm
I think making people feel important follows keeping up with conversations. People feel like their words mean something if they get a response. This is along the lines of writing an email, but never getting a response (something I am notorious for).
By Scrivs on August 3, 2005 1:27 pm
I’m not sure how recently you redesigned WhiteSpace, as I normally just read via RSS, but I really like the new design. Simple, but straightforward and effective.
I agree too, that if you never comment on someone’s blog, visitors tend to feel shunned. That’s what’s happened with the blog our school tried to start, it was being written by non-bloggers, who would write an entry and never read comments.
By Nathan Smith on August 3, 2005 3:10 pm
One more if I may add:
Take it easy.
Make sure you bond with your members and let them bond with each other. Don’t stop a personal conversation because it’s off topic. Sometimes those off topic messages create those special relationships between your members that make your site worth a visit later on. Ppl are not only looking for information, but they need friends and foes too. Humans crave their social skills to be exercised otherwise they become depressed.
By ivan raszl on August 4, 2005 2:28 am
Scrivs, I agree with all the tips you have posted above. I’ve published several blogs in the past couple of years and had dramatically different results in building community. The primary difference between the blogs was the hosting location – some under a domain of my creation, the others hosted by one of the free services (AOL, Yahoo 360, My Space, etc.). The blogs created under my own domain tend to spark more participation among readers. In some ways, I think some blog viewers think if you publish via one of the free services you’re not a serious blogger.
Has anyone had success in building their desired community (with an audience outside of the hosting service’s community)? Or does the choice of hosting location by default define the scope of your community?
By Damon Bryant on August 7, 2005 8:35 am
The distinction you make between building traffic and building community seems obvious now that you’ve made it but it had never occured to me. Traffic is kind of a commercial concept I guess. Those of us who are trying to speak with others about politics or religion or topics we think are important should be more interested in community.
The suggestions you offer are great - I would add one more: simply, “be nice”. For a lot of new visitors, it means a lot to have some encouragement, as in, “great comment, would like to hear more” (rather than someone disagreeing right away as so often happens).
Also to keep an eye out for new bloggers and link to their sites, help to spread the word.
I use Drupal, which has a built-in rss aggregator. I’ve tried to use that to foster a community of bloggers with similar interests, i.e. by aggregating their feeds all on one page.
Anyhow thanks very much for the insight - and for this great site. Will check in often.
By Andrew Schamess on August 8, 2005 5:04 pm
I am glad everyone is finding this article so useful.
By Scrivs on August 8, 2005 5:15 pm
Interesting ideas and comments. Ivan (Raszl), I totally agree with yours.
By Jane on August 17, 2005 2:23 am
Great suggestions.
The community aspect of blogs is often lost. I think we have too many blogs out there for post and forget type of writing.
A suggestion is to develop a blog that is very niche and can generate a lot of buzz around that niche. For instance, don’t write a blog just about “computers” but create a blog about “computer help support” or specific computer hardware reviews, or the like.
By Larry on September 16, 2005 9:49 am
[...] Once you have the traffic you can begin to work on developing a community within your site. [...]
By Developing Traffic » Wisdump on August 8, 2006 5:21 am
@Christian: I used to send emails to people with my reply for their convenience. Luckily, Wordpress has a simple plugin called ‘Subscribe to Comments’ which will allow visitors to get emails every time a new comment is posted. I’ve found it helps with the conversation..
By Devin on August 8, 2006 10:29 am
Devin,
You just responded to a year old comment. Just an fyi.
By David Krug on August 8, 2006 4:55 pm
I really enjoyed reading this post and the one on building traffic. Your experience in manageing websites clearly shows here. I have bookmarked these pages for future reference.
One question that has been touched on but not fully addressed, is what do you do once you have traffic and a community? Where do you go from there? Does it just become a matter of how long you are willing to sustain the existence of a site? Or are there strategies for diversification, expansion, opening it up to new authors and developers? How ‘organic’ can a blog/website be?
By AndrewE on August 15, 2006 7:58 am
i feel that deleting comments is just silly as it is part of the community feeling. people wont like things all the time and they should tell you.
By lee on July 17, 2007 9:04 pm
Guess you know your stuff because this post has gotten quite a few comments. Good article keep up the good work.
By Nathan Hull on November 5, 2007 11:47 am