Content is overrated. There’s too much of it. It’s hard to produce the best content. It’s costly and time-consuming to get the latest, breaking, news first.
Usually it’s not worth it.
Converting readers to participants isn’t easy. If you’re relying on topic-related content to draw people to your community you’re going to be disappointed. Worse, if content is your big draw to your community, participation rates are likely to be low. People are coming to read content, not participate in a community.
Focus on making connections. Introduce members to each other. Write content about members - not the industry. Ask questions which stimulate activity. Make the content in your community unique. Make it impossible for competitors to copy. Make it the place to come to find out what your peer group is doing.
That's how you win the content battle and build a thriving online community.
Smart post Richard.
I've only recently discovered that far from helping my members with content I've probably gone too far into preach mode. People simply come for the top tips, tutorials and workbooks but nothing else.
I guess it's about painting a small part of the picture and crowd-sourcing the rest so everyone can get involved.
Posted by: Dylan Jones | Tuesday, 09 November 2010 at 14:24
Have to partly for once :)
I feel that great content is just that tool that inspires and activates readers. I've successfully implemented a content plan for an online magazine a year ago. We not only set the subjects, but also the questions and statements we wanted our readers to discuss.
In only three weeks time, we already got to a point where we had a group of ~5 regulars and around 20 not-so-regular commenters that also interacted with each other (average views was ~400 per article).
Thanks for aiming at interaction, we became able to pick better subjects and get some readers to actually bond with our editors and each other.
Posted by: Bas Helderman | Wednesday, 10 November 2010 at 09:12
Rich, I'm a little puzzled. It sounds like you're sending mixed messages in this post. The one statement that stands out is "make the content in your community unique". To me thats the key.
IMO you can post the latest and greatest as long as it is framed as a conversation starter that encourages comments and varying opinions.
Posted by: Dave Lutz | Wednesday, 10 November 2010 at 11:16