Shut Your Community Down

Why not shut your community down until the New Year?

I’m serious.

Shut it down. Tell everyone to spend the holidays with their families instead. Have a countdown clock to Jan 02 – 6pm.

Now you wont have a weak community for over a week. You will have a community that launches with enthusiasm in the New Year.

It’s a great time to backup and update the site too.

Comments

[Martin Reed]

Hmmm - Another original idea, good stuff!

Not sure I can get behind this completely, though. What if your community is only a few weeks old? Relationships won't necessarily be strong enough to survive a long absence. The last thing you want is new members forgetting about the community - perhaps this can work, but only if the community is well established and has a hugely loyal membership base.

Have you ever done this on any communities you have worked on?

- Martin

[Richard Millington]

Hey Martin,

Sorry for the delay, I'm moving country over Christmas (now in Lithuania).

These posts were written about 3 weeks ago.

We did this accidently. The website went down at the beginning of December. So we used it as an opportunity to touch up the design, do the techy stuff (not me, personally) and put a count-down clock to January 02. The anticipation worked well.

You're right, it wont work for every community. And weak communities might struggle.

Aside, is it good to launch a new community so close to Christmas?

[Martin Reed]

Congratulations on the move - I hope you are settling into Lithuanian life well, and are learning the language!!

I guess it depends on what you determine to be 'close to Christmas' - two months? Three months? It's all subjective, and one of the reasons why community building is so exciting!

- Martin