Ask, Discuss, Or Share?

May 5, 20162 Comments

Most communities implicitly or explicitly decide the behavior of members.

  • Is this a place where people come, ask questions, and leave?
  • Is this a place where you discuss a topic you’re interested in?
  • Is this a place where you share the latest ideas you’ve seen and go to find the latest ideas from others?

There are tradeoffs to each of these.

If it’s about questions, people only come when they have a question. That might be once a day, once a week, or never. That’s a specific behavior and mindset.

If it’s about discussions, people visit if they really want to spend their spare time talking about the topic.

If it’s about sharing content, people visit to learn something new. This usually means they visit more frequently (variable reward mechanism), but it’s hard to filter for quality (LinkedIn).

Most community platforms only allow you to pick one option. At Inbound.org you don’t. You click on Add News and then the type of activity you’re going to perform.

Screenshot 2016-05-04 08.48.35

If you have the capacity to do something similar, you might want to try it.

Comments

  1. Stephen Gates says:

    Interesting. I’m working on a new forum and need to pick a sub-domain name. Ask, Share, Discuss are all options.

    I was leaning towards “ask” i.e. Ask.theXYZ.org as it made a sentence. Share.theXYZ.org and Discuss.theXYZ.org don’t work as well.

    I wonder if this will influence the posts made and how best to counter the behaviour described above.

  2. Sarah Hawk says:

    I think it probably does prime behaviour, yeah. We regret choosing Experts now, because it’s likely intimidating for some.

    I actually think that discuss.domain.org is good. Or even discussions.domain.org

Make your own comment on this post at FeverBee Experts

Avatar for HAWK Avatar for richard_millington Avatar for Stephen-Gates

©2023 FeverBee Limited, Apartment 2410, 251 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 6FN England FEVERBEE
GO TO THE CUTTING EDGE OF COMMUNITY BUILDING

We’d like you to join us.

We’re a group of community professionals who push each other to the cutting edge of our work. Every day we share our experiences, highlight new expertise, and push one another to become the best community builders we can be.

The day you join, you’ll get access to 1000+ practical tips, dozens of resources, and unlimited access to the top experts in our space. You’ll also get to see how we go about building a community amongst our own audience.

It takes just 30 seconds and doesn’t cost a thing.

CLICK HERE AND JOIN FEVERBEE
Please Select Membership Level to access more posts.

Level Price  
ALL COURSES $750.00 per Month.
Select
Community Development Program $1,100.00 per Month.
Select
Director of Community $8,770.00 per Month.
Select
Free Trial - Accelerator Program Free.
Select
Community Accelerator (founding members) [annually] $250.00 per Year.
Select
Community Accelerator and FeverBee Intelligence [monthly] $45.00 per Month.
Select
Community Accelerator and FeverBee Intelligence [annually] $450.00 per Year.
Select
Full Community Upgrade (Large Enterprise Only) [monthly] $750.00 per Month.
Select
Full Community Upgrade (Large Enterprise Only) [annually] $7,600.00 per Year.
Select