Daily Work

You should be developing your community, not maintaining it.

Spend your time bonding your online community. This isn’t the same as fire-fighting. It’s not resolving disputes, responding to queries or deleting bad posts. It’s proactively doing things that make members feel a greater sense of community.

Make members feel they are in your community. Create boundaries and rituals to follow. Focus on developing some rewards for members who participate. Give each member a chance to influence the community, no matter how small that influence might be. Hold events and highlight issues that provoke emotional connections.

This is the really, really, important stuff. Do the maintenance later.

Comments

[Martin Reed]

This is one of my favourite posts from you, Rich. You know, I wonder if you could have just made this whole post one line, 'You should be developing your community, not maintaining it.'

I couldn't agree more.

- Martin

[Richard Millington]

Hi Martin,

I actually considered leaving it as one sentence. But I suspected people have different opinions on developing so I wanted to be more precise.

Thanks though.

[Angela Connor]

Rich: This is one of those lessons that you have to stick with once you learn. It's not something you know at first. I no longer make putting out fires my main priority and I don't rush to the scene the way I once did. Our time is much better served adding value to the community. I put a high level of focus on culling content into image and asset galleries that produce a great experience for users, and add to my arsenal of long-tail content.