Seven Years In The Making
Desire has burned in me since 2004, long before Facebook and Twitter and MySpace were common household terms, the passionate desire to create a vibrant online "geographical" community mirror. This community would build upon the activities and interests of those living in, or connected to, a specific local geographical area. This could be a city or a town or even a larger region.
If "practice makes perfect" - well, I must be coming a regular Einstein! The truth is not so glamorous, though. I have started a bunch of local niche communities that have merely fizzled out, and this article is about giving to those who have a similar interest, an account of my experiences as an online community developer. In doing this, perhaps someone else can be positively influenced from this account of my experiences, and avoid a few of the pitfalls expressed here, or try a new twist on something that I previously attempted.
With the People, By the People, and For the People
This online location (domain) would be a website developed to; effectively communicate, receive and broadcast information, and accurately express the character of the culture, the people, organizations, and special interests of a local region in "real time", 24/7.
Let's build a communication tower that begs us all to have a local voice, that others might also be encouraged to participate, a place where everyone can be seen and heard from. My hope is that a project like this would help to build a spirit of unity, and raise the desire of people to become more involved in their local area. We don't know, what we don't know, so lets build the tower together, for the purpose of sharing our best with our neighbors and friends.
A community such as this would need to involve the business community, non-profit groups, youth organizations, religious groups, clubs, leagues, schools, and the list goes on.
Pitfall # 1 - Ongoing Community Participation
Getting people to participate one time is hard enough, getting them to engage themselves in a regular activity over an extended period of time has been a huge challenge for me. I'm still working on the science of this one. This challenge lies in understanding and effecting psychological changes that effect community behavior. So, we not only need to become technically efficient, but also (to an extent) psychologists as well!
There is no website technology designed to do what relationships were intended to do. The online community experience is relationship dependent. Having said that, the first step is to get "groups" to agree to use the community platform. That is actually the easy part for me. I am a sales professional, so I can build the initial enthusiasm that some technical types might be challenged with.
For me, getting people to do something one time is a bit easier than influencing them on a deep enough level, to such an extent that new habits can be formed, and a community experience becomes a desired daily activity.
The psychology of the community experience really is the critical element that I have seen as not only possible to understand, but also something that can be measured and tracked. The online "local niche" community really is destined to become tomorrows reality. Yet, it remains my most difficult hurdle.
That's not to say that I have mastered it! No phone calls, please. I'm not your knight in shinning armor. Community website development is a technical service, an art, and a professional practice, all rolled into one. I am merely a practitioner, and a student of my profession, sharing my experiences with you.
Geographical Niche
When I started building community websites in 2004, I built those sites with the hope that I could enable others to write online, and encourage them to actually do it without being "prodded" or pushed. I started with the church community - a "targeted" local niche. This community (of pastors), seemed to be excited about the notion that local churches could all be found on one Web site (hub), where they would keep the public informed about the happenings in their church. Churches signed on (for free), but then became silent. The project was dropped in 2005 due to my failure to see the psychological needs of their community experience.
In 2006, I created a business community site (phase ll). I sold annual memberships in the $200 range. Businesses bought the memberships, but seldom logged onto the site, and fewer actually contributed content.
My solution was to rebuild the site 18 months later, raise the price to $500, and provide buy-down incentives for content writing and referrals. The more active the member, the lower the membership cost - they could even buy down the following year's cost all the way to $0. Memberships were sold, but even the incentives didn't engage the members to become active contributors. The site was dropped in 2009. Again, I failed to see the psychological needs of their community experience.
Part of the missing psychology in the past was that community members had no basis of comparison to other similar experiences. No instance to draw an understanding of value or potential benefit from. Here it is, late in 2010, and I'm at it again. But now there is a difference. It's called social networking.
People of all ages are logging into community sites and writing in a blogging format. Sites like Facebook have popularized content writing for the average American. Hey, it's not so scary anymore. Anyone can do it, and it's free!
We, as developers can learn simply by following some of the psychology that Facebook and other social networks employ to draw users into their community, and keep them there, and using the services they provide over, and over again.
Better yet - now we have the technology to bring these social networks right into our websites, even using our members' preferred social network as a method to login to our site! Wow - things have changed since 2004, haven't they?
Choosing WordPress
Our current model is a Web site for the town of Winchendon, Massachusetts. Instead of using the Joomla! framework for content management that I have always used in the past, I'm going with WordPress. There are several valid reasons for this, but the shift to this new platform has required me (since the beginning of this year) to study blogging, search engine optimization, videography, and content writing in the WordPress environment. I have launched close to twenty sites in the past few months for the sake of practice alone.
Remember what I said about the psychological advantages of "similar experiences"? WordPress is easy to post on, and easy for others to comment on. It's clean and neat, and search engines love it. AND... many are already familiar with it!
Technically speaking - Add-on functionality is packaged into simple options called "plugins". Hey that's not so difficult! If you want to place something in a side column, those boxes are called "widgets". Imagine! Simple, easy to use, and free (for the most part).
WordPress is hostable, meaning that I can host it on my server and add more functionality, and I own it. I can install it in the cpanel (Linux) with fantastico, and I can create a new instance in any sub-domain, as many as I need. But in this case, I'm using the multi-user functionality (you need to add a script for this). OK - I lost some of you, so let me simplify...
Customized Blogging Network
As Facebook and other social networks become a common experience, we as developers can take advantage of this "learned behavior" in the creation of our own online community experience. Yahoo!, Google, MSN - all the big boys have blogging networks... familiar, familiar, familiar! Did I say familiar?
The value in developing communities using WordPress, is that our communities are now able to attract and keep people with common experiences, as well as people have who are already blogging online somewhere else.
Please Comment
Tell me - did you find this article helpful? Would you like to add something? Would you care for me to share more on this topic? Your thoughts are really appreciated - hey, I shared mine!
David Thayer is a web site developer, copywriter, and online marketing strategist. He is a member of Team Bob Yeager, and a student of the WEST program. He is the founder of Net2Church Global Ministries, VestRite Internet Practices, and owner of TalkRite Communications. of Keene, NH that provides high-tech/high-touch business solutions for the Internet marketer.
David Thayer
Keene, NH
http://talkrite.com
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