Great article, Rosemary! I'd just add this: to 1. - No matter HOW you define success, your community must be visible in order to be successful. I've seen too many people hide their communities so that it takes a trail of breadcrumbs and a jungle machete to find it. to 2. - Completely agree that these are questions that are best answered before you start. We've seen a number of communities try to set up "premium features" on formerly-free features.
Excellent points and great thoughts to consider before starting an online community. An addition to 1: How do my forum users define success, and is this congruent with my definition? What is their baseline for success, and what factors will cause them to consider the community a failure?
I went to opposite approach. I purchased a UBB license from Infopop to give a few friends and I a new home and blindly jumped in with both feet. I can't thank you enough for giving a complimentary license to Leo Laporte. That was my intro to the world of Social Strata.
Thanks all for the excellent additions to the list! LOM great one! If you're going to throw a great party, you want to focus more on the comfort of your guests than yourself, right? Harold, we've always been big fans of Leo. It's cool to hear that something we did a long time ago has rippled through the years And we've definitely benefited from having you around too!
Useful beginners tips Rosemary. I can relate a little of my own experience here if you don't mind. ( notice the compliment and the almost apologetic way of stepping in Groupee was the first Bloggers site I had ever joined with confidence. It was the newness of the Social network on offer that gave me a feeling of belonging. Prior to that I could not "break the ice" anywhere else. I think blogging is easier than joining a forum. Unless the forum is very specific in it's nature. In a blog you...
LOL James you are a perfect example of how to do it! Thanks for adding your insights as well...you just never know who might be reading and need a little encouragement.
Thanks for being part of OUR community Please come back and let me know how things work out as you try out different ideas, or if you come up with some new ones of your own!
Will do! I've basically been encouraging everyone I know interested in my site concept to share it like crazy. Having the support of friends / family with thriving online social networks helps a ton. And I realized that I should sign up for a FB page so I could entice regular FB users BACK to my site by posting news and blog post links there. Learning a lot and loving what you guys are doing! Where are you located? A couple people have asked and I can't figure it out. Morgan
Yes, you should definitely leverage your FB presence. That will help you too. The bulk of our staff are in Seattle, WA, but a couple of us are in Charleston, SC. We're in the process of opening a second office here. It's definitely helping us to have folks in two time zones!
You sure can! On your blog page, on the right hand column, you should see an RSS link. Just grab that and feed it into Hootsuite as I described above, and voila. Just let me know if you run into any trouble, and I can help further.
Bandwidth is surely very cheep these days and I am reluctant to pay a premium OR lose my SEO. Could you please tell me what my monthly charge will now be without it? Thank you.
All of our plans include unlimited bandwidth, so that is a non issue. I'm not sure what cost you are referring to, since nothing I described in this blog requires a cost of any kind. Both new features are free. For further questions about your particular account, please post to our support site: http://socialstrata,com/support Thanks and have a great weekend!
I could have sworn I was told that I have to pay a charge for excess visitors or bandwidth of some kind? It was going to appear on my bill but you said you would hold off the charges until the new feature was released and then give me the choice of the extra charges or limit the BOTS. This is really confusing. Can you confirm then that my site will have no additional charges if I DONT limit the bots on my site?
"If your billable page views are getting close to your plan limit, this option may come in handy." - THERE! So what are billable page views if its not linked to bandwidth?
Hi Richard- Your plan has a billable page view limit (not a bandwidth limit). And if you exceed your billable page views, you will incur charges. Thus, if you are close to exceeding your account's limit, then you may want to consider using the throttling option. For questions about your specific account, please post to our support area.
Great stuff. One question: In the Activity Point formula, there's a reference to points earned for the author having a post on a support topic "marked as best answer." Can one enable this "best answer" feature in their own community forums? If so, how? I can't seem to locate this option on Hoop.la. Thanks.
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