Communities and Content

If you keep a tab on what people read and don't read, then you'll be able to find out what your most valuable content is. This isn't just a simple "10.000 read that article and 400 read that article", since that last article might have been written when the site was young and you only had 400 subscribers. You need to keep an eye on market penetration. The market is your subscribers, and the penetration is the percentage of subscribers who have read an article. This also have to be numbers used at the time of publication.

These days every site seems to have on-line discussion forums, chat, e-mail, link databases and what not. Resist this, for the moment. You don't need a link database when you have 20 links to the best places within the field you're working. Use an online link checker on that page and be done with it.

My path through community building continues after a short hiatus. I've led you through starting up, planning your site and content. From now on I'll jump from place to place, just adding my views on stuff which I have something to write about with regards to community building.

I'll start with memberships.

If you listened to my advice in part two, you have already an idea of who your content creators (designers, writers, editors etc) are. These are the top notch people who will keep people coming back to your site and uphold the standard of the site.

These people will be working while the infrastructure of your site is en route. Give them a lap-top each, an office suite and a license to write, and you're already on the right track.

This is the second part of our series on community building. What is best for your site, pre-packaged software? Custom made software?

Pitfalls in all directions.

It is said that Internet time is much faster than normal time, perhaps much like dog or cat years. So, since its inception, back in the early nineties, it should have matured by those standards.