Building & Running an Online Community
Presented by Ben Brown
Building a loyal community is a key component to the success of your website, whether you're running a content site, a web application, or something in-between. They may not have a voice on your site yet, but the community is out there, talking amongst themselves. We will discuss the practical realities of opening the doors of your website to member participation - how, when, and why.
When "users" become "members," you are sharing the ownership and management responsibilities of the site with them. Your most loyal members will be with you on launch day, they'll help you through redesigns, and they'll mourn the passing of each feature that doesn't quite make it out of beta. We will discuss the risks and rewards your community will bring.
What will be covered?
- When should you open your site's doors to members?
- How do you set and enforce guidelines for your members?
- What kind of features does your need community need?
- Your best users are sometimes your worst users!
- How not to design an incentive system
- Cut-and-paste community
Brown will explore some of the real life scenarios from his 10-years of building and running online communities, including notorious nerd/hipster dating site Consumating.com, which crashed into a self-help site and burned to the ground, dooce Community, the social side of world famous dooce.com, and the newly launched but still very interesting MediaBugs.org, a site where members can report errors in their local media.
