Tactics That Make Activity Go Up

There are thousands of tactics that will make the level of activity in the community go up. 

Initiate a poll on a topical issue and e-mail all your members about it. Host an exciting event and invite members to join (their friends too!). Turn the most controversial discussions into sticky-threads. 

But there is a difference between tactics that make the level of activity go up, and the strategies which make the level of activity stay up.

The problem with the above is two-fold. First, these tactics always take time. You will always have to spend your time hosting/initiating these. This isn't a single intervention, it's something new added to your work load.

Second, members get tired of the same things. You can't repeat the same trick forever. Eventually the activity declines again. You can't always host more interesting polls, exciting events, or feature even more controversial discussions.

It's always better, over the long term, to develop a sense of community. To forever push your community towards greater familiarity with each other. To use the transferable community elements within your community strategy.

This doesn't make the level of activity go up, it keeps the level of activity going up. 

Comments

[Brad @ipagecoupon]

Having a high level of activity on an online community is very important as unless there is a strong level of discussion and interaction, the whole point of having the community would be lost. Work, patience and attention are required to achieve a satisfactory level of interaction in the short term and in the long term, and to prevent such interest in the community from dying off. I believe that this works like a fire. Once it is dying down, you need to throw more wood to set it up again, but if you let it die down completely, you have to work much harder to set it up again from scratch.