Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

The Notification Cycle

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

If you’ve made your first post in a community, when will you visit the site again?

After one hour? Five hours? A few days? 

It’s quite likely you will forget and never return.

It takes time for visiting a community to become a habit.

There are a tiny number of websites we visit every day. It might be Facebook, CNN News, a few blogs and a community site. You have to force your community into that list. 

The notifications cycle plays a key role in achieving this. 

People are notified by e-mail (not through the platform!) when their discussion has received a response. They visit, read the response and reply. The individuals which replied are notified and visit to reply….and so the cycle continues. 

Visiting the platform soon becomes a habit. 

Notifications also speed up the community. Most people instantly click on the notification to see the response. In that visit they make their own response. Others reply at a quicker pace. The quicker pace equals more posts equals greater familiarity and a stronger community. 

Don’t overlook notifications. Set them on by default. Keep them short. Make sure the message is clear “Joe Smith replied to your comment about {topic}, click here to reply“. Members are free to change the setting if they receive too many, but let them make that decision, not you. 

You can build a community without notifications, but it’s much harder. 

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