Starting an Online Community that Contributes

Mar 03

Chris HornakSEO , , 1 Comment

Lately I’ve been working with some websites that are trying to create a community within their site.  When helping build and optimize these websites I think about what community sites I visit and why.

When I was in highschool I got involved in online First Person Shooters. To be more specific, Quake 2 was the title of the game that got me addicted. I have been playing games like that ever since (about 10 years). There’s one site in particular that I visited daily way back then and I still find myself participating on it today. It’s a little site called ESReality.com. ESReality is a site for competitive gamers, more specifically those who have roots in Quake games. Before I ramble on forever about competitive gaming (or eSports) let me attempt to get to the point of this story.

The reason I think people like me have been visiting this site for so long is because it focused on a niche when we needed a site to focus on it and it had people who brought the best stories about that niche to one place. This is exactly what I have been trying to apply to the community site’s I’m working on now.

To get to my point I think if you want to run a successful community site you need to really find your niche, something that you’re passionate about. The second part is find other people who feel the same way and are willing to contribute (if you want to start a community, you need people!). Finally, just start writing and provide users with the tools they need to contribute to your community. If you have those things, the people will come and they will contribute.

Three Point Summary:

  1. Find a niche.
  2. Get others involved.
  3. Provide users with the tools they need to contribute.

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One Comment (+add yours?)

  1. Richard Millington
    Mar 05, 2010 @ 03:44:24

    Nice post. I used to work with Sujoy from ESReality for a few years.

    I suspect there’s more to it than providing people with the tools. You also need to provide them with the motivation as well. Sometimes, people just get lucky. A group of people want to talk but don’t have the means, you create the means and the community takes off.

    But this is rare.

    Usually it’s a case of hard graft of reaching out to individual members, engaging them and inviting them to participate.

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