Essential tips for building an online community
Upping the Addiction of Users by Improving the stickiness of the Site
Building a community successfully can often lead to an addiction for your readers. By this time your website has been bookmarked, is currently the homepage and comes alongside your reader’s coffee every morning. It’s one thing to get your visitors hooked, it’s another to get them addicted. Content must remain consistent and frequent and discussions must always be present. There may even come a stage when your readers will be writing the content and your website almost becomes self-sustaining.
Summary
If you want to build a community then there are at least three things that you must achieve. Firstly you must reward your loyal readers so that their share your posts and promote your website. Secondly, you must have a routine for your website. Regularly posting, events for your readers to look forward to will entice them to return. Thirdly, you must work hard. Content must be regular and of very high quality and finally you must involve yourself with your community, talk to your readers, discuss ideas, arrange live shows/meetups and at the end of the end enjoy meeting new people and discussing your favourite topics.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 18:17 and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I enjoyed this post, and I agree with the need for regular content. This is especially true for those bloggers only posting once or twice a week. Not unlike a TV show that you look forward to watching every, say, Wednesday, a regularly schdeuled blog has the ability to generate loyal followers.
I also like your idea about competitions and removing the option of losing from the equation. Would you suggest that even smaller blogs with few readers start these competitions and hope that word would spred? Or is there a better way to promote this stuff?
I’m interested in your thoughts.
Thanks again,
Tamara
Adaptive Consultancy
Sorry about my late response Tamara.
There is nothing wrong with competitions, they can get you noticed and lead to positive stuff but at an early stage you do have promote them yourself. Your ability to market will determine how quickly your website takes off. So long as the content, in the case what you’re giving away is relevant and worth the reader’s while then you’re in good stead. But you will have to promote/market like hell (without being spammy!) 🙂