What do you do with those that you attract to your community? The short answer is “Talk to them!”
The long answer is that you treat all of them with respect and dignity, find out what it is that they are looking for, and help them to find it.
Once you begin to build a community, you will find that there are some that are more interested in getting involved than others. One of the things that this kind of community member is looking for is Engagement. These readers and “doers” will enlist in your community expressly to get involved with other people – to talk, to listen, to help. They are looking to be a part of something larger than themselves.
Your goal should be to empower them to do so
How does your blog or website deliver to this type of reader/community member? Is there a comments feature that allows people to post their own opinion? How about a forum where the members can engage each other in a much broader fashion?
There are two schools of thought on allowing comments on a blog. One holds that it allows the readers to engage the author, and each other, in a discussion – a conversation – about the topic of the post. This can be a very powerful method of getting the word out about your site, as more people talk about and comment. The downside of this is the possibility of spam – fake comments from pr0n sites – and that you need to monitor the comments for inappropriate behavior. This is the primary rationale for the second school of thought on comments – don’t allow them.
How should you manage your empowered community?
Creating and nurturing a community takes time and effort. It means that not only do you need to give of yourself to create the content that the community is looking for, you need to share part of your creation with the community. A Web forum is an excellent tool for sharing this content and the responsibility for managing it. Sometimes called a bulletin board or message board, a Web forum is an online center for ongoing, in-depth discussions of specific topics and issues.
One of the more interesting features of the Web forum membership is that users frequently self-select for monitoring what is going on. As the “leader” of the community you can enlist these active volunteers to become moderators for the various topics and keep an eye on the postings and comments.
Seek these people out, encourage them to take the next step. Share of yourself and see what happens!
