Today I'm pleased to offer an in-depth interview with Harris Toser of Non-Sport Update, someone who has been in the trenches of online community management and magazine publishing for a long time.  My key takeaways from his advice are: 1) you've got to invest consistent hard work, and 2) face-to-face meetings are a great way to solidify the community.  Thank you for taking the time to chat with me, Harris!

Tell us about your business. What is “Non-Sport Update”?

Non-Sport Update is a magazine published for collectors of non-sport and entertainment trading cards. There are trading cards for movies, television, comics, history….you name it! Pretty much everything and anything has been featured on a trading card. Our magazine deals with any cards other then sports cards. We started publishing Non-Sport Update in 1990.

When did you start your forums?

Boy, its tough remembering all the various incarnations of “NSU Card Talk” (which is what we have always called our forums). NSU Card Talk goes back to sometime around 1999. We have been with Social Strata for over ten years and started out with a free version of Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB), moved to a paid version, moving that to its own domain, and then finally to the hosted solution we currently employ.

Is this a full-time job for you?  Do you have any community members help with moderating?

Non-Sport Update is a family run business. I work on the magazine with my parents and the three of us work on it full time. Managing the forums is just part of my function here.

For many years, we ran our forums without moderators but when things really started to get busy, it was apparent that we needed some help. I asked specific people who I thought would do a good job moderating and I don’t think anyone turned me down. A few of those people still moderate the forums to this day.

What were some of the early promotions you did to get the word out about your forums? Do you leverage your in-person events (shows) to get more members?

In the beginning, we did all sorts of things to encourage people to join the forum. For the most part, however, I think it was (and still is) more the case of people finding us. In general, I think there are “forum people” and everyone else. By that, I mean, I think some people are just inclined to find forums for things they are interested in and join.

We constantly mention the forum in the articles in our magazine. We have also run ads for the forum as well. Our biggest push in terms of this sort of thing, however, are our “member gatherings.” We have always done a lot of trade shows. Early on, we thought it would be good to get our online members together at these various shows. These gathering have proven very popular and we have done countless meetings all over the country and even other countries. Eight or ten years ago, some of our U.K. members even held their own member gathering without us being there! We now exhibit at that show and have held a gathering of members there many times.

You’ve got a promotion running where you are using content (photos) posted in the forums in your magazine (Non-Sport Update).  Do you do that a lot? Does it increase traffic/buzz?

I think you are speaking of our promotion called “Open That Box! day”. This is a day we designate for collectors to open a box of cards and share the experience through our forum. This has been very popular for us and we get collectors all over the world participating. We also try to encourage members to open their boxes with their spouse, children, friends, etc. to make it more meaningful and to try and introduce others to our fun hobby. This year was our sixth year of Open That Box! It has been a great promotion for the forum as it brings us many people on OTB day. In the last couple of years, we’ve even had people do video box openings and a podcasting friend of mine did his podcast (UK CardCast) based around is OTB participation. And yes, we encourage people to take pictures and we often try to run them in the magazine. Our new Jun/Jul ‘11 issue features many of this year’s participants.

What’s your biggest challenge right now, as a community owner?

Our biggest problem is probably also what keeps things going, collectors’ passion for their hobby. People on the forum get very passionate about collecting and the point they are trying to get across. This can occasionally lead to some heated exchanges and hurt feelings. I always feel bad myself when the forum causes a member grief, even when I have nothing to do with the exchange.

We also often discuss offering a premium version of NSU Card Talk or possibly charging to participate in the forums. To avert this, last year we decided to simply ask our forum members to voluntarily contribute if they felt they found our forum to be a valuable resource. We were humbled by our forum member’s contributions. A couple of very generous retailers and one collector even offered items for sale on eBay to benefit the forum. I am really happy we continue to offer the forum totally free-of-charge as a resource for collectors.

What do you see as the differences between your interactions on the forums vs on your Facebook page? Do they cross-pollinate?

We use Facebook and Twitter more to get news out there. We also co-promote a trade show for card collectors (our next one is coming up on May 14 and 15 in Allentown, PA – gotta get in a plug!) and Facebook and Twitter are great for this. My thought is that people are spending a lot of time on the social networks so they might as well see the new that artist Sean Pence will be at our show at the same time they read their friend Mary is moving and Bob is excited for his Counting Crows concert.

The great thing about forums like NSU Card Talk, though, is that you get such a better depth of discussion there then you do on Twitter and Facebook, We have an entire forum with over 20,000 posts devoted to box breakdowns. You’d never get something like that on the social networks. Both have their own place, of course.

Do you have any tips for other community managers looking to build a long-term community like yours?

Not really, unfortunately. I wish I had the magic bullet to pass along but I think you just have to really work at it. And of course, it helps to be in the right place at the right time with your forum idea.

What’s your best crazy community member story? (You don’t have to share names)

One funny story that comes to mind revolves around one of those member gatherings I mentioned above. And it was at the U.K. show I mentioned. The show offered us space for our gathering the first couple of years but after that, the show changed management and the new company could not fit us in. We had a small group that year and figured we could simply meet in the dining area. For some reason, we couldn’t find space and had to seek out another solution. We kept trying to find other places to convene, shuffling our group from one place to the next, and ended up having our session behind a parked truck within the convention center and under fear show security was going to usher us away. It was not our finest hour. Our forum members in the U.K. still talk about the time we met behind the truck when I go there! Fortunately, the show has changed management yet again and the new show runners offer us panel space in their stage area.