5 Steps in Building an Online Community
Posted on April 25, 2008 by
Rosanne Lim 
Forums 
5 Comments
Online communities are dynamic environments but it also needs consistent management. Members must ne invigorated and reinvigorated by new concepts and ideas so that they will be encouraged to contribute more freely and frequently. Any failed attempts at building an online community must be discarded or altered because they stop a lively community from developing. In line with this, here are 5 steps in building a lively online forum:
Experiment with your rules and procedures – your forum should be seen as a work in progress especially during the initial stages. This will help you determine which rules and procedures would work for your site and which ones wouldn’t. Try to ask and monitor feedback from site visitors to know their opinion.
Identify community leaders – in online communities, there will be leaders that emerge. These are the people who will contribute valuable information voluntarily which will help sustain the community.
Cultivate community leaders – it is important for web owners to encourage these leaders as much as possible so they will be motivated to stay with the community.
Reinforce participation – new members must be welcomed and they must be encouraged to participate in the online community. Their questions and queries must be answered; acknowledging and replying to posts that receive no response will help as well.
Avoid “churn” – churn is a problem on the internet because visitors are continually looking for new and fresh content. Avoid churn by offering fresh material on a consistent basis.
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For me, this is a very timely article. I’m currently planning to start an online community. I’m trying to decide between Joomla or Drupal as my platform.
Online communities seems to be a growing thing these days, just remember that there is a lot of work involved if you want to have a good forum.
You have to not only consider everything in your article, but you have to keep everything up-dated and deal with all the problems to, if you understand all that, go for it.
Pugsley
I started a forum for my gh site. It failed miserably becuase i dont have any time to put into it.
Some good basic information here, just a shame you aren’t able to go into more detail. I would like to comment on the five points you mention.
#1 - Experiment with your rules and procedures
I am not so sure this would be a great idea - sure, asking for member feedback is always good to do when it comes to online communities, however if you are continually changing your rules and procedures, you will confuse your members and break down levels of trust.
#2 - Identify community leaders
Yes, identifying community leaders is a positive step but what do you do once they have been identified? You need to ensure you don’t treat such ‘leaders’ better than anybody else; everyone within your online community needs to be treated equally well otherwise you risk creating conflict.
#3 - Cultivate community leaders
Similar to point #2 - how do you cultivate a community leader without favouritism? Surely you should be cultivating every single one of your members - not just the apparent ‘leaders’. Just because someone is more involved in the community than others, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are your most valuable member.
#4 - Reinforce participation
You make a very good point here; one of the best ways of encouraging interaction in an online community is through asking questions. In my community building blog, I refer to threads without any responses as ‘failed threads’. Put simply they should never be allowed to happen.
Having an introductions area is a good idea, as long as people who introduce themselves are responded to in a personal manner and asked questions to encourage further interaction.
#5 - Avoid “churn”
Retaining members is hugely important and, as you mention one way of doing this is through fresh, quality content. If your members aren’t creating this for you then you need to step up to the plate and create this yourself.
In this regard, online communities are not overly different from other websites - if you have no content, you will not succeed. It really is as simple as that.
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Wow, I think this is the longest blog comment I have ever written - my apologies if I went on for a little too long. You made some great points in this article, but the community blogger in me couldn’t help but elaborate a little further!
- Martin Reed
Hi Martin,
Yes, wow! Many thanks for your insightful contribution. Your clarification in Rule 1 is particularly helpful because I was thinking that you should experiment with rules and procedures until you find the formula that works well for you. I was not actually encouraging continual experimentation but I wasn’t able to point that out. Thanks again.