Community

Twitter is great because sometimes, you come across some real cool gems in the form of links that people have shared. This one is no exception. It’s called LiveNewsCameras.com. Over the past half hour, I’ve been following the progress of Hurricane IKE thanks to live coverage from a number of local media stations that have all been grouped together on one page. Each stream is muted upon page load. To hear a stream, simply unmute the stream and turn the volume up.

So far, my favorite streams include the SevereStudios storm chase team with their live reports from their storm spotters/chasers. However, the local media outlets are doing an excellent job covering the hurricane as it makes landfall.

A few days ago, DavidG who is a member of the Hive community announced the launch of his new forum, http://www.eatingbritain.com/forum/. During the discussion related to forums, David showcased some of his stats for previous discussion boards that he had managed to sell and it was obvious that the man knew what he was doing. So I asked David if he could share some of his tips. He did, and here they are.

1) Target MySpace. Get an account there, let it run for a couple of days with just a set of info and some nice clear big graphic links to your forum.

Then start searching the ‘forums’ and ‘groups’ along with commenter’s and friends related to the subject. Send each one a personal message. Try to hand pick and get a core set of users to check you out. Try to make each message personal and don’t spam. This is the time when you can get core users, potential Mods and strong promoters.

2) I am loathe to give this one away, but if you are doing anything for music or artists jump to the virgin radio website, become a VIP and submit news etc to the site linking back to news threads on your forum. They always approve it and its some great links, traffic and marketing etc.

3) Press releases can do massive work for you, especially if you actually pay some money and do it properly. Include the url in full (with http) in the copy and it will get you nice links, clicks and reading as well as get promoted by people. Try especially to choose a press release service that will push you via Google News as well. Many sites pinch RSS feed links from their and auto post in their own forums so its a nice way to show up without promoting yourself.

4) Personally say hello to every new member up to number 100, then as many as possible after that.

5) Implement changes that users requests, add new emoticons and announce them for users to play with. Make them feel you are doing stuff for them.

6) Start with no more than 6 forum areas to prevent the forum from looking empty.

7) Reward early users with custom user titles, mod rights etc.

8) Facebook, mybloglog, ping RSS feeds of your forums etc

9) Include / write about news actually within the forum and ping that as a seperate RSS, especially on the latest news that people will be searching for. Some will join just to reply and thats a new set of users right there.

You eventually reach a tipping point where the thing runs itself. I have a number that I will only look at once a week. Get your mods on your msn / gtalk list etc so they can contact you directly with any questions or problems. They will bother you little, and often you can say “make it so” and they will manage it all.

Finally, youtube. Youtube is a great way to get new people. Just upload videos that have a 3 second screen with your logo and web address at the start and end, perhaps even a bar along the bottom all the way through too. That can get you lots as people there are normally interested in what they are watching.

Conclusion

I want to thank DavidG for not only becoming part of the Hive, but for sharing his experience along with tips and tricks for managing a forum. If you are looking for more information in regards to managing forums, be sure to check out my two part interview I conducted with Patrick O’ Keefe.

Interview With Patrick O’ Keefe Part 1
Interview With Patrick O’ Keefe Part 2

Controversy is a tactic bloggers use to generate a buzz about their blog. Think of it like getting into a fight with your sibling or best friend, but within the blogosphere, everyone can read how you approached the situation. You could generate controversy aimed towards an important or noticeable topic, but you could also create controversy with another blogger. I would prefer the former option, but that is completely up to you. Regardless, it should be used sparingly (unless your blog is focused on this type of material).

There are both good and bad points to using controversy, but it is up to you to weigh the risks and rewards.

Pros

• Lots of traffic in a short amount of time
• Can bring you many subscribers
• Gets you in the spotlight
• Can make you seem like a genius if you come out on top
• Can instantly make you a reputable source
• Can make you an overnight star within the blogosphere

Cons

• Can harm your reputation
• Can cost you subscribers and viewers
• Can come back to haunt you later on
• Might earn yourself some haters (people who love to disapprove of your blog and/or name on the internet)
• Could forever hurt your chances of reaching success

Be Careful

I must again reiterate my advice of only playing the controversy card sparingly. It can quickly become annoying. It will also lose its effect if it is done often. Also, I find it difficult to seriously follow someone who appears to always be making drama for the sake of being in the spotlight.

So tell me, what has been your most controversial article? Also, do you believe controversy is a worthy thing to manufacture for the sake of being noticed?

… at least according to stumbleupon.

For those of you who hadn’t heard of this issue before, there is this widespread problem with StumbleUpon where millions of web pages are mistakenly labeled as “pornography” – and while they do have a form that you can fill out to notify them about mistakes, I’ve never once seen the mistake corrected. The problem is made worse because StumbleUpon data is sometimes used by content filtering algorithms to determine the risk factor of content.

So this morning, I stumbled across a high-profile site that’s tagged as “porn” in StumbleUpon. I figured I’d bring attention to it by posting about it on Performancing. Let’s see if StumbleUpon fixes this one.

In the meantime, I’m curious whether you’ve run into this problem before and what you’ve done about it.

Since I’ve started to blog on serious level, I’ve come to find out that the most important page on my blog was the About page. I’ve spent quite a bit of time browsing the web and I’ve noticed myself looking for the About page quite often as the sites purpose was not immediately defined. I’ve been thankful to those who have a page set aside to describe what their site is all about. For those that don’t have an about page, you are truly doing yourself and your audience a dis service.

Tips on writing a good about page:

1. First, make sure the link to your About page is in an expected location. Typically, the majority of sites either place an about link at the top or bottom of the site within the navigation links.
2. In the first paragraph, be clear, concise and to the point in a paragraph or less as to what your blog is all about.
3. The about page is a nice place to present an image of yourself to let people know you are a human being.
4. For personal blogs, you can add profile information such as name, occupation, and miscellaneous information.
5. Near the bottom of the about page, I suggest providing readers with a descriptive backlog as to why your blog exists. This includes highlighting the topics you write about, the goals you have in mind, and your inspiration for blogging.
6. At the end of the about page, give your readers links to other places on the web where they can find your work.

So tell me, have you ever visited a web site that you wanted to know more about but yet, you couldn’t find an about page? Does this frustrate you? Have you taken the time recently to give your About page the love it deserves?

Ryans message brought home to me just how important community is.

People make a site such as this work, not technology, and certainly not “page rank”, “traffic” or “search engine rankings”.

There have been numerous cases where I have been so grateful to people who have supported me through the many ups and downs of my blogging career. Some of which happened on this very site 😉

I can’t stress enough how important loyal readers are. If you are going to focus on one thing, serving your audience has to be it.

The real value is in loyalty. Traffic without engagement is meaningless. Forget about SEO tricks, gaming social media, community is where it is at.

That folks, is why I am still here, 2 years and 2 weeks later 🙂

A few months ago traffic at my Freelance Writing Jobs blog had stalled at about 1500 visitors per day. I wasn’t getting many new visitors and hardly anyone on the weekend. Page views were way unimpressive. I had been so busy blogging for others; I was neglecting my flagship blog with only a few posts per week and a poor design. After assessing the situation, I realized my problem: sporadic posting.

As its name indicates, Freelance Writing Jobs provides leads to freelance writers. Every day I offer a list complied from as many different job boards I could find. I only posted on weekdays and as I got busier, only several times each week. No wonder my traffic was so stagnant. I decided to act in an aggressive manner.

Before I changed my format, I changed to a more pleasing design. Because I’m not a techie, I let an expert handle that. Now I pay someone for periodic adjustments and it’s worth the investment. The biggest change is in the format. First, I hired someone to update the job list every day. This leaves me with little profit, for sure, but it’s a worthy investment because it ensures the daily flow of traffic.
I also added something else: daily “roundtable” discussions. Prior to that I had the occasional weekend blogger or rare post on issues affecting writers. The past few weeks have seen a surge in traffic and a rise in revenue. Here are some things I learned:

• That I have a huge, intelligent community. Some posts have had 80 plus responses.
• That if you title a post with a question, your community will answer.
• That by posting every day, preferably two or three times each day, you will increase traffic and revenue.
• List posts are great linkbait.
• Controversy is great for traffic.
• My community truly wants to take part in the discussion.

I always knew I had a great resource. Now that I added a way to get my regulars (and even some irregulars) involved, I have a great community. Post often and give people a reason to visit your blog. Involve them in the discussion and watch what happens. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Need a little nudge on your favorite social voting site? If you post a link to your Reddit, Digg, Netscape, etc. submission in our new social voting forum we’ll vote it up around 9am Eastern time.

Conditions:

1. The link should be a net benefit for the online community (spam will not be promoted)
2. You must post a link to the original article as well as each of the social voting submissions

If you like this idea, feel free to join in on the voting! Hopefully we can all help each other drive more traffic to our sites.

I started things up here:
http://performancing.com/node/6495