September 28, 2004 | View Comments (26) | Category: Web Mastering
Summary: How to develop a great community on your non-forum site.
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 and my sites.
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.
But that still doesn't help answer the question as to what to do once you get the traffic coming to your site. The first and most important rule in helping to foster a sense of community on your site is:
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.
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 discussing differing opinions with them.
This sort of goes along with developing thick skin. Some sites and bloggers have a policy of if you do not agree with what I am saying or say something that I dislike your comment will be deleted and you will be banned. 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 you perceive they are. Usually they are hurting your feelings more.
At the 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. Now I think the Vault has much better disucssions although they are still not at the high caliber I envisioned.
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.
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.
Compare Forever Geek to Whitespace 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.
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.
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I think commenting on other's site is the most important point raised by this article. I've found that when I comment on other's sites, their visitors end up heading my direction and commenting on my articles. This very comment may send 10 people to my site, they will read a few of the articles on the front page, maybe browse some photos and if I'm lucky, comment once. I try to spend at least 15 minutes every day actively involved in the discussion of sites I frequent. We're all apart of this community, commenting is a great way to share our opinions and our visitors.
Chris Fenison (http://www.chrisfenison.com)
I think timing is important too. If you post your really great and comment-worthy entry on the wrong day, nothing happens. If you had waited for another day, or maybe just a few hours, there could have been many more comments.
Anyway, thanks for the good tips.
Roger Johansson (http://www.456bereastreet.com)
Chris: Exactly. Many people expect miracles to happen, but it really is a give and take situation. If you give enough to the community the community will give enough back to you. That seems to be the only way it works. Even if you only get a couple new commentors a week or month you are growing.
Roger: This is an advantage I think us Americans have over Europeans and Aussies (and others). If I can get an entry out during the morning hours I can usually catch people during their lunch break or before they go to work. However, a lot of people don't have that luxury. There is always a little bit of luck involved in everything.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
"Entries that ask questions and leave them unanswered are good ones for developing discussions"
Exactly right. I post a couple of entries a week and most of them benefit (suffer?) from proper closure. However, when I've asked questions, or simply left a topic without a conclusion, the comments come flooding in.
It's fascinating to watch! :-)
Jonathan M. Hollin (http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/)
@ Chris: Commenting on Scrivs' sites is the best way of getting new visitors - I've had more referrals from Whitespace and the Vault than all the other blogs I've commented on combined!
<tangent>
I was wondering this morning why there isn't a dedicated forum for web standards advocates - or maybe there is and I just haven't found it yet? It would provide a centralised place to discuss ideas, rather than on specific blog posts, and also perhaps provide somewhere for less well known bloggers (or those without blogs) to pose questions that wouldn't normally get an audience on their own blogs.
</tangent>
Matthew Pennell (http://www.thewatchmakerproject.com/)
Scrivs: Actually, Europians have the advantage (time-wise).
They can write it in the evening, then at lunch time the next day (or a bit later, say 17.00) they can comment on American blogs as one of the first. Thus they get a lot more visitors than people commenting further down the thread.
Also, the points in your article are right. If you read interesting articles and give people time to comment, you have the best chances of building a community.
Worth noting is that posting regularly is a boon too. (As I find myself visiting white space more often than Shaun Inman for example, as you update a heck of a lot more frequently.)
AkaXakA (http://akaxaka.gameover.com)
Well you have 9 sites to comment on so hopefully you can get lucky with one of them.
There are plenty of forums around though discussing web development and standards. To prevent any tangent discussions I shall do research and write an entry on them. Sound good?
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
The good thing about posting frequently is that visitors can be reminded of older discussions that are still going on and continue to go visit them. With blogs that aren't updated as frequently these conversations can quickly be forgotten and when someone returns they find that nobody has commented in 2 weeks so they don't feel it is worth their time or effort to do so either.
I still think us Americans have the advantage. Of course I guess it depends on how large the American readership is vs. the European readership.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Scrivs:
Another thing is to make it clear that you want feedback. Ask a question at your conclusion, and you'll see results.
While it might have taken away from your entry's definitive nature a bit, you could have ended it with a question, such as, "Can you think of any more ways to foster reader participation?" That might have sparked more comments as people would have felt as if you'd asked for their opinion; as it is, your entry is pretty declarative, and unless people radically disagree with a declarative statement, they're unlikely to challenge it.
When I do this with things that I write online, I typically set the question off by a horizontal rule; the visual cue seems to help.
HTH. HAND.
Geof (http://gfmorris.net/)
Good point Geof, but by some stroke of dumb luck conversations just tend to happen here no matter what now whether it be by me or by someone asking a question in a comment.
In any case, it got you to respond didn't it ;-)
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
I'd like to suggest it also has a lot to do with what kind of blogging community it is. The Web Design blogging community has the best discussions by far. It's not unusual to see comments numbering in the 50's and even hundreds in this community. But take the Knowledge Mgmt blog community for example, which I also frequent. They're lucky to get into double figures in comments - even the most popular KM bloggers.
The other thing, which you alluded to, is that some people don't write blog posts that encourage discussion. I probably count myself amongst this type, because I use my blog mainly as a publishing vehicle for my writing - rather than as a sort of discussion forum. Of course I'd love to get more comments on my site - but would I have to change my style of blog-writing to do that (ie follow some of your tips here)? Probably. It's something I think about, because I think your blog is a great example of the benefits to be had from that approach.
Richard MacManus (http://www.readwriteweb.com)
Well I don't know how much these tips actually change your style of writing, but more of the strategy of your writing. You can still maintain the same tone or whatever if you feel that it is conducive to a discussion, but maybe make the entry more open-ended so that it is open to interpretation.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
"...our very own Mark Fusco
I once was lost, but now I'm found in my home on Whitespace. Wow. I can't possibly describe in mere words the warm, fuzzies I'm experiencing now, knowing that I belong here.
; )
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
You da man!!!!
For those 2 seconds it took for me to say that at least :-P
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
...and it was 2 seconds of sheer bliss, my friend.
Now, post something stupid so I can get back to arguing with you.
;-P (whatever that means) back to ya.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
See this is where my thick skinndedness (nice word there) comes in and I realize I have two options:
1. Tell Mark to go to hell since I do not write anything stupid and ban him for life
or
2. Do a fake online laugh “haha, good one Mark” and actually write something stupid for him tomorrow so he can argue some more.
I have yet to decide what option to take.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
For the uninitiated, and for Paul, my previous was soaked in sarcasm. I don't really think anything posted here is "stupid." While I may not agree with everything Paul posts here, or I may push him to defend his opinion for nothing else than my own self satisfaction, I only do it because I'm a tired, cranky old geezer (arguably the old man of this particular community).
However, for all my perceived crankiness, I will undeniably say that I have learned a great deal from this site, CSSVault, ForeverGeek and the Roe. Also appreciate getting a little more personal glimpse into the man (the myth, the legend...blah, blah, blah...) from the root page as well.
As far as the other sites...meh.
For the record Paul, I think you're doing a fine job. Keep up the work, kid.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
and finally, for the record, I was in the middle of my post when you jumped ahead of me with yours. Just in case someone thinks there is some suckin up going on here.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
We all know you be suckin up to the master of this site Mark! Now if only he would get off his lazy ass and fix those other sites you don't like :-)
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
I'm just starting my own weblog, and I've definately noticed that commenting on other sites and participating in discussions definately brings a few visitors around to my site.
It's very interesting to read my referer (sic) log and see where people are coming from. It's also nice to be the number one result on Google for your own name. :)
Darryl Millar (http://surreal.hydra3.org)
This is probably not as relevant to this particular discussion but after reading the header I was hoping to find some ways to create a community other then using weblogs. Something more slanted towards UX or the IA of HoneyCombing Sites.
BMT (http:///blog/bmathomas)
Very nice advice. Another Idea that I use is to highlight some topics that are popular but suddently get off the frontpage. It helps to continue the discussion.
cvander (http://www.maestrosdelweb.com/blog)
BMT: You could always use forums to build up a community. Besides that I don't know any other way to build interaction between the site and its audience. Blogs allow comments and forums allow discussions. Same thing, but different "type" of sites.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
This is a great topic that I've been thinking about for years; I run a popular and well used Community/threaded discussion and have started others that are ghost-towns.
I don't think there is a formula that one can just plug in to make "community" happen in weblog post comments or in a threaded discussion board. Although I agree with every one of the points in the post, following them is only one part of building a successful community.
Each weblog/discussion that is successful probably had a tipping point that might be useful to go back and examine: a particular post or a collection of things that lined up that got a lot of people to get the feed, then post then snowball. However, if you could isolate all the tipping points on every popular weblog, I doubt they'd all be alike in some way except that they produced a popular place.
I also find it interesting that a lot of this activity is from fellow weblog publishers who are probably professional designers and that this crowd has values, knows each other, etc. and threads are full of this stuff (which is good: its a community, and bad: it's cliquy and seemingly closed). As you might imagine, I'm not a professional designer although I read the weblogs of many.
A natural question for those running weblogs is: what would you do if all of a sudden your site was getting a lot of attention and current and past entries were getting commented on at a fever pitch?
Is that what you (we) want? If so, why? Popularity (ego?), money? Fame? Something else?
Would we then start to think about harnessing that to make money, quit our day jobs and spend more time feeding it. I'm tracking John Gruber's personal experiment with http://daringfireball.net closely.
He got the eyeballs by choosing an area he knows a lot about to cover, covering it well (imho) and then letting us know he wants to cover it more and would we help support his plan to do that.
I subscribed almost immediately for two reasons: I like his writing and find it useful but I also want to see how his experiment works. I'm not sure it's working quite as well as he wanted as he's recently posted that he wants some contract programming work (read: has the time for, needs money).
Or, are we just after being popular? I've never asked him and I know he's a Gladwell reader but I'd be curious as to what Jason Kottke's tipping point was? How did that work? And, if you notice, he doesn't have much commentary possible on his site anymore but when he does, it's a feeding frenzy so he's got the eyeballs, comments or not. Although, unlike this thread, his commenters don't know each other well; he just knows the famous or infamous ones.
One thing that's really important is that people who comment are not only treated well by the site author but by each other. Fraternity in a community is important and it can make the community a water cooler (place to hang out) and lead to more hanging out to be with friends.
One large difference between threaded discussions and one-person weblogs is that with a lot of people posting topics (not just replies) in parallel, the possibilities for any one of them reaching a tipping point of interest and getting bitten on heavily rises.
So, maybe the ultimate solution to this is group weblogs under a common banner although the experiments I've seen in this have not been all that appealing (not as appealing as personal weblogs).
Sorry to be so long-winded but this topic is very interesting to me.
Richard (http://www.richardsnotes.org)
Thanks for a most enlightening read.
My friend, Richard Wanderman, pointed me to this discussion. I've been thinking about this, too, especially why some sites get more comments, etc., and came to the conclusion that it's due to 1) the long list of links on that person's site, and 2) the choice of topics (and probably the person's reputation, and also the type of things his "readers" like to read).
I like the rule about giving the entries time. Due to my own commitment to "never a day without lines", I usually have at least one entry a day, sometimes more. I also have only a day's post/s on the main page. So what I'm doing is probably wrong. While I can't change the first due to commitment, I can change the second by having more days' posts on the main page, and maybe (just maybe) reducing the font size used.
To date, my most "popular" weblog entry (the one with the most number of comments, two of them mine) is the one on Remembering 9/11 (a bit of shameless publicity here ... please feel free to edit it out). I checked it against the rules and found that it met two of them - I responded to comments, and it was a controversial topic (altho not presented too aggressively). But then, this is just my personal opinion.
Chet Chin (http://www.chetscorner.com/chatter)
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#1
I just realized the irony of writing an entry on developing community and then having no one comment on the entry so I am doing myself a favor and writing this comment.
But seriously I come across too many people who are looking for the magic formula in getting people to comment. It's almost like trying to sell something to them. Why would they want to comment on your site? You have to give people reasons.
There are simply too many sites and too many discussions to keep track of and it is easy for someone to not be interested in commenting on "another" site.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)