Sow Seeds, Elements of Effective Community Building
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Sow seeds. Recruit members and offer incentives for genuine participation in return for their advocacy. Most healthy online communities have passionate stewards leading the way. Lurkers are the majority, and most of them will never participate beyond creating an account and occasionally logging in. Increase the chances of retaining a visitor and encourage them to participate in a meaningful way by drawing their attention to something new, interesting, and immediately relevant. The trend online is increasingly attention-deficit, and the newest social aggregators like Pinterest are a smoking gun. You can’t create this content yourself. You can’t create 1/10 of it yourself. Have your core members create it for you. Or curate it for you. Run contests. Exchange pictures, video footage, and other content for merchandise. Set up guest blogging arrangements to draw both search engines and new visitors to your community. Reward your best participants in a meaningful, valuable way. What is it really worth?
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