Setting up and Moderating an Online Community

February 22, 2011 - Last Modified: February 22, 2011 by Wasim Ismail

Several organizations are now setting up online communities for their users as an additional source of providing information and interacting with their visitors. This option helps these groups to come to terms with their cost, time and effectiveness. It allows these organizations to reach out to people, be acquainted with their thoughts, recognize their needs and even prompt their awareness.

Technically, setting up an online community can be only a few steps away. Just hire a developer and get open source forum codes. However, to keep it active and useful for your visitors, you require an accurate expectation of its growth and plenty of commitment.

We might assume that people will participate and join community and that their numbers will grow in a short span of time. Although these are just assumptions, we have to make these things real and achievable. It’ s best if we get the foundation right so that the community can grow and users can really benefit from such sites.

Below are some tips that you may consider in developing and moderating your online community:

1. Make the purpose of your community loud and clear

Know why you are setting up the community and what you want to achieve by setting this up. Be specific and thorough. For example, “Awareness to prevent online fraud”, “Community forum to help PHP programmers” or “Fan page to promote a certain artist”. By knowing what your clear purpose is and the goal of your community, you will be able to set everything else up accordingly, from the site design and development and to hiring the right users to manage the site.

You can also aim for a definite number of participants like “Reaching one million members to stop harassment of women” or “Ten thousand likes to put your brand on top”.

2. Know your target participants

Based on your goals, know who your readers, commentators, advisers or delegated supporters are. For corporate people, your target participants maybe your clients and for non-profit organizations, you may target your members. If you are generating awareness, you may open your community to everyone. Establish who will be using your site.

3. Provide relevant content and organized posts

Significant and helpful content plus organized topics can enhance user experience. This can also create good impressions particularly for new members and lasting loyalty for the regular ones. It’s the same old rule – if you offer good quality information that will help users, your visitors will stay and be loyal.

4. Specify rules and regulations

The correct use of the community is very essential, especially for the admin. Implementing rules and regulations will prevent hurting your brand name. Unfortunately, you do get some members that are only active to promote their own brands, to post gibberish, or to ask questions which have no connection to your community purpose. This might mislead your target participants.

5. Put the right skilled and active people to be the moderators

Putting the right skilled moderators in charge can attract more participants and prevent losing track of your purpose. The moderators should know the rules and regulations of the community. They must also be trained and skilled to reply in a friendly and intelligent manner to members’ questions, especially if the community is a support group. They should always be alert and prompt, as most online users want an immediate response. The best way to choose your moderators is to see which members are using your community regularly and approach them to be moderators, as they will be more familiar with your site.

6. Identify the dominant contributors

Identify good influencers in your community and give them incentives like promoting them into a level 2 membership or giving them the ability to put their own brands in their signatures. By simply giving importance to these users, you can create a more welcoming ambiance to other target participants.

7. Set up Peer-to-Peer Networks

People are signing up to communities to connect to others. That is, creating a peer-to-peer network. The same level environment can erase insecurities or doubts for other users to participate in discussions. This will make your community more interactive.

8. Know the right tools to use

Many application tools may increase your community popularity and enhance your members’ experiences. Sample applications are Facebook’s Like Box, Social network Sharing Tools, or Tweeting Buttons. Putting in like/dislike buttons can create an impression of giving importance to users’ opinions and reactions. In addition, putting a sharing tool button can entice the users to share your community page to other social network sites.

Strengthening your online community and moderating it well can be a big help to your brand popularity, and an ease to your traditional supports. It can also lessen your time and expenses in meeting your target participants.

What else do you think one should consider in setting up an online community? Share your tips below.

About Wasim Ismail

Follow @wasimalrayes

Wasim’s a project manager at Alrayes Web Solutions along with an online SEO consultant & blogger for business at wasimismail.com, specialising in online business.

{ 35 Responses }

Mavis Nong says:

Hi Wasim,Great tips you are sharing here. Having an online community is a great way to get like-minded individuals together to mastermind and help each other. I see this is a growing trend these days.I agree, it needs to be promoted and be packed with valuable content to attract new members and retain existing ones.Thanks for sharing your insights, Wasim.All the best, Mavis
Alex says:

Hello Wasim, I think one of the strong points of building a community is to have the core users ready to jump in. I mean, I really don't see the point of building it if you don't have a certain number of people who want that community to help others, share their thoughts their sufferings. So, supposing that you already have the core members (which by the way, don't have to be people you know, but people that have the same objectives as you or share the same thoughts) the community should take off much quickly. Mainly because those few members will tell other people and so on, in a snowball effect they will grow your users numbers, thus making your work of promoting the community much easier!
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  I get your point, this is why, many build a mailing list first, and then start a community, as they have a good followership already, and attracting their readers to join their new community would be much easier, like you said it can have a snowball effect.
Fran Aslam From Onlinewriter says:

Hi Wasim Building a community and a guide for others how to work on it is a great job. Must take lot of work and this work never ends as far as you want your community going stronger better and popular all the time. All the best Fran A
Moosa Hemani says:

Great Advice by Wasim here... Setting up and online community is one hell of a work and yes it give great results as well... One need to be active and participative i must say should be the 1st to break the ice kind of person in order to run a successful online community on the web... Great Article.
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Yes Moosa, It is hard work, but just like everything else, it require commitment and a plan of action.
Dennis Edell says:

Excellent advice Wasim, and timely too for me. As I mentioned to Tinh above, I have eventual plans as well for forum, and/or chat/conference room.
- Hesham says:
  
  Hi Dennis, If you are planning this, then you maybe need to consider dealing with spammers, I've discovered that the best way is to NOT open forum for the public to register! (I read below you are between paid or close membership, good idea!) You will get a lot of spammers register to your forum in a few days from launching your site, I have no idea how they find forums that fast!
  - Wasim Ismail says:
    
    Great advice Hesham, and tip to deal with spammers, keep your forum closed for only subscribed users, this way you are also building your email list, and you know whose seriously interested, also at a later stage you can also charge to access your special forum if you want. Thanks for the additional tip. :)
    - Hesham says:
      
      No problem, and by the way.. Thank you so much for the informative article! I've worked before as an editor and moderator in some international media organization, and I've seen a lot of this, and what you put here together is actually something I wanted to write about since long time :) Great job Wasim!
    - Dennis Edell says:
      
      That's what I was thinking Wasim, maybe take it all the way and even hide it from the search engines...invite only. This could work real well if I decide to charge and offer an affiliate program. ;-)
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    Probably some software bot out there constantly scouring the net looking for newly formed forums.
Sourish says:

after google has made it mandatory they even comments must be edited to meet its guidelines , i moderate comments and clean common vernal abuses from each one of them ... not to mention spams are deleted automatically via akismet
- Dennis Edell says:
  
  Google did what? When? Got a link?
  - Alex says:
    
    He was talking about AdSense. Google mentions on it's AdSense blog, and I think in their guidelines that every user is responsible for their content and that it doesn't matter how that comment reaches the users website they still need to moderate it and make sure it complies with their guidelines. So even if you have a forum with over 100 000 users and they post thousands of posts a day, you have to make sure all those topics are Google friendly. But, I don't think it's something to worry about if you don't use AdSense :)
    - Sourish says:
      
      thanks for pointing that out Alex . moderating comments / user generated content also helps pages rank in serp ... only last day google introduced their new algorithm to downrank and remove spammy and low quality sites
    - Dennis Edell says:
      
      Thanks.v I don't currently use it, but may go back to it on blogs other then DEDC.
Robert Dempsey says:

Great tips Wasim. One point I would add for the moderators is keeping the conversation going. I've seen communities come online only to fall flat as they can't get enough participation. Without that, people start to wonder why they are there. That also feeds into your other points too.
- Dennis Edell says:
  
  Very good point Robert, too many moderators just wanna play warden.
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Thanks for the adding more value. Keeping the conversation is important, and as a moderator, it’s a skill that one needs to learn, so that the forum stay alive. Thanks
Shariq says:

Maintaining an online community is really a challenging task.
Steve says:

Great points about building an online community. I specifically liked 3 and 4. Knowing who you are targeting is striving to give them the exact information they really want and need by providing high-quality content seems to me to be a great goal. There are so many of these online communities out there is sometimes seems like it becomes hard to separate yourself from the herd by really targeting people and giving quality you can make your community truly stand out shine
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Steve, thanks, this is why users will come to your forum, because they are looking for something, and if you can provide them the information that they want easily, and the information quality unique content, then you will always attract new users, and start to grow your online community.
Marlee says:

Hey Wasim! These are excellent guide lines for building a community! I'm going to take each to heart. I'm in the process of developing my own community (yet to be publicly unveiled) and I'm going to definitely strive to implement #1 & #5 because those are the principles I've seen most effectively keep a community strong in any that I've been a part of.
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Hi Marlee I'm glad you have found this of value, and best of luck with your new community, keep us posted on how you get along. Thanks
Sujith says:

Creating a good friend circle through the active participation in similar communities will make the job easier.
Tinh says:

All are correct and I think that moderating an online community is not an easy tasks and I would suggest a closed community or paid with quality, quantity is not something that makes our community good as spammers are still there :-)
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Thanks for the suggestions, yes sometimes it may be better to have a closed community, so that you know that the users are genuine, and that they appreciate your work.
- Dennis Edell says:
  
  I too have plans for a forum and/or chat/conference room. I was wondering bout making it paid and or closed also.
- Hesham says:
  
  So true Tinh! I've done a few setups for forums, the worst thing is the spam! It's really recommended to make sure you are protecting your site and community!
Dave Grimes II says:

Great advice. My favorite technique for building a community online is one that you highlighted very well, and one that is (sadly) overlooked by most: providing useful, relevant content. Nothing brings people and ideas together like thought and opinion provoking content.
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  True said, the reason why users will subscribe and join your community is because of what you have to offer.
TJ McDowell says:

Promote, promote, promote. Otherwise all the planning you've done to get the community off the ground is for nothing. Noone can benefit from a community that they're not aware is out there.
- Wasim Ismail says:
  
  Once you have built your community you need to shout it out, let everyone know, just in the same way the way you promote your website, blog and business, your online community needs to have a marketing strategy.

Setting up and Moderating an Online Community